I have a niche genre of movies that make me happy. The basic plot is the main character sees others around him or her living in the shadowlands, takes action, faces challenges and drama, then the magic happens.
One of the first ones I watched was 1951’s “Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell.” Clifton Webb plays the hero, had been giving lectures on how to live well even if someone was in their 80s.
One night he overhears residents at an impoverished retirement home talk about their ailments and boredom. In no time he becomes their resident anarchist, starting when he has the local pharmacist make placebo pills out of sugar.
Belvedere tells the residents it is a rare medicine from Tibet that reverses aging, and they believe him. Then comes the challenge and drama part, then the magic happens.
A second movie is 1995’s “Cold Comfort Farm.” Flora Poste’s parents die, she has little money and realizes she needs to make her own way in life.
Other relatives are not interested in her, so she goes to live with distant cousins at Cold Comfort Farm in the village of Howling, Sussex, England. It does not take her long to realize that all of them have emotional problems because of their repressed lives.
One cousin is the lay preacher at a local church, but always wanted to be a traveling evangelist. Another one wanted to be an actor.
Another woman is the embodiment of self-martyrdom and gloom. Another wanted to marry her childhood crush, and the toughest nut-case of all, Aunt Ada Doom, keeps repeating, “I saw something nasty in the woodshed.”
So Flora goes to work. Cue the challenges, drama then magic happening. The preacher is invited to lead an evangelistic tour in America, a Hollywood director discovers the next box office sensation, the cousin is hooked up with a psychologist and she finally has some morbid fun.
There is a wedding and Aunt Ada puts on a frock and announces she is going to Paris. In the final scene, Flora runs across a farm field into the arms of a dashing newly-minted Anglican priest, who just happens to own his own biplane.
The third, 2019’s “Poms,” stars the late Diane Keaton as a New Yorker with terminal cancer who moves to a retirement community in Florida. She is lonely, bored and dying.
It’s a nice enough community, but repressive with its endless rules and persistent snooper-vision from the administrators.
One of the heroine’s new friends discovers she was once a cheerleader who can still fit into her uniform. They ask her to organize a cheerleading squad to qualify for a national competition.
Time for the challenge and drama in the form of administrators who forbid it. The pom-pom girls outmaneuver them, escape the repressive compound and compete. Even though their leader dies, she has given them a new lease on life.
I appreciate the theme of these films because all of us have that little spark flickering in our hearts and souls that want to burst into a full flame of fun. Sometimes money, other responsibilities or health get in the way, but the hopes for fun and escape remain.
Some people in our lives who listen to our dreams and fantasies, then deflate us saying, “I don’t think you want to do that.” What they really mean is, “I don’t want to do something like that, therefore I don’t think you should.” Sometimes they are right, of course.
As a youngster I always wanted to make fireworks. My best friend and I spent long afternoons at the library, reading and studying chemical formulary to learn how to make the colors, gunpowder, design mortars and rockets.
From there, we went straight to Woolworths to buy supplies, but her mother and my parents put a stop to that, and we were banned from the reference room of the library.
(Now I can find all that out online, although I probably don’t want to do it because the ATF, NSA, Homeland Security, FBI and a few other federal groups wouldn’t share my enthusiasm.)
The Olds won that one, but I didn’t let them in on the secret that I had bought a set of bagpipes and was secretly practicing in the basement of the museum.
I slipped up when Father saw a letter addressed to Roy Acuff, care of the Grand Old Opry, and wanted me to explain what I was doing. I told him I could play his theme song “The Wabash Cannon Ball” on the bagpipes.
Sure enough, the first words out of the Old Boy’s mouth were, “You don’t want to do that.”
My sister was worse. She stuttered and stammered and finally wailed, “Roy Acuff? No! That’s hillbilly music! Don’t you care what my friend will say if they find out? My social life will be ruined!”
They didn’t need to worry. My letter must have got lost in the mail because I never heard from Acuff. I quit waiting after learning he died in1992.
Still, we have to deal with people who want to spoil our fun with their cautious, “I don’t think you want to do that,” cold water thrown on us.
The other thing that stops us from cutting loose and having fun is the question, “What would people say?” or the dire warning, “People will talk.”
That is what Michael Caine, in the role of Bernard Jordan, ran into in his final film during his final film, 2023’s “The Great Escaper.”
He and his wife, played by Glenda Jackson, are in their 90s and living in a retirement home when he wants to join long-ago army mates in France on the 70th anniversary of D-Day.
The challenge and drama come from the commandant of the nursing home, who puts his foot down despite the support of his wife. The magic happens when he kisses her goodbye and goes over the wall in the middle of the night. The alarm is sounded when they discover his escape, but they are too late. He’s already on a boat going to Normandy.
The administrators worry about what people will say when they learn the news, also too late. People talk, the media finds out and the couple takes home a nice paycheck because of it.
Worried that someone might talk or disapprove of you finally settling down to write poems or paint pictures? Concerned what others might say if you start learning how to play the flugelhorn or double-belled euphonium? Or, like President George H.W. Bush, go skydiving on your 90th birthday?
Well, let people talk. If you like vintage clothing and want to dress like the Boardwalk gangsters in the 1930s, or put on your shiniest flapper dress and learn the Charleston, then go for it. And while the Olds tut-tut away, you get to have the time of your life singing, “Old King Tut, Tut, Tut” along with Eddie Cantor as you do the shimmy-shake.
If you have the money, go on the safari that you read about as a child. Take up a new hobby. Build your own telescope. Get a shortwave radio license and talk to people around the world.
Now we are the latest Olds, it’s our turn to shake things up. My Aunt Toxic amused us demonstrating the Charleston from when she was a young woman; we can show the kids how the twist is really done, and send them running for the hills with a ukulele as we sing in a falsetto “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”
Just go have fun. Stir things up, be eccentric, scandalize the Olds, your children and grands, fellow church members and anyone else who looks like they were weaned on a pickle.
