For your viewing pleasure, a few films off the beaten path
Movie viewing is always evolving with new technologies. Movie
palaces lost their place to cineplexes in the ’70s, which offered a
larger variety of films to a bigger audience. Movie theaters then
started to lose out to home viewers as VHS boomed in the ’80s and
’90s, leading to independent video rental stores.
For your viewing pleasure, a few films off the beaten path
Movie viewing is always evolving with new technologies. Movie palaces lost their place to cineplexes in the ’70s, which offered a larger variety of films to a bigger audience. Movie theaters then started to lose out to home viewers as VHS boomed in the ’80s and ’90s, leading to independent video rental stores.
Without a movie theater in town during my junior high and high school years, my Gilroy friends and I frequented a local place called National Video. We could call ahead to reserve a movie – and if it wasn’t in, the owners were always ready with a phone call as soon as the movie came back into their hands. The owners would look into rare films for regular customers and had a decent swath of independent and foreign films to choose from.
It was from National Video that I rented some of my favorite films of all time – movies that never landed within a hundred-mile radius of my house. “Indochine,” starring the gorgeous Vincent Perez, Wim Wender’s “Wings of Desire” and its sequel “Faraway, So Close!,” as well as countless others.
It was not in the dim light of a movie screen, surrounded by strangers, that I fell in love with films, but inside the brightly lit store that used to be a few doors down from Straw Hat Pizza – a perfect combo of dinner and movies for any teenage girl sleepover.
National Video is long gone, as are many other independent movie theaters that lost out to national chains. But once again, as technology has changed and DVDs have become mainstays these national chains have a new form of competition in online rental Web sites.
Now nearly any movie is accessible to anyone, whether it’s a foreign film, a documentary or a black-and-white classic.
So here’s to catching the latest – or oldest – flick. Here’s a few great films to get started:
Indochine – A 1992 film starring Catherine Deneuve (Eliane) and Vincent Perez (Jean-Baptiste), in french with subtitles. The film follows the story of Eliane and her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille. Against the back drop of French Indochina as communism takes a hold, Camille rejects the Vietnamese man chosen as her husband and runs off with Jean-Baptiste. Deneuve and Linh Dan Pham deliver shattering performances, while Perez is just pretty to look at.
Roman Holiday – Audrey Hepburn is lovely as ever in this 1953 film in which she stars with Gregory Peck. Hepburn is a princess on the sly who takes up with a journalist who pretends not to know who she is as they tour Rome.
Farewell, My Concubine – Released in 1993, the film tells the story of the friendship of two Chinese men who apprentice with the Peking Opera over 50 years of Chinese history. Leslie Cheung stars as “Douzi” who plays the female roles in the opera performances and Fengyi Zhang, as his male counterpart. Li Gong, who most recently starred in “Hannibal Rising” and has a long history in Chinese cinema, stars as the woman who comes between the friends.
My Sassy Girl – With a remake of this film in production, a look at the original is warranted, though it may be hard to find. Released in 2001, Tae-hyun Cha stars in the South Korean film as a young man who feels pressured into helping a drunk stranger on a train when others mistake her for his girlfriend. After their chance meeting, he feels a sense of responsibility for the girl and keeps in touch. The story is based on a novel by Ho-sik Kim, who described his own relationship with a girlfriend online.
Flirt – The same story is told in three different cities – New York, Berlin and Japan – with a different cast each time and a different outcome. A person must choose between a romantic partner who is moving away and another prospective partner who is currently unavailable. The film touches on the whimsy of attraction and the darkness of jealousy.
Wings of Desire and Faraway, So Close! – Wim Wender’s films follow the lives of former angels after they choose to give up their immortal lives. Though the angels are familiar with the lives of humans since they watched them without interfering from afar, once they make the leap for angel to flesh they realize how complicated life can be. In various languages with subtitles. “City of Angels,” starring Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan was loosely based on the films. The originals are better.
