What's in a name? Maybe too much, writes DONALD CLARKE
When the Oscar nominations were announced on Tuesday, few were surprised to see Lee Daniels’s Precious featuring prominently. Hats off to you, Mr D. Your film has overcome numerous difficulties to win over awards voters and the general public.
The picture, a study of life in 1980s Harlem, features some furiously grim subject matter. It has a lead actor who looks very unlike a movie star. It's got Mariah Carey in it. On top of all that, it has one of the most annoying titles in the history of the medium. Yes, the full name of Daniels's film is (deep breath) Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire. That's not a title; it's a credit sequence. I suppose we should be grateful that the author of the book – a frightening performance poet – goes by a one-word name. If the novel had been by, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer, then the title would barely have fitted on a three-sheet poster.
Of course, most people refer to the picture simply as Precious. Nonetheless, one can imagine many potential viewers catching sight of the full handle and thinking, not unreasonably, that if the film-makers can’t even edit their title effectively, they can hardly be expected to impose order on the film itself. Happily, open minds prevailed.
As it happens, the gratuitously enormous film title appears to be a phenomenon of the age. In the olden days, films were called things like Scarface, Double Indemnityor (now here's brevity for you) M. By contrast, the films that occupy positions three to 10 in the all-time box office charts – all of them released in the past decade – average a terrifying eight words each.
We are cheating here slightly. Nobody, is likely to approach the box-office and ask for "two tickets to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, please". But title diarrhoea does seem to have set in badly with commercial film-makers.
In the past, films generally acquired really long titles for comic effect. Both Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomband Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstangot audiences laughing – well, smiling anyway – before they even started. The same is true of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.
Mind you, nothing about The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sadewas remotely amusing. (Though it did allow facetious film critics writing columns on long film titles to cut and paste satisfactorily huge lumps of their copy straight from the internet.)
It has to stop. The punchy one-word title – Jaws, Persona, Up, Heat– has a gorgeous economy that these rambling, colon-ridden clutters of clauses can ever equal.
We must, thus, belatedly extend some unqualified praise towards James Cameron. The two most successful films ever at the box-office are now Titanicand Avatar. At least there one thing about Cameron's films that's short.
