Five Films that Changed My Life

Night at the Opera

Night at the Opera

Film Friday

I belong to a film group that every six weeks or so assembles to eat snacks and watch a movie, which we then discuss. We generally watch something out of the mainstream—as our host Jim Bershon (he with the big screen) puts it, “If there’s a line around the block, we don’t want to see it.”

Tonight we are having our annual holiday gathering, hosted every year by Jill Morris and Chris Waggoner.  No movie for a change, just a nice dinner and talk. This year Jill has given us an assignment: we are to report on five movies that “affected our lives profoundly.”

It’s an impossible task, but here are the five that I came up with. They are movies that not only made an impact when I first saw them but that continue to pull me in every time I watch them.

1. Night at the Opera (the Marx Brothers, 1935)

This is the first film I recall seeing, and I still remember laughing hysterically as Harpo swings on the curtain chords, thereby changing the sets behind the opera singer.  Night at the Opera introduced me to the magic of movies.

2. To Kill a Mocking Bird (Robert Mulligan, 1962)

I’ve written several times about the significance of the book and the film to a 12-year-old growing up in the midst of southern Tennessee civil rights battles. Suffice it to say, I saw my father as Gregory’s Peck’s Atticus Finch as he worked together with members of our local NAACP to desegregate Sewanee Public School.

3. Children of Paradise (Marcel Carne, 1944)

I saw this film at the Paris Cinematheque in 1971 (I was studying abroad) when I was in the midst of a rocky relationship. My girlfriend broke up with me when we returned to the States and I think I sensed it coming. Anyway, the film is a powerful exploration of art, illusion, and unrequited love. I still cry when I see it.

4. Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)

I’ve written about how this is my favorite film of all time. I saw it in 1976 and was captivated by six-year-old Ana Torrent and her intense response to the Boris Karloff Frankenstein in 1930’s fascist Spain. The film confirmed for me what I already knew–that movies are more than just entertainment. They are as big as life.

5. I’m having difficulty choosing between Akiri Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, and Federico Fellini’s La Strada. I think I’ll choose the first (although I could change my mind by this evening). I love the collective effort of the samurai as they defend a peasant village against impossible odds. In the end, most of them are killed but the cause is noble.

What are your five films?

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