Jason E. Squire

Los Angeles

The writer is a professor of the practice of cinematic arts at the U.S.C. School of Cinematic Arts.

To the Editor:

As an independent filmmaker for over 20 years, I can attest to the validity of Martin Scorsese’s thesis. What the business lacks is “ the unifying vision of an individual artist.” There are exceptions, of course, like Quentin Tarantino. But today where are the young Steven Spielbergs, the Francis Ford Coppolas, the Brian DePalmas, the Alfred Hitchcocks, the Stanley Kubricks, the Ingmar Bergmans, the Orson Welleses?

Today’s industry is all about factory formulas, and avoidance of a unifying vision and any possible risk. A dearth of great filmmaking is now upon us, and it is our loss. Perhaps more than any other living director today, Mr. Scorsese has worked to educate young filmmakers about the art and technical aspects of filmmaking through his brilliant documentaries. For me, he has been like a personal mentor over the past two decades, and his words continue to inspire me even as the end draws near for the auteur.

Oliver Tuthill

Portland, Ore.

To the Editor:

For most of us who never lived in New York City or other major cities with art house cinemas, our first exposure, often our only exposure, to the classics, from John Ford to Orson Welles to Douglas Sirk to Ingmar Bergman to Akira Kurosawa to Preston Sturges, was watching these movies on TV, usually on a local public television station on Saturday night, then from renting Netflix DVDs or catching them on Turner Classic Movies. If we were “woke” in college, we could see them on a relatively tiny cinema screen in our college student center.

My point is that we saw these movies on a small screen, not in a movie theater. The size of the screen didn’t matter then. It doesn’t matter now.

Your life can be changed by Shakespeare in a stage play, a movie adaptation or by reading the text. It’s all good!

Jeffrey Mobley

Nashville

To the Editor:

Martin Scorsese reveals what he really believes to be cinema: movies made by the white male filmmaker. By referring to the films of Hitchcock, Bergman and Godard in his argument about what defines cinematic art, he reinforces the decades-old white patriarchal ideals that have pushed female filmmakers and filmmakers of color out of film history and out of mind.