While the country wondered and worried about the results of one of history’s most consequential elections, our family was unexpectedly on edge with more pressing matters. Sparing details, let’s just say our senior columnist went through a life-changing medical event, which in turn has changed the lives of our family. The three of us (alas, father and son columnists also have our own editor/coordinator/archivist who shall be known here as “mom”) now have both the privilege and pain of understanding how fragile our worlds really are.
In great moments of change, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Such has been the case with our family, and the pleasures of eating a meal together, going for short walks, and even just watching a repeat episode of “Seinfeld” have all taken on greater meaning. But as readers know, in our family, there’s one artform which keeps us all together—movies. This Thanksgiving, we’re going to go slightly off script to talk about what really makes movies great.
Take One
In our house, the experience of watching a movie usually begins around six o’clock. Someone will float the idea, but it’ll take all of us the better part of an hour to negotiate on what film to watch. The criteria evolves year-to-year, but usually it has to be a) black-and-white, b) a film noir or something involving duplicitous lovers and c) under two hours. That narrows the pool to a few thousand titles from the 30s, 40s or 50s, and we’ve made our way through many of them. On a recent Saturday evening in early November, all three of us gathered around the television to put on “Dark Passage” (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a classic black and white film noir.
The film begins with the camera in first person as an escaped convict (Hollywood bit player Frank Wilcox who is only visible in a newspaper clipping) meanders through San Francisco on the lam. When he’s picked up by a knockout love interest (Bacall) who is obsessed with his case, she shelters him until he can have significant plastic surgery to modify his appearance. The new face that appears onscreen as the film shifts to third person is, of course, Humphrey Bogart, who spouts plenty of wisecracks about how ugly he’s become. The film continues on this strange course with a few truly surprising twists, steered by a white-hot jilted former lover played by Agnes Moorehead. But the city of San Francisco, per 1940s, is the real star of the movie, as the characters rise and fall on the city’s streets.
All things considered, “Dark Passage” is a good movie, but not a great one. But one of the great secrets of life is that the movie (or book) itself is less important than the people you share it with. In that context, “Dark Passage” is now one of my favorite films.
Take Two
If anyone appreciates the fragility of life and the simple pleasures of everyday experiences it’s yours truly. I have always loved a wide variety of movies but I’m especially thankful for the films of my childhood that turned me into a dedicated cinephile. I was mesmerized by David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”(1962), as an 11 year old, for its production beauty and exotic locales. An awareness shared by Steven Spielberg who has always claimed this was the film that made him want to be a film director. And a year earlier I had an adolescent crush on Hayley Mills in Disney’s original “The Parent Trap.” One Saturday afternoon I sat through three consecutive showings of the film (“Let’s Get Together, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”) in the old Valentine theater in Defiance.
But the film I really loved, and recently shared with the better half, was William Cameron Menzies science fiction masterpiece “Invaders from Mars”(1953). The story, told through the eyes of a child navigating an adult world skeptical of his alarming claims of alien abductions and grown-ups being transposed into menacing robotic surrogates. The movie was filmed in vivid color and the Martian underground headquarters are (today) a hoot but not to a 6 year old impressionable boy. I will never forget the small metal clips on the back of the necks of the adults that have been altered by the invaders. Whenever my parents were angry with me or acted distant I would check the back of their neck to see if there was a metal clip attached. Thankfully, the aliens never had the chance to robotize my parents or the grown-ups in Defiance.
All films available on Amazon Prime and YouTube.
(This column is written jointly by a baby boomer, Denny Parish, and a millennial, Carson Parish, who also happen to be father and son.)
This post was originally published on here
