The next in a set of occasional posts in a series ‘For the Love Of…’ Basically I will just write about something I like a lot. Nothing more than that! This one will cover films. Or movies. Whatever you want.
The first trip to the cinema was… just… magical! I still remember it. Six years old, Yeovil Cinema. A Disney film although, back then, a Disney film meant a cartoon for kids and not the fifteenth spin-off from Star Wars. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. From 1937. I have not seen that film since. Still, forty-three years on, it is still memorable just how transfixing it all was. How could drawings look so human. All on a screen so big that it consumed you.
So it all started.
Feeling
It’s amazing how those memories stay. That six year old who saw Snow White is still, literally, spellbound. He grew in to an eight year old who saw The Empire Strikes Back is still so excited and was especially thrilled when he found out Han Solo was also Indiana Jones! How amazing was that!
When a Star Wars film was every five years. Not every five minutes.
It was always about feeling, though. Those feelings changed with age. It does not seem so much, from six to fourteen. That was the age when I saw, for me, a life-changer of a film. Just on the television and with a lot of the dialogue censored but remarkable! Apocalypse Now for the first time was like being put through a grinder. From the adrenaline of the helicopter attack to the hearing the whispered final words. ‘The horror… the horror’. All the memorable moments in between, the memorable lines. ‘Napalm in the morning’. The whole human experience in one film. It also acted as a gateway, perhaps, to more intense films.
Into Darkness
Indeed, Apocalypse Now seemed a bridge toward darker films as I moved in to my teenage years. Film Noir, all dark streets and darker hearts, particularly caught my attention. And I first saw what I would call my favourite film, The Third Man. Striking cinematography, images of tired post war Vienna stuck in my mind. And Orson Welles, only seen for a relatively short time in the film but so memorable for the cold justification of child deaths for profit through penicillin rackets. Not to mention Cuckoo Clocks.
Still, in youth there was a lack of awareness. I remember seeing Silence of the Lambs. Illegally, I was fifteen and it was restricted to over-eighteens. Couldn’t get what the fuss was about. Sure, it made me jump but not much more than that. Seeing it much later, in my forties, I realised just how terrifying it was. Couldn’t sleep that night.
Pretentious Student
When the youth went to university they perhaps got a little pretentious. Instead of just enjoying the film there came various intellectual (?) angles. Shot angles. Cultural significance. And other things. If this sounds vague it’s because, frankly, I don’t remember them and I don’t want to remember them that much. The other side of youthfulness, thinking you know things when you simply don’t.
Despite such youthfulness, this was the time when I discovered many of my favourite films. Not all Noir. Some even in colour. Not many comedies, I have to admit. Bit of a serious person, perhaps. But still there was a healthy mix, expanded with a lot films that one could call arthouse through my university years. I cannot remember them all but I do remember the enjoyment. The wonder of seeing so many different cultures across the screen.
Drifting Away, Drifting Back
I am not sure why I drifted away from film. I still enjoyed a nice trip to the cinema, especially the ritual trip for every new Bond film. Englishman abroad and all that. But I was not watching films at home as often as I had. This was not to do with the move to the Netherlands and was rather other hobbies taking my interest. Cooking, cycling. Especially the latter which took me away a lot and kept me active, out-of-doors.
But then MS decided to progress and I became less active. Still active, still cycling. Just less. With passivity came films. A good way to spend time lazing around. That and reading, of course.
The Love of Film
In a sense, things have come full circle. The pretentious stage of my later teenage years is long gone although I am grateful for the films I discovered during this phase. However, the pure enjoyment of my early years, looking in wonder at those cartoons that looked so real then, that is back. Now life is a little more static than I would like, it is important to make the most of that time and not look critically at everything. Simple enjoyment. I do have favourites and, for a bit of fun, have listed them below. It will be different next week. Just wandering around. Enjoyment, wonder, pure and simple. Nothing more. I am very happy with that.
The Top Ten!
This is completely personal and with no discipline. The first three are in order. The rest? They change all the time. Re-edited to add favourite scenes which also changes every five minutes and Internet Movie Database entries for the films themselves.
- The Third Man – Besides the ‘Cuckoo Clock’ scene I mention above, it has to be when Harry Lime is first revealed to still be alive.
- Apocalypse Now – So many to choose from but the utter insanity of the Do Lung Bridge takes it for me. Completely disorientating. A bit longer than the other choices.
- Double Indemnity – The murder. Nothing violent, just the look on Barbara Stanwyck’s face.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Impossible to choose. Went for this, a short view of the relationship’s underpinning the film.
- Psycho – Easy to choose one of the shock scenes but I like this one. A little background.
- North by Northwest – Had to be this scene, one of many ridiculous ways the villains try to kill the hero.
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – ‘Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!’
- Deliverance – Not putting a favourite scene for this one. It is not ‘Squeal like a pig’ which is shocking. It is actually the end scene but I could not find a good clip of this. Not violent, no shock value, but unsettling.
- Network – That monologue.
- On the Waterfront – Actually changed this from To Have and Have Not. Still love that film but remembered this scene from On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando playing with Eva Marie Saint’s glove is just so… human.
Honourable Mentions
Apart from the top three, this list keeps changing. Rather than keep messing with it, below is a list of honourable mentions. No links, but the Internet Movie Database will help here.
- Anything by Hitchcock, especially The 39 Steps, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window and The Birds
- Also the films of Howard Hawks, especially Scarface (the 1932 original, not the remake with Al Pacino), Ball of Fire, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and Red River.
- Joel and Ethan Coen, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men.
- Spielberg! Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- There Will Be Blood. The only one of the Honourable Mentions that will get a favourite scene. On the edge of the Top Ten, just for Daniel Day-Lewis.
- … and the first three Star Wars films, a lot of films by Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick…. I really will stop there! Otherwise this will just go on forever!
We shouldn’t be embarrassed by, or shudder at what we were or what we did in our youth. We were authentic at that time, and probably more thought-out than we give ourselves credit for. Oh the advantages of hindsight…
Not a huge film buff, but I do like well made thought-provoking films – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was, I think, the first film I saw on a VHS player – and such a gem – JN rightfully winning an Oscar for it.
But the guilty pleasure are the Bourne movies!