But They Don't Talk on the Screen

Michael looks at his mom. He wants to take off his coat, it’s so hot in the theatre.

He has never seen such a big screen. If the movie is going to be played there, everybody will look huge.

His mom looks back at him, raising her eyebrows. He is not going to be allowed to take off his coat.

-This movie is special, Michael –she had told him at home, her thin lips broadening into a smile while she was buttoning his coat. –It’s a talkie.

Michael wants to hear people talking on the screen. He figures it would be fun.

He wanted to pay, though. The lady at the entrance had told him he could go with his mom and not worry about the ticket. Little boy. She had used the words ‘little boy’. He hated them. And she smiled while she was saying them, which made it even worse. His mom and daddy paid a quarter, and he wanted to pay his quarter, too. But they didn’t let him. They let him hold the tickets and told him that he could take them home. The ticket says: ‘Al Jolson – The Jazz Singer’.

There are many people in the theatre. Michael looks around. He doesn’t know anybody. He never knows anybody when mom and dad take him out. He fiddles with the buttons of his coat. He knows his mom will get angry if he opens it, so he just plays with the buttons and the buttonholes, and looks around. There is no other child in the room, or at least none he can see. But then, it might be that they are already seated and they are too short for him to see them. He thinks he himself is too short. He turns his head to see the edge of his seat. Yes, he is too short.

-When does the movie start, mom?

-Very soon, Michael. But not yet. Can’t you see people are still looking for their seat? You don’t want them to miss the movie, do you? –And she smiles.

No, he doesn’t want that. People running around looking for a place, noise, everybody irritated.

The woman in front of him has a tall hat on her head. Michael hopes she will take it off, otherwise he will not be able to see the movie properly. He could ask her to remove it. Will she get angry? Will mom and dad get angry? How old is this lady? She looks older than his mom. Old ladies are not nice. They pretend to be nice, oh yes. When they are in public. When everybody can see them they all say “what a handsome young chap” and “do you want a cookie?”, but then they change. He can always smell that they are lying, all right. When they are alone with him old ladies are always strict, stricter than his mom. They don’t shout as much, but they don’t want you to move and play and go into the living room. Like grandma. They say that’s because mom and dad wouldn’t like it, but he knows that it’s not true.

And then somebody turns off all the lights and the movie begins to play. What if there are still people walking around? He can see there are still two, maybe three places which are empty. Where are those people? He is quite concerned now.

He looks back at the screen. It’s New York, the writing says, but Michael doesn’t recognize the street. Maybe if he looks carefully enough he can see somebody he knows, or that his parents know. He doesn’t know that many people.

-Why does he have that long beard, mom?

-Shh, be quite Michael –those raised eyebrows again. –It’s because he is a Jew. They have long beards.

A Jew? Do they all have long beard? What is a Jew? He has heard the word before, but he can’t really remember where. People with long beards and strange hats. They must be foreigners. He can’t really ask to his mom for more information, now. Everybody is quiet and if he becomes too insistent they might decide not to let him come to the movies next time.

But they don’t talk on the screen. His mother must have been wrong. When people in the movie try to communicate with each other, he can’t hear anything. Their words appear on the screen, long sentences which interrupt the movie. It takes some seconds to Michael to understand the meaning of those words, but he doesn’t ask for help. He has just learned to read, and he is quite proud of it. He bet he is better at it than any other child in the room, if there are any.

And then the young boy on the screen starts to sing.

Jakie, the writing said he is called Jakie. Michael can hear his voice, his real voice. He likes it very much, but that lasts only for three or four seconds because then everybody starts to cheer and applaud and he is not able to hear anything very well anymore. All these people around him, the lady with the tall hat and everybody else, become all of a sudden so noisy. Even mom and dad smile and talk to each other, and seem to like Jakie’s voice a lot. –Have you seen, Mike? –his mother tells him, evidently delighted. –I told you they were going to talk! –But that’s not true, Michael thinks, they weren’t talking until one moment ago, and now they are singing. He wanted everybody to talk, he wanted to hear their conversations. That would have been really nice. But he doesn’t tell mom, because she is so happy and he doesn’t want to spoil the fun. He just wish he could take off his coat.

But Jakie is really, really good. He should have been a singer, not an actor, Michael thinks. A couple of children he knows sing really well, but Jakie is much better than them.

The four places which were empty some minutes ago are still there; he believes he can see a fifth one. Where are those people? They are missing all the best parts. They will be sad when they will realize it.

-What is atonement, mom? –what a strange word. It must be connected with the Jews.

-It’s a Jewish festivity. You know, like Christmas.

He can always tell when mom doesn’t want to talk. He will have to figure it out by himself. He can see no tree and no children, so it must be very different from Christmas. He tries to understand what’s going on, but then the old man with the long beard gets really angry with Jakie because he sang at the bar, and then Jakie runs away from home. That’s so stupid. Michael gets angry with mom and dad at times, but he really wouldn’t know where to go if he had to leave home. Maybe Jakie has some other house, or an old grandma who’s not as bad as Michael’s. You know, like Mrs Kirby on the second floor of Warren Street.

Michael wonders what Jimmy is doing at this moment. He bets he hasn’t seen the movie –he bets he hasn’t seen any movie. On Monday he will tell him, he likes to tell stories and talk about something the other children don’t know. He can never do that with mom and dad or Mrs Kirby, they always know everything and he looks like an idiot. A young idiot chap.

But now Jakie is grown up and is an adult and everybody calls him Jack. He can still sing very well, but his voice is a bit different from before. And then all the people in the room starts to cheer and applaud and laugh again when he says: “Wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothing yet!”. This time Michael laughs and claps his hands too, even if he got distracted and so he’s not sure what Jack is talking about. He talked this time, Jack actually talked, like his mom said. Michael sneers. Boy, will he have to tell Jimmy!

Everybody seems to like the movie. Dad, who is always so calm and likes to repeat that a boy who doesn’t know how to be quiet is a boy who won’t find a good school and a good job, smiles and whispers to mom and adjusts his tie.

-Do you want to become like your dad, Michael? –he often says, all dressed up and with his nice case in his hand.

-Yes dad, how?

-Be always tidy and accurate in everything you do, even in the small things. Small things are important.

-Yes dad, I know.

-And listen to what your mom says while I’m away. She is second in command –and then he always blinks to Michael, as if sharing a secret with his best buddy. But Michael is a bit worried about being accurate and precise and tidy. He is not, he doesn’t know how to do it, he always gets distracted. He knows he will have problems in the future.

Are the people who couldn’t find their seats still wandering around the place? Michael hopes they are at least inside the theatre. It’s cold outside.

But now Jack has reunited with his mother, who’s become old like a grandmother. Jack likes a young beautiful girl who is a dancer but is not as nice as Jack is. Michael has a nose for girls. He can immediately tell that this one is not good for Jack, she doesn’t smile enough and when she does she is lying. He tells his mom, but she doesn’t seem to be convinced. Michael is sure his dad would agree with him.

It’s so nice that the movie is set in New York, Michael thinks. He can recognize some places. Here’s Broadway. There are the lights on the streets. But why does Jack paint his face black? Why does he want to sing like a black man? He is already good enough, he doesn’t have to impress the audience. Yawn. Michael is a bit tired now.

The coat still bothers him. It’s too big for him, and the theatre is still hot. The collar hurts his neck. His mom is not looking now. Dad is too far away. Everybody laughs and watches the movie, and all the lights are out. While Jack stops singing and talks with his father, long beard and all, and the mom cries, Michael slowly raises his hand and touches his collar and his coat. He feels one button, then the other. Nobody looks at him. His collar itches against his neck. His fingers touch the coat’s border again. His mom is still not looking. He unbuttons it.

Davide

Meet Michael Floyd

Isaac is alone in his house, lying on the sofa with a tape recorder on the table and a microphone in his hand. “Why is life worth living”, he wonders; “it’s a really good question.” Thoughtful, motionless, staring at the ceiling, he lists some of the things that, for him, make everything worthwhile. Groucho Marx. Willie Mays. The Jupiter Symphony. Swedish movies, naturally. Frank Sinatra, Cezanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s. Tracy’s face.

He thinks for another second, calm and quiet, then he suddenly leaves the apartment and goes after Tracy. Perhaps it’s not too late.

Great scenes, and, what is more important, great stories. For more than a century cinema, like literature, has provided us with friends and enemies, heroes and villains, glimpses of lives that might never have been but which certainly influenced us and our vision of the world. With hundreds of questions, and, sometimes, with partial answers. And thus Isaac and Tracy, or Rick and Ilsa, are what we are, or what we were, or maybe what we would like to become. The cities in Taxi Driver and Bande à part are the metropolis in which we actually live, and which – we suddenly discover – we didn’t know so well. And the absurd scenery of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari represents better than anything else the horrific, fragmented, supremely subjective reality of a humanity which had lost its certainties and meanings.

Films tell history, everywhere and at every time. Great movies are precious documents of what happens and how it influences our lives and our thoughts.

In this blog I will not talk about this. Or better, I will do it indirectly.

This blog chronicles the life of Michael Floyd, American film critic born in Brooklyn in 1922. Each post will talk about an episode in Michael’s life, from his early childhood to his late years, and will be connected somehow to a particular movie. As a kid in the Depression era, Michael likes to go to the cinema. As a teen-ager, he realizes that he enjoys watching films more than anything else. Before turning twenty, he starts to work as a critic and film reviewer. He interviews directors and stars, he goes to important ceremonies and travels to Europe and Asia. Like everybody else, he is influenced, moved, and at time angered by the great movies he watches. And like with everybody else, he has different dreams and expectations in different stages of his life.

This is, perhaps, not a blog about cinema but a short-story blog. What interests me is the life of Michael Floyd, how he became who he is and what he believes in, what he feels and what he thinks. What I want to know is when he gave his first kiss, what was he doing during the Second World War, which friends did he make and when did he fall in love -and how many times. When was he sad and worried, and why. On the background, and sometimes so much bigger than him, the history of movies, one after the other the most important films that shaped our perception of the world. On the screen and in the real life of Michael Floyd, dozens – perhaps hundreds – of great stories. Which is, after all, what we are all interested about.

Davide