Subway sequence is a great romantic moment.

I have it on DVD and could watch it a whole day. :)

This film came on recently, and it's another one of many that I grew up watching. But this time I was assessing and analyzing it from a different angle, on a different plane, in a different dimension. Many people don't realize there was a science to these certain sorts of films back then. Everything blended together to make the scenes and the film the precise whole that it was.

As I watched that final scene, I said, "It's not that today's films can't pull off a scene like this today. It's just that, it would be highly unlikely, because the entire production (everyone from the head exec down to the director and even composer) does not put in the same level of thought and vision in developmental phase and pre-production anymore."

It's a bizarre scene in an odd and bizarre film in an era with lots of other perfectly made bizarre movies. Their quirks and off-the-wall deliveries made up the spirit of the artistic filmmaking culture at the time.

That final scene in this film, is indeed a romantic one of the ages, but it is rugged in how it explores crowded New York culture as the two protagonists have to communicate to eachother through strangers in a cramped subway. But the simple dialogue, the music in the background, the down-to-earth quality of the moment and how it is all delivered, is a science that I think largely came naturally to filmmakers back then. It's why you saw so many films executed in the same fashion up until a certain point. Today's films do not tackle scene after scene in this way. There's a layer missing from today's movies (two of the primary aspects are tone and pacing).

Today's movies are often even less simple than they should be. But films can be approached and executed today in a similar fashion if everyone in charge would get on board and on the same page.


It's not that a classic such as this is necessarily better than today's films. It's that, it's directed with a certain cinematic style, charm, and simplicity that is important to films and the majestic tones that can radiate from them when delivered a certain way.






I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way

Do Montreal and Toronto have garbage cans in their subway stations? Just curious. I think New York took theirs out because people could plant bombs in them. Washington took their garbage cans out of the stations after 9-11, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting bomb-proof garbage cans in there. Maybe NYC doesn't have the $$$ for that, but then they should forbid eating & drinking.

Hunting isn't a sport... In a sport, both sides know they're playing.