NOVEMBER 6, 1935- Ernie Takes in a Movie and Gets to Thinking About Life
THE WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS — WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1935
Ernie Takes in a Movie and Gets to Thinking About Life
By ERNIE PYLE
Instead of the usual critics’ harp of “Why can’t they make movies more like real life?” the question that seems more pertinent to me is “Why can’t real life be more like the movies?”
A movie is a series of climaxes, just little glimpses here and there, of high spots and low spots, and in the end there is the great climax, and the darkness, and no concern for the years of dying embers and the utter monotony ahead.
Why can’t human beings live only in climaxes, in great ecstasy and great despair, with all the long dull stretches left out, and with darkness coming at the proper place, at the end of the big climax, instead of the middle of the scene, or long after the play is finished?
Who would mind being blinded in the war, if he could win the girl anyhow, and then have it understood that the rest of his life was to be an idyll and a blessing, with no dreary days of gradual, growing prongs of pity directed at him?
And who would mind being the other fellow and losing the girl if in real life he could actually come to the end of the reel right there, and never have to brood about it, or hunger?
Of course, characters on the screen are made to suffer in their tragedies, just as we humans do. But their suffering is so dramatic, and romantic, and ours here on the globe is the dull achy kind, that embitters and wastes, with so little drama to soften it.
We go to see a movie, maybe a sentimental one, and we weep and smile, and when we come out our throats hurt but our hearts are free. Yet in real life, when tragedy comes, we hurt all over, and there is no drama in it, and no sunlight and it all is desolate. Why was human life made like that?
I have been impressed by a poem I have just read, written on the battlefield by a man named Leslie Coulson. This is part of it:
“So be it, God, I take what Thou dost give,And gladly give what Thou dost take away...Then shall my soul soar up and summon TheeTo tell me why. And as Thou answerest,So shall I judge Thee, God, not Thou judge me.”
Coulson wrote that out of bitterness at seeing his fellow soldiers die around him in France. And not long after, Coulson himself made that trip from the battlefield up to see God. I wonder if he asked his question.
Movies like The Dark Angel are made for fools like me. The Dark Angel is the story of two Englishmen and an English girl, and the war, and it makes people sad and happy.
Like all movies, it is just a series of little flashes, little high spots in people’s lives, the little high spots that in real life make the memories we dwell on and the stories we tell in future years. Just little flashes that suggest something enduring.
It isn’t what the movies put in that makes them so wonderful, it’s what they leave out. Wouldn’t a movie be dull if it ran on for weeks and weeks, just showing a man at his work? Isn’t it much nicer for the movies just to show him working for 30 seconds? Wouldn’t it be much nicer in life just to work for 30 seconds, and then have it understood that although we should probably go on working a long time, we wouldn’t have to know it?
And our little tragedies and despairs, and our big ones too. Why couldn’t we, in real life, just go stare out a window and bow our heads and look grave and heartbroken for a few seconds, denoting a long period of grief and yearning, and not have to go thru the actual months and years of it?
And our happiness too. Maybe you’d like to go the movie one better, and have happiness strung out instead of just a flash and it suddenly dies forever. But I think not, for me. Just a flash of happiness is all right, for then it stays that way, and there is no dulling.
Yes, just give me joy for the peaks and the valleys, just enough gloom for the bottoms of them, and please have the anaesthetic ready when we come to the plains, and the long bright days when nothing happens.
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Great piece!
Transcript, second to last paragraph: "Maybe you’d like to go the movie one better, and have happiness strung out instead of just a flash and it suddenly dies forever."
Newsprint: "Maybe you’d like to go the movies one better, and have happiness strung out instead of just a flash and and a kiss denoting bliss forever."