One of the delights of moving to the DC metro area has been the “art” cinemas. I will admit to you right off that I am a cinema snob. I like FILMS, more than movies. Though one of my favorite flicks, Star Wars, is probably more of a movie than a film. What’s the difference? Well, to my mind, the difference is that a movie’s goal is to entertain it’s audience; whereas a film’s goal is to make art. A movie wants to make money, a film aspires to illuminate, penetrate, instigate, and almost never makes a dime unless it’s by accident. A movie wants you to walk out and say, Man, that was fun (even if you were scared out of your wits); whereas a film wants you to walk out and say, Hmmm, I never thought about that before. I’m oversimplifying here. And truth be told, I don’t know much about films or movies. Some of what I’ll be aiming to do in these pages is think through what I like in films and movies, and why I like it.
What you should know about me:
Favorite Actor: Carey Grant
Favorite Actress: Audrey Hepburn
And, no, I’m not 85 years old.
I’m just someone who really grooves on old movies. Anything made before 1978 seems to be a different artform. What changed? Star Wars. I can tell you right now that the day I saw Star Wars I walked into that theater as one kind of out of 12-year-old and walked out another. I can remember actually thinking, “That’s it. Nothing in my life will ever be the same again.” I was that shaken. What changed? How had it changed? I’m not sure. Something about my ability to suspend disbelief and live in an alternate world, not through my imagination, but through an outside visual.
But I was twelve. The perfect age to be blown away by everything that was Star Wars.
I remember having a similar, though more disturbing, reaction the first time I saw another of my favorite movies/films: Alien. I saw this at a drive-in theater in mid-Michigan on a warm summer’s night and peed my pants in the back of my cousin’s boyfriend’s old Pinto because I refused to get out and walk (through the alien-infested dark) to the bathroom. She didn’t even get mad. Neither did he. They peed their pants too. Maybe that seems silly in light of the movies that are available now, but back then…well it was enough to make you piss your pants in the back of a crappy car and not feel bad about it.
So does my admission that two of my favorite films are two of the most famous sci-fi films ever made mean that I’m not really a film snob? I don’t think so. Both the original Star Wars and Alien (NO “S”) were commercial successes. But they were also both groundbreaking. I won’t go into all of that here because it’s all been written about by those who write about these things much better than me. I will say, though, that until Alien, I’d never seen a woman as hero like that.
