Twitch-O-Meter: Losing My Virginity - Top 5 Experiences with New Cinema

Posted by Peter Martin at 1:17pm.

Posted in Twitch-O-Meter .

I have not always been the grizzled old man you see before you today. Once I was young and fresh and unspoiled, schooled only in the ways of innocent black and white television and Disney films, barely cognizant of the occasional PG-rated temptations to which I snuck away with my elders. Then I got my driver’s license, an old car, and a minimum wage clerk’s job that made possible a new world of cinematic sin.

But enough about sex on film. What really opened up my mind were the initial excursions into unexplored territory, the tentative expanding of boundaries and possibilities and new ways of looking at the world, all things that came about only when I broke down barriers I had set for myself and sampled various types of new cinema, whether they be from different genres or different countries.

After the jump: the Top Five that were most significant to me. In the comments section, please share: What were your groundbreaking first adventures?

5. Shiri

With a few more years of context now under my belt, I understand that Shiri was atypically Hollywood for a Korean film, and in retrospect it’s probably not as good as I thought it was, but at the time I thought: “Eureka! Another country producing movies I want to see!”

4. Hard Boiled

The level of violence shattered me when I saw it on premium cable (!) many years ago—just so so bloody; such personal carnage was both revolting and thrilling, an uncomfortable combination that I’ve never been able to properly shake. Once I got past that to a degree, the filmmaking was sufficiently supercharged to make me minimize my other concerns, a trend that continued as I explored more of Woo’s films. But what this really did was awaken in me a desire to see much more of this type of ballistic, high energy, take no prisoners action films, and the Hong Kong film industry of the late 80s and early 90s was fully capable of filling that desire. I have yet to recover.

3. Orphée

I can’t rightly recall the first non-English language film I saw, but Jean Cocteau’s 1950 classic Orphée was almost certainly my plunge into French cinema. I only gave it a try because it played at a repertory theater on a double bill with Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, and watching that film had left me open to almost anything. (To be precise, the exceptional, near-perfect first half of All That Jazz was breathtaking, but after the valiant yet downward spiral in quality and execution of the second half, I was left a bit wanting.)

I had no prior knowledge of French films, much less Cocteau’s work, other than their perceived “arty” qualities and the perennial promise of undraped actresses, but the black and white imagery informed me that Orphée was of an earlier time and place. My interest was waning as I read seemingly endless subtitles and listened to the characters talk talk talk—and then someone walks through a mirror into another world, and I was transfixed.

Plot summaries cannot communicate the palpable joy I felt. People who spoke other languages had fantasies too! And ones I could relate to—Orphée is dark, haunting, and mysterious, and I was hooked on the idea of discovering films beyond what even old Hollywood (see #1 below) could offer.

2. Apocalypse Now / Friday the 13th

Beyond the unlikeliness of this pairing as a second-run multiplex double bill (?!), I was shocked—shocked, I tell you!!—to hear Martin Sheen utter the “f-word.” And very disappointed that the strip Monopoly game in Friday the 13th was so lame and non-nude. While the increasingly bizarre kill scenes in Friday were less disturbing than simply off-putting, the increasingly bizarre war scenes that Sheen encountered on his journey into the heart of darkness transfixed me. I thought it was a work of poetry, writ large. It’s never left my mind entirely. This double bill sent me simultaneously onto parallel paths, searching for more mind-blowing imaginary cinema, as well as seeking the satisfyingly visceral thrills of the horror variety.

1. You Can’t Take It With You

Soon to graduate high school, I tagged along with a favorite English teacher’s class to a free afternoon screening of Frank Capra’s black and white comedy. (It was only when researching this article that I realized this was also my first experience at a film festival: the screening was at Filmex in Los Angeles.) I had no expectations; frankly, I couldn’t imagine that something from the 1930s could make anyone laugh. The auditorium was filled with high school kids bussed in for the occasion—a huge theater, maybe 2,000 capacity—and, shockingly, we all started laughing almost immediately, caught up in the good spirits and the contagious atmosphere of hundreds of people enjoying themselves. I realized that a film’s age or color (or lack thereof) had nothing to do with its quality or its ability to communicate with its audience.

As soon as I could, I started checking out other “old” movies playing in theatesr. I was lucky to live at that time: Los Angeles had a solid handful of repertory theaters, and soon I was inviting friends to join me in watching Laurel and Hardy, film noir (Double Indemnity was a particular favorite), and most anything else (oooh, the original 3:10 to Yuma in a gorgeous print on a big, big screen). DVDs make it possible to see an incredible variety of older movies, but there’s nothing like losing your virginity on a big screen in front of hundreds of people.

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Reader Comments

Ardvark 04/01/2008 @ 3:41pm

Cinema, up close and personal. A few firsts for me:

Saw “Conan: The Barbarian” in a cinema at age 12, and was exposed to decapitations and (woah!) people lying on top of each other…

Same cinema, and I think same year: my first R-rated movie with “The Road Warrior”. We didn’t have R in the Netherlands but there was the dreaded “16” tag. This cinema was the only one which showed this film with a “12” attached, so my father and I entered… and left afterwards ever so much more bonded.

Trying to remember what was the first time I cried in a cinema. Damn!
voxom 04/01/2008 @ 7:58pm

RE; Loosing my Virginity,

I guess the one film that changed my perspective on cinema: Bad Timing, with Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel. I was lucky enough to attend the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival years and years ago, with the two stars sitting just a few rows ahead of me, and I became mesmerized from the first few minutes, both by the editing (shifting time frames) and Russell’s incredible presence in the film. I never saw films the same way again. One day I hoped it would get the Criterion treatment - and it did! Biggest present I could have.

Re; the Russian film SSD and the title’s significance. It means youth camp, or stories that kids tell themselves by the campfire. In this case the camp is abandoned and the ‘kids’ are going through old stories that belonged in the camp. This is approximately what my Russian friend, Sergei, told me.
Collin Armstrong 04/02/2008 @ 6:02am

My dad took me to see TETSUO(!) at the only arthouse theater within 100 miles of our crappy little burg when I was all of 12 or 13. He ended up walking out (with me in tow). All I knew was Japanese robots + super 8mm; didn’t foresee the film commenting on the mechanization of sexuality, but what can you do?

We ended up going back for ONE FALSE MOVE and CRONOS (stayed for all of both!). Living where we did, it was hard to see anything other than current mainstream film in theaters - so these were all big moments for me.

First R-rated movie I saw in theaters… man. I don’t know. Has slipped my mind. I think 10 was the first film I saw with boobies. That or THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS
Simon Abrams 04/02/2008 @ 6:28am

First R-rated film: The Bodyguard

First R-rate film in a theater: Enemy at the Gates

First movie to blow my mind: Brazil

Other milestone films:
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams
Bananas
Network
Alphaville
Twilight Samurai
Talk to Her

and a bunch of other junk.
Frank Pembleton 04/02/2008 @ 8:46am

1981, Gaborone, Botswana - Year 7, so class was full of 12 yr olds, and the American kid in the class says he saw this great film when he was back in the US, so the English teachers rent the 16mm reels for us to watch IN CLASS, and it’s Escape From New York… my mind was officially blown. I went on to help run the Friday after-class film club, where I also saw Carquake, which was most intense for the time.

Later when I moved to Switzerland, I remember sneaking in to see Aliens, since it was (I think) a 15, and I was 14, or else it was a 16 and I was 15. Anyway, another mind-blowing experience, a real obsession for a while. For my 18th birthday I went and saw Robocop on opening night, but I had seen Flesh and Blood already, so it was more the Verhoeven does Hollywood effect that was to be marvelled at.

Sexy stuff is hazier, given French and Swiss Tv made it easy enough to see stuff…
bonnequin 04/02/2008 @ 9:09am

I’m not sure I could do a top five, but I definitely remember a few. The first was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I was 14 when it came out, and all I knew about it was that Daniel Day-Lewis was in it, so my mother agreed to take me. It was my first experience with European cinema, and it certainly was a cherry-popper, so to speak. The next was actually that same year, with The Last Temptation of Christ. My father took me to that one, and even as a devout Anglican, he loved the film, and so did I. Next was just a few years ago, with Good-bye Dragon Inn. Again, an introduction to a completely different kind of filmmaking.
Kurt Halfyard 04/04/2008 @ 10:06pm

First late-show: Star Trek II The Wrath of Kahn. Those ear slugs haunted my poor 7 year old sensibility…

One film that really seemed to say that I didn’t share cinematic tastes of many of my peers was loving Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead back when a bunch of us 16 year olds rented it. Everyone left the room to do other things, I remained watching it, loving every minute.

Another one was David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, shattering my 13 year old mind....And Videodrome followed shortly thereafter...it wasn’t until a few years later that I found out they were the same director....ah those innocent teenage years…

Perhaps the single most ‘young impressionable’ piece of cinema was David Lynch’s DUNE. That opening sequence with the Spacing Guild, The Emperor and the Bene Gesserate left some interesting conceptions of what sci-fi could be, in sharp, sharp contrast to Star Wars...It took me decades of starwars devotion to come to the conclusion that even the compromised cut of DUNE is a far more compelling piece of cinema…

Lastly, being able to sneak into ROBOCOP in the cinema and truly see explicit on-screen violence was a bit surreal to a young teen. (Yes, my parents were pretty lenient with our movie watching habits...Jaws when I was 6 or 7, The Good The Bad the Ugly at about the same age....)

p.s.
Good-bye Dragon Inn is a fine piece of cinema indeed. Glad to see some folks went out of their way to catch that relatively obscure Tsai Ming Liang film…

Nice.