Friday, January 29, 2010
On the Misjudgment of Probabilities
A somewhat rambling, indulgent post. I'm writing a blogpost after quite a while which may account for the rather stodgy turns of phrase.
Finished reading Nassim Taleb's bestsellers Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan lately. One among the several insights in the books is that in the real world, it is difficult to assess the degree of uncertainty as risks are not easily computable. The tools of Probability theory come in mighty handy to help compute odds in controlled environments like a casino. But they are of little use once we step out of such regulated environs.
Also, even when we are in a position to reliably compute the odds, we do not consciously use the odds while taking decisions.
Suppose an insurance salesman presents you with two policies.
- Death on account of a terrorist strike
Covered Amount: $50,000
Annual Premium: $50(for 5 years)
- Death on account of any cause
Covered Amount: $50,000
Annual Premium: $2500(for 5 years)
Now, I find Policy A just as attractive as Policy B if not even better. Yes, we would all expect the premium on a special-case death policy to be a lot lower than a "normal" life insurance policy.
A premium of $50 as opposed to $2500 seems fair enough as it appears to account for the relative rarity of a death on account of a terrorist strike.
However, though a ratio of 1/50 ($50/$2500) sounds very good, Policy A is terribly overpriced! (I'm assuming ofcourse that Policy B is reasonably priced)
Death on account of a terrorist strike is an extremely rare event. Surely, fewer than one in fifty deaths is caused due to a terrorist strike. Even if Policy A were priced at $10, I'd still regard it as overpriced!
This reminded me of the law trial in the memorable Otto Preminger classic - Angel Face starring Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons (who passed away last week) that I watched the other day on DVD. A 20 year old girl kills her step mother by tampering with the gear and break system of the latter's convertible. She succeeds quite spectacularly in her attempt as her victim hurtles to her death along with the vehicle which falls off a cliff.
In the trial that ensues, the ruins of the vehicle are examined. An automobile engineer concludes that the gear shaft was manipulated. The defence lawyer asks whether the gear shaft may have reached its present position due to the impact of the fall. The engineer replies that it is a one in a million event. The shrewd lawyer rejoins - why not one in a thousand? or even one in ten!
So now the case rests on the jury's assessment of probabilities. The higher the likelihood of the gear shaft reaching its present position during the fall, the better the chance of the step daughter getting acquitted. Here's a case where there is no way one can judge the likelihood of the event, no matter how sophisticated you are in your knowledge of statistics and probability. Juries tend to play safe in scenarios like these (i.e over-estimate the likelihood of the rare event) and let the criminal go scot-free.
PS: Jean Simmons does get acquitted in the movie, somewhat predictably.
I've seldom seen a mainstream Hollywood movie demonstrate our inability to come to terms with randomness. Angel Face is an honourable exception.
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A somewhat rambling, indulgent post. I'm writing a blogpost after quite a while which may account for the rather stodgy turns of phrase.
Finished reading Nassim Taleb's bestsellers Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan lately. One among the several insights in the books is that in the real world, it is difficult to assess the degree of uncertainty as risks are not easily computable. The tools of Probability theory come in mighty handy to help compute odds in controlled environments like a casino. But they are of little use once we step out of such regulated environs.
Also, even when we are in a position to reliably compute the odds, we do not consciously use the odds while taking decisions.
Suppose an insurance salesman presents you with two policies.
- Death on account of a terrorist strike
Covered Amount: $50,000
Annual Premium: $50(for 5 years)
- Death on account of any cause
Covered Amount: $50,000
Annual Premium: $2500(for 5 years)
Now, I find Policy A just as attractive as Policy B if not even better. Yes, we would all expect the premium on a special-case death policy to be a lot lower than a "normal" life insurance policy.
A premium of $50 as opposed to $2500 seems fair enough as it appears to account for the relative rarity of a death on account of a terrorist strike.
However, though a ratio of 1/50 ($50/$2500) sounds very good, Policy A is terribly overpriced! (I'm assuming ofcourse that Policy B is reasonably priced)
Death on account of a terrorist strike is an extremely rare event. Surely, fewer than one in fifty deaths is caused due to a terrorist strike. Even if Policy A were priced at $10, I'd still regard it as overpriced!
This reminded me of the law trial in the memorable Otto Preminger classic - Angel Face starring Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons (who passed away last week) that I watched the other day on DVD. A 20 year old girl kills her step mother by tampering with the gear and break system of the latter's convertible. She succeeds quite spectacularly in her attempt as her victim hurtles to her death along with the vehicle which falls off a cliff.
In the trial that ensues, the ruins of the vehicle are examined. An automobile engineer concludes that the gear shaft was manipulated. The defence lawyer asks whether the gear shaft may have reached its present position due to the impact of the fall. The engineer replies that it is a one in a million event. The shrewd lawyer rejoins - why not one in a thousand? or even one in ten!
So now the case rests on the jury's assessment of probabilities. The higher the likelihood of the gear shaft reaching its present position during the fall, the better the chance of the step daughter getting acquitted. Here's a case where there is no way one can judge the likelihood of the event, no matter how sophisticated you are in your knowledge of statistics and probability. Juries tend to play safe in scenarios like these (i.e over-estimate the likelihood of the rare event) and let the criminal go scot-free.
PS: Jean Simmons does get acquitted in the movie, somewhat predictably.
I've seldom seen a mainstream Hollywood movie demonstrate our inability to come to terms with randomness. Angel Face is an honourable exception.
Labels: movies, statistics
Friday, August 28, 2009
Changing Social Equations : Witnessed through the prism of movies
I've always felt that motion pictures are much more representative of a society's collective impulses than any other art form. It is possible for a novelist or a painter to construct an alternative universe of his own and create works of art that can exist in isolation in any era independent of the social milieu that surrounds them. The art of cinema is fundamentally different. Being a mass medium, movies must be able to relate to the impulses of the audience if they have to succeed. Most movies are products of the times in which they are made, unlike a lot of great books. Frank Capra's films are products of the thirties Depression Era. Woody Allen's pictures on the other hand are influenced by the counterculture of the sixties and seventies. Either of them couldn't have succeeded in the other person's era.
Literature is quite different in this respect. It is a lot easier to associate the attribute of 'timelessness' with books than it is with movies. Take for instance the fictional world of the incomparable PG Wodehouse. He created a universe inhabited by absentminded earls, erudite butlers and wealthy nincompoops which hardly had any basis in reality. The books of Wodehouse found a niche market which exists even today, though the 'Edwardian' utopia found in his books is not to be found anywhere on earth.
Which is why I feel that studying the history of motion pictures can provide a great deal of insight into how the society has evolved over the decades. Having watched countless Hollywood classics over the past year or so, I was drawn towards how the treatment of coloured people on the big screen has changed so dramatically in the course of movie history.
The earlist movie I've seen is DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation released in 1915, a three hour period saga of how two white families cope with the consequences of the American Civil War. The movie was notorious even then for its blatant depiction of blacks in a negative light and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. What's more interesting to me is that Griffith employed white actors with faces painted black to play Negroes in the film! And yes. This movie was a major worldwide blockbuster the year it was released. It couldn't have been made in 2009!
Things got a little better in the 30s and 40s, with black character actors like Rex Ingram and Hattie McDaniel getting meaty roles in A-films. Yet, their characters were invariably maids or butlers. It was still quite unthinkable for a mainstream Hollywood film to accept a black leading man or a leading woman. I find Alexander Korda's delightful 1940 Arabian fantasy - The Thief of Bagdad most significant in this respect. It is one of the earlist films that I know of to feature a coloured boy in the leading role. The actor was a teenage son of a mahout in Mysore who was transported to England to play in several British adventure films, the best of which is The Thief of Bagdad.
However, it was still anathema to both movie-goers and movie makers to have a coloured actor as the romantic male lead. The emergence of Sidney Poitier in the sixties was to change that. Remember, we are in the sixties now. The decade of Martin Luther King & Malcolm X, the Beatles & The Vietnam War. The audiences could finally digest the prospect of Poitier, a Bahaman negro, dating and *gasp* marrying a white girl in the family drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The movie may seem too cutesy and sentimental to modern audiences. But it must have made powerful viewing in 1967, amidst all the cultural upheavals of that decade. The success of Poitier in the sixties seems so timely and inevitable. Poitier couldn't have become a star in the thirties. He may have ended up specializing in butler roles instead. He wouldn't have been such a big deal in the nineties either. His stardom had a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time with the right complexion.
Which brings me to a movie that I happened to see recently. The Taking of Pelham123 starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, two ageing actors lending some star power to an otherwise forgettable movie. Having been weaned on movies from Hollywood's Golden Age (1930-1960), I was extremely surprised that none of the characters drew attention to the fact that Washington is black in the course of the film. Not even a single oblique reference! It was almost as though the colour of his skin was totally immaterial to everyone around him. This would have been unthinkable in a Poitier movie! No wonder America is ready for a black President.
The critic David Thomson wrote that the "history of American movies is the history of America in the time of the movies". Very true. I couldn't agree more.
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I've always felt that motion pictures are much more representative of a society's collective impulses than any other art form. It is possible for a novelist or a painter to construct an alternative universe of his own and create works of art that can exist in isolation in any era independent of the social milieu that surrounds them. The art of cinema is fundamentally different. Being a mass medium, movies must be able to relate to the impulses of the audience if they have to succeed. Most movies are products of the times in which they are made, unlike a lot of great books. Frank Capra's films are products of the thirties Depression Era. Woody Allen's pictures on the other hand are influenced by the counterculture of the sixties and seventies. Either of them couldn't have succeeded in the other person's era.
Literature is quite different in this respect. It is a lot easier to associate the attribute of 'timelessness' with books than it is with movies. Take for instance the fictional world of the incomparable PG Wodehouse. He created a universe inhabited by absentminded earls, erudite butlers and wealthy nincompoops which hardly had any basis in reality. The books of Wodehouse found a niche market which exists even today, though the 'Edwardian' utopia found in his books is not to be found anywhere on earth.
Which is why I feel that studying the history of motion pictures can provide a great deal of insight into how the society has evolved over the decades. Having watched countless Hollywood classics over the past year or so, I was drawn towards how the treatment of coloured people on the big screen has changed so dramatically in the course of movie history.
The earlist movie I've seen is DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation released in 1915, a three hour period saga of how two white families cope with the consequences of the American Civil War. The movie was notorious even then for its blatant depiction of blacks in a negative light and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. What's more interesting to me is that Griffith employed white actors with faces painted black to play Negroes in the film! And yes. This movie was a major worldwide blockbuster the year it was released. It couldn't have been made in 2009!
Things got a little better in the 30s and 40s, with black character actors like Rex Ingram and Hattie McDaniel getting meaty roles in A-films. Yet, their characters were invariably maids or butlers. It was still quite unthinkable for a mainstream Hollywood film to accept a black leading man or a leading woman. I find Alexander Korda's delightful 1940 Arabian fantasy - The Thief of Bagdad most significant in this respect. It is one of the earlist films that I know of to feature a coloured boy in the leading role. The actor was a teenage son of a mahout in Mysore who was transported to England to play in several British adventure films, the best of which is The Thief of Bagdad.
However, it was still anathema to both movie-goers and movie makers to have a coloured actor as the romantic male lead. The emergence of Sidney Poitier in the sixties was to change that. Remember, we are in the sixties now. The decade of Martin Luther King & Malcolm X, the Beatles & The Vietnam War. The audiences could finally digest the prospect of Poitier, a Bahaman negro, dating and *gasp* marrying a white girl in the family drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The movie may seem too cutesy and sentimental to modern audiences. But it must have made powerful viewing in 1967, amidst all the cultural upheavals of that decade. The success of Poitier in the sixties seems so timely and inevitable. Poitier couldn't have become a star in the thirties. He may have ended up specializing in butler roles instead. He wouldn't have been such a big deal in the nineties either. His stardom had a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time with the right complexion.
Which brings me to a movie that I happened to see recently. The Taking of Pelham123 starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, two ageing actors lending some star power to an otherwise forgettable movie. Having been weaned on movies from Hollywood's Golden Age (1930-1960), I was extremely surprised that none of the characters drew attention to the fact that Washington is black in the course of the film. Not even a single oblique reference! It was almost as though the colour of his skin was totally immaterial to everyone around him. This would have been unthinkable in a Poitier movie! No wonder America is ready for a black President.
The critic David Thomson wrote that the "history of American movies is the history of America in the time of the movies". Very true. I couldn't agree more.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
On Plays , Movies and Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock once said that the silent movie is the purest form of cinema. The first time I read this quote, I dismissed it as a nostalgic remark of one who yearns for old fashion to return. It seemed ridiculous to claim that the addition of dialogue could detract anything from a film.
In retrospect, I think the reaction betrayed my lack of appreciation of the differences between theatre and moving pictures.
A play is a form of literature, notwithstanding the fact that it is primarily meant for performance rather than reading. Its success hinges almost entirely on the script penned by the playwright. The art of the Cinema on the other hand is not tied to language. It is essentially a montage of moving pictures that aims to provoke emotions among the audience. Silent pictures fulfil this criterion admirably. Unlike a play, a silent picture is universal in its appeal. Unlike a play, it influences the audience not by means of dialogue but by enabling the viewer to draw connections between a sequence of moving frames. It is no wonder that Charles Chaplin was the most recognizable face in the world in the twenties and thirties as his brand of pantomime transcended the barriers of language and culture.
However, the distinction between cinema and theatre became blurred with the introduction of sound in the late twenties. The cinematic style pioneered by silent film went out of fashion. Films became increasingly talky with a greater emphasis on dialogue and the performance of actors than on music and cinematography. Hitchcock, a director who came of age in silent films during the twenties decried this -
The coming of talkies also prompted filmmakers to focus more on content than on style, a development that was diametrically opposed to Hitch's 'content doesn't matter' dictum. Dialogue was used as a medium to explore themes that would've been beyond the reach of silent doyens like Murnau. Hitch nevertheless stayed away from dramatic material and stuck to the suspense/mystery genre as it enabled him to give full scope to his cinematic style. Ofcourse, he paid a heavy price for it as the Oscar Academy preferred substance over style and assiduously avoided his films every year.
The tendency to celebrate substance over style still very much persists among critics and moviegoers. This is especially noticeable in India where off-beat serious movies like Taare zameen par are glibly hailed as masterpieces with little regard to their actual cinematic merit. Whereas exceptionally well made light comedies and thrillers such as Bheja Fry and Johnny Gaddar seldom enjoy similar critical adulation or comparable box office success.
The first question audiences invariably pose while deciding to watch a movie is - "What is it about?". I wish they'd rather ask "How well made is it?"
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Alfred Hitchcock once said that the silent movie is the purest form of cinema. The first time I read this quote, I dismissed it as a nostalgic remark of one who yearns for old fashion to return. It seemed ridiculous to claim that the addition of dialogue could detract anything from a film.
In retrospect, I think the reaction betrayed my lack of appreciation of the differences between theatre and moving pictures.
A play is a form of literature, notwithstanding the fact that it is primarily meant for performance rather than reading. Its success hinges almost entirely on the script penned by the playwright. The art of the Cinema on the other hand is not tied to language. It is essentially a montage of moving pictures that aims to provoke emotions among the audience. Silent pictures fulfil this criterion admirably. Unlike a play, a silent picture is universal in its appeal. Unlike a play, it influences the audience not by means of dialogue but by enabling the viewer to draw connections between a sequence of moving frames. It is no wonder that Charles Chaplin was the most recognizable face in the world in the twenties and thirties as his brand of pantomime transcended the barriers of language and culture.
However, the distinction between cinema and theatre became blurred with the introduction of sound in the late twenties. The cinematic style pioneered by silent film went out of fashion. Films became increasingly talky with a greater emphasis on dialogue and the performance of actors than on music and cinematography. Hitchcock, a director who came of age in silent films during the twenties decried this -
In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call "photographs of people talking" . . . One result of this is the loss of cinematic style, and another is the loss of fantasy.'The difference between a play and a movie became very apparent when I rewatched a couple of old favourites last week - Maltese Falcon, a fast paced film noir starring Humphrey Bogart, and Rear Window, one of Hitch's evergreen favourites. The former, though a fine yarn with superb performances, is not cinema. It is essentially a play that heavily relies on dialogue to convey the plot. Rear Window, in contrast, is a film driven almost wholly by visuals. Though it contains a lot of dialogue, it is possible to comprehend the movie in mute. Dialogue is used mainly to impart humour and develop characters and not for explaining the plot.
The coming of talkies also prompted filmmakers to focus more on content than on style, a development that was diametrically opposed to Hitch's 'content doesn't matter' dictum. Dialogue was used as a medium to explore themes that would've been beyond the reach of silent doyens like Murnau. Hitch nevertheless stayed away from dramatic material and stuck to the suspense/mystery genre as it enabled him to give full scope to his cinematic style. Ofcourse, he paid a heavy price for it as the Oscar Academy preferred substance over style and assiduously avoided his films every year.
The tendency to celebrate substance over style still very much persists among critics and moviegoers. This is especially noticeable in India where off-beat serious movies like Taare zameen par are glibly hailed as masterpieces with little regard to their actual cinematic merit. Whereas exceptionally well made light comedies and thrillers such as Bheja Fry and Johnny Gaddar seldom enjoy similar critical adulation or comparable box office success.
The first question audiences invariably pose while deciding to watch a movie is - "What is it about?". I wish they'd rather ask "How well made is it?"
Labels: movies
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Why do mediocre novels make great movies?
I've never been a big fan of moving pictures (better known as movies) all my life. However, this changed in term 5 thanks to a not-so-curious mix of boredom, lack of academic rigour and peer-to-peer networking software.
I stumbled upon one of the less well known Hitchcocks - Dial M for Murder, halfway through the term. It was probably the best thing I did in the term. Over the next couple of months, my movie education progressed very well! I watched close to thirty movies, most of them filmed sometime between the mid 30s and the mid 60s.
A few observations -
- The older Hollywood movies are far richer on dialogue compared to the more recent ones, but score low on cinematography. Expletives are conspicuous by their absence :)
In contrast to the present day Hollywood pictures that look better than they sound, the older movies sound better than they look.
- Most of the movies, including the really good ones that feature in the IMDB Top 250/AFI Top100, are adaptations of novels and short-stories. Interestingly, most of these novels/stories themselves are often very ordinary and fall under the category of 'Pulp Fiction'. However, the movie adaptations of the same are outstanding and have become all-time favourites!
Take for instance films like Rear Window, It's a Wonderful Life, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or even Double Indemnity. All of them are based on novels/novellas that are nowhere near as acclaimed as the movies!
In contrast, attempts to adapt truly popular novels to the visual medium have failed more often than not. Has anyone succeeded in making a great movie out of any of Dickens' novels or for that matter even the popular books of an Agatha Christie or a PG Wodehouse? No.
Ofcourse, there are a few exceptions like Gone with the Wind/Godfather. But those are exceptions and not the rule.
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I've never been a big fan of moving pictures (better known as movies) all my life. However, this changed in term 5 thanks to a not-so-curious mix of boredom, lack of academic rigour and peer-to-peer networking software.
I stumbled upon one of the less well known Hitchcocks - Dial M for Murder, halfway through the term. It was probably the best thing I did in the term. Over the next couple of months, my movie education progressed very well! I watched close to thirty movies, most of them filmed sometime between the mid 30s and the mid 60s.
A few observations -
- The older Hollywood movies are far richer on dialogue compared to the more recent ones, but score low on cinematography. Expletives are conspicuous by their absence :)
In contrast to the present day Hollywood pictures that look better than they sound, the older movies sound better than they look.
- Most of the movies, including the really good ones that feature in the IMDB Top 250/AFI Top100, are adaptations of novels and short-stories. Interestingly, most of these novels/stories themselves are often very ordinary and fall under the category of 'Pulp Fiction'. However, the movie adaptations of the same are outstanding and have become all-time favourites!
Take for instance films like Rear Window, It's a Wonderful Life, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or even Double Indemnity. All of them are based on novels/novellas that are nowhere near as acclaimed as the movies!
In contrast, attempts to adapt truly popular novels to the visual medium have failed more often than not. Has anyone succeeded in making a great movie out of any of Dickens' novels or for that matter even the popular books of an Agatha Christie or a PG Wodehouse? No.
Ofcourse, there are a few exceptions like Gone with the Wind/Godfather. But those are exceptions and not the rule.
Labels: movies
