A MOTHER'S DAY CHAT WITH MOM

Happy Mother's Day! This year, to commemorate the day, I decided I wanted to have a chat about movies with the person who took me to hundreds of them when I was a kid (and still occasionally to this day): my mom, Betsy Bowes.


me: Okay, so let's start: what was the movie that made you realize you loved movies?

Mom: The fist movie I ever saw, The Great Locomotive Chase, starring Fess Farker who was already my favorite actor from Davy Crockett. It came out in 1956 when I was either 8 or 9.

me: Was there anything in particular about the movie or about Fess Parker that really spoke to you?

Mom: There was plenty of action and I was already interested in the Civil War. Fess was an engaging hero.

me: So you already knew Fess from Davy Crockett; was this the TV version? It wasn't the radio show, right?

Mom: It was the TV version, withe theme song you had a record of when you were a toddler. I had to watch it at my next-door neighbor's house because we didn't have a TV.

me: So, before you got a TV in the house, did you primarily see movies at the neighbors', or in theaters? What were your options as far as theaters at that time?

Mom: I had a friend whose mother took a few of us to the movies for her birthday party each year. The Pajama Game in 1957, a few Martin and Lewis comedies (I always liked Dean better than Jerry), and Ocean's Eleven in 1960. I LOVED Ocean's Eleven. I didn't start watching movies on TV until I was a teenager and was babysitting. The movie theaters we went to were the Embassy in Waltham, a movie palace from the 20's or 30's (the first suburban Boston theater to show talkies), the Community Playhouse in Wellesley, and the multiplex at Shoppers World in Framingham.

me: Whoa, there were already multiplexes in the early 60s? I thought those only came along later.

Mom: I think it was a very early one. I remember there being several different movies playing there.

me: The thing about Ocean's Eleven---the original---that really stood out to me was that they all looked like they were having so much fun, like that was the purpose of the whole thing; was it that way for you too? Also, Sammy was awesome in that, driving the garbage truck and so forth.

Mom: Absolutely, and Sammy was awesome with the garbage truck.

me: Didn't you meet him or get an autographed photo or something once?

Mom: Yes, when I was a freshman at NYU . A friend down the hall in my dorm had an uncle who was a VP at NBC. He got us into a dress rehearsal for the Sammy Davis Show. Sammy spoke to us and gave us unsigned photographs. He was friendly and gracious. Some of the guests on the shoe that week were Frank Sinatra Jr, Leslie Uggams, the Copacetics, and Milton Berle. One of us approached Milton Berle but he snubbed her. Sammy was married to Mai Britt at the time. She was in the audience and was very blond and pretty.

me: Milton Berle's all like "I have better things to do," what a tool.

Mom: (Like in his youth fucking Aimee Semple McPherson.) I was never a big fan of comedians who used drag as shtick. Of course Some Like It Hot was a different matter altogether. There was a reason for Jack and Tony to disguise themselves as women to hide from the mob. And in Bosom Buddies Tom [Hanks] and Peter [Scolari] need an affordable place to live.

me: And in Some Like It Hot, you've got Joe E. Brown not giving the slightest fuck that Jack Lemmon's really a guy, which I always loved. Trying to think of a better last scene that that's hard, no?

(Also, I love that you throw Bosom Buddies right in there with Some Like It Hot.)

So, let me ask this: at what point did you start getting European movies up there? Those were about the only foreign pictures you got back then, for the most part, right?

Mom: When I was a teenager the Exeter Theater in Boston was the place to see foreign films. The first movie I saw there was La Belle Americaine which was a series of vignettes featuring the same fabulous big American convertible. Also there was a student exchange program with my high school and a town in France, with an annual movie as a fundraiser. One year they showed Black Orpheus, which I loved. I saw 8 1/2 in Boston with some friends and a 7 year old sister one of them was babysitting.

me: And was this around the time you developed your thing for Alain Delon and Marcello?

Mom: How could a teenager resist them?

me: Any other favorite actors or movies from that period?

Mom: At a certain point my parents decided that if a movie was based on a book I had to read the book first. So in 1959 I read Ben Hur from cover to cover and was allowed to ride my bike to the Embassy in Waltham by myself to see it. I particularly like the naval battle and the chariot race. I read Tom Jones so I was allowed to go into Boston by myself to see the movie. One had to be at least sixteen to get in and I turned sixteen during its run. I fell in love with Albert Finney then and still love him today.

me: Well, he's Albert Finney. When was it you moved to New York, 1965?

Mom: Yes, in September, and started going to the movies as much as I could afford. There were so many great movies to see at so many movie theaters within easy walking distance. Most of them are long gone.

me: I was going to say, I imagine you started seeing more movies at that point. Were there any particular places you went to a lot? Any specific kinds of pictures you sought out more than others? Or just everything, as much as you could see?

Mom: Also, in 1965 the Protestant center began a film series, where I saw To Have and Have Not, Scorpio Rising, Triumph of the Will, Olympia (parts 1 and 2), I forget what else they showed. My dorm showed movies also, Shane, the Zombies of the Stratosphere serial, and other stuff. At theaters I saw La Dolce Vita (two showings back to back), Georgy Girl, The Graduate, La Chinoise, A Hard Days Night, and lots of other movies.

me: Nice.

Mom: One thing I forgot to mention earlier was how Hitchcock enabled me to pass a my high school chemistry mid-year exam. I was so stressed out and knew that more studying would be pointless, so the evening before the test I persuaded my parents to let me go see a double feature of Psycho and Vertigo to chill me out. It worked and I passed with a B-.

me: Awesome. Now, especially people my age and thereabouts who didn't actually get to experience it firsthand, kind of romanticize the period from about the late 60s through most of the 70s as being kind of a second Golden Age, or the Hollywood New Wave, or some such. I'm curious, since you were actually there and going to lots of movies, whether that was something people were conscious of at the time, or whether it was a perception that happened in retrospect, when people looked at the volume of awesome stuff that came out and went "whoa." Was that something people thought and talked about at the time?

Mom: I don't think we were conscious at that time that it was any second Golden Age or Hollywood New Wave. I think we just expected movies to be good, were discriminating in what we chose to watch, and were rarely disappointed. There were just a lot of movies worth seeing.

me: You mentioned Fess Parker, and The Great Locomotive Chase being your early favorite, owing to the action. Have you always been into action movies?

Mom: I went to the Rex Cinema (now Cobble Hill Cinema) to see Frank Sinatra in Dirty Dingus Magee. It was unmemorable, but the second movie of the double feature was a western I had not previously heard of, For a Few Dollars More. My love (and respect) for Clint Eastwood continues to this day.

I was introduced to Hong Kong action movies when we got our first VCR and you picked out movies at our local video rental outlet. Together we watched all of Bruce Lee's moves over and over, then Chuck Norris, Stephen Seagal, Bruce Li, Jet Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold, Sly, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, heroes all. And the great franchises: Terminator, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, on to Transporter, Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible, xXx, The Fast and the Furious.

An important aspect of the action hero/antihero was that though battered, bloody and often tortured, he managed to beat out Evil in the end by HIMSELF (or with, if he had one, his team).

me: I remember you telling me about seeing The Godfather in the Metropolitan in downtown Brooklyn, back when it was all one theater....

Mom: We went to see it with our upstairs neighbors. I absolutely loved it although I thought Diane Keaton was miscast. The Metropolitan was a great place to see movies. I saw Death Wish there. I was almost the only white person in the audience and everybody cheered when Charles Bronson killed another mugger.

me: Yeah, I kind of miss the Metropolitan too, even after it got all run down. I'll always remember seeing Double Impact there with you, with the guy behind us going "Look out! There goes Bolo!"

Mom: As it got all run down, audiences changed, but everybody always CAME TO SEE THE MOVIE, and were totally into it. There was never a security problem during daytime movies, no racial incidents going one way or the other. Couples often brought sleeping babies to action movies there to save on baby sitters, and there was no problem with babies crying. The Metropolitan is now a church, and I wonder if it is even half as much fun as it used to be.

me: Not even on its best day, I bet.

Mom: Today's movies with stadium seating and properly functioning air conditioning may be more comfortable, but I miss the funky old theaters without endless advertisements or too many trailers for shitty movies I don't want to see, but with audiences who really having fun at the movies.

me: Yeah, the ads and shit drive me nuts, with all the stupid trivia questions "This actress, whose name rhymes with Shmishirney Deaver, starred in Alien and Ghostbusters", and it's like, come on, man, can't we just watch a movie?

Mom: Yes those are totally stupid and they keep looping so you see the same ones repeating while you are WAITING FOR THE FUCKING MOVIE TO START FOR FUCK SAKE.

me: Absolutely. And if you cut things too tight in terms of showing up on time so you don't have to see that bullshit eight thousand times, you either don't get a seat or miss the start of the movie....

Mom: Sometimes makes it worth the wait for Netflix to have the movie so you don't have to deal with that shit. But there's nothing like watching the movie on a big screen in the dark.

me: Absolutely. Do you have much problem up on the Cape now with people screwing around on their cell phones for the whole movie? That's kind of an epidemic here in the city these days.

Mom: Not a problem on the Cape. In fact I have seen a number of movies here (especially the first showing of the day toward the end of a run) when I have been the only person in the theater. If almost feels like a Command Performance for me.

me: Heh, "Entertain me, mortals."

Mom: Entertain me, Celluloid Heroes!

me: Yes! Celluloid Heroes! Thank you so much for ensuring I never had a Kinks-deprived childhood.

THIS ENGLAND: TWO BY COWARD AND LEAN

David Lean (left, Noel Coward (right); photo from that Criterion box set I can't afford

There's a Noël Coward retrospective at Lincoln Center this weekend, because Noël Coward's awesome. I took in a double feature Friday night, of the first two films Coward made as producer: 1942's In Which We Serve and 1944's This Happy Breed, the latter from his 1939 play. These also, notably, mark the beginning of David Lean's career as a director. When Coward was approached by Anthony Havelock-Allan to make a propaganda film for the British war effort, he accepted the invitation on condition that he was allowed to write, produce, direct, and star. (Because part of being Noël Coward is knowing that you're Noël Coward.) Though he was sure that his experience in the theatre and Ronald Neame's skill as cinematographer would be sufficient for most of the task that would be In Which We Serve, Coward brought in Lean, who had to that point been a film editor, to supervise the action scenes, for which (as well as for other direct and indirect influences on the shape of the film) Lean was ultimately credited as co-director.

One immediately apparent influence Lean had on In Which We Serve, as related by Barry Day, was in advising Coward that his treatment was too long, and that Coward go see Citizen Kane, then in theaters, for inspiration to shape his idea into something more specifically cinematic. Not only Coward's script—built around flashbacks—but Neame's camerawork, with its unconventional tilts and use of deep focus, recalls Kane. While Coward's script and scenes of life on the home front give In Which We Serve its heart, Lean's action scenes give the film its teeth: they're a really extraordinary achievement in action cinema, shot and cut for maximum tension (and in a way that shows the influence of Eisenstein's Potemkin as well as Kane; if you're going to show influences, those are two good ones to flash, to be sure), but their simultaneously realistic and stylized use of sound prefigure modern action cinema, and hold up to what was done decades later in the genre.

But as skillful and ambitious as the filmmaking is, what makes In Which We Serve so effective as both cinema and propaganda is its characters. Family, country, and the Royal Navy intertwine, and are essentially as one; the affection the film builds for the crew members of the HMS Torrin makes the political point better than a speech would have. At the story's end, we want England to win the war because we like Captain Kinross, Chief Petty Officer Hardy, and Ordinary Seaman Shorty Blake so much. It's one thing to know that Great Britain was in a battle in which its very existence was at stake, it's an entirely other thing to know that, really, we serve because of our comrades. Love for one's fellow human beings is a far more effective motivator than abstract political principles; where the latter, when fully understood, are the actual reasons to fight and win, the former is the fuel that keeps the fire going. That Coward knew this so totally is the fundamental thing that makes In Which We Serve so great.

Part two of the double feature, an entirely different kind of film though embodying much the same theme of one group of Britons representing the entirety of the kingdom, was This Happy Breed. Lean's first solo credit as a director, and an adaptation of Coward's play, This Happy Breed is, like In Which We Serve, a departure from the prevailing notion of Noël Coward plays as being things where people swish around in silk dressing gowns and cigarette holders and banter dazzlingly. The Gibbons family, and their friends and neighbors, are working-class Londoners. Their lives are deliberately those any of their countrymen could easily have lived, as, like In Which We Serve, the film universalizes the British experience. Lean (with, of course, the help of the brilliant Ronald Neame, and in gorgeous Technicolor) accomplishes this universality by bookending the film with two rather glorious establishing shots: the first pans from a shot of the entirety of London to the house in Clapham where twenty years in the life of the Gibbons family play out. Then, at the end, the shot in reverse connects the house back to all of London, and thus, of Britain itself.

There's a repeated sentiment in This Happy Breed about the English character as being one not easily rushed, and of change happening gradually. That characterizes the movie quite well; its pace would be called slow by anyone unable to connect emotionally to the Gibbons. Indeed, parts of the story, especially in the middle-ish sections, do lag a bit (these are also, not coincidentally, where the film still feels excessively beholden to its one-set origins on the stage). But that's kind of the point of This Happy Breed. It's so warmly written and beautifully acted, not to mention the clear genius already present in Lean's direction, that its slowness is what makes it what it is, a deeply human drama.

The lead performances, by Robert Newton as Frank Gibbons and Celia Johnson as his wife Ethel, are both masterful bits of work. Newton, in the role Coward himself played onstage, brings an earthy gravitas Lean felt Coward couldn't (this in spite, ironically, of Coward actually having grown up in just such a manner as the Gibbons). Whether or not this was the case, we'll never know, but This Happy Breed does feature one damn fine Robert Newton performance. His Frank Gibbons is who he is, as he was and ever shall be, like the England he so loves. Also conveying that same reassuring sense of eternity is Celia Johnson as Ethel. She plays a variation on her character in In Which We Serve in This Happy Breed, with the variation being one of class, though she's every bit as powerful and real as the working-class Ethel as she is as the more genteel Alix. Just watching Celia Johnson act is a glorious thing, as well: every gesture is exactly what it needs to be, every line reading simple and direct. Without going in for a bunch of Method histrionics, she manages to convey a sense of real humanity even more effectively. Even more than her physical beauty (which she personally downplayed, presumably out of owning neither a mirror nor an ego) this sublime precision to her craft (most famously seen in Lean and Coward's subsequent Brief Encounter) is what makes her one of the great film actresses (in stature, if not resume).

There's a shot a ways into This Happy Breed that's both profoundly British and a sign that David Lean was well on his way to becoming David Lean even in his solo debut: their daughter has to break some tragic news to Frank and Ethel, and runs out to them in the garden. Rather than follow her or cut to the garden the camera stays inside and politely lets them hear it without eavesdropping, and slowly, as if not to make a noise, pans across the room to the door. At the end, Frank and Ethel enter, stunned. It's almost like the film itself is saying, we already know what they're going to hear, let's just give them their space.

That right there is what this whole cinema thing is about. That shot, more than anything else in either of these two pictures, is where the partnership of Coward and Lean clicked into place and harmonized perfectly. Coward's drama giving Lean's camera something great to observe, Lean's camera lending a whole other level to Coward's drama that mere words couldn't convey. Two brilliant minds working together and saying, this is where I'm from. This is me. “This little world, this precious stone set in the sea . . . this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”