Primacy

A while ago I talked about lists, something to which film fans are particularly prone. The reasons for a film being included on anyone's list are obviously many and varied. My own list of 'greatest' would be different from 'favourite', for example.

The first criterion I plan to look at I call 'primacy'. In other words, the first film that made an impression on us. I do not mean the sort of film that I will consider later under the headings 'nostalgia' or 'Potemkin moment', but what are often childhood favourites.

My own introduction to the cinema was in the mid-fifties. These were the days of support features, Pathe News, Look at Life and Pearl and Dean advertisements. My mother would take me and my sister to the pictures, taking advantage of continuous performances. It was quite normal to take our seats halfway through the main feature, and then spend half an hour wondering what the hell was going on. And two three hours later she would announce, 'This is where we came in' and off we'd go, despite my protests. My mother didn't believe in watching films twice.

It's strange the things you remember from those early days. There was, for example the bust of Edgar Wallace at the beginning of Man of Mystery, which revolved through 360 degrees while The Shadows played the theme tune. The tune ended just as the bust finished turning and faced us again. Every time I watched it I would wonder if, this time, the process would not would not be synchronised properly.

Then there was the lugubrious Edgar Lustgarten recounting famous murders of the past. Pathe News was relentlessly cheerful, Look at Life relentlessly boring; there was a preponderance of monochrome, which I didn't appreciate in those days, and a growing realisation that British films were hopelessly cosy, while Hollywood knew how to deliver real excitement.

Hence my disappointment when, taken to see Reach for the Sky, I found myself viewing a black and white British war film, with a rather unattractive hero and lots of British domesticity, rather than the colourful American Western the title had led me to expect. I was only a child.

One such Western is a strong candidate for a place on my list, because it impressed me at the time and is even now regarded as an excellent film. I refer to The Man from Laramie.

It was the last James Stewart/Anthony Mann collaboration and I am little surprised that it's censorship category allowed me to see it because for the time it was startlingly violent. When I saw it again, many years later, I was surprised at details I remembered. Stewart's fight with Arthur Kennedy; Stewart being dragged through a camp fire and shot in the hand; Kennedy's sympathetic villain; the salt flats; and bullets ricocheting off rocks. While I was always a fan of Westerns, the only other one I remembered in such detail was Boetticher's Ride Lonesome. These films obviously had something more for a small boy who was only interested in gunfights and fistfights.

In this frame of mind others might choose a James Bond film. Or maybe The Magnificent Seven, The Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape. Alternatively, Brief Encounter or Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I remember going to see The Battle of the River Plate, another disappointment at the time. I told my primary school teacher about my planned trip, and she advised me that the supporting film was much better. When I saw it I couldn't have disagreed more. It was a short French film about a small boy. Now, the presence of children and women always detracted from a film for me in those days, and my prejudice kicked in within a minute of its opening.

I've changed my mind. This film is about loneliness and the cruel bullying of child on child. It is about hope and dreams, about escape from poverty, monotony and narrow-mindedness. It has much in common with Kes and is called The Red Balloon. An excellent little movie and is my choice in this category, if I allow myself hindsight.