From 20's to 30's

I mounted my steed and looked ahead at the dirt road that lay before me. I have spent several months getting to know the early days of cinema, traveling through the early 1900s, the teens and the twenties. My horse began to gallop slowly down the road, kicking up a small sprig of dust with each step. Without realizing my head turned back and I took one last look at the characters that I've met thus far on my journey: Dr. Caligari, Battling Burrows, Nanook, Count Orlok, Buster Keaton and his many personas, Sisif the engineer, Ahmed the thief of Bagdad, McTeague, The Lone Prospector, Alonzo the Armless, Jakie Rabinowitz the jazz singer, Harold Hickory, Det. Frank Webber and Lulu. They all waved at me as they saw my head turn toward them and I threw up my hand and gave them a passionate wave back. I'd spent a considerable amount of time getting to know those characters and some I'll remember more fondly than others, but they were all certainly worth remembering.

I decided it was time to face forward, so I turned back and that's what I did. I looked up ahead at the thirties, which approached me. I saw a new cast of characters and films that I'll certainly look forward to spending time with: Dracula, Frankenstein, City Lights, M, I Am a Fugitive from A Chain Gang, Scarface, Freaks, Duck Soup, King Kong, It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, Mutiny On the Bounty, Modern Times, Dodsworth, Grand Illusion, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and The Rules of the Game, just to name a few. I look forward to getting to know those movies from the thirties that I have yet to experience, and reliving the ones that I already have.

Your courageous journeyman,
Andrew

October 24, 2009 5:07am