Come to the talkies with me

Here are six movies you’ve not seen but should. I won’t tell you their names but there are enough clues for you to find them with some clever searching

Nobody goes to the movies any more. They sit at home and stream. But deep down, everyone misses the movies. How do I know? Because every new tweak of technology promises to deliver an even more authentic movie hall experience—larger screens, and surround sound, to name two. Add popcorn, and you might even believe you were back at the talkies again.

I’m a shameless, unrepentant lover of old gold. This week, I want to tease you with a short, partial list of some movies I have watched and cherished over and over, wallowing in the plot, the performance, the cinematography or even the sheer pleasure of watching a good story well told. 

To make the experience exquisitely torturous, I will withhold the movie’s name but leave more than enough clues for you to discover it for yourself with a little Googling.  Using ChatGPT would be considered cheating.

Oh, and all of them are available in full length, free for viewing on YouTube.

Movie #1: It’s easy to scare people using loud sounds, gruesome images and special effects (think The Exorcist). Here is a spine-tingling black-and-white movie from 1967 where just the story and the acting will bring you to the edge of your seat. The late, great Dame Audrey Hepburn, then a bewitching young actor, plays a blind woman alone in a London basement who becomes the unwitting owner of a doll stuffed with heroin. Three criminals take turns trying various strategies to get the doll back. When all fails, the main villain, terrifyingly played by an understated Alan Arkin, 
enters the house. 

Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. Alan Arkin passed away exactly two months ago to the day today. 

Movie #2: Have you noticed how every detail seems a little larger than life in childhood memories? People, rooms, trees, everything looms. Moments last longer, expressions are more severe, and life has an exaggerated comic-book quality. Now imagine a film that captures these ethereal, magical, slightly puffed-up memories, laced with nostalgia, wry humour and affection, and you would be thinking about this unsung masterpiece by Italian maestro Federico Fellini. A movie hall in Calcutta screened it—by mistake, I’m sure—for three days in 1973, but I was lucky to see it then. I have watched it with pleasure over 30 times since.

Movie #3: Everyone knows this magnificent actor by his one grisly turn as a cannibal serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs. But a much younger Sir Anthony Hopkins starred in a nail-biting psychological thriller based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman. He plays a shy, introverted man who comes into his own only as a ventriloquist in conversation with his puppet, which constantly derides and belittles him, to everyone’s delight. One day, the puppet begins controlling him, giving him chilling instructions. Both the book and the movie are obscure masterpieces, hard to come by. The movie was directed by the late Sir Richard Attenborough, who made Gandhi and played Dr. Hammond in Jurassic Park.

Movie #4: While on Anthony Hopkins, let me introduce another unknown gem. I picked it up because the name suggested it was somehow about Indians. It wasn’t and it was. In this uplifting, meticulous 2005 film based on a true story, Hopkins plays a down-and-out but tenacious New Zealander who loves motorbikes—and wants to race his Indian Scout motorcycle on the Utah salt flats in the USA. And that’s all I’m telling you.

Movie #5: A black teacher from British Guyana is hired to teach a class of angry, delinquent teenagers in a seedy East London district. What could possibly go wrong? Sidney Poitier, already a name by then, stepped into the limelight with this heart-warming and uplifting 1967 movie. A few months ago, I watched it with a brilliant 12-year-old child with Asperger’s Syndrome—it lit his face up just as it did mine. 
This movie also introduced the singer Lulu. The theme song, To Sir With Love, topped the US Billboard Hot 100.

Movie #6: The name Anthony Quinn may not mean anything to you. To me, he is a hulking, bushy-eyebrowed, ebullient actor who brought amazing energy and subtlety into his acting. This movie, hardly remembered even though it was directed by the legendary Stanley Kramer and nominated for two Oscars, tells the story of the Italian village of Santa Vittoria towards the end of World War II. The retreating Germans want to seize the town’s cache of wine. To protect their treasure, the town elects the bumbling town drunk (Quinn) as its mayor. Crafty, canny, obsequious but determined not to surrender the precious wine, Quinn is a treat to watch as he outwits the Germans.

There are a few more gems where those came from, but I’m close to my word limit. You may have to wait till next week. Meanwhile, if you want to check out your answers, scan the QR code alongside and type in your guesses to get the correct answers.

Now go watch the movies. Don’t forget the popcorn.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at [email protected]

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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