On A Snowy Day I Can See Edgar Cayce
I share my Netflix account with friends who wouldn't buy the service but are very appreciative of being able to have access. (You can have two people watching on different computers at the same time. I guess this generally accommodates families.) When I look at my queue it's almost impossible not to see what was recently watched; a lot of Barney and kids movies for my friends' kids - and then the occasional escape for the adults. One of my friends tends to watch movies that my mother (OBM) used to like - Frank Capra, Billy Wilder and the like. I was just struck to see my friend's most recent choice: On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. I haven't heard or thought about that film in many years. I was eight when my parents returned home from the movies on a Saturday night. I asked what they saw and got the answer. Then, in the kitchen, mom told me - because I asked - what the movie was about. It was about things I'd never heard of before (a New York woman who, under hypnosis, transformed into a lady living in early 19th century England). Learning for the first time about the concept of past life experiences made an impression on me.
Most people today probably haven't heard of Jean Dixon, and that says something (though I know not what). My mom liked the idea of the mystical and spiritual. Mom was into people of this sort going back to Nostradamus (they were not contemporaries, but mom looked him up). She also was interested in newer people as they made the news, people like Edgar Cayce and even Uri Geller. Mom was smart enough to not take these people too seriously, but she was curious and creative enough to be intrigued by them. The book pictured on the left was under a pile of things on mom's dresser till the day she died.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 10:31 PM
3 Comments:
I always read about how great these old Frank Capra films are, so last year I gave "It's a Wonderful Life" a try. And then another try. And another. I simply could not make it all the way through. I found it just too hokey for words. There are people I respect who love and praise old movies. Sometimes I get it, but more often I don't.
Different old movies are different one from the other. Many of the films were sharp, edgy, cynical, dark. He was in the minority. Other directors and normal people used to mock his stuff and call it Capracorn. He was very much his own man, and in the minority. he was quoted as saying that talking to someone alone in the dark for two hours is a big responsibility. His way of meeting that responsibility was to try to entertain and enlighten in a soft, sincere, simple - bordring on naive, positive, kind of way. It's a wonderful life was panned and unpopular in its time. Somehow it had the mazal of coming back and becoming a standard years later. You might like Jean Shepherd's http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Jean_Shepherd)A Christmas Story. Incidentally, Wonderful Life was not meant as a Christmas Picture. A fantastic film that has some Christmas in it but is not a Christmas film is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn - IMHO.
I know A Christmas Story; I think it's terrific and hilarious in places. But it's not all that old; 60s I think.
Another example is Casablanca (which also was not a hit in its time). People praise it to the skies. I watched it and pretty much liked it, but totally do not get the adulation.
You ever notice the way the actors speak in old movies? They enunciate very clearly and use an upper-class accent and always sound like they're acting. Watching a movie almost always requires a certain suspension of disbelief; it's harder to do when the actors speak like actors; the film has to be that much better to overcome that flaw.
Regarding "It's a Wonderful Life," there's a kinda remake/kinda tribute film to that one starring Nic Cage and Tia something. I think it's called Family Man. Now that movie I liked. It was funny but still moving, a little sentimental, very nice.
I remember reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" as a kid and enjoying it, although I don't recall much of the plot today.
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