Sunday, December 9, 2012

My Love Affair with Classic Old Movies


My Love Affair with Classic Old Movies

Everybody has his or her own list of favorite movies. My love affair with the movies began in my early childhood. There is still something magical in the ability to escape from the real world into the reel world for a few hours of gloriously mindless entertainment.  I don’t want movies to preach to me. I want them to entertain. And for me the greatest entertainment is found in the classics made during the first half of the 20th Century. And yes, nostalgia does play a part.

When I was a child we watched television on a black & white TV mounted o a shelf in the kitchen. I think we got our first color set in the late 60’s. The local stations used to broadcast old movies late at night on weekends and on Sunday afternoons. My dad also loved old movies and would sometimes stay up late watching with me on Friday or Saturday night. And we often watched Family Classics on WGN from Chicago Sunday afternoons with Frazier Thomas and Garfield Goose & Friends. 

During those years I learned to love the swashbuckling Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain’s Courageous and The Charge of the Light Brigade; the screwball comedies such as Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey and The Philadelphia Story; the film noir classics such as the Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Thin Man, Rebecca, Notorious, Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Key Largo and Gaslight; and the social commentaries of From Here to Eternity, All About Eve, To Kill A Mockingbird, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Best Years of Our Lives and A Place in the Sun.

Even now when I need complete down time and cannot concentrate on even the most captivating book, I can plop on the sofa with a cup of herbal tea or a glass of wine, with fire blazing in the fireplace and allow myself to be carried away by Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Yankee Doodle Dandy or Jezebel.  Other than CNN, The Weather Channel and Jeopardy {HBO & Showtime original series are not part of basic programing}, when we watch TV it is mostly Turner Classic Movies or American Movie Classics.  

It is such a shame that many young people have never seen so many of these amazing movies because they were filmed in black and white!

So, what are your votes for favorite classic movies?

1 comment:

  1. Thanks to old films and those that love them as I do.
    My favorites, The Women, Sabrina, From Here to Eternity, Wings, The Mark of Zorro, The Black Pirate, The Plastic Age the list goes on and on.

    ReplyDelete