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Finding
classics on Ottawa's big screens gets harder
Video has all but killed the market for old movies,
writes Maria Kubacki, but determined film buffs can find a few
screenings.
Maria
Kubacki
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday,
November 21, 2003
Elizabeth
Hay and I are in the little study off her kitchen, mesmerized
by the image of Ingrid Bergman recklessly tossing back liquor
and sizing up Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious.
"You know something, I like you," Bergman growls and pours herself
another drink.
He
likes her, too, in spite of himself. You can tell by the way he
looks at her, although he has a funny way of showing it -- later
he karate chops her on the wrist to get her to relinquish the
steering wheel after a crazy, drunken drive.
"It's
very sexy, you know," Hay murmurs as Grant stands behind Bergman
and slowly wraps a scarf around her waist to warm her up. Like
the heroine of Garbo Laughs, her novel about a movie-obsessed
family living in Old Ottawa South, Hay has watched Notorious over
and over.
Garbo Laughs was nominated for the Governor-General's Award in
literature.
In
the novel, character Harriet Browning, her children and their
neighbour, Dinah, watch videos of movies such as Notorious and
Ninotchka, the Ernst Lubitsch comedy about a stern Soviet special
envoy transformed by a trip to Paris, in which tragedy-queen Greta
Garbo famously and uncharacteristically laughs. Hay did the same
with her own son and daughter and a family friend, arguing about
the best movies, best lines and best endings.
Increasingly,
video is about the only way you'll see classics in Ottawa. Even
the Ottawa Film Society had to resort to projecting a VHS copy
for its recent Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin double bill. It was
able to get Chaplin's The Great Dictator on 35-mm, but the distributor
couldn't supply them with a print of Keaton's The General and
so gave them permission to show it in whatever format they could
find. In the end they had to make do with a VHS tape from the
Ottawa Public Library.
"Thirty-five-millimetre
is an endangered species for old movies," says long-time film
society board member Lyle Stern. Often when existing prints get
damaged they are not replaced.
It
all comes down to the bottom line. Audiences want what's new.
"We are very fixated on the present now," says retired Carleton
University film studies professor Peter Harcourt.
"There's
just no money in older movies," says David Holford, manager of
the Mayfair Theatre on Bank Street, which is mentioned in Hay's
novel, along with now demolished or empty theatres like the Capitol
and the Somerset.
Once
upon a time, the Mayfair had Woody Allen double bills, Humphrey
Bogart nights and screenings of perennial repertory cinema favourites
such as Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. That was before
video all but killed the big-screen old movie market. The grand
old theatre is now basically a second-run cinema, offering double
bills of newish mainstream movies, as well as recent independent
films.
The
Mayfair still occasionally offers up an old standard, such as
The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Halloween, and recently had a
French embassy-sponsored screening of a 1928 silent film, La chute
de la maison Usher, accompanied by electronic music by DJ Joakim.
But
Holford says Ottawa is not big enough for the old-movie market
to be worthwhile. It's more viable in a larger centre such as
Toronto, he says.
Bruce
White, owner of Ottawa's only art house cinema, the ByTowne on
Rideau Street, says experience has taught him the appeal of old
movies is limited. He recalls screening the 50th anniversary print
of Sunset Boulevard in his 670-seat theatre. "Fifty gay guys showed
up."
White
hasn't given up on repertory material entirely -- this summer
he showed Casablanca -- but generally old movies don't do well,
he says.
Like
Holford, White says people don't want to pay theatre prices to
see films available on video. At chains such as Blockbuster, classics
are one-week rentals, costing a pittance to watch over and over
again. Unfortunately, their selection is limited.
There
are a few excellent independent video rental stores in town, however,
including Glebe Video International on Bank Street, the Elgin
Street Video Station, Video Mondo on Beechwood and Invisible Cinema
on Lisgar.
Sit
down with Hay's novel and make a list of the movies discussed.
Chances are that knowledgeable staff can help you find many of
them at one of these outlets. At Glebe Video International, Carleton
University film studies graduate Peter Grey and former translator
Paul Green steered me towards Ninotchka and such obscure gems
as Max Ophuls' The Earrings of Madame de ...
Green
even looked something up for me in Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights
at the Movies, which happens to be Harriet Browning's bible in
Garbo Laughs.
Even
a professional cinephile like Harcourt says he's happy to watch
favourites on the small screen now. Aging 35-mm prints of older
titles may not get replaced, but studios are restoring and remastering
films for DVD and including bonus features such as previously
unseen footage, interviews with actors and crew, and storyboards.
Criterion, a company specializing in quality DVDs with lots of
extras, has an impressive list of older titles, including a digitally
remastered version of Notorious.
It's
up to non-commercial groups such as the Ottawa Film Society and
the Canadian Film Institute to keep cinema's past alive on the
big screen. The film society, which offers subscriptions only
(no single tickets), often features older films in its theme series.
This season the theme is Actors Become Directors and includes
last month's Keaton/Chaplin double bill as well as upcoming screenings
of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Charles Laughton's Night of
the Hunter and other classics.
The
Canadian Film Institute, whose mandate includes the preservation
of film history, had its first ever Silent Film Festival this
September, screening, among others, a brand-new print of F.W.
Murnau's 1922 vampire flick Nosferatu, and two Hitchcock films
few remember, The Lodger and Downhill. They did well enough that
director Tom McSorley says the silent festival will become an
annual feature. All films were accompanied by live piano music.
Coming
Dec. 11-13 at the National Arts Centre is another silent film
event, a screening of Chaplin's Gold Rush with live music by the
NAC Orchestra. The NAC's Jane Morris says it's part of the orchestra's
pops series, which in 1996 included sold-out screenings of Chaplin's
City Lights.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2003
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