THOSE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE BLACK AND WHITE FILMS
The weather has finally warmed up these last few of days, hot sunny
and windy with the whole countryside in imminent threat of going up
in smoke, just like summer is supposed to be here, ready for an air
conditioned Christmas. I never used to like the heat, and I still
don't in many cases, but living alone I can go about naked and it's
much nicer that way, I even look forward to it.
I just finished writing about art as a consumable in the other
post, and in fact with my supply of old movies on VHS cut off, and
not much worth watching on the TV channels without excessive
advertising, I'm pretty short of sources to consume that particular
art. I got through that expensive box set of "The Last Detective",
which was in fact even better than I remembered, no doubt because
all the ads pissed me off so much when I was watching it on TV
about ten years ago. My memory had dutifully forgotten all the
plot-lines as well, so it was all pretty much new to me - my poor
memory helps a lot to combat the consumability of art!
But now I've moved on to the Internet Archive, supplementing all
the obscure documentary films that I've been pulling off there for
years with some old B/W movies that are out of copyright in
Australia (over 70 years old, assuming they're not restored
versions in which case a shorter duration of copyright applies
after the publication of that edition, but I can't actually be
bothered working _that_ hard at being legal). Unfortunately they
can be pretty ticky to find after exhausting the limited entries in
the "film noir" category, but I'm starting to get the hang of
searching for them by director, actor, etc.
So, whenever I have access to a decent internet connection I'm now
pulling down all the scraps of Hollywood's golden age that I can
lay my hands on (it seems to be pretty American-biased, though I
hope to find more British films as they made great stuff back then
too). They're clearly having quite an effect on me because the
other night I lay in bed singing this short little thing to myself:
See them and hear them,
nearer to near them,
those beautiful women,
of the black and white films.
Dreams made of grey,
lit by a golden ray,
those beautiful women,
of the black and white films.
Bursting from the screen,
from an age now just a dream,
that distant time you've seen,
with those beautiful women,
of the black and white films.
I'll admit it's a pretty tragic state of affairs for a bloke to be
singing that to himself alone in bed, but well, I guess that's how
it is.
