Who knew that butter used to be sold in wooden tubs?
I knew that sauerkraut came from barrels, but butter, from wooden tubs?

Ok, I am watching a movie on TV, one I have seen before but don’t remember very well, called, people will talk, from 1951.  It’s a black and white film that is a little but different than most movies that one will see. For instance, did you know that collies, rather than being the happy go lucky types can be rather evil and nasty seeming?  Even to the point of being named, Beelzebub.   Or random valets called Mr. Shunderson that look dangerous and ominous and scare the pants off of people, and valet themselves to medical doctors.  Whoa, news from the front, 1/3 of the way into the movie, and Shunderson says his first words.  Prior to that he only looked ominous.  Strange.

 Have I ever mentioned that I watch a lot of black and white movies? 

What did you set out from your farm to be.
Nothing in particular, but far from here.  And through much of my life, I remained just that, far from here, and nothing in particular. 

Well, I think, actually that I watch a lot of movies in general and that you would certainly have known that. 

I’m in love with you.
What makes you think so?
I can’t give you symptoms, it’s not measles.

And I guess I do watch all manner of movies, but at this point I want it to be clear for the purposes of this entry that I watch a lot of old ones.  I might have mentioned this before in the form of telling you about old movie night.

You’re being pompous again.

You remember old movie night, on a regular and practically scheduled basis a darling friend and I sit down and watch an old movie.  Sometimes black and white classics, sometimes...

 There hasn’t been a woman born that doesn’t believe in her heart that she will make a much better wife than her husband has any right to expect.

black and white doosies (as in so not classic it’s ridiculous that it be kept in that section) and musicals.   I am not sure entirely why I like them so much.  But I do indeed.  

Professor lionel hapmton, did your train leave on beep beep or beep beep beep.
The signal was beep beep.
It was to leave on beep beep beep, those were your orders.

I guess it’s something about the feel of them.  The dialogue, the clothes, the situations.   Movies back then, they, placed a much greater importance on the interaction of humans.  The way that people talk to one another, feel about one another,  unlike today...

I have always felt I have been a fairly normal adult young lady that should know everything that a fairly normal adult young lady should know. 

  where everything seems to be about the plot and the special effects.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are many things to love about the movies of today but, they just don’t do for you what the movies of the past can do.   I kind of wonder what it is about them that makes other people...

You fell in love all of a sudden didn’t you?
All of a sudden.
Let me know when you hit bottom.
It should come around in about 40 years.

  find them dull and not worth watching?  Insanity.  Or maybe just personal taste I guess. 

 I wonder if the movies of the time, back then saw these dialogues as the abstraction of the way that perfect people talk, you know in the same way as the grand things that happen in sit-coms really never do happen?  I wonder.  Anyone out there old enough to remember if the way that people talked in the black and white movies, most especially the film noir ones, had anything to do with the...

Then why ask idiotic question to which you already know the answers?

actual way that people spoke back then?  I mean, perhaps it was just a very restricted part of society, you know, the underside, that did.  Then again, perhaps it was.

Ellwell you can use more words more annoyingly than any annoying little pip squeak than I have ever known

Have you ever watched a movie and said to yourself, ‘who talks like that. I mean, who would say that?’   Come to think of it,  we say that today and it makes a movie less real and less palatable.   For the most part at least.  On the same vein, I think in the ‘70’s movies were all about speaking exactly as real people did.  Movies then were all about being real.

The trouble with you Mr. Ellwell is that you have never had a cadaver of your own, much less one that bit your finger.

Of course, I like to watch those movies as well.  They all have a message, something to learn, something to see.  They just provide it in a different way I guess.  Perhaps it would be better to say that I am enthralled by almost all forms of human expression.  In the same way that a book, or a painting express something about humans and specifically the...

Mr. Ellwell you are a little man, it is not that you are short but that you are little in the mind and in the heart.  Tonight you tried to go after a man who you could not stand up to his boot, as if he was on a mountain.  And in the end, you turned out to be even littler.

people that made the piece but generally just all people, a movie and to a lesser extent, TV, do the same thing.   I guess, as I grow older, that I am much more an artist than ever the science minded young me could ever admit.  That I love art and artists far more than I could ever anticipated.  I think this is a wonderful thing to be aware of about yourself really. 

ok, the movie is just ending, as is this slightly strange entry.  Hope you enjoyed it.  Right now, i am going to watch Reindeer Games, an entirely different type of film and work on the article i was supposed to be writing when i wrote this instead.

Oh, nifty, mankiewicz, the man who made this picture, this is the same guy how did Guys and Dolls and for a while was in charge of Cleopatra.

   this entry is dedicated to shar. who invariably makes old movies even more enjoyable.