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?
Thanks to old films and those that love them as I do.
ReplyDeleteMy 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.