I’m a movie fanatic. Having grown up in a town without the pastimes and hobbies of a village (the charms of the rural) like fishing, swimming, gaming or taming animals, my principal source of entertainment was going to the movies.
The theatre behind our home was the center of gravitation. When ever I was early from school or had a holiday, I would run to the theatre and wait at the gates. When the doors were opened to let out the crowds after the show a few minutes before the movie ended, I would dash in to watch the last scenes. Oh the cinematic experience! Like the protagonist in the movie Cinema Paradiso, I have had a romantic affair with the movies. When I was early for the evening show and loitered around the corridors watching the posters and stills from movies to be released. I would try to steal some views of the film through the slit in the entrance door. Compare this experience to what I’m given today at the Multiplex. The most important thing is of course the certainty of getting a ticket. Gone are the days when obtaining a ticket for a movie was a cause for celebration. Indeed coming back home without watching a movie (read not being able to get a ticket) was a sour experience. Going to a movie was a range of experience starting from buying the ticket, to finding a seat, buying snacks in the interval or having quarrels with friends over seats. In these days of multiplex culture, the tickets are not given as slips necessarily. They are sent to your mobile to just flash at the entrance. During those days, one stared into the box office to see the booking clerk tear out slips which denoted the balcony, the dress circle, the box and so on. In Chennai during the year 1979, the tickets were 1.80, 2.90, 4.50 and 6.00 rupees respectively. Watching a movie has its own sweet associations. Watching a movie, especially after going through a great ordeal or getting a huge burden off your mind is indeed a memorable experience. My best experience in this regard is watching the movie ‘Escape to Victory’ on the last day of my SSC exams. After answering the Social studies paper which was the last exam, all the guys trooped out to watch this memorable movie about liberty and freedom. On the day, I left my hostel with my Uncle after my SSC; we watched the movie ‘The 36th chamber of Shaolin.’
Part of the Cinema – going experience was the fight for tickets. A guy who crept in first and got out with tickets for the first show of his favorite actor’s movie was a brief celebrity. And the consternation, when the box office was shut on your face, the last ticket having been sold to the man in front of you! A profession that has gone out of reckoning or vanished perhaps is the sale of cinema tickets in the black. Cinema is right into your room or mobile these days in the form of OTT and where is the place for sly sellers pestering you to buy tickets in the black, taking tickets out of shoes, matchboxes and so on.
The romance of watching a movie in a theatre assumes certain grandness when we witness the adulation and frenzy of fans. In the year 1991, I watched the MGR Block buster Ayirathil Oruvan along with some of my friends in PILOT Chennai. The movie must have had many earlier releases, but the fans threw confetti, coins and even broke a pumpkin when their hero appeared on screen. Such larger than life moments in a theater render mystique to the stars, which could turn out to make them larger than life figures themselves.
There are a few movies which I would love to watch on the big screen. Re-runs are no longer in vogue and one must be content watching them on TV. Dersu Ouzala, Rome-Open city, Nazarin, Yojimbo, Bicycle Thieves, Aparajito, Great escape, Papillon, La Strada, M, BenHur, This man must die, How Green was my valley, Stagecoach, Shawshank redemption and Tokyo story are some of the films. The list is not exactly chronological but random. All these films have defined the grammar of films for me. What would it have been to watch in a theater, the Stagecoach racing through the arid desert of the American West trying to ward off the marauding Indians : the first film in which John Ford recaptured the aura of the West and made it an element.
Is watching a film similar to watching a play or watching a Greek tragedy? Do both the acts carry a similar experience? Does one go through catharsis after watching a film like say, Battleship Potemkin or Mr. Kipps. This brings back the question whether Cinema is purely entertainment or does it carry a social responsibility? From the earliest days Cinema has been a medium that has promoted free expression with a spirit of freedom, liberty and creativity. These core values of society are a part of Cinema’s illustrious tradition. Time and again these values have been expressed and echoed in films like Bicycle Thieves, Rome-Open city, Women of Rome, Maha nagar, To kill a mocking bird, Mr. Deeds goes to Town, Meet John Doe, The Southerner, Mr. Smith goes to Washington or Hang Men also die.
Film as a channel of expression lends complexity to the medium. If it were to remain purely a medium for entertaining the audience, we would have been deprived of some classic visions of life, preserved for the pleasure and education of posterity. Movies like The Searchers, Citizen Kane, The Sun shines Bright, Iron Horse, Stage Coach, La Belle De Joure, Psycho, Vertigo, How Green was my valley, Ran, Dersu Ouzala, Pick pocket, Full Metal Jacket, Rashomon, Shatranj ke khiladi, Pather Panchali, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Platoon, Killing fields, Bridge on the River Kwai, Schindler’s list, Meet John Doe, High Noon, Godfather, Young Mr.Lincoln, Hobson’s choice, Pygmalion, Roman Holiday, Andrei Rublev, Father of a Soldier, The Cranes are flying, Sansho the Bailiff, Diary of a country priest, Aguirre the wrath of God, Autumn Sonata, Persona, Wild Strawberries Winter light ,Rebecca, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Modern Times, City Lights, Great Dictator or Gold Rush are representative documents of humanity, a way of life, a culture or a period in history. The significance of such films lies in their universality and unfading appeal. As a filmgoer, I have aged from a kid who ran after carts announcing the release of a new film to someone who is trying to appreciate the seriousness of Cinema, thanks to all the great films I was able to watch.