From the time I was tiny, old-movie-watching was a disease in our household. My father, a lover of television and communication technology in any form, would excitedly yell out to the entire family when a good old movie was about to start on TV. And because he was the smartest man on earth to my brothers and me, we would rally ‘round the old tube-laden console and try to see things through our father’s eyes. He would explain who the actors were, what the story was about and we would learn to love the past through movies.
As a child, I saw the movie world that lived inside our TV set as one that must have existed on another planet. Movies made in the 1940s had people wearing huge shoulder pads, hats at all times, suits even in the hottest weather and dresses in the kitchen, spouting their lines in fake British accents. They spoke to one another just a few inches from another actor’s face (tight screen shots, no doubt), which made me wonder about halitosis on the set. Still, I was riveted. They spoke more rapid-fire than you and I, and they miraculously never interrupted one another.
Some of the more enjoyable movies were the moral-to-the-story ones with children, however. Movies like Cheaper By the Dozen, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Lassie Come Home, National Velvet, and The Yearling helped us get a peek into another child’s world, whether growing up in a huge family, being the offspring of immigrants, being lucky enough to ride horses, owning an amazingly smart dog, or living out in the wilds of America. Even charming shorts like The Little Rascals captivated me, as I saw what life was like when my parents were small.
As I grew older, I came to savor the whacky humor of the Bowery Boys, the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s “Road to…” movies and Laurel and Hardy’s antics as classics, taking any opportunity to see them again and again.
Some people don’t like to watch old movies. Having seen them once sometime in their past is enough for them. “All the actors are dead now,” one naysayer in my life would counter when I begged him to watch a classic with me. How morbid. The thought never occurred to me, probably because it didn’t matter. If all the characters in the movie were make-believe anyway, why did it matter that the ones who portrayed them no longer got up and brushed their teeth every day? It’s inconceivable now that he would ever purchase a DVD of an old movie and watch it over and over again, as if it were an old friend.
So I am a sucker for nostalgia. But I wonder if the generations that follow us boomers will learn to appreciate our history through the world of cinema or take comfort from watching decades-old movies. Unlike my father, I was not the parent who called out to my only child that she had to watch an old movie with me because she would be silly not to, nor was I as clever nor as regal as my father when trying to explain the significance of old cinema. Did I do her a disservice? Is it like failing to guide your child to classic books – ones that can live inside them for a lifetime? I can only hope she remembers the delight on my face when she passed by the family room as I watched an oldie and that memory will be enough to make her curious. I would love that legacy to live on.
Web site: Communic8or.com, Dena Kouremetis' freelance writing service located in northern California.
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