Who Me, Afraid of Subtitles?
I'm a movie buff and have been one for as long as I can remember. The first movie I can remember is Sitting Pretty (1948). My mother took me to it at the theater in our small Midwest town when I was six years old. About the same time, I remember seeing The Paleface (1948) with Bob Hope.
As a child, I saw many westerns (Roy Rogers, Lash La Rue, Tim Holt), comedies (Ma & Pa Kettle, Francis the Talking Mule, Three Stooges) musicals (The Band Wagon, Three Little Words, Hans Christian Anderson) and tons of cartoons at that little theater. As the spread of television grew, the town commercial club took over the struggling theater and my dad was a volunteer projectionist. The Disney film I have the fondest memories of seeing, is Melody Time (1948) with its "Little Toot", "Johnny Appleseed" and "Pecos Bill".
In my high school years in the late 1950s my friends and I would go to the movies at the drive-in and walk-in theaters in nearby, larger towns. We'd go to almost anything, but especially horror and science fiction movies, like It Came From Outer Space (1953), The Black Sleep (1956), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957), War of the Worlds (1953), and House on Haunted Hill (1958).
Although there were some wonderful films during my college years, (West Side Story (1961), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Haunting (1963), Goldfinger (1964), I nevertheless felt that American movies were starting to get a bit stale. But there was an "art house cinema" in my college town, Iowa City, and I discovered, for the first time, foreign movies. To me, they were more interesting that most films out of Hollywood at the time. My favorites were from Sweden's Ingmar Bergman and France's François Truffaut Not being subject to the United States movie production code, they were often more daring.
I admit to having frequently cut classes to see them, which is probably one of the reasons for my "C" average grades. But that education in world cinema has remained with me my entire adult life. Some of my favorite foreign directors now include René Clair, Luis Buñuel, Yasujiro Ozu, Vittorio De Sica, Marcel Carné, Jacques Tati and Akira Kurosawa, to name but a few. I watch so many films with subtitles, that I barely notice that they are there.
As a child, I saw many westerns (Roy Rogers, Lash La Rue, Tim Holt), comedies (Ma & Pa Kettle, Francis the Talking Mule, Three Stooges) musicals (The Band Wagon, Three Little Words, Hans Christian Anderson) and tons of cartoons at that little theater. As the spread of television grew, the town commercial club took over the struggling theater and my dad was a volunteer projectionist. The Disney film I have the fondest memories of seeing, is Melody Time (1948) with its "Little Toot", "Johnny Appleseed" and "Pecos Bill".
In my high school years in the late 1950s my friends and I would go to the movies at the drive-in and walk-in theaters in nearby, larger towns. We'd go to almost anything, but especially horror and science fiction movies, like It Came From Outer Space (1953), The Black Sleep (1956), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957), War of the Worlds (1953), and House on Haunted Hill (1958).
Although there were some wonderful films during my college years, (West Side Story (1961), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Haunting (1963), Goldfinger (1964), I nevertheless felt that American movies were starting to get a bit stale. But there was an "art house cinema" in my college town, Iowa City, and I discovered, for the first time, foreign movies. To me, they were more interesting that most films out of Hollywood at the time. My favorites were from Sweden's Ingmar Bergman and France's François Truffaut Not being subject to the United States movie production code, they were often more daring.
I admit to having frequently cut classes to see them, which is probably one of the reasons for my "C" average grades. But that education in world cinema has remained with me my entire adult life. Some of my favorite foreign directors now include René Clair, Luis Buñuel, Yasujiro Ozu, Vittorio De Sica, Marcel Carné, Jacques Tati and Akira Kurosawa, to name but a few. I watch so many films with subtitles, that I barely notice that they are there.
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