Doomsaying has become popular sport in America, from the extreme of that crazy California radio prophet being wrong about the end of the world not just once, but twice in 2011, to technology pundits predicting that DVDs will disappear within five years.  The DVD prediction isn’t going to happen either; not as long as people like me want to actually own hard copies of what we want to watch.  Nevertheless, the film industry in particular is undergoing great change, from the way in which movies are delivered and presented at theaters to the actual business of moviemaking itself. Some people are commenting that the movie format itself is archaic and predicting that movies will, at some point, simply stop being made.

I cannot even imagine such a world.

But others can, because they see the proverbial writing on the wall.  Even my fellow critic Psychdoc77, who recently wrote to me with this wisdom to impart:

I hate to say it, but I think a key fact from 2011 in film is that movies are rapidly losing their cultural importance.  Moviegoing is way down, at least at theaters, and I feel like people’s energies are elsewhere.  I am certainly worried about the long-term viability of the film industry.  Of course, smaller films might be better anyway.

That made me think, and I have to say I agree with him.  His facts are accurate.

Where I diverge from his thinking is that I believe that this has been true for some seventy years, and yet movies are still being made and watched pretty much as they have been since their heyday.

That heyday was in the 1940s, during World War II.  Never before or since, at least in America, were (or have been) movies so important.  1939 is widely considered to be the pinnacle of American filmmaking, but ’40, ’41 and ’42 were pretty darn good as well, with an astonishing number of truly great films being produced.  The war began to change that, with much effort going toward propagandizing the war effort, but on the flip side, movies meant more to people, both at home and on the world’s various battlegrounds, than ever before.  Movies were an escape from the horrors of battle, of rationing, of separation, of grief, of destruction.  I would argue that even with a general lessening of quality during the last three years of World War II, the film industry was never more important to the American people than at that time.

The fifties brought prosperity and challenges, best represented by the profound influence of a relatively new medium, television.  But films adapted, with new stereo soundtracks, a wider acceptance of color and spectacular widescreen processes.  The sixties threatened a social upheaval, and film studios struggled to make sense of it all, sticking (as an example) with bloated musicals that felt outdated even as they were released.  Yet the moviemakers adapted again, embracing the new freedoms of the screen and turning period pieces like Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch inside out to find cultural relevance.

As technology advanced, movies kept up.  The home video revolution was thought by many at the time to sound the death knell for theatrical runs.  Why should anyone pay to watch a movie in a theater when they could rent it for home viewing?  Those people quickly found that in order to be successful, a movie must have a high public profile before a video release.  So the process has continued unabated.

Now there’s the internet, and streaming, and “on demand” services.  They’re all fine and dandy, especially for the young folk who adapt quickly to such changes, but one thing has never changed, and I don’t think that it will.  There has to be a basic product — something to download, something to stream, something to order “on demand.”  And at least some of the product remains theatrical movies.

Television has proven to be a goldmine for home video in all its forms, much more so than I ever would have imagined.  (And yet they still haven’t put out the shows that I would like to revisit, like The Lou Grant Show or Police Story or Room 222).  Even so, movies are just as important a source of revenue for home entertainment and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Just think of all the movie stars that would have to adapt.  I can’t see Russell Crowe or Jodie Foster doing reality TV.  I can’t see Adam Sandler or Julia Roberts devoting themselves solely to comedy webisodes.  I can’t see Seth Rogen or Penelope Cruz retiring because there are no more feature films to be made.  Not gonna happen.

Have the movies lost some of the cultural significance?  Sure, but like I said, that has been happening for seventy years.  It’s cyclical.  All it takes is a Best Years of Our Lives or a Marty or a Graduate or a Jaws or an E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial or a Titanic or an Avatar or a Godfather and they’ll be important again.  All it takes is for someone in Hollywood to come up with something fairly original and fairly entertaining that somehow catches lightning in a bottle and all this fatalist talk about the end of movies will end.  At least for a while.  15 Dec. 2011.