Total film/little white lies

Alternative Genre Movies:

Press Movies (Little White Lies/ Total Film)

The depiction of the press across all platforms is a noteworthy subgenre in the entire existence of celluloid, and why shouldn’t it be? Journalism and movies share an important criteria in that they both set out to tell a story (whether truthful or otherwise) and we as consumers love to lap it up. Films have been made from newspaper articles; for example an article in Life magazine called “the boys from the bank” was a source of inspiration for the film Dog Day Afternoon, whilst the movie On the Waterfront was based on a 24 page part series of articles in the New York Sun to create a story of Union corruption and crime in the New Jersey Docks starring Marlon Brando.

Of course there are also a number of great directors who have originated from the field of journalism. Stanley Kubrick’s path to one of the greatest ever auteur began as a photo journalist for Look magazine, then transcended to documentary maker, before he took on the reigns of “Fear and Desire” and went on to make such films as “Dr Strangeglove” and “2001: a Space Odyssey”. Samuel Fuller began his career as first as a copy boy aged 12, and then he moved on to crime reporting for the New York Evening Graphic. He produced a love letter to the print press with the film Park Row, and its romantic ideals of what the press stood for. Nora Ephron started her career as a reporter for the New York Post, then went on to directed and wrote such films as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. In the sixties the French New Wave emerged, which produced directors such as Trauffaut, Luc-Goddard and Chabrol and went on to revolutionise films that have been made ever since. Their careers originated as film critics for the magazine Cashiers du Cinema, where they decided that they could make better films than the ones they were writing about.

The representation of the pres in the movies should be a familiar one. From the spinning newspaper headlines, to the harassment from the press by a suspected criminal or celebrity protagonist, the press are often presented as piranhas. The movies with Michael Corleone finds out about his father’s attempted assassination while glancing at in the Godfather


Films have been made from newspaper articles