I remember my mother talking about the film Laura (from 1944) with Gene Tierney when
I was a child. It was one of her favorite films as I recall.
I believe I saw the film when I was a teenager, but I don’t remember
the impression it made on me. My mother also talked about the films From Here to Eternity (1953) and
The Children’s Hour (1961), both
of which were off limits to us as children due to their adult themes. I have
not seen either of them, but recently ordered them both films from Amazon UK. They
will join the ever-growing DVD collection I have of old films; by old, I mean
from the 1940s, 50s and 60s, when I was a child. Once the 1970s came, I was
often at the movies because by then I was a teenager. Going to the movies was
something we did a lot of then.
Many of the old films starred actors and actresses such as
Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney, James Stewart, Kim Novak, John Wayne, Ingrid
Bergman, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, William Holden, Gregory Peck, Spencer Tracy,
Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, and Humphrey Bogart. There are of course many
others that I have not listed here.
I recently purchased the film Bell, Book & Candle (from 1958) with Kim Novak and James
Stewart, and enjoyed it a lot. Kim Novak is Gil, a witch who places a spell on her
neighbor Shep (James Stewart) to make him fall in love with her as a way of
getting revenge on a disagreeable woman she went to college with who is now
engaged to Shep. I recommend it as a very enjoyable way to spend a couple of
hours. And last night I watched The Ghost
and Mrs. Muir (from 1947) with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It was a
wonderful film that could only have one ending, but even though I knew what was
coming, I was unprepared for the effect it had on me. It is a sad but lovely
ending to a love story between the deceased sea captain Daniel Gregg who haunts
the house he lived in and the woman Lucy Muir who ends up living there with her
young daughter Anna and their housemaid Martha. The last scene made me cry, and
it is rare these days that a film has that effect on me. It is a testament to
the wonderful acting but also to the emotional impact of the story of the love
between the captain and Lucy throughout most of her adult life—a love that
could never be realized in life. So that is what makes the ending that much
more poignant.
I look forward to seeing The
Children’s Hour and From Here to
Eternity. Many of the old films used to show up on TCM, but for some reason
this channel changed its format and stopped showing the old films, focusing
rather on showing films from the 1980s and later, most of them rather obscure
Asian gangster films. It then went off the air here in Scandinavia, most likely
because it lost its appeal to viewers like me who preferred the old films. I
wish it had kept the original format, because it is the old films that I want
to see now, the films that are a part of the golden age of Hollywood, an age
that is long over and not likely to return.
