I saw this commercial last week in New York at an advertising award show. It was featured as one of the best commercials of last year. As I watched it, I was in complete awe because of what I thought it was doing - and that is trying to promote film preservation. The commercial is about how Scorsese possesses three and a half pages of an unfinished Hitchcock script. The idea up front is that instead of preserving films that have already been made, Scorsese is going to preserve this script by shooting it the way Hitchcock would. As an idea for film preservation, it's incredible. As I watched the spot, my mind was blowing because I thought this was the greatest idea ever. Not for one second did I think that this commercial was not 100% legit. Well, look at me. The guy who's in the biz and who should know better getting played like a sucker. The spot wasn't for film preservation. It was for Freixenet Sparkling Wines. Goddamn sparkling wines. The kind of shit that my 90 year old aunt drinks because it's "yummy." Directed and acted by one of our greatest directors ever. To me, this commercial represents all that is ugly with advertising. Not having an ounce of respect for anything as long as it helps peddle a product. It makes a mockery of film preservation and makes a whore of Scorsese.
As an homage to Hitchcock, this commercial is great fun, drawing on classic framing, camera movements and musical scores. As a progressive idea for film preservation, this commercial is fantastic, really taking a new approach to highlight how important film preservation can be. As a commercial for frickin sparkling wine as shot by Martin Scorsese, it sucks. Most of the blame falls squarely on Scorsese here because he knew what he was signing up for. There are plenty of bad ideas out there and what keeps the good people respectable is their ability to pick and choose and to stay far, far away from the stinkers. This was a terrible mistake on behalf of Scorsese and honestly it's soiled me a bit on the guy.
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