The Simple Trick to Great Filmmaking--Or Writing

Marisa Berenson

It seems to me there is a simple and obvious difference between a good movie and a bad movie. A good movie leaves you with scenes, visuals, lines, that burn into your memory. This effect is so profound that sometimes I fear going to see a new film by a certain director, because I know there will be a part of my consciousness that I will never own again. A bad movie may hold your attention while it is on screen, but a few months later, you can remember nothing about it. Perhaps not even whether you have seen that movie.

This is what the great directors do. There are always memorable lines and memorable images.

The funny thing is that this in itself is a kind of formula, and not that hard to follow. A big part of this—and it applies just as much to good writing—is that a bad film follows all the conventions, and gives you just what you expected. A good film—or piece of writing—strives to give you something you do not expect. This is always what is memorable. George Orwell put it well when he gave, as one of his rules of good writing, “never use an expression or phrase you are used to seeing in print.”

To give one example, a bad movie will cast actors who are conventionally extremely good looking in the lead roles. Obvious enough, surely.

A good movie will instead cast actors who have an unusual appearance. If someone is conventionally extremely good looking, they will cast him in a character role—like George Clooney in Hail Caesar!, or Brad Pitt in Burn after Reading.

Then they will cast a character actor in the lead role, like Tim Blake Nelson in Buster Scruggs or Frances McDormand in Fargo.

Stanley Kubrick, with his photographer’s eye, was especially good at selecting lead actresses who were, although not extremely beautiful in the conventional way, entrancing to look at: Shelley Duvall in The Shining, Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon.