All language subtitles for 2 - Beginnings

I'm often asked about the relationship

between my original desire to enter the priesthood um

and my love for film

um in other words

in a sense going from one vocation

which is one calling

it's called one calling

which the priesthood

to another which is a calling which it is a

commitment to a way of life and that is the filmmaking

of course it's a very

you know personal matter but

but I will say that it was a matter of being

honest with myself as best I could

and realizing that

you must do what you're called to do within yourself um

the church and and cinema

and they both make sense to me

one particular priest who was a very

very influential in my upbringing

from the age of 11 to age of 17 or 18 um

that made sense

he really made sense

made sense about morality and life in the outside world

away from the neighborhood and the church we were in

and this is a person that I wanted to be like

of course you know

in order to be

true cleric

in that sense

you do have to feel that yourself

you have to be

there's a commitment that you can't join it

because you want to be like somebody else

and he has to come from you

um and I found all of this started to filter into a

storytelling

storytelling

this particular priest did help try to balance um

common sense in the world

and also moral sense

but the world we're in

you know the world that was the Bowery

when they call them the bums

at the time

living on the Bowery

were part of the world that I grew up in

was a criminal element

along with working class people

who just trying to stay alive

and the older Sicilians and the Neapolitans

who would come to America

who didn't speak English

so so much was entangled

that woman on

in that neighborhood in

and in my own life

and it was so powerful to me

the desire to tell these stories on film came from that

and a lot of what I experienced in church

for example

the visual impact of the church

the statues

whether they were plaster statues

or whether they were actually beautifully form

versions of some sort of sculpture

devotional paintings

stations of the cross the

the light in the Basilica

of Saint Patrick's Old Cathedral

the light during the daytime

and how it shifted through the stained glass windows

uh the tone and the mood of

of the Basilic itself

the nature of the rituals

that was pre Vatican to uh

all inform me of course

and my approach to cinema as a

began making movies

the concept of morality uh

right and wrong

good and bad

good and evil um

and how faith um

how faith is a major element in leading a life

that could be a moral life

you know and how faith can also be something which

contains a great deal of doubt

and how there's a struggle for faith

and this is something that comes from that time

that was planted at that time

how does one live

is the old story as a Main Streets

or a number of the other films

if you're in a world that is a

on you're in the front lines of a world that is uh uh

pretty tough and pretty negative

and at times evil is all around you

how do you try to live balanced

not balanced

but I try to live a moral life

and so these

these questions always uh uh uh

come back to me

and this is what I think of all the time

when I was young uh

obviously was a very different world than it is today

movies were only seen in theaters before television um

and due to many different reasons

of late 1940s and early 50s

including health

I found myself seeing a lot of movies

my parents would take me to see

my brother and I loved the movies I saw um

but there was no doubt that this world of movie making

um where these um

miraculous images and stories came from um

really felt very distant

I it was something that I could not imagine um

I would ever be involved in

the point is that um

creativity with cinema

like any real art form

is you really should know the old work

that has gone before the old masters and I

I do think you should know it meaning

you should be exposed to it

you should see and uh

experience them as best you can

do not look at them to learn from them

look at them to see if speaks to you

if you're interested at all

if you're curious

you know it's not a matter of

I'm gonna learn something from watching all of Max

all folds I'm gonna learn something

you know um uh

it's a matter of your response to it

you're aware that that is out there

you're aware that that's part of the

medium you're using

and so in a way

even if you reject it

you have to know what you're rejecting I think

and it's to learn from the old masses

hence you need conservation

you need preservation

and you need presentation of these films

unfortunate that many of the new films will be seen on

a small screen

however we did see some great films on television

which was a small screen at the time

in the late in the 50s

so somehow the power of films like

like Citizen Kane

burst through that 16 inch black and white screen

you know and when we saw it in a theater

in a print that was being shown and um

re release in the late 50s uh

it was another experience you know

I wish I had seen it on the screen for the first time

but didn't the effect

seeing it on television was still very

very strong

enough to change my mind about how films are made

and so you know

it's really important to

be aware of these things that have happened before

and to maybe reinterpret them

and we interpret

reinterpret to the point where you discard them even

you have 100 years of cinema

more than 100 years now to

sort of I should say

dive into in a way and find your way you know

because in 1960 we had basically the 19

some of the 1930s

all through the 40s and 50s of American films

all the silent films were not seen

if you did see a silent film by that point

it was in 16 millimeters scratched up jerky motion

and you wondered why anybody went to see these things

you had some foreign films

French and Italian mainly

many British films um

but nothing from Japan until early fifties

and so there was a possibly German films

to a certain extent from the 1920s

again there was silent Russian films

it was silent

so whatever prints we got

dupe negatives

they weren't the best

but you were aware of these things

and yet I think by 19

1960 or 61 one could still say

you could actually absorb the history of cinema

from all over the world

cause wasn't that much to see

compared to now

now you have everything

and everything is on the same plane

on the same time scale almost

you can watch something from 1920

and then see something was made yesterday

the people who made a cinema and created cinema

I should say

in 19 1898 to 19 0 3

to 1910 to 1916 to 1925

it's a very different

they were creating a language

they were creating a new form

a new art form and so we

myself and my generation

many you know

even others at that time

but primarily

the generation that came out of the 50s and 60s

that started making films in the 70s

in the cinema

is that was made

particularly in America

that we were exposed to constantly

is a block of time that is something very special to us

no one really ever thought about the continuity

the preservation of the restoration

or even just the preservation

the conservation of these

these works that influenced us so much

are influenced

but made up so much

made up so much of our lives

it was transition from the old studio system in the 60s

the early 70s

transition from the old studio system

to the new Hollywood at that time

but in the in the midst of it

you don't know if there's gonna be a new Hollywood

you see we just knew that the studios were closing down

they were selling off their props

who knows what was happening to their prints

a lot of the prints are on nitrate stock

a lot of the negatives in nitrate

they're just disintegrating

all of this was the end of an era

you see and so we started um

trying to raise the consciousness

of people who are in power at the time

to preserve the films

conserve the films ultimately

particularly with the ancillary markets of video

and that sort of thing

they begin to realize that there's a

there's still an ability to

these are assets

very important to them

we knew they were more than assets

they were a life blood to us