Nostalgic cinema

Recently two classic movies were seen.
Steven Spielberg’s 1982 “E.T.”

and last night, Tobe Hooper’s 1982 “Poltergeist”.



These movies have been seen before but at intervals of several years.
Therefore, each time when watched they are initiating different feelings and responses.
The own position in life has changed and more experience has been accumulated.
Plus that modern movies have become more sophisticated that puts the special effects of the older movies in a whole new perspective.
Used to the current digital trickery, films like “E.T.” and “Poltergeist” have become monuments of simplicity.
That has its own charm.
You can see that the aliens in “E.T.” and the death bodies in “Poltergeist” have been made in the prop department with paper mache.
They were real and moving because a guy behind a curtain was pulling some strings.
While today’s actors are in front of empty blue screens on which the computer later fills in monsters and fairy queens.

It is good therefore to enjoy primitivity once in a while and see how in another century people were entertained.
Realizing that at the time “E.T.” and “Poltergeist” were stunning and sophisticated movies.

Nowadays, they remain entertaining as they are also inspiring complete new ways of thinking about the film.
For example, it was never realized that this space ship with which E.T. came to Earth, landed right next to Los Angeles and Hollywood.
The same for “Poltergeist”: the story of a dishonest project developer who moved away only the tombs of a cemetery to build houses right on top of the corpses did not happen in Zürich, Switzerland or Timbuktu in Africa.
It happened in Californian suburbia.
Why are that kind of things actually happening precisely in one country only?

Another observation of E.T. is the music by John Williams.
The film starts and the first twenty minutes not one word is said.
The audience only hears the music of John Williams and it is the strongest part of the film.
Once the actors and actresses start talking, we get into another league.
Like the children asking mother something about their father.
This makes the mother turn away, overcome as she is by emotion.
Why?
Father is with another woman on an island in the Caribbean.

The mother of the children in “Poltergeist” has also a surprising side.
She is smoking pot.
And this on her bed in the bedroom in the presence of her half naked husband.
While she talks he reads a book.

No wonder these films remain fascinating.
Always something new is discovered.
And the old becomes more and more charming.



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