Wednesday, September 15, 2010
What are the greatest lengths or extremes you’ve ever gone to just to see a movie?1
I’m reasonably confident that I win this round, but I invite you to take your best shot. My Tuesday evening by the numbers:
- Two hundred miles round-trip in eight hours.
- A ticking clock counting down to a 7:30 p.m. showtime.
- Arriving in San Francisco amid bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic.
- A $6 toll just to cross the Bay Bridge into the city.
- Making the 100-mile trek with no promise that I’d find convenient parking, if any at all.
- A $10 general-admission ticket.
- A $5 toll just to get out of the city at evening’s end.
- Only four hours of sleep on a weeknight (though, by my standards…).
The historic Castro Theatre, built in 1922, is a magnificent showplace, with balcony seating (though it was closed Tuesday night); a high, domed ceiling (directly under whose intimidating lighting fixture I sat, ninth row center); plush, comfortable red-velvet seats; wall frescos, faux opera boxes, gilded trim and other architectural magnificence in a mishmash of styles and cultural motifs; and an honest-to-God vintage pipe organ that rises from the floor to stage level for a 10-minute performance prior to curtain.
The evening’s entertainment, my principal objective, was a brand-new, digitally remastered print of Sir David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, foremost among a number of POW movies that I hold in special regard.2 Those of you not as fortunate as I will benefit from its imminent transfer to Blu-Ray disc (coming November 2). But I win — not only because Bridge shines like a diamond on the big screen, the way God and Lean intended it to be seen, but because the print was so new and pristine as to have not even a scratch on it yet. (Trust me: One would have noticed, the way one notices the first door ding on a new automobile.) In many ways, it was like seeing the movie for the very first time.
The star of the new remaster is Jack Hildyard’s cinematography, always grand in scope but now more alive with color than ever before in the dozen or so times I’ve seen Bridge, whether on DVD or in theatrical exhibition. In particular, the variegated greens of the Ceylon jungle are so lush and luminous that I found myself mesmerized by them on one or two occasions when there were characters in the foreground who would ordinarily demand my attention. (Those greens are reminiscent to me of John Toll’s almost monochromatic color palette in Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.)
More noteworthy still is the blood — what little is actually spilled onscreen, that is — which is more vividly crimson than ever before. While this enhancement might appear gratuitous in other, lesser films (spoiler alert!), in Bridge it is especially beneficial in story terms. All these years, one of my minor bugbears with the film has been the extent of the injuries sustained by Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) during the film’s climax. After the mortar shells explode near the shoreline, Nicholson, to my eyes, has always appeared more disoriented by the concussion of the blast than actually injured by it. Now, in one telling shot as he turns his back to the camera, one can clearly see the blood of multiple shrapnel wounds in his hair, making it more obvious that he is mortally wounded and making more poignant the insistence of Maj. Warden (Jack Hawkins) that he had no choice but to fire the shells that would seal the fates of Shears (William Holden) and Joyce (Geoffrey Horne). It is a detail that, for me, elevates what was always a great film to the status of near-perfection. (End spoiler.)
Never mind that San Francisco is one of the greatest, most vibrant cities on earth, nor that I hadn’t been there in over 18 years. I went for a movie — and only a movie. That said, the experience exceeded my expectations, even as it fell a little short of the mark. (My bad, not the city’s.)
After the movie, I walked around the neighborhood a bit, although now I wish I had explored it a little more. I was starving by the time the end credits rolled, so I found a terrific, if overfurnished, little New York pizza place a block and a half away, where I scarfed down a couple of slices to sustain me on the drive home.
On the way there, I was ambushed by a homeless man — a white man, I should state up front — who emerged from between a couple of parked cars and said, “Excuse me, sir, would you help out a nigger?” (I was too startled to have noticed what was written on his cardboard sign and wish now that I had.) He employed this off-putting approach with the next few passers-by before I was out of earshot, and as he bore a passing resemblance to Harry Dean Stanton, I was inclined to write him off as being more mentally unbalanced than necessarily racist. After all, a little unanticipated local flavor never hurt anyone (although I’d be very interested to watch him try out that line on an African-American).
I discovered only the next morning — and kicked myself for having not investigated it more thoroughly beforehand — that had I walked another half-block beyond the pizza place, I would have seen the building that once housed the camera shop and campaign headquarters of slain city supervisor Harvey Milk, “the Mayor of Castro Street.” I knew, of course, that I’d be on Castro Street, but distracted as I was by the mission at hand, it hadn’t actually occurred to me that I’d be on Castro Street. Rest assured that No. 575 will be a definite stop on my next visit — which might be a couple of weeks from now, when the newly restored “complete” version of Fritz Lang’s landmark silent film Metropolis stops at the Castro for a weeklong engagement.
Anyway, that’s the new benchmark for my own commitment to great cinema. What’s yours?
1 And no, “I flew all the way from L.A. to New York just to see Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail” because it (or some other such form of cinematic waterboarding) was the airline’s in-flight movie doesn’t count. One movie — or perhaps a double-feature if applicable — and it has to have been the primary objective of your mission. That I hope it was a great movie goes without saying.
2 Depending on the day of the week, I’d say it’s a photo finish between Bridge and John Sturges’ The Great Escape, with Mr. Wilder’s Stalag 17 (also starring William Holden) running a very close third. Honorable mention goes to Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion and Mark Robson’s Von Ryan’s Express.
