On Film Going

  I have always been a cinema goer. I can’t think of how many hours I have spent in dark showrooms. As long as I had few bob in my pocket, a weekly film was always a must.  

I have watched full film screenings, which meant going into the cinema, say, on a Saturday afternoon to leave the darkroom on a Sunday morning. One film followed to another with some intervals in between to have a bite and a drink.

I adored (and still do!) Bogart or Kubrick or Wilder … Ah, isn’t the list long? It really is. It is impossible to name them all.

Watching their films, I left my worries at the entrance of the cinema for a couple of hours. I engrossed in what they had to tell me, crying, panicking or bursting out in laughter until I felt a stomach ache.

I watched most of their filmed masterpieces long time ago. Yet, I haven’t forgotten their plots, their faces and, in many cases, scenes or phrases that they have become epic in the history of cinema.

Most of them are dead and they died of old age. However, their films are as fresh as ever.

Take for instance Billy Wilder. As far as I know, he never won an Oscar, but I am not surprised, as his films are way too critical on the American Dream. Even if one gets an stomach ache watching them, there is something to make the Academy to put them aside. He was a sort of  ”enfant terrible” of the US film industry. There are no glamorous stars, apart from Marilyn Monroe, and his most famous couple was Walter Mathau and Jack Lemon. But Wilder was no stupid and he knew well that if he wanted to sell his films, he had to make “a nice end” to please everybody, especially to the distributors.

These days, there may be entertaining films to watch. No doubt about this. But how is it that we forget their titles or what the plots are about two weeks later?

Many of the new actors and actresses, except for few of them, are just pretty faces with no personality at all of their own. They’re far too attractice to be true. They are way too similar from one to another.

What is known as the seventh art has turned into a huge industry. They produce films in the same way car factories produce cars. One follows after the other in the assembly line.

If the producers get a title that works for them, they will go on and on with it. One, two, three…

Cinema lovers say that it is because adults don’t go to the cinema anymore. That is why the new films are somewhat childish. They take the latest huge best seller novel into the screen, because they know it is going to work on their revenue very well. Aye! How I miss a good, original plot that makes me tic and remember it for months to come! Even years. 

When home video films, and later on DVD, many of my friends said that they preferred to stay at home watching one film after the other, wearing slippers and even their pyjamas. I don’t.

Nothing can beat to smarten up to go out to watch a film. On ending, one feels contented for the film one’s watched. It may be coolish or warm outside of the cinema, but it is a relief to feel it on one’s face.

Let’s go for a coffee.

Did you like it?

Quite.

Wasn’t it good when…?

Yeah, it was!

Nothing can beat to leaving a sitting room, which is way too warm to go out to watch a good film.