Losing it at the Movies

I have a confession to make: I cry a lot at the end of movies. Even ones I’ve seen over and over. Romantic comedies slay me. I’m a mess at the end of Jerry Maguire. Right on cue, when Renee Zellweger says, “You had me at hello,” I lose it. Dirty Dancing is another one. Rips me up. So is Pretty Woman, Ghost, For Love of the Game and too many others I am embarrassed to mention. I’m also a sucker for well done, believable feel-good movies.

I’m not sure this means I’m more emotional than other people. I think it has something to do with my ability to immerse myself in a film, to believe that it is really happening and I’m there witnessing it. I shut out my own world for the duration of the movie, give myself up to it.

I trace this back to my introduction to art movie theatres in New York City.  Back in my twenties, the city had seven or eight of these specialty theatres. Most played double features. The Elgin on Hudson Street in the West Village--later converted to a ballet theater--was one of my favorites. The funky Thalia on West 95^th Street and Broadway was hands- down my venue of choice.  This classic art house opened in 1931. It appeared in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, and remained popular until it closed in 1987.

The Thalia was incredibly small, maybe 60-70 seats. The floor was concave. Starting at the last row, the floor rolled down to a valley midway, then curved up. In all the years I went there, I don’t think the floor was ever cleaned. Decades of dried, sticky soda, beer and other fluids grabbed at the soles of my shoes.  I can remember wine bottles coming downhill to bang against my feet.

I was around 23 when I caught the cinema bug. I had vague illusions (delusions?) of becoming a film director. One entire summer I went to double features five days a week at the Thalia. I always sat in the first row, right up close – I mean really close – to the screen, maybe five feet away. That way I could be inside the film, no people in front of me to distract me from inhabiting it.

At the Thalia I saw probably every classic foreign film ever made. All of gut-wrenching Bergman’s early films, Rossellini, Fellini, Truffaut, Godard, Renoir--to name just a few--and a little known director (at least to the general cinema public), Marcel Pagnol. He was a French novelist who filmed his own books, most taking place in the French countryside of Provence. His stories unfolded at a leisurely pace, heavy with  country characters. The black and white images of Provence made me want to be there so badly, the beauty, the simplicity of the life style, picnics in the tall, flowing grass. The bread, cheese and wine they ate in the hot sun made me famished. Harvest, Caesar, Marius, Fanny, The Well Digger’s Daughter and The Butcher’s Wife transported me to a better place.

It was Bergman, though, who had my number. Morbid young man that I was, starving for love, I was blown away by his movies, and especially his recurring actors, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and of course the great Max von Sydow. I fell madly, deeply in love with Liv Ullmann. I leaned toward the screen for her emotional close-ups, penetrated her eyes, was pulled in, hopelessly enraptured. Her scenes with van Sydow in Shame gutted me.

An all-time favorite was Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962). I believe it was the first movie to depict a loving relationship between men. Jeanne Moreau was incendiary. She must have been the inspiration for the Rolling Stones song, Ruby Tuesday. I will never forget the scene where she decides to race Jules and Jim across a bridge. She is wearing man’s clothing, with a fake mustache. They line up to run. She jumps the gun and takes off, cheating. They try to catch her. As she realizes she will win, she bares her teeth, her eyes ablaze with triumph. She is all about winning and never giving in to men or anything. The ultimate liberated woman, I guess. Sort of.

Today I watch all my Netflix movies on my 19-inch, high def computer screen, which is even closer to my face than the screen at the Thalia, roughly twelve inches. I turn off the lights. Again I’m back in the movie, part of it. I must watch 300 movies a year. Obviously my social life is a bit weak. Ha! Ha!

(While I was writing this, my son just called. He was staying with his mother to help take care of her. She is going through her fifth bout with cancer. Somehow she survives the operations, the chemo, the whole terrible ordeal, and fights on. Strong woman, my ex. My son is very emotional. Unlike me, he experiences his feelings in real life, not movies. He has had a rough life himself, yet he motors on and seeks better things. Alex is incredibly perceptive, always has been, way beyond his years. I asked my son how he’s handling his mother’s latest illness. He said, “I just learn to deal with it. You take what life gives you.” Wisdom he got from real life, not movies. I guess there’s a lesson in there for me. I need to let more people into my life. I’m taking steps to do so. Honest.

My son, though, is way ahead of me. Ironically, my fondest memories of him when I was living with my wife (for seven years), were of taking him to the movie theater. He loved movies, especially action ones. He was a bit hyperkinetic, and would bolt from me if I didn’t hang on to him. Everything attracted his attention. He would run to see it. So when we got to the suburban cinema parking lot, I had to hold his hand tight, always fearful he would run off and get hit by a car. The walk from the car to the theater was stressful, and the return trip, too. The fun came once we were inside, sitting up close (he preferred much further back, but gave in to my needs), sharing a monster box of popcorn. I am reminded of the film critic Pauline Kael’s book title, “I Lost it at the Movies.”

I have always believed in reincarnation. I am aware of two past lives--as a film director in Hollywood in the 1930s, and a ballet dancer in Paris in the 1800s. If I die, I think I would like to come back as a character in a movie that becomes a classic. I would no longer be watching from a seat, but part of it, forever and ever, viewed by fans, over and over.  I kind of hope it’s a romantic comedy. Please don’t tell anyone I said that.