Movie Story-Telling and Pacing Differences - 20's through Today

[DarkDune]

Hello fellow Movie Fan-addicts!

I recently saw the new Hobbit film (The Desolation of Smaug), and Frozen, which are both highly successful moderm films, from modern studios, and from artists who know how to tell really good stories using film as a medium. In watching these films and comparing memory of other recent modern films I gave some time to thinking about how the story-telling, and pacing of film has changed over the years. I notice this in television as well, and it is quite different from film not so far back - even as recent as the 90's, 80's and 70's.

We live in a modern World, and are often bombarded with multiple things simultaneously calling for our attention, which in contrast is not what watching a good movie is all about. In watching movies, we sit ourselves down, and desire being transported to other World's, and choose to blast our senses with images and sounds sometimes unlike anything we've ever dared to experience in the real World. In doing so, however, distraction is not warranted, or desired. A good movie, with a good balance of story-telling, action, and pacing is more successful at giving us the illusion of being transported for a time there.

So, I was wondering if you all would join me in a discussion of how film story-telling, and pacing have changed over the years, and if you have a preference.

For example:

Do you enjoy quick cuts from one actor/actress to another, or do you prefer the camera linger longer on an actor/actress in order to take in their performance?

Do you think this visual style has changed for the better, or worse?

Can you think of some specific examples of movies where the more modern, quicker pacing was highly successful, or highly disastrous?

Are there some older, slower pacing films that just nailed it?

I would really enjoy hearing about what you all think (I hope this is an interesting topic for you all).

I would also love to know - if you choose to reveal it - whether you are a child of the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or 2000's, to provide some further context to your opinions.

In my case, I am a child of the 70's, so you can imagine I grew up with films from that era in the Movie Theater itself, as well as TV, and some Movie Theaters that gave me "proper" access to older films.