Friday, July 17, 2009

Art House Movies v. Video Tape

I love Turner Classic Movies.
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Which, I suppose is obvious. It is a little like saying that Gavin likes Channing Tatum*.
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But here is the thing I was thinking about recently (in my feeling like a bit of an anachronism)... I remember (and we are going way back here Sherman) before video tapes were widely available.
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Kids, in the olden days to see old movies you didn't turn on TCM. You went to an Art House theater to watch them. And there is a certain thrill to watching Mildred Pierce or Double Indemnity on the big screen that can't be repeated when you know you can get the movie from Netflix or off TCM.
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Not that I would ever trade Netflix or TCM, but you young'ens are really missing something.
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Take Vertigo.
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I am not looking this up on Wikipedia, because I don't want to spoil my memory - and it is hazy and quite possibly wrong. Here is how I remember it....Vertigo was one of 5 Jimmy Stewart movies that he did with Alfred Hitchcock in vivid color (I assume technicolor, but I might be wrong).
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They hadn't been released or shown FOREVER, due to some legal rights issue with Jimmy Stewart and Hitchcock, so I was in the Beverly Theater (across from El Coyote) with a packed house to see one of the first public screenings in 30 years.
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I can still remember Jimmy Stewart and the odd camera work to simulate Vertigo as he couldn't jump across a roof to catch a crook. I still see Kim Novak (a horrible actress in her only truly great role) and her bright blond hair and pale blue suit running up the tower to leap off, and Jimmy not being able to follow her. I can still hear the gasp of the audience as she lay on the ground, obviously dead so early in the picture).
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Hell, I actually WENT TO THAT MISSION to see the tower.
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To show someone Vertigo now is to show it at home, available to pause when you have to pee, available without a sense of wonder (CGI being so much more effective than Hitchcock's zoom-out and refocus) without the believing in Jimmy Stewart as THAT COP!
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Now, although more accessible, you think, "wow, Jimmy Stewart is kind of old and silly in this role..", "what's the big deal with this?", "we should go there someday, it's cool", "is the Art Museum in San Francisco still there?" You, in short, think instead of feel. You watch and multitask instead of being enthralled. If you miss something, you can back it up.
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At the Beverly Theater we KNEW that if we missed something it might be another 30 years before we saw it again. It wasn't, of course.
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Soon enough it came out on Video, then on DVD and then not a big deal at all.
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And I guess it is good that more people see this movie - which I thought was a masterpiece unseen in generations... and now I think is only a middling-ish Hitchcock (I like Stage Fright much better even with the false flash back). PS -the others (and I saw 4 of them at the Beverly that month) were Rope, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much (the remake with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day!!!) and the one I didn't see and I can't remember
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We gain and we lose and (as Liza says in New York New York, which is better taken in short DVD bites than as a 205 minute whole) The World Goes Round.
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* (Gavin only likes Channing because he does Universal Pictures and Gavin works in the Marketing group - no other reason. AND this is not a gratuitous shot of Channing from GQ just for the horseflesh, but as a visual aid for those who are not aware of who Channing Tatum is.)