So, the other night (and by "the other night," I mean a good several months ago), I did something that I hadn't done in a long time and was well overdue for - I went to see a classic movie on the big screen.
That's not to suggest that I haven't done that often; I have. But it's been at least six months, if not a year or so, since I saw a classic movie in a theater. One of the local playhouses has movie nights during the summer and holidays. They have this nice, big screen they bring down over the stage and they sell $5 bags of popcorn. One of my good friends told me a couple of months ago that the theater was playing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and I immediately put it in my calendar and saved the date. I invited another friend who I knew loved the movie too and we made a little night out of it. We went and got cocktails and dinner and then to the movie.
Like I said, I'm pretty pleased with the number of classic movies I've seen in theaters. I know I'm not breaking any records or anything - but I would never have guessed at the opportunities I've gotten. I've even seen Seven Brides on a big screen before - I got to see it on the TCM Classic Cruise when they invited Jane Powell. It was amazing. Jane Powell did this great interview with Robert Osborne and talked about the quilts that were used to make the costumes and the painted sets. And Robert Osborne told her she was the lynchpin that held the whole movie together. I even got to meet Jane Powell the day I saw the movie on the cruise! She was at the pool deck and I told her that I thought she was amazing. She was incredibly kind and shook my hand. I only regret not asking to take a picture with her - but when I circled back around to do it, she had gotten lunch and I didn't want to interrupt that.
Anyways... this was a different experience than that one. Obviously, there was no interview right beforehand. But, the audience who went to see the movie on the cruise was a bunch of dedicated movie buffs. They had paid over $1,000 to be there. Most of the people in that theater had seen it before. And on the TCM Cruises there was this habit of the cruisers to go to an interview and then slip out before the movie started in order to catch the next interview. It's kind of ridiculous in a way, when you think about it, but that's what a lot of people do. I did that for movies I didn't care to watch but I was curious about the interviews beforehand.
It may sound strange but this viewing of the movie was even better (not counting the interview at the beginning of the first viewing, of course). The theater was no cruise ship theater. It's an adorable theater but only boasts a few hundred seats. Those seats were filled. I think there were probably less than ten or twenty seats left. And the audience was one of the best theater audiences I have ever sat among. I suspect about half of them had either never seen the movie or were watching it for the first time a long time. Because the laughter was so genuine and so loud.
When I see a movie a million times, I laugh at the jokes, I laugh in anticipation of the jokes... but this audience made me laugh at jokes I'd forgotten were there. It was almost like watching it for the first time. When Caleb takes the cake from Adam and tells Ruth that he'll follow her "to the ends of the earth," I laughed the hardest at that line than I ever have. The jokes sometimes become so familiar, that you forget they're even there (at least some of them). And if, like me, you've been watching movies since before you really understood them, watching them as an adult is an entirely different experience as line after line and scene after scene finally make sense or have new meaning.
I have watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers countless times and shown it to tons of friends. But even old favorites can surprise me.
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