Today, you can watch more than half of the movies ever made with the push of a button. 2002 documentary “Cinema Mania” It harkens us back to a time when becoming a full-time film professional required much more effort.
None of the five New Yorkers profiled here are married or working (four are disabled and one is independently wealthy). That means they can spend their days visiting one small repertory theater after another, carefully cross-referencing showtimes and public transportation routes. Pack as much film as possible.
These movies aren’t always easy to watch.
This compulsive movie watching seems like a kind of mental hoarding. In fact, each subject has a suitably messy house. Roberta, the only woman in the band, lives in an apartment filled with memorabilia of dubious value, including plastic advertising cups, and at one theater she chastises an employee for tearing up ticket stubs. I was banned from entering.
And yet, they’re all fascinatingly knowledgeable and smart. “Being obsessed with movies means you have to have a technologically deviant lifestyle,” says a particularly self-conscious Jack, a 30-something trust funder. Their company lasts about 80 minutes and is fascinating. Any longer than that and you might start to think deeply about your own obsessive enthusiasm.
MGM
Characters from the 1952 masterpiece “Singin’ in the Rain” They have a particularly urgent “commitment to film.” That’s how they put food on the table. This movie may seem very old to us, but it’s easy to forget that it was a historical drama in its own right. Set in 1927, Gene Kelly plays a silent film star struggling to make the transition to talkies.
Midcentury studio musicals are among the pinnacles of American filmmaking. The first thing viewers accustomed to CGI spectacle will notice is the sheer physical talent on display. Vaudeville veterans like Kelly and Judy Garland didn’t need camera tricks or audio enhancements to wow audiences with song and dance. The elaborate and beautifully executed set pieces become even more impressive when you consider that they all had to be realized with practical effects.
These movies aren’t always easy to watch. Their rigid conventions and stylized sentiments may seem trite and shallow to the uninitiated. Still, they convey a depth of emotion that rivals any of the “gritty” films that replaced them by the end of the ’60s.
Singin’ in the Rain, for example, is at once a sophisticated romantic comedy, a sharp satire of showbiz, and a crowd-pleasing song-and-dance show. A subtle meditation on the relationship between popular entertainment and art. It also showcases Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor’s charms so well that it’s worth the price of admission alone.
