of educational incompetence, for instance when montage is taught without a reference to Eisenstein. This is so because the professionals who teach editing today are not aware of his work, have not read his books, or dismiss his films and his thinking as irrelevant to our times. This is nonsense. What all of this means is that students are not given access to a challenging material that could prod them into making more demanding films. For film theory (adapting what Gerald Graff says of literary theory)
is what is generated when some aspect of [the art], its nature, its history, its place in society, its conditions of production and reception, its meaning in general, or the meaning of particular works, ceases to be given and becomes a question to be argued in a general way. This is what inevitably arises when [film] conventions and critical definitions once taken for granted have become objects of generalized discussion and dispute. 68
Broadly speaking then, to become aware of theory helps students question what it is they are doing as filmmakers as well as grow as active participants in the cultural debate of their times. In 1937, Harry D. Gideonse commented on the goal of liberal education. Such schooling, he wrote, "has always aimed at both theory and practice with the dominant concern of making the theoretical available for practice, and of correcting and fertilizing the theoretical by the practice."69 Nowhere is this philosophy more urgently needed than in film schools today.
XII
No director ever went to film school prior to the sixties. How did they do it? Well, there was that training ground called the studios where you could demonstrate your know-how in B movies. Generally speaking then, just to be around moviemaking seems to have been enough to get a sense of it all. To maintain a stable of would-be hopefuls, however, was an expensive proposition. Once the government forced the studios to sell their majority interest in theater circuits all around the country, they discovered they no longer could afford to pay people to learn their craft. Retrenchments became necessary. Hence, it is no coincidence that film schools became palatable to Hollywood at the exact moment the studios stopped being a home for prospective talents. A sort of privatization before the let-
