Do Movies Design The Lives We Live?

 I have loved movies since I was a child. My parents apparently did as well because I can't think of a weekend  before my sister was born that we didn't go to the theatre. And, back then, most movies theaters had a double feature. Can you imagine that today? Anyway, we saw them all. A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, Ester Williams, Ma & Pa Kettle, Gene Kelley movies along with some black and whites. We saw Doris Day, Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, James Dean, Elizabeth Tayler, Charleston Heston, Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum. However, I sincerely believe they have the power to change us and have.

I remember going  to see a movie and was surprised to find there was a double feature. I don't remember the movie we went to see but the "B" movie was MONEY BALL and I remember it still. It shows, you just never know. Brad Pitt and baseball from a story by Michael Lewis whose financial books I admire. What a combination! ALL movies used to be double features. There was a cartoon and news of the world too.

As I enter my 78th year soon, I have become infatuated with movies I saw in my youth. In fact I have purchased their DVD's for the reason much of what is offered on Netflix or Prime I would never watch and oddly Prime charges for movies that are, as we say, long past their prime. 

A case in point. I got a hankering to see CHARADE with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. I remembered the scene in the church where one of the dead man's "friends" stuck a huge pin in his hand to make sure he was dead. Everyone in the theatre jumped! To "rent it on Prime was going to cost me $4.99. Really? A movie made back in 1963? As luck would have it I stopped at Big Lots to get something and stopped at their DVD shelf and found CHARADE for $3.00. Not only did I get a movie I wanted to see but I got it cheaper and it was now mine!

That started a search for other movies I had seen in my teens, 20's and 30's. There was DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, BLOW-UP, James Bond movies and so much more! 

I have also become more and more interested in classical music and
recently wrote about it. Where did classical music go? I surmised it went to the soundtracks of movies. Watching AMADEUS I was struck by a Mozart piece that has become synonymous with the movie ELVIRA MADIGAN a tale of star crossed lovers that took Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 in C Major and made the second movement, the andante, the pivotal sound of the movie. Considered on of the most difficult pieces to play it has forever become enshrined as Elvira's music. 

The 60's and 70's were a prodigious time for movies, especially foreign movies. Fellini, Bergman, the British New Wave which produced TOM JONES with memorable eating scenes, BLOW-UP with an enigmatic murder and of course James Bond. Fellini's movies introduced America to a Italy few knew about and was so different from home. I can remember Bergman's SEVENTH SEAL being so glum that after watching it I just wanted a gun to end it all.

Stanley Kubrick took movie's to a whole new realm. PATHS OF GLORY  and DR. STRANGLOVE made war anything but honorable, sex scandalous as shown in LOLITA, freedom's call honorable in SPARTACUS and forever changing science-fiction with 2001: A Space Odyssey where cheesy Buck Roger's special effects were dismissed forever.

Bringing Up Baby

On closer examination, movies have influenced our lives in ways we rarely notice. BRINGING UP BABY is a classic Grant-Hepburn movie from the 30's, a laugh out loud comedy farce. A close look at the set used here and in many other movies during the 30's and 40's showed homes few Americans had or would ever have, possibly. Look carefully at 50's
movies and advertisements. Recognize anything? The homes they portray, as the ideal, in the those 30's movies were just about what all our friends had when I grew up in the 50's. The differences were very apparent when I visited or stayed with college friends in the 60's whose families lived on farms in Oklahoma.

Contests were held nationwide for the 
perfect "Blanding" house

MR.BLANDING BUILDS A CREAM HOUSE with Cary Grant paved the way for the Draper house in 1950's MAD MEN. As MAD MEN so clearly showed those returning from the war wanted more. They didn't want a farm like MA AND PA KETTLE, they wanted modern furniture and electric appliances! Living in Palm Springs, surely one of the cities most devoted to "Mid-Century" living, you see in real time how everything from the past was rejected. Trim, sofas and chairs had clean, no frill lines, roofs became V's rejecting centuries of A designs. Things had to be modern, clean, NEW!

Who can forget avocado green, or harvest gold stoves and refrigerators, or pink toilets and bathtubs in bathroom with square tiles? We had a friend once whose had pink fixtures and tiles in a bath. She painted the walls pink and added pink curtains. It was horrible! It was like being inside a Pepto Bismo bottle. However, how many soldiers and war brides had ever had such luxury before when an outhouse with a Sears catalog for paper and a hand pump dominated a kitchen?  The series MAD MEN was entertaining and showed post war living again so different than many of those people grew up with in the 20's, 30's and 40's. Hollywood binge watching during those era's created a demand of what they were seeing on the screen.

2001 changed everything from
sci-fi to useful gadgets we
are using today! It predicted 
cell phones and wi-fi

No one wanted the Kettle house anymore

Movies, for ill or good, do influence us in ways that we may not completely understand. It has made us aware though of luxuries we may never have heard about and shown us ways of living we may never achieve. I can remember showing my Peace Corps kids images of America. One scene caught the entire villages attention ... clothes lines strung across the tenements in Brooklyn. Where I saw poverty they were stunned at ALL the clothes the people had.

As movies have shown, maybe trained us, to want to live, movies also have the power to show us how to think. After watching Ryan Reynolds HOLLYWOOD on Netflix a few years ago and still available, it gave us the idea that if only Hollywood had been more progressive, would the Gay issue be such a topic today? Especially when we realized how many actors
were in the LFBTQ+ spectrum? Race relations, the impact, importance and reach of religion? Visual images and actions take on a whole different meaning when transferred from print to motion. Movies have POWER. As we seeing, almost daily now, it be used for good as well as for bad!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed!

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed!