Watching old films is like going on a journey. Last week I
happened to watch a TCM classic and began to think that the 1950s are full of
movies that are masterpieces. Vertigo, Rear Window, Diabolique, Strangers
on a Train, The African Queen, La Strada, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Ben-Hur and
Some Like it Hot, among others are just a few of the best-known examples of
this kind of quality.
The treachery of time — the unwelcome intrusion of the past,
the empty languor of the present, the terrifying uncertainty of the future — are
many of these old film themes, and part of what makes them good, for all its
charming glimpses of a bygone era, they often feel unnervingly contemporary.
And yet the reality of the postwar is often visible in these
films as a strong intimation of the direction of cinema in the coming years. With
time, these films represent the arrival of something new, and even now they can
feel like a bulletin from the future.
The way Directors dissolved narrative into atmosphere, of
locating drama in the unspoken inner lives of his characters, one might anticipate
the plot. And the characters manners and
modes of dress mark them as creatures of another, perhaps more refined age, are
immediately recognizable in their loneliness, their cynicism and their thwarted
desire to connect and to feel.
Some of us will never tire of these stories, with their
black-tied gloom and elegant suffering, and will therefore relish the beauty
and melancholy of the voyage, along with what looks like tourist snapshots in
black and white and heart-tugging music.
What about you? Are you a romantic that reveres old movies or
a realist that appreciates contemporary?
No comments:
Post a Comment