MOVIES OF THE ‘80s : MTV: CINEMA OR SALES PITCH?

It’s no secret that MTV has wowed Hollywood. In an industry where marketing and packaging rule, MTV is a messenger bearing glad tidings--most music videos look like souped-up trailers for old movies, replacing story with style, emotion with a parade of flashy images.

That’s not to say that this video fad couldn’t be cured with a few well-placed bombs of the box-office variety--not one stashed underneath veejay Martha Quinn’s desk, of course. Yet, music video hasn’t been an entirely bad influence. Good directors can come from anywhere--Paul Mazursky started out as a stand-up comic--so there’s no reason why they couldn’t come from MTV.

At its best, music video is truly pure cinema--it’s all visual shorthand. And with its reliance on image over dialogue, its giddy celebration of

performance and its utter lack of pretense, it’s the closest thing we have today to the anarchic energy of silent film. Anyone who’s seen Martin Scorsese’s “Who’s That Knocking At My Door?” knows that music video doesn’t have to be one-dimensional drivel. In Scorsese’s hands, pop music stimulates emotion, echoing the lust and guilt that rattle around in his character’s heads.

The video revolution has spawned its share of promising young wizards, most notably Julien Temple, who gave “Absolute Beginners” such a jet-propelled intensity that you could have sworn he’d hooked a camera to the wing of a F-14.

Unfortunately, all too many young directors--particularly cinema brats like Jamie Foley and Albert Magnoli--seem to have learned all the wrong lessons from video’s head-banger approach to film. It’s one thing to throw the story out the window, another to simulate character development with a rock artillery barrage, a halo of golden light and a 360-degree dolly shot.

NOTABLE FILMS: Absolute Beginners (Julien Temple); Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Alan Metter); Razorback (Russell Mulcahey).