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Quite a few have succeeded. In 1957 Morris Engel made Weddings and Babies. In 1959 Robert Frank shot Pull My Daisy, and Sidney Meyers directed The Savage Eye. In 1961 John Cassavetes released Shadows, and Shirley Clarke did a movie version of Jack Gelber's play The Connection. The same year Jonas Mekas fired off Guns of the Trees, and two years later his brother gave out with Hallelujah. In 1962 Herbert Danska filmed The Gift, and Frank Perry came in with David and Lisa, the best U.S. film of the year. And in 1963 Robert Drew, Greg Shuker and Ricky Leacock produced The Chair. Some of these films were heavily haired-over and a few were downright funky, but most of them looked new and alive and original, and when they were shown in Europe the men of the new cinema were mightily impressed.
New Techniques. More than many others, U.S. moviemakers have taken advantage of new techniques: lightweight, hand-held cameras; directional microphones that spot the right voices in crowds; transistorized sound equipment. Such devices have been used with striking effect—particularly in the "living camera" pictures of Drew and Leacock. This or similar equipment is now available in most major centers of moviemaking, and so are a number of extremely sensitive and rapid varieties of film that can just about see in the dark.
The men of the new cinema know these new tools and use them. As a result, the craft of film is changing rapidly and so is the art of film. The new tools have enlarged its language and enriched its spirit. They have set the camera free as a bird. They have put in its head the eyes of a cat. Anywhere a man can go a camera now can go, and anything a man can see a camera can see better. Such an instrument is sure to make the art of film more supple, more various, to put within its reach a larger share of life.
The Way Lies Open. Such an instrument indeed may do something even more important. It may free the movies from the gilded cage in which they have so long languished; it may free the creator from the grip of the financier. The new equipment is absurdly inexpensive to own and to operate. A standard motion picture camera, for instance, costs $25,000; an Arriflex costs $3,500. Eleven standard studio lamps cost $2,100; eight of the new portable lamps do the same job and cost only $566. With such reduced expenses, the new international cinema can quite comfortably be supported by the new international audience.