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Wednesday 13 March 2013

WordPress Daily Prompt: Silver Screen

Take a quote from your favourite movie - there's the title of your post. Now write! - I must admit I did some exploring in Internet for this piece, but I grew up with films and cinema and know the films I mentioned. The earlier entertainments were going to the cinema before TV was invented, so I got a lot of influence from mum and dad.

Casablanca super super

I constructed this photo myself with a little help from Internet and photoshop. The background of the arches was taken from a photo I made of Hotel Mansour Dhabi in Marrakesh where I once spent a week's holiday.


Dracula never did want to suck my blood. That old phony got all he needed in the blood bank. He did not like piercing the blood vessel with his teeth, it was a messy job and stained his nice white shirt with all sorts of red marks. Meeting such a coward as Dracula was a disappontment, so I decided to move on to Frankenstein. Now that was a man if there ever was. He was big and strong, but had a few funny ideas. I told the Professor that he had used a few wrong spare parts. You know like taking the brain from a dinosaur, thinking that would be the solution for such a large body. Unfortunately dinosaurs had the smallest brains in proportion to their body size and the brain that the Professor stole from the natural history museum was so old, that most of the cells had died off. So there it was, Mr. Universe with a wrong brain in the wrong place. Thos plugs and things he had on the side of the neck kept getting in the way every time he put his t-shirt on.


So let’s get to the real man. The real dirty rats and the man that called them by their name. Who could forget James Cagny in his star roles as the Gangster of all gangsters. He told them how it was in the 1931 film “Blonde Crazy” – “Mmm, that dirty, double-crossin’ rat”. Most of all I like the film “Angels with Dirty Faces” with his priest colleague Father Jerry. He touched me with his religious way of dealing with things saying “All right, fellas... let's go and say a prayer for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could”. If I remember rightly James Cagny went to the electric chair at the end screaming for mercy and his life, although that was all put on to show the little boys that they should not follow his example. Oh James, you really showed them the way to do it in that film.

Yes Tarzan, I am coming to you. Let’s face it you were not exactly blessed with a super intelligence and the apes had a tough job to show you how it worked. Just one of the problems not learning the construction of the language I suppose. Apes just say sort of “ugh” or “grrr” and pour old Tarzan had no chance. Thank goodnes he met Jane who showed him how it worked with pointing to herself and saying “Jane” – what a sign of female intelligence. Tarzan pointing to himself said “Tarzan” although I really do not know how the apes taught him that one. Anyhow after a whole sequence of Tarzan and Jane words, they seemed to have got the hang of it. “Yes I know Tarzan, it was all instinct eventually”. I always wondered how he managed to shave, and not a hair on his chest. Perhaps he had a hormonal defect.

Mae West of course went in the other direction. Did he have a gun in his pocket, or did he really like her? She took the risk and told him to “Come up and see me some time”  Whether he did or not is an open question, but the lady was already past forty years old when she discovered her power over the opposite sex. I just love that lady.

Now for some swashbukling quotes from the 1930’s. I might be a golden oldie, but that one does come from my mother’s days, the film “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer” with the famous words spoken by the chief villain Mohammed Khan to Lt. Forsythe “We have ways to make men talk”. What ways they were and whether he actually applied them is left to my imagination, but the film was a success for Gary Cooper at the time.

And now to my favourite film of all favourites. How could you resist Humphrey Bogart when he said those famous words “Play it again Sam”. They were my favourites of all favourites, but wait a moment. He did not say “Play it again Sam”. Was it because he hated the song “As time goes by” due to the fact that Sam played it everytime he sat at the piano. I do not think so. Humphrey was more preoccupied with his girlfriend Ingrid Bergman (who was actually married to someone else) and trying to escape the clutches of Captain Louis Renault (played by the unforgettable Claude Rains). I just loved the last words of Claude Rains at the end of the film when the evil Major Strasser was shot. By then he was on the side of the “goodies” so his words to his police commander were “Major Strasser has been shot... round up the usual suspects.” But back to those famous words, no he did not say “Play it again Sam”, it was Ingrid Bergman who loved the song (by then Humphrey Bogart hated it) and she said “Play it Sam”, but who cares, it was and still is my favourite film of all time. 

3 comments:

  1. All classics, and I've seen all of them at some time in my life. However, in my opinion, the best movie ever made was more recent.....1994, in fact. It's called The Shawshank Redemption. A marvellous tale of the enduring spirit of friendship and hope.

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    1. I have seen that film at least three times and even in english (they usually come in German on our tv, but they always showed that one with two channel tone). A great film. A lovely happy ending where everyone gets their just deserts.

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