If There's Anything To Learn From The

We May Be Reaching The End Of The Era In Which Individual Movies Meant Something To People. In The New Era, Movies May Just Mean A Barrage Of Images.

Watching Old Movies Is Like Spending An Evening With Those People Next Door. They Bore Us, And We Wouldn't Go Out Of Our Way To See Them; We Drop In On Them Because They're So Close. If It Took Some Effort To See Old Movies, We Might Try To Find Out Which Were The Good Ones, And If People Saw Only The Good Ones Maybe They Would Still Respect Old Movies. As It Is, People Sit And Watch Movies That Audiences Walked Out On Thirty Years Ago. Like Lot's Wife, We Are Tempted To Take Another Look, Attracted Not By Evil But By Something That Seems Much More Shameful -- Our Own Innocence.

I Live In A Rather Special World. I Only Know One Person Who Voted For Nixon. Where They Are I Don't Know. They're Outside My Ken. But Sometimes When I'm In A Theater I Can Feel Them.

Movies Are Our Cheap And Easy Expression, The Sullen Art Of Displaced Persons.

For Some Strange Reason We Don't Go To Charming, Light Movies Anymore. People Expect A Movie To Be Heavy And Turgid, Like "american Beauty." We've Become A Heavy-handed Society.