Movie memories

The first movie that made me cry was Old Yeller and the most recent one that evoked tears was Into the Woods for its superbly crafted words and truths. As a ‘tween I sobbed at the end of Love is a Many Splendored Thing when I realized William Holden was really not returning to Jennifer Jones and during the old black and white version of A Tale of Two Cities. Everyone in the group of 7^th grade friends who went to see West Side Story gasped “No!” when Tony was killed and I remember being confused when we walked out of the theater into afternoon sunshine for the movie ended with a night scene.  

I fidgeted through Fantasia while my mother was enthralled but sat on the edge of my seat in front of the TV and clapped along with Mary Martin to make Tinkerbell well again. What teenage girl didn’t want to be Liesl in the gazebo in The Sound of Music? Operation Petticoat and the original Pink Panther and had me laughing until I cried. Exodus was my first book-to-movie and I was bothered by some of the translation from what I’d read and envisioned to what was on the screen. Today’s younger audiences may be surprised to learn that there used to be news clips and a cartoon that preceded the feature film and that longer movies had intermissions. I remember exploring the theater during the break in the two reels of Ben Hur because we were in New York City and were sitting up in the theater’s balcony.

In college we discovered Ingmar Bergman who taught us that movies can be more than entertainment. I remember feeling sophisticated as I watched and later dissected the acting, the script, and the use of Mozart in the film’s score. I agreed with the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel and loved The Graduate. Back when there were large screen theaters, 2001: A Space Odyssey was stunning while Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a sheer joy, even with the ending.

Then came violence so different from the Westerns we were used to. I had such a visceral reaction to Joe in 1970 that I never wanted to see Peter Boyle again, was appalled at Billy Jack, but enjoyed much of Easy Rider, well, until… My eyes were closed through most of Mean Streets and Day of the Locust so I started to be more selective in what I was willing to see. I made it through Spielberg’s Schlinder’s List and Attenborough’s Gandhi but choose to not see so many other historical dramas because of man’s inhumanity but it’s not always easy to tell what is violence-free. We all might love Finding Nemo and The Lion King, but my four year old grand-niece screamed through parts of Aladdin.

Much of my queasiness at seeing violence on screen has to do with an image that still haunts me and that I’ve never talked about. When I was around eight years old I walked through the living room while my parents were watching a movie on TV. That sounds like a normal everyday thing. Unfortunately, it was at a point when three prisoners of war were being released. They were roped together because one of them had been blinded, another made deaf, and the third’s tongue was cut out. As disturbing as that is to write, it was a terrible image for a child to see and hear about.

That makes me worry about the thousands of images that bombard today’s generation on all fronts. From billboards to downloads on computers and phones, kids, well all of us really, are exposed to so much and I think we all have become jaded to a certain level of violence considered acceptable. I’ve learned there are certain 9pm TV shows I cannot watch right before going to bed because for me they cross that line.

I have no solutions or even suggestions but this is something I’m going to continue to consider. What about you?

Marilyn