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Talking movies Here’s a peep at some of the old classics that impressed
with their novelty
After almost five decades on the film circuit, guess one is amply qualified to discuss movies, the ones that impressed and why, but not to impose my views but share with GenNext which I believe is better than us, or doesn’t evolution teach us that. The first film was Traitor’s Gate, the preview was at the Embassy cinema (now turned into a shopping mall) opposite Liberty theatre now near defunct. The date was June 30, 1967, the age of private cinemas was ending, making way for multiplexes (Inox, first among them) which did not contribute to better cinema. Traitor’s Gate was based on an Edgar Wallace novel and it was at best a pot-boiler, though we were yet to learn such terms and I strayed into films as it afforded me a chance to write unlike my fellow critic and dear friend Rashid Irani, who was passionately fond of movies from the very beginning. We still attend previews together with others who have joined the club. So let’s begin with An Unmarried Woman by Paul Mazursky, who like Martin Scorsese specialised in New York-based stories and was made in the late 1970s during the sex revolution. It followed what one called the Decade of Change, from 1965 to 1975 which accounted for moon-landing, flower power. Make-love-not-war era and Hollywood came closest to European cinema because it dealt with life and its problems — realism as opposed to "lived happily ever after" endings. The heroine is Jill Clayburg a plain-looking woman (as opposed to beauties) who learnt to accept love without marriage. Strangely one saw it with a girl (I was much younger then) who is now herself an unmarried woman. Talk about coincidences! The hero is Alan Bates, that rugged Britisher whose work includes Thomas Hardy’s only happy-ending novel Far From the Madding Crowd and the beautiful Julie Christie, fresh from her success in Dr Zhivago. Those were the days my friend. Around that time, the mid-1970s I think, is Mary, Queen of Scots, with two powerful women in the lead, the beautiful Vanessa Redgrave and the somewhat plain Glenda Jackson, both exceptional performers. Vanessa was Mary and Glenda Elizabeth and how they vied with each other for top honours! Daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and sister of Lynn (of "Georgy Girl" they were a famous British family of theatre folk. I met her after a performance at Piccadilly where she refused me an autograph. But one admires her for being ahead of her times. She had a child with Italian actor Franco Nero after they met and fell in love during the filming of "Camelot." It took me 20 seconds to google my memory, which is expectedly playing tricks.
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