Everytime it rains, it rains...

[awanderingbard]

God, I love old movies.

(cut for spoilers for 'Pennies From Heaven', though I don't know if you can spoiler a movie that came out 72 years ago. Is there some sort of statute of limitations?)



I can just picture the screenwriter coming up with this story.

"Alright, so they'll be this guy. In prison. And he'll have a lute! And my happy movie will start out with the electrocution of a murderer! And he'll give this letter to the prison guy, because the prision guy has a lute and he sings. And no one is more trustworthy than a guy who sings.

"And then the guy will get out of prison and go off to deliver the letter. Which will be addressed to the grandfather of this little girl who has a sailor hat and is being chased by the Child Welfare lady who wants to put her in an orphanage. And the little girl will merrily invite the guy with the lute home for lunch, because that's a perfectly safe thing to do.

"And then the Child Welfare lady and the lute guy will banter and no one will suspect that later they will fall in love.

"And they're be all kinds of schemes to help keep the girl out of the orphanage. And the girl will claim to be in love with lute guy and he'll sing songs to her and it'll all seem rather creepy 72 years from now. And he'll need to make money, so he'll be a daredevil in a carnival! That's brilliant!

"And then the girl will be taken to the orphanage and he'll bring the whole circus to perform for the five billion children who live there, all as a cover to sneak her out. In a drum! We'll put her in the marching band's drum! Only it won't work, but he won't notice because he has to go to New York to find Child Welfare lady. And he'll go through all of New York, singing the same song until he finds her! And they'll be in love and everyone will be shocked because it was so unexpected!

"And then the police will find them and bring them back because the girl is attempting to burn down the orphanage and threatening to throw herself out a window unless they let her go. Because that's not vaguely disturbing. And then, of course, Child Welfare Lady and Lute Guy will adopt her and they'll go to Venice.

"And somewhere I'll stick in all these songs I'm trying to write the story around. And it'll be great!"

And it was.

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

LOL! Personally, if a movie's over, like, five years old MAX, I don't take spoiler hysteria at all seriously. [wry smile]

About the movie itself, I don't know how old you are (and I'm too lazy to check your Profile right now) but it's hard to explain to younger people what it was like even thirty or forty years ago. There just wasn't the acknowledgement of child molestation that there is today. And it's good that it's there now because it means kids who are being hurt have a much greater (like hugely greater) chance of getting help and having the molesters put away. But in a way it's bad because now there's just this automatic assumption that any adult (especially a man) who's interested in a little kid (unless he's their dad and sometimes even then) is obviously some sort of pedophile, and even if he's really not, everyone's still really suspicious and disapproving and it's still considered kinda creepy and icky. And that's really sad, because little kids are cute and sometimes an adult will just take a liking to a little kid and there won't be anything wrong with it. But we can't see that nowadays because we're always looking out, eagle-eyed, for molesters. And yeah, they're out there, but.... [sigh]

I'll be the first one to go over a real child molester with a baseball bat, and I think it rocks that they get beat up and raped in prison, and I'm not even joking here. But I think it's sad that an adult who has an honest and innocent interest in a cute little kid has to be stupid to show it these days. Everyone's being so careful that a lot of great and truly harmless friendships have been lost. And no, I don't have a better answer. :/

Another good example, though, is just about any Shirley Temple movie. She's constantly getting involved with strange men, smiling at them and sitting on their laps and they're carrying her around with their hand right under her butt, and today it's all O_O because people are looking for Bad Stuff. But those are fun movies, which could never be made today. And that's sad.

Angie, feeling sadly rambly tonight

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. I didn't mean to imply that it was actually creepy or anything. I was just joking. I'm only 22, but I've watched many old movies (I love musicals), so I know what you're getting at.

It's like, my friend and I watched My Neighbour Totoro (a childen's anime movie from Japan) and she warned me that there was a scene where the two little girls bathed with their father. I was like, 'so what?', but apparently a lot of North American audiences found that creepy.

I too don't have an answer for it.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Totoro, although it's on my list. :) But yeah, I can imagine how that scene would hit a lot of North Americans. [nod]

There's a picture -- I think the original was a woodcut, although I wouldn't swear to it -- from the Middle Ages of a family walking down the street through town naked, just holding their towels, on their way to the baths. Dad, Mom, and some number of kids. And it's not a big deal, and no one's all O_O at them, because they're going to bathe and there's no assumption of sexuality in the nudity. Context actually mattered then, and I think that's part of the problem, that nudity always has an assumption of sexuality nowadays.

Angie

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my parents are both medical people and my mum says that when you've seen as many naked people as her, it stops being sexual. Everyone has the same parts, gender specific, of course, and there's nothing special about them.

There was a time when nudity was considered artistic. Now it's more 'OMG, she's NAKED!'. It's silly.

Totoro is adorable. It's non-stop cute and you'll just smile all the way through it. The depiction of the children is so perfect. The way he animates the littlest one is so realistic. I loved it.