Just off the phone talking with a dear friend, an actress about my age, also from Chicago, and temperamentally very like myself. We were talking about the movies.
She always loved the movies until she moved to New York and experienced its abundance of live theatre. That was that.
In recent years the only movies I have enjoyed (besides the occasional documentary and a few exceptions like the recent Hugo and that magnificent French film about 17th-century music, Tous les matins du monde) are the old ones: Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Buster Keaton--movies in which the vital fluid of discovery leaks out through the tin of the can, staining you indelibly.
It took awhile but eventually the technology accessible to movie-makers took over and now constitutes a large part of the art.
I found myself remarking that the technology of recording very quickly became the most audible aspect of recorded music. It has reached the point where students are encouraged and even expected to sound like recordings.
How soft an alarm will it take to wake us up?
