Having arrived home late last night, I was too tired to post yesterday’s Perfect Moment. That isn’t really a bad thing because it gave me a little time to reflect on it. As many bloggers will attest, reflection pre and post writing is not a bad thing at all.
Yesterday’s perfection comes in the form of a movie double bill I shared with my father. My father has many talents. These include incredible sudoku skills, a vast knowledge and love of movies, and the ability to laterally outthink trivia questions.
What does that mean? It means if you ask him who won the Academy Award for best actor in 1957, he will take you on a roundabout tutorial about the ins and outs of Hollywood, who married who, followed by some historical tidbits before finally arriving at the answer. By the time he is finished, you’ve probably lost the thread, and were amazed at how he arrived at the answer.
What does this have to do with a movie double bill? Well, several months back, I asked him what was his favourite movie after Casablanca. I know Casablanca is his favourite, so that is why I had to reconfigure the question.
His answer was the James Cagney feature “City for Conquest”, which I had never seen. After doing several lines in the movie and telling me his favourite parts, he went on to talk about James Cagney.
So, recently, I purchased a four pack of James Cagney movies for him. Yesterday we sat down to watch City for Conquest and White Heat.
Wow! I enjoyed both films and I could tell how much he liked them. James Cagney was certainly a good actor and he certainly was capable of making the viewer empathize with a criminal. The stories were good and if you have some free time, I definitely urge you to check them out.
As for my father and I, we shared a father-son bonding moment over the movies. I also realized that my love of classic films comes from these moments with him. Without his input, I wouldn’t have discovered The Great Escape, Stalag 17, The Sting, Casablanca. Sadly, I cannot convince him of the greatness in Japanese cinema–subtitles are just not his thing.
What is your favourite movie?
