Veteran editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient) recently gave this fascinating talk about ‘the three fathers of cinema’, with reference to Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustave Flaubert andย Thomas Edison.
Murch once had a shrewd observation about the impact of film on audiences:
I believe that one of the secret engines that allows cinema to work, and have the marvelous power over us that it does, is the fact that for thousands of years we have spent eight hours every night in a “cinematic” dream-state, and so are familiar with this version of reality.