The difference between ‘films’ and ‘movies’, according to Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton has divided her time between subversive indie films and blockbusters since she started acting back in the 1980s, appearing in everything from experimental Derek Jarman numbers to Marvel movies.
You’d think that she wouldn’t stoop as low as the superhero franchise when she clearly knows a good film when she sees one, but Swinton has a certain criterion that she stands by when she picks a job.
She’s adamant that there is a difference between ‘movies’ and ‘films’, something she learned from one of cinema’s greatest masters, Michael Powell, who was responsible for making one of Swinton’s all-time favourite films, A Matter of Life and Death, with his directing partner Emeric Pressburger. It’s a gorgeous piece of cinema which envelopes you in its world (who can forget that giant, surreal staircase?), and really, that’s the crux of what makes a good film, according to the actor.
“It’s style and beauty. We all split the hairs of film and movies, and sometimes, for pejorative reasons, we go and see a movie or when we are sick of movies, and we want to go and see a film. Maybe we think of movies as being story-led or drama-led?” she mused once to Variety.
So, what is the difference between a movie and a film? Of course, the terms are interchangeable, although you’ll often find that ‘movie’ refers to something a little more low-brow. Interestingly, it was ‘film’ that came first, while the term movie was reportedly not printed until 1912, of course existing as a shortening of the term ‘moving picture’. Really, for the common folk, it all just comes down to preference, but to Swinton, they mean two different things.
Bringing up her friendship with the late Powell, Swinton explained her understanding of the two: “I’m thinking of this moment when I was privileged to know Michael Powell at the end of his life. I had just come in on a plane to New York and he said, ‘What was the movie you saw on the plane and was it good?’ and I said, ‘No, it wasn’t, it was Batman‘. And he said, and this was one of the only times anyone said this, ‘You’re wrong, it’s a good film. It’s a good film; any film that sets out to create its own world is a good film’.”
So, that was her told: if you watch something that totally engulfs you in its own world, one that can’t be mistaken for anything else, then you’re watching a film, whereas movies are much less memorable in that respect.
“And I remember swallowing that and letting it digest for years. I think it doesn’t mean to say I want to be in that world or that it’s well realised, but that gesture of making a world unique to that film or filmmaker gets you to the next level. Maybe movies don’t do that,” she concluded.
Perhaps that’s why Swinton has allowed herself to star in the MCU, and while some filmmakers, like Martin Scorsese, see these kinds of films as nothing more than theme park-esque, the fast food of cinema, the actor clearly sees them as films that craft distinctive worlds. However, something tells me Powell wouldn’t be a huge fan of Doctor Strange.
