I don't really know about that.  Greek tragedy was always artificial, very different to modern theatre, more like opera in fact.  Of course someone like Shakespeare was recognisably influenced by the Greeks, Sophocles in The Winter's Tale, etc.  When I look at a Renaissance painting I still find it beautiful.  Perhaps that is because I am really just a classicist at heart.  I hate the idea of cinematic Marxism.  It appears to me that fashion has got an awful lot more to do with both Marxism and Fascism than some people would like to admit.  Maybe I'm just biased, but I don't believe so.  I think that cinema is losing credibility rather than gaining it, I long for an apolitical filmmaker.  I think that the suprahistorical exists outside of politics or religion, perhaps that is what art is.  If you look at a Raphael painting, even with a religious theme, there is always something which transcends it.  I wonder if anything in cinema does this, or can ever do it.   