Movie Maven

Even those who aren't movie buffs know the wonderful experience of seeing a good movie in the dog-days of summer. One's life can be changed, sitting in the unnatural cool of a darkened theater, goose bumps raising the hairs on your bare arms. Afterward you burst out into the night, the hot air hitting your body like a wave, your mind spinning. It's the weekend, and you don't have work the next day- there's nothing to distract you. You aren't thinking of chores or your job or homework. You feel elemental, like something inside of you has been re-arranged. And you always, always remember the ending.

My favorite summer movie I saw not in the theater, but in a barn about an hour outside of Sacramento, California. I was 14 and I had gone to California for six weeks to spend time with my relatives who live throughout the state. It was a momentous trip for many reasons- my first plane ride, the longest stretch of time I'd ever spent without my parents, the first time I ever saw the ocean. I lived for most of the time in a cabin that stood outside a renovated barn owned by my Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Cameron. The barn sat on Carolyn's in-laws' farm, populated by cows, horses, an organic garden and a peach orchard. They didn't have cable- didn't even have a television inside the house- but out in the old stable that functioned as a garage they had an itchy old couch and a TV with a VCR.

It was there I watched "Casablanca" for the first time.

Carolyn and I put her kids to bed, and then sneaked out to the garage. We covered ourselves in a blanket, and scarfed popcorn as the emaciated barn cat curled up next to us. We were far from civilization on that unusually chilly night, and there was nothing to distract us from the Rick and Ilsa and their beautiful, sad, soft-focus love. I was 14 and completely entranced; it was a film of action, of suspense, of surprising humor and grim determination for justice. I trembled when Rick's customers drowned out the Nazis' vulgar singing with a rendition of "La Marseillaise." I almost cheered when Louis Renault threw the empty bottle of Vichy wine into the trash. And I was old enough to perceive the rumbling undercurrent of pure sex that flows through the film like a natural spring beneath the earth. No talks about it, but you know it's there, a hidden pool of energy waiting to burst through the surface.

It was the perfect time for me to discover "Casablanca" that gorgeous night, during the summer when I really first began to discover myself. There are so many movies that I don't remember with any clarity, so many I've forgotten I've even seen. But that experience of sitting with my wonderful aunt on a smelly couch in a dark barn, basking in the glow of the Cinemascope, is as sharp as if it happened yesterday. And that ending, that final shot, is etched into my brain: Rick and Louis, not walking off into the sunset, but simply being enveloped by the mist at the Casablanca airport. They're uncertain of their fate, but confident in their resolve. Not a bad ending for an uncertain 14-year-old girl to see.