Warm, Soft Video Lard

Three movies that have been sitting in my house, checked out from the library, and kept WAY too long, are:

1. "Touch of Evil"
2. "The Searchers"
3. "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"

When I was in 8th grade, a freshly minted Junior High student in my hometown of Neosho, MO, I fell head-over-heels in love with the school's library.  I was amazed at the breadth and depth of the selection, and pored greedily through its holdings every chance I could get.  I tried more than once to land a premium gig as a "library assistant" for school credit.  In my junior year, I finally got it, and that one fateful occurence started the long train of destiny that has led me to where I am today. 

But I digress...

One book which I found particularly delightful was a volume called "The Great Movies."  The cover claimed that, "in all of cinema history, sixty films deserve to be called...the great movies."  I pored through the contents, and educated myself to things that I had never before encountered, including thrillingly obscure foreign films and classic genre cinema.  I made a list of the titles from the book (although I came to be able to almost recite them by heart), and set out to acquire as many as I could. 

The fact that this was in the late 90's and the book had been published in 1972 didn't deter me.  Most of my interests at that time coincided with that particular period of history, anyway, so it was perfect.

Over the years, I managed to find several of the movies listed in the book.  Some I hunted down and paid exorbitant amounts for on VHS (prior to the age of DVD), and others I had to wait years to finally view.  One of the most obscure titles, Robert Bresson's "Au Hasard, Balthazar," was released for the first time on home video in North America in 2005, at least 8 years after I first read about it.  8 years after I first put it on my list with a little star next to it to indicate that it was of particular importance.  It wasn't as life-affirming as I had hoped (Godard famously said it was "the world in 90 minutes"), but I was still thrilled to have finally gotten a chance to mark it off my list.

Not all of the movies were so hard to track down.  Anything by Chaplin was always available, and probably always WILL be.  Orson Welle's "Touch of Evil" and the great John Wayne western vehicle "The Searchers" were no farther away than my public library.  Yet, I avoided them.  Until recently, 15 years after I first composed the list, I found it again stuck inside a copy of "The Great Movies" I found unexpectedly at a flea market some time in the early 2000's.  In a rush of inspiration, I snagged a bunch of the movies that I had been avoiding over the years.

First came George Stevens' "Shane," starring Alan Ladd as a mythical gunslinger in a truly wild west.  All of the classic western archetypes were fully in play - the man with mad gun skills who has sworn himself to a life of peace, the corrupt landowner who tries to force decent homesteaders off nearby claims, and the dark clad ringer brought in to do final and definitive battle against the hero to decide the outcome of the universe for these poor farmers. 

Then came "Children of Paradise," a 3-hour French epic about vaudeville that many consider the European answer to "Gone With the Wind."  Whoa - too much pressure, man!  But I watched it, and it was wonderful. 

Then came "Seven Samurai," which I've had for some time, and which I started on more than one occasion, only to chicken out.  There's a number of reasons it would be easier not to watch another 3-plus hour epic with subtitles.  No worries - I'll come back to it someday.

And then I snagged "The Searchers" and "Touch of Evil."  And they have sat...and sat...and sat.  Some of the things I've watched in the meantime include:

"Sleepaway Camp"
"Sleepaway Camp 2"
"Black Belt Jones"
"In Like Flint"
"Our Man Flint"

Amongst many, many others.  I think I'm going to have to give up on the list for now.  It's gotten to the point where I have begun to think of the movies as homework, rather than entertainment.  You HAVE to watch these things!  Hell, man, I ain't gotta watch NOTHIN!  I, uhh, say to myself. 

The dream of that 14 year old still lives on, and the list still is a worthy task to conquer.  I still want to be that truly cultured cinephile who can wax rhapsodic about Fellini, or Bergman, or Kurosawa.  It's sort of like going to the opera, though.  You know it will be good and worthwile, but sometimes you just don't feel like putting on a tuxedo, you know?  Sometimes you want to hug the shadows with your crazy eyes and wild, unkempt hair as you creep towards the RedBox, hoping "Final Destination 19" will be in stock in Blu-Ray.  And then you slink home and slather your mind in warm, soft video lard.  And you feel content and happy.

Cos you didn't have to work at it.  Sometimes, you just want to be entertained.  Sometimes, that is enough.