Celluloid Heroes

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“Everybody’s a dreamer, everybody’s a star,” sang the Kinks in their 1972 song “Celluloid Heroes.” So true. I nominate this song to be the permanent theme song of the Academy Awards show.

First movie: Sayonara. As far as I remember, this was my first movie in a theatre, although I probably saw others on television before that. My aunt Adele took me to see it at Radio City Music Hall. It was released in December 1957, so it must have been some time that winter, meaning I was six-and-a-half years old. This movie was totally inappropriate for a small child. Aunt Adele didn’t have any children of her own, and I guess it never occurred to her to think about whether the subject matter was age-appropriate. It was about an interracial (and therefore forbidden) love affair/marriage between an American GI and a Japanese woman during the Korean War. Think Madame Butterfly updated. Complete with suicides. Why the woman was Japanese and not Korean I don’t know, but that’s Hollywood. Anyway, my strongest memories are of the Rockettes doing their fabulous dance routine before the movie, and of the man sitting in front of me turning around and telling me to stop kicking his seat.

Best Picture Ever: I have to give this to Casablanca, winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1943, even though a close second in my heart would be every film starring Audrey Hepburn. This movie has everything — history, politics, a café full of people singing the Marseillaise in defiance of the Nazis (most of whom were played by Jewish refugee actors), and the powerful love story between Rick and Ilsa culminating in the indelible parting line “we’ll always have Paris.” This is a movie I can see over and over and never get tired of it.

Best Picture of 2018. I have seen almost all the nominated movies this year, most in the week between Christmas and New Year’s because I had access to the screeners sent out by the movie studios. My vote goes without question to Lady Bird. This movie is a charming and pitch-perfect portrait of a girl in her senior year of high school. Her conflicts with her mother, her best friend, various boys, and the college application process are so true that I think every woman over the age of 17 can see bits of herself in it. The fact that it is set in Sacramento, and was actually filmed here, of course makes me love it even more. I think it would still be a profound movie even if it took place somewhere else, but I must admit that seeing all the familiar landmarks on the screen was exhilerating. I was watching it at the Tower Theater (next door to where the original Tower Records was born), and when they showed the distinctive facade of that theater, everyone in the packed house absolutely screamed, cheered, and carried on. And in the scene of the mother driving around the Sacramento airport after dropping her daughter off, I was in that car driving that same route so many times with tears in my eyes.

I also feel a connection with Greta Gerwig, who wrote and directed the movie, because she is just a year older than my daughter Sabrina, and although they went to different schools, I suspect that over the years their paths crossed somewhere, possibly playing rec soccer in elementary school on opposing teams. If I ever get to meet Greta, I will ask her if she played soccer as a kid, but pretty much every kid in Sacramento does at some point, so I’d be surprised if she didn’t. I hope Lady Bird wins Best Picture on Sunday, and I hope even more fervently that Greta wins Best Director. She is only the fifth woman ever nominated, and would be the second woman to win. #itstime

First but not Best

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My older brother and I were Disney nuts. We loved all things Disney. I skipped piano practice so I could watch the afternoon TV show as a kid. My first movie, as a four year old was Fantasia, some lovely stuff there, but some pretty scary stuff too. I don’t remember my reaction, but I’m sure I was frightened by The Night on Bald Mountain and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but charmed by rhinos and elephants dancing to Waltz of the Hours.

The movie was re-released again in 1969 and the counter-culture had discovered it. My super-straight brother and I went to see it along with all the stoners, tripping out on the lights and fantasy. My brother couldn’t understand what was going on. I thought it was very funny.

My favorite movie of all time is Shakespeare in Love, having always wanted to play Juliet. I loved the clever way Shakespearean references were woven throughout, the doomed love story, the vibrant costumes, lovely music, and it takes place during the reign of my favorite monarch, Elizabeth I. What could be better? I watch it over and over again.

Second favorite: Last of the Mohicans, a gripping adventure of love and death in the mid-1700s with a political twist. Daniel Day-Lewis never looked so good. Best screen kiss EVER! I had a chance to see it again on the big screen recently, as one of our local arthouse cinemas was doing a DD-L retrospective, given his planned retirement. After 25 years, it holds up well. It is lush, brutal and surprisingly romantic.

This year was not a bumper crop of good movies. I think the best two are Three Billboards Outside Hibbing, Missouri and The Shape of Water. One is a brutally stark, dark movie about a mother’s grief and guilt, what she does to try to find her daughter’s murderer and how she seeks salvation. The other is an odd, Cold War love story, charming and twisted in its own way. Quite different, but very interesting. I found it beautiful. Very different animals (no pun intended).

 

Gone with the Wind

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I first read the book when I was a teenager. It’s the only book I missed two meals to finish. I staggered out of my bedroom late in the afternoon after turning the last page. I’d been lost for what seemed like days in the lives of Scarlett, Ashley, Melanie and Rhett. My parents must have given me a free pass for the day (it had to be a weekend) because I don’t remember being disturbed other than by a quick parental peek to see if I was still breathing. It’s fitting (or maybe, as Mammy would say, “It ain’t fittin.’ It just ain’t fittin’!”) to mention that I have read this book more than once, and  each time I read something more into the story and have a slightly different take on the characters. When I went to see the movie, I already had a vision of what all the characters looked like. But my imagination was no match for what I saw on the big screen! (If you haven’t seen the movie, I can’t help you– spoilers will follow.)

The grieving widow (hic!)

How could anyone besides Clark Gable play Rhett? The moment he first appears on the screen at the party at Twelve Oaks, you could hear a deep sigh of longing from every woman of any age in the theater in San Francisco where I saw the film for the first time: teenagers like me, and mothers and daughters– and probably grandmothers too– we all swooned at the scandalous Rhett Butler.We had him pegged as the kind of bad boy who pulls women toward him like a magnet– and he makes you feel like he knows what you look like under your shimmy!!   And when he carries Scarlett up the stairs… but before that when he tells her she needs to be kissed and kissed often by someone who knows how,

and when he tells her he loves her and he’s waited for her longer than he’s waited for any woman…and all the heartache and loss when little Bonnie dies and Mammy has tears running down her cheeks; and the things they say to each other make my blood run cold, and they’re just mules in horse harness, and I don’t know nuthin ’bout birthin’ babies …and the political meeting behind Mr. Kennedy’s store and Belle Watling’s dyed red hair, and that green dress with gold fringe that doesn’t fool Rhett for a moment, because look at her hands. Great balls of fire and fiddle dee dee!

And then at the end when Melanie dies and Ashley is such a wimp after all and Scarlett runs home to Rhett, but it’s too late and you want to grab them both and shake them, but he’s out the door and into the mist and says, well you have to know what he says here:

Rhett! Don’t say it!!

Tara, Tara, Tara…

 

As God is my witness, I’ve never seen anything to equal the grandeur and scope of that movie. Scarlett in that red dress, with plenty of rouge. The opening scene with her in full southern belle mode, surrounded by all those young men.That heart-stopping moment when she watches her daughter on the pony and says, “Just like Pa…”

Well, I may have to watch it again soon. Maybe tomorrow. After all. . . .

But first, one more look:

On February 29th, 1940, this film received eight competitive Oscars and two honorary awards, from a total of thirteen nominations. Hattie McDaniel received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the first African-American performer to win an Academy Award.