Movies that have inspired me immensely

I would like to express my views on two very inspirational travel movies both of which are redolent of feminism and self-discovery. 

Just finished watching Vicky Christina Barcelona for the third time. This movie is like visual marijuana! I get high on life when I watch witty travel movies. It is needless to say that Mr Allen's direction is a feather in the hat. 

There are other travel movies that have inspired me a lot, they include but are not limited to, Under The Tuscan Sun, Le Divorce, Letters to Juliet, Midnight in Paris, Top hat (my fave musical), Zorba the Greek, My Life in Ruins, Before Sunrise Trilogy, French Kiss, A Good Year, Holiday, Mamma Mia, Funny Face and many more. 

Here is something I've always wanted to do for society apart from eradicating poverty and bigotry, I want to change the world through movies, in fact I would love to act/ direct a few. I want the world to dance and sing with the actors, laugh with them, shed a few tears, learn from their mistakes, make more mistakes, make novel mistakes and most importantly travel through space and time with them. I have a great rationale behind it- Movies and Sports help you heal ephemerally although sports have a more permanent effect. 

Granting all this, one shouldn't get carried away with the ridiculously pontificating idea of a soul mate (something that is invariably glorified in most films), it is a toxic fallacy, beguiling young vulnerable minds. I try to remember five things that are closely related to one another- Finders, Keepers, Lovers, Weepers. 

Movies have taught me to fall in love with places and people, they have taught me to fall in love with love itself but not with the flawed concept of a "soul mate". I almost found mine and had my heart broken into a trillion pieces. 

Society needs to get rid of all equivocations including "True Love" and "Soul Mate". So to understand all this keep watching Woody Allen films. 
     
Check this out, "The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it." Now, I don't fully agree with Mr. Allen but I can see his point.

"I don't wanna achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it through not dying" This is my favorite Woody Allen quotation because it is unassuming and sincere. 

There is another movie, that I would like to mention, this one is a Hindi movie called Queen. I was born in India, lived here for 24 years, never set a foot outside the country but I haven't seen more than 3-4 Bollywood films in my entire life. I don't want to sound pretentious at all but I feel most Hindi films depict frivolous romances, big houses garishly festooned with meaningless showpieces, people waltzing all over the place, imbecilic action sequences and they all follow more or less the same story line. I grew up watching classics like Gone with the Wind, Sabrina, The Wizard of Oz, The Maltese Falcon, It Happened One Night, To Catch a Thief, Double Indemnity, Gilda, All about Eve, Jezebel, North by Northwest and so on (this list is interminable as there was a time when I watched four movies per day.)

Let's talk about movies in general. A movie is an escape to the love you don't (and will perhaps never) experience, something your heart craves. 

When it comes to Hollywood classics, I don't know what it is, is it their bib and tucker or their style and urbanity or their eloquence or the monochrome but they totally leave me wonderstruck. 

After a multitudinous relationship fiascoes I have turned against marriage. The quotation by Kay Francis, another gem from the pre-code era has reaffirmed my admiration for Classic Hollywood smartness. 

I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to open, and I am not afraid to look behind them." - Elizabeth Taylor

BUtterfield 8, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof have convinced me that Liz Taylor wasn't just a pretty face. While being a 'good girl' wasn't her expertise, she invariably ended up being wiser by the end of every movie.

The only good thing in my life at this point of time are the movies of the bygone era. I just feel I was born in the wrong century or maybe the wrong half of the century. Without David Selznick, Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Teresa Wright, Vivien Leigh, Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rodgers, Fred Astaire, Barbara Stanwyck, Shirley MacLaine, Montgomery Clift, Julie Andrews, Deborah Kerr, Joan Fontaine, Olivia de Havilland  (don't know if I should put their name together), Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart, Ava Gardner, Debbie Reynolds, Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Doris Day, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Lauren, Gene Kelly, Lauren Becall, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden (sometimes I wonder if he and Ton Hanks are twin brothers separated in time, although most people won't agree with me), Gregory Peck, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Shelly Winters, Joan Crawford, Priscilla Lane, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson,  Clark Gable, Eva Marie Saint, Rita Hayworth, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marlon Brando, Spenser Tracy, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Peter O' Toole, Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, James Dean, Donna Reed, Maureen O'Hara, Gary Cooper et al (I wonder if this list can ever come to an end). And I just realized that totally sounds like an academy award 'thank you all' speech. Howbeit without their legacies our generation would be completely deprived of the finest movies ever made. 

"Happiness is good health but bad memory" - Ingrid Bergman

It was Ingrid Bergman's birthday just a few days back. Oh how I love Miss Bergman. Wish I could bring her back to life, hold her hand, kiss her and ride off into the sunset. She must be the brightest star in the sky and sometimes I stare at the night sky and wave at her, I know she waves back at me and acknowledges that I'm her biggest fan. I thank her for all the laughter, tears and fun. A grand lady who has inspired me to be smart, beautiful, happy and fiercely independent. My favorite Ingrid Bergman movie is The Human Voice and as the name suggests the movie is based on vocalization of sentiments, passion and yearnings. I don't remember if Ingrid Bergman had a name in the movie but throughout the movie she was painfully insecure about the way her voice sounded to her former lover. It is unique because it is a monologic one-sided telephonic conversation between Bergman and the man she was in love with who was to marry another woman the next day.

"Mai India se hoon Rajouri. Rajouri suna hai? Apne honeymoon pe akele ayi hoon." - Rani (Queen)

Sorry for the detour before arriving at the main point. Queen is a breath of fresh air, quite antithetical to the patriarchal Hindi movies we get to see which is primarily the reason why I stopped watching them.  

After getting jilted on the day of her wedding this bashful girl from Delhi goes on her honeymoon all by herself. She travels through France and Amsterdam, makes friends, develops a worldview, makes decisions and starts having an opinion of her own for the first time in life. Unlike other movies they did not turn the simpleton into a diva, the transformation was delicate and slow paced which made the movie very sensible and close to reality.

Fiercely feminist with a quaint sense of humor, it is by far my favorite Hindi movie. Having said that I haven't seen many of them so I am not the right person to judge, but this movie has definitely restored my faith on Bollywood. Kangana deserves a Giga-Oscar for this. And I deserve one for making the meme.

Molto Mega Grazie :)

PS- Sorry if I offended some true romantics out there, this wasn't supposed to be a polemic rant.

PPS- I have made a mention of Bette Davis but I'd like to do a separate article on her. 

PPPS- I had made very beautiful memes but wasn't sure if I was allowed to put them. I was tempted to put them all and write a silly line that I get to see on almost all youtube videos "I don't own the pictures/ music. No copyright infringement intended." 

© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.