„There is a town in Northern Ontario …“, Neil Young sings in his homebounded song HELPLESS.
Timmins is a town in Northern Ontario, where my friends come from. We just spent New Years Eve together in Munich. We had lots of fun, drinking, singing along and watching the movie NOSTALGIA with the fabulous Scottish Annie Lennox. While we were watching the film, I asked my Canadian friends, what kind of movies they were watching when they were very young and so today.
With ten they watched bible effected films like Samson and Delilah or Ten Commitments. Then „Blue Hawai“ with Elvis Presley in it. Or Tom Thumb and the Walt Disney stuff. Few years later they liked films, which took place in a more or less poor envirement: Geory Girl, The L-shaped room, A Patch of Blue. With twenty they liked Midnight Cowboy, Guess who is coming for dinner, A man of all seasons, The Lion in Winter. Films which really shaped their lifes are: Easy Rider, The Ipcress File, Death in Venice, La Strada, The Ambrellas de Cherbourg, The Ship of Fools, Querelle (wow), Isadora, Wait until is dark, The Children’s hour, Two for the Road.
Best film ever: Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf.
I asked which films since 2000 they would recommend: Crash, Broke Back Mountain, Cold Mountain, Ordinary People, Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy … I asked, if they watch series; „Oh yes, they are so much better made, they are to compare with Charles Dickens, who wrote weekly in a newspaper one chapter. That’s how we watch the series: Intreatments, Rectified, Fargo, Oliver Knitteridge, Damages, American Crime Story …
I was surprised that the Atlantic seems to part us in our selection of films. Some of the titles I’ve never heard before. When I mentioned, that I watched Winnetou movies, when I was very young and then as a student the French films like ‚Kinder des Olymp‘ or the Avantgarde Cinema with Rene Clair and Vigo or the Nouvelle vague, they were surprised.