Film Studies: When 'Lust in the Dust' killed the fine art of opening

About 5,000 movie theatres in the United States are getting ready to play Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones. With equivalent numbers in Britain, and all over the world. Why? Well, to get a "huge first weekend" – over $100m in the US (it has to be, now that Spider-Man did $114m). Why?

Because that orgasmic number pays off the costs quickly.

Because it launches the merchandising operation from toys to junk food.

Because the opening will be sensational – even if the film isn't. And because in the rapture of a first weekend, no one heeds reviews. In an ideal world, as George Lucas sees it, "everyone" would swallow his picture instantaneously. Another word for that process is television (which probably indicates the future of film), with a picture exploding like a great bomb, blanketing mankind.

This was not always the way. Once upon a time in America, a picture opened in New York and/or Los Angeles. Then it made its gradual way around the country, with review praise and word-of-mouth building until those people who lived in provincial places were desperate to see the picture.

And then came a movie called Duel in the Sun. Let me backtrack a little. The producer, David O Selznick, had won the Oscar for Best Picture twice in a row with Gone With the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940). He had also made a fortune on Gone With the Wind, the full release of which occupied nearly a year. Thus, as never before in his life, Selznick was rich, a success ... satisfied. Whereupon he had a nervous breakdown (for he needed to feel dissatisfied). As quick as the money came in, he gambled it away. He began not to make pictures, but to loan out his properties (people like Alfred Hitchcock, Joan Fontaine and Ingrid Bergman, for instance).

His marriage, to Irene, the daughter of Louis B Mayer, broke down – thanks in part to his passionate affair with a young actress named Phylis Isley. Selznick took her away from her husband (the actor Robert Walker). He changed her name to Jennifer Jones. And he resolved to make her a great star in a picture bigger than Gone With the Wind.

As his wife walked out, he began to make a Western – Duel in the Sun. A huge Western, with a love story as well as cattle; a Western with sex – the sex resting on the uneasy shoulders of Miss Jones and testifying to the heat of their affair.

Well, the picture grew as it was made, partly because Selznick fired one director (King Vidor), and began enlarging the script himself. It would end up costing more than Gone With the Wind, though it lacked the extraordinary appeal of that film. You can find critical argument over Duel in the Sun these days (there are those who love its nearly painted Technicolor, the swagger of Gregory Peck, and the whole camp air of it all). But Selznick himself had doubts, even if he didn't foresee that some critics would call the picture Lust in the Dust – its perfect amended title.

By 1946 (as the time came to release the picture), Selznick was in serious financial trouble. He had sold off his interest in Wind for what would prove to be peanuts; he had his divorce to handle; he had gambled insanely; he had spent too much on Duel. So he needed to get his money back quickly. Thus it was that he threw out years of tradition and opened the picture wide – maybe 300 screens then – to circumvent the damning reviews he anticipated, and to get a quick infusion of cash. Back then, this was called "blanket booking".

I am telling you this because I am fond of Selznick, and because he would have been 100 years old last Friday. He was maybe the greatest of the moguls, the one who loved film the most; yet he was the most self-destructive as a man. To this day, his career stands for the crazy passion of making movies for the masses.

Another reason for the story is this: the explosive opening of pictures is a business ploy meant to escape critical attention. It is also the engine of an industry that is increasingly scared of the real depths or tangles in a story. There's nothing in the film business now so hostile to quality as the marketing impulse that wants to dump the product on everyone all at once. There was once, and could be still, a tender art in opening a film gradually and letting its fame build on understanding, discovery and enthusiasm. So what this story – and the life of Selznick – really asks is whether this thing called movie is an art or a business. And which you want it to be.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk