A Movie Weekend

The atmosphere was particularly clear Saturday night. Moon bright, stars twinkling. A fine time to be outdoors despite the cold. On Sunday, for entertainment, I read The Movie Ad Book by Malcolm Vance, a book with 120 full page, color reproductions of classic motion picture posters.

My canon of movies makes a short list. Chronologically, World War II movies I saw in downtown Davenport were formative. Saturday morning I picked up the city bus near the hospital where I was born and rode downtown to pay my newspaper bill. After hanging out for a couple of hours, when theaters opened, I saw matinees of The Great Escape, The Longest Day, and other films about the war. I grew up in a culture where World War II veterans were everywhere.

Grandmother took the whole family to see The Sound of Music during 1965. She particularly identified with the Maria Rainer character. Of course, this was also a film about World War II. It was the only time I remember going to a movie theater with her.

I saw early James Bond films in Davenport, beginning with Goldfinger, released in 1964. Dr. No and From Russia With Love made return engagements, so I was able to see them. Even then we expected all of Ian Fleming’s Bond books to be made into films. The last Saturday matinee of a Bond film I saw was Thunderball, released in 1965. It was a special time for a young newspaper boy.

I have little remembrance of films I saw from beginning High School in 1966 until returning from military service in 1979. I remember seeing The Graduate in a Quad Cities theater, likely in 1968. While serving in Germany, our battalion showed Patton repeatedly while we were in the field. It was always a challenge to keep projector light bulbs going because generator surges caused a couple to burn out during each screening. In garrison I remember seeing Superman with Christopher Reeves during its initial release, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind at a theater in Wiesbaden, dubbed in German and subtitled in English. During a trip to Holland, I saw Annie Hall in an Amsterdam theater in English with Dutch subtitles while the buddies I traveled with went to the red light district.

When I returned to the United States, I saw Apocalypse Now which made an impression on me. So did The Deer Hunter. When I entered university for my graduate degree in American Studies, I became completely absorbed in seeing every possible film. It was a way of understanding film as an expressive art form to enhance my writing. I sought every film by Rainer Maria Fassbinder who was at his peak creativity. I saw most of his feature film movies during that period. During our first year of marriage I saw the entire Berlin Alexanderplatz series. It was surprising when he died in summer 1982 of a drug overdose.

The first time I did anything with my future spouse, we went to see Blade Runner in 1982. We also saw Tootsie and Out of Africa in theaters. Most of the long-form movies we saw were on VHS and CDs checked out from a library or commercial video rental store. For a while we made movie-watching a regular family event at home. Of the films seen during that period, I would watch the first film in The Matrix series again. Another keeper is Michael Moore’s Roger & Me about the auto industry in Flint Michigan. I spent a lot of time in Flint when I worked for a transportation firm.

Of the 120 movie posters in Vance’s book, I saw about 30. I was serious about film study in graduate school, but the 40 years since then eroded my interest. These days, I can hardly picture myself sitting still 120 minutes at a time to watch a movie. I’ll be sending my copy of The Movie Ad Book to Goodwill to be recycled with another reader. It was a fun Sunday thinking about films and how they affected my life.