OLD MOVIES

148 – Thursday, May 28, 2009

While browsing through the cable channels searching for something to watch, my sister-in-law announced, “You guys are missing it – an RKO black-and-white like you always enjoy – a musical!” Otherwise occupied, it took me several minutes to get to the recliner and tune in. When I was finally able engage channel fifty-three, I was not disappointed and she was correct. The 1937 vintage film, ‘A Damsel In Distress’, was airing starring Fred Astaire in his best genre, a song and dance celluloid plethora of gliding and whirling, fantastic, even though it appeared sans color – I bellied up to the entertainment buffet and glutted. The thought occurred to me that our modern film-making studios and production companies, with all the technologies and marvels of science at their fingertips, don’t even come close to the intrinsic quality of family-friendly, eye-and-ear-pleasing melodies, sprawling stages filled with props, plumage, and professionalism once the mainline offerings from Hollywood – it is not because there is no talent available, for there are still gifted singers to vocalize (just watch American Idol, et al) and exceptional dancers to trip-the-light-fantastic (observe Dancing With The Stars, et al) – it is because our fickle population is no longer interested in ‘G-rated’ talent and splendidly arrayed opulent staging; they want blood-and-guts, dicey dialogue with a deluge of profanity and sexual innuendo and exposed skin, splashy computer-generated graphic explosions and destructive displays of pyrotechnical resplendence – what a shame that there no longer exists a consumer market for quality – our ‘modern’ society has become a flesh-hungry degraded mass – Hollywood would still create the really good stuff if we were just in the market for it – too sad!!

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