Dusty Shelves Revisited

I grew up when our only tools were rocks and bones. Our only visual entertainment medium was a pond surface where we watched the ripples caused by throwing one of those rocks in it. Actually the tools were IBM 360s and punch cards while the entertainment was broadcast TV, but those might seem like only modest improvements to someone not old enough to remember a time before smart tablets. Among the many limitations of television entertainment back then, the leading one was viewer choice. In the US the three networks dominated new programming while the independent channels played a lot of syndicated reruns and old movies. (Even New York had only seven VHF channels; most markets had fewer.) They aired what they aired. If there was a particular favorite movie you wanted to re-watch, you just had to wait until it turned up again on some local station’s lineup, which could take months or even years. It might not happen at all.

I remember watching King Kong on my 12-inch portable in my college dorm and thinking how cool it would be to not rely on station programmers to watch it again. One of the tropes of depictions of the ultra-rich in movies and TV shows at the time was a home theater with reel projectors for movies-on-demand. By the late ‘70s VHS cassette players had made a less fancy version of this affordable to almost everyone. The tapes themselves were fairly expensive and bulky, however, so most of us opted to rent them from video stores rather than buy them. Prices of videos dropped over time. When much easier to store DVDs came along, home video libraries became more common and more full. Nowadays, discs, too, are a senescent technology (even the Blu-rays) as Netflix and other on-demand options make them largely superfluous. Nonetheless, they aren’t vanishing entirely. Even the most dedicated Hulu and Netflix fan is still likely to buy (or be given) DVDs here and there. Over the years they add up and start to overflow shelves.

One of my DVD cases

A curious feature of DVD home libraries – which would have surprised my younger King Kong-watching self – is the extent of their disuse. There is something about having a movie at one’s fingertips that makes it easy to put off watching it. Most of us have had the experience of being caught up in a movie airing on TCM that has sat on our shelf unwatched for years. In the past couple of decades I accumulated 16 shelves of DVDs in three cases. That is a smaller stash than it might seem – the shelves are modest in size – but it is still large enough: too large, really. Every now and then I make a point of randomly selecting a DVD from my collection and playing it – or, if the thought of playing it is truly off-putting, discarding it. Starting a week ago I once again picked a disc randomly from each shelf with the plan of rating each as 1) watch and keep, 2) watch and discard, or 3) discard at once. (“Discard” can mean giving it away.) So far I’m eight shelves in. The results are below.

I’ve reviewed some of these movies before (sometimes years ago), but our tastes and opinions (and, with luck, our insight) evolve over time, so I’ll note any changes in those, too. Lest this post becomes too unwieldy, I’ll try to keep the re-reviews as brief as possible.

From shelf #1 was Wings (1927) starring Clara Bow in the first film ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. Mary (Clara Bow) loves Jack who loves Sylvia who loves David (Jack’s friend and rival). When Jack and David become pilots on the Western Front in World War 1, Clara joins the Women’s Motor Corps so she can be closer to Jack. There is remarkable aerial footage, melodramatic romance, and tragedy involving friendly fire. Extreme naivety in the script alternates with unexpected sophistication. Gung-ho early-20^th century patriotism is balanced by a recognition of the cost of war. My views on this film are the same as when I first saw it long ago and enjoyed it. The DVD is still a Keeper.

Claudette Colbert & Don Ameche

From the next shelf was Midnight (1939), which I already knew was a Keeper but watched again anyway because the whole idea was to make random picks. Putting a first pick back on the shelf no longer would be random. Eve (Claudette Colbert) arrives in Paris broke. For openly financial reasons she goes along with the scheme of the very wealthy Georges (John Barrymore) to pose as a Baroness and draw away to herself the romantic attention of the lover of Georges’ wife. Meantime, taxi driver Tibor (Don Ameche) has his own interest in Eve. It’s a thoroughly pleasant comedy with an attitude in the dialogue and (despite the contrived plot) a naturalness in the human interactions that I miss in movies (and life) today. I’m more cognizant of the historical context of the movie than when I first saw it, but otherwise regard it much the same way.

Cat Women of the Moon (1953). All one need say about this film’s budget is that the acceleration couches in the rocket are lawn chairs. Several obtuse male astronauts plus a female navigator named Helen fly to the moon. Helen is in telepathic contact with Alpha, leader of the moon-dwelling cat women. Despite this connection Helen helps to kill the cat women because they are bad, bad, bad. The movie was remade in 1958 as Missile to the Moon which had enough of a budget for color film but was even sillier. By all rights this should be “Not a Keeper,” but it is the very definition of “so bad it’s good.” So, I’m reluctant to part with it. My reasons for enjoying this movie have changed completely since I was a kid (when I accepted it simply as adventuresome scifi), but it is still a Keeper.

World without End (1956): In this surprisingly good science fiction tale an accident with velocity and time dilation sends astronauts into a post-apocalyptic future where they find effete but technically capable humans hiding underground while the surface is dominated by dangerous primitive mutants. I loved this movie as a kid. Nowadays, the many 1950s cultural presuppositions in the movie are highly visible, but everything is a product of its time – even (maybe especially) the “timeless” movies. This is still a Keeper.

Daisies (1966), directed by Věra Chytilová: Two nihilistic young women, both named Marie, decide that in an absurd and corrupt world one might as well revel in absurdity and corruption. (This Czech film was banned in it its own country until 1975; Marxism and nihilism don’t mix.) They indulge their appetites, play pranks (especially, but not exclusively, on older well-connected men), and destroy a room where an elegant feast is laid out. The young ladies’ philosophy seems sounder to me than in the days of hippie-dom when I first saw the film. Nonetheless, there are consequences to the characters’ behavior, as there would be in real life. This surreal and playful movie is definitely a Keeper.

If… (1968): This movie almost never plays on broadcast or cable TV in the US. Commercial broadcasters’ disinclination to put it on the schedule no doubt derives from the (correct) assumption that many or most viewers would be offended. Boys from the privileged class in an English boarding school are indoctrinated with a code of conduct, not to be confused with a code of ethics. Graduates presumably emerge ready to take on Kipling’s burden. I’d want to go conquer someone after suffering through that school, too. Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) and a few of his friends are unhappy students. At first they rebel through fantasy, alcohol, and sex (hetero- and homosexual), but ultimately they opt for submachine guns. I first saw If… in the theater in 1968 at age 15. Back then I didn’t care for it: some elements of the film confused me while others annoyed me. I like it better now despite (or because of) its anarchist streak. Total Film rates it the 16^th greatest British movie of all time, which I think is way too high, but it does have merit. Keeper.

Pamela Franklin & Maggie Smith

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969): Once again I was tempted to put this pick back on the shelf, close my eyes, and reach for another because I already knew it was a Keeper. Nonetheless I stuck with the rules (even though they were my rules) and spun up the DVD. Miss Jean Brodie, played by Maggie Smith, is a teacher at a girls school in 1930s Edinburgh, Scotland. She is a romantic in the broader sense and is an inspirational teacher, but … well ... she’s a fascist. Literally. Nowadays that term gets tossed around carelessly, but she is the real thing. The film’s portrayal of Jean Brodie helps to explain the seductive revolutionary appeal of fascism to so many people. It’s hard not to admire Brodie’s defiance of the prudish, repressive Victorian values she encounters at every turn, especially from the school’s headmistress, but she truly is objectionable in ways the headmistress doesn’t really comprehend. (*SPOILER* ALERT.) Brodie’s most trusted student and “special girl” Sandy eventually turns against her for these reasons and allies herself with the conservative headmistress, who is Wrong in oh-so-many-ways but ultimately less dangerously Wrong than Brodie. Sandy tells Brodie, “You are dangerous and unwholesome, and children should not be exposed to you!” Yet, even in rebellion, Sandy owes her independence of mind about moral choices in large part to Miss Brodie’s influence. Sandy is perfectly played by a young Pamela Franklin on whom I had an instant schoolboy crush when I saw the movie in the theater in 1969. (Is that really 50 years ago?) My opinion of the film is more philosophical than in ‘69, but I liked it then and like it now.

A Boy and His Dog (1975): The intro to the movie tells us “World War IV lasted five days. Politicians had finally solved the problem of urban blight.” In a post-apocalyptic world Vic (a young Don Johnson) travels the wasteland with his trusty companion, a sentient dog who communicates with him telepathically. They meet a woman who tells about an advanced underground society that needs healthy genetic input from the surface. It sounds too good to be true to Vic, and so it turns out to be. Based on a Harlan Ellison novella, this cult film is sardonic and funny. Dog lovers will appreciate Vic’s choices. Keeper.

Well, if my goal was to thin out the shelves of overstock, so far I’m not making much progress toward it. There wasn’t a single Not a Keeper in the first eight. Maybe Round 2 will be different.

Appending 8 trailers would be excessive (and the reader can find them easily enough anyway), so I’ll opt for just one: Daisies