Old Movie Comfort
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
We all have our favourite movies. Sometimes we watch them so often we can fill in the words before the actor has a chance to say them. That happens to me a lot – even the female parts, which is a bit disturbing. My Kathryn Hepburn was so good even Spencer Tracy couldn’t tell us apart, especially if we were both in bathing suits. (Kate and I, not Spence and I, I don’t want to start any rumours.)
What I intended and started out to write was about an article I read where some bozo claimed to have watched the movie Tombstone some thirty times. I thought he must be a tad wacky until I realized I have done that too, maybe not thirty times but, well, maybe not thirty per se, well I suppose it could have been close to – okay, twenty-nine times, but no more than that.
How about A Christmas Carol with old Alistaire Simms? I watched that one at least once a year for decades and will again this year. The Scrooge movie is different of course because it’s an annual tradition and it is the law that we must watch it every year or Santa won’t come. I know, I know, that is ridiculous but the law is the law.
Come to think of it Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally are also traditions and then there’s Mamma Mia, Love Actually, High Society and… I guess I’m as nutty as the guy watching Tombstone.
I know that being the manliest of men I should be watching Dirty Dozen, John Wick, the Mission Impossible series and any one of a dozen James Bond movies and I do whenever they are on. However living such a violent life myself I like to relax once in a while with something that doesn’t have a body count in the hundreds. (John Wick is a disaster looking for a place to happen.)
Sometimes after a hard day though, an old stand-by movie can be just the thing you need to help you relax when it is time to sleep. Mary and I did that last night, the movie was Four Weddings and a Funeral. It is a comedy with lots of humour and of course, four weddings (the last one is a bride’s nightmare, very funny as long as it wasn’t your wedding) and good acting because they were all Brits, well except for Andie McDowell who is American, but good (for an American).
But, the funeral.
The eulogy was delivered by John Hannah, a Scottish actor and a very good one. In the movie, his gay partner (Simon Callow) died suddenly at Andie’s wedding and Hannah’s delivery over the casket was absolutely magnificent. He finished with W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
There is nothing more to say.
(Image Supplied)
