When I suggested to my ten-year-old son that we go to an art museum to see an old black-and-white movie, I suspected he’d be up for it. He’s an adventurer, and will usually say yes to anything that gets him out of the house. But I had no idea whether he’d be happy he went by the end of the night.The Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University has a film noir night every third Thursday of the month for the first four months of the year. We planned to go last month, but due to poor planning on my part we didn’t arrive in time. But this time I thought things through a little better and we made it in plenty of time.My friend Gregg Hertzlieb, who’s the director/curator at Brauer, greeted us as we walked into the gallery where he’d taken down a large piece of art so that the night’s selection—The Big Heat (1953)—could be projected onto the wall. After the film, Indiana University Northwest Performing Arts faculty member Peter Aglinskas led a scholarly discussion of the film.As soon as we walked into the gallery, the art on the walls caught my son’s attention. He approached one painting and reached out to touch it, but I caught him in time and told him he couldn’t touch anything there. It’s serious art, and he shouldn’t even pretend to mess with it. But I don’t think he believed me until he saw a painting done in the 1940s by an artist born in the 1800s. The age of the painting gave it, and I think the museum itself, legitimacy in his view.We spent a few more minutes looking around, and then sat down. I had a small bag of popcorn and he wandered off to look at more paintings and returned a couple of minutes later to summon me to see a painting of two people in a canoe. When he looked at the water and the lily pads he thought it was a photograph, but when he saw the two people’s faces he realized it was a painting.His enthusiasm for the art wasn’t the last time he impressed me.The film began and we were both engrossed. Glenn Ford plays a police sergeant, Dave Bannion, who’s investigating the death of a fellow officer, which appears to be a suicide. But when the cop’s mistress, Lucy Chapman (Dorothy Green) contacts him and claims that he was murdered, Bannion begins to have doubts.For the rest of the film Bannion investigates various members of the organized crime outfit that runs the city and has many of the politicians in its back pocket. One of the mobsters is Vince Stone, who’s played by a young, menacing Lee Marvin. I’m always surprised when I see the young version of an actor who I always associate with being old. I reacted the same way to young Lee Marvin as I did to young Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, and young Martin Landau in North by Northwest. As if these people were born old.I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and maybe I’ll write a full review of it in another blog post, but I enjoyed the experience of watching the film with my son even more.He’s the biggest movie fan among my kids, and he’ll watch just about anything. He watched Shane with me a few years ago, so I shouldn’t be surprised that he liked an old film. Although Shane is in color and this is black-and-white. But not only did he like the film, but he had a few interesting points that he mentioned as we talked about it afterward.No one cussed in the film. One character made reference to having heard four-letter words, but no one actually said any word that I wouldn’t let my six-year-old say. Yet a couple of the dudes in the film seemed every bit as tough as anyone in recent films.He also noticed that the death scenes were rather tame. Four or five people are killed, yet no a drop of blood is shed. He called them “clean kills”, which somewhat unnerved me, and is probably something he learned from a video game. And he didn’t mention the clean kills as a slight against the film, but rather just a difference from how deaths are filmed today.And he also mentioned that everyone in the film was white. He guessed that might be because it was made before segregation ended, and that seems right on track to me.So not only did he enjoy the film, but he thought about it as he was watching it, and he even followed a couple of points that I thought might be somewhat ambiguous to him. And since he wants to watch more film noir, then the evening was a success. Helping him enhance and develop his natural appreciation for movies is part of the reason that I wanted to bring him to the film.But even more than that, we got to enjoy another shared experience. And that’s the best part of all.Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
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