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