Growing up with film in Johannesburg , South Africa

 

 

Somewhere late seventies , early eighties :

 

The earliest memory was going to the drive-in central Johannesburg was to watch one of the Airport “ movies . I don’t remember which one it was but I know that it was most likely brilliant. At the tender age of somewhere between 4 and 8, all movies would get a four star rating. My parents were from Italy, so they didn’t have a great command of the English language. That meant that whenever Bud Spencer and Terence Hill were staring we would be at the drive in. I guess if you did not have a good command of the language , we would never be watching Kramer vs Kramer , instead simple klaps ( slaps in Afrikaans ) by Bud Spencer and quirky remarks by Terence Hill , while he gave out his movie star making klaps . I don’t know if this was a good introduction to the movies , but I guess if I really look at it I would feel rather sorry for the kids that had to watch Kramer vs Kramer .

 

The drive-in in Johannesburg is on top of a mine dump, right near the city center. These days I look out from my office window and I can still see it. I never realized why we were always confined to the drive ins for movies instead of the cinema like other respectable children. That I guess takes me back to the Italian thing . My dad has a good appreciation of vino, even more than films and I guess the drive him provided him with a situation to drink his vino with the added benefit of having the wife and kids be quiet for the first time in that week . It must’ve been paradise for him . Back to the movies , before anyone starts thinking about the drink and driving consequences .

 

It seem like the serial movies seemed to have sprout throughout my drive-in career. The next in line were the James Bond movies. I don’t think there isn’t one human being over the age of twenty-five on this planet that has at least not even seen one James Bond movie , even if that person lives admist the dark jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo . Actually, I don’t know anything about the Congo , but anyway …. Back to Bond. What simple brilliance for a young wannabe kid. Simple stories, strangely attractive woman and lots of peeks behind the terrible iron curtain. 

 

My favourite movies normally, which my dad still calls “ quelli su la luna “ ( those on the moon ) were science fiction and horror were never really an option as the storylines did not agree with my dads viewing habits . But I guess we should be grateful about the fact that we even had movies to watch . I must say my thanks to Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher for not imposing movie sanctions during the apartheid area or else I believe my movie interest would’ve stopped right there and then. The reason you may ask . My answer is South African TV. South African TV movies was the death for all little children . If it wasn’t black and white, it didn’t make it on TV . Forget about Star wars or anything thing like that . It was normally some obscure 50 ‘s movie that most countries national television stations have long lost there print as they have never used it . I guess , it wasn’t all dark , I do remember some Jack Lemmon movies and they did play the brilliant Hitchcock movies . Even though it was a curse at the time for a child not be watching Spy kids and Harry Potter, I guess its actually a blessing in disguise as it definitely sparked an interest in the older movies, which I think every serious movie lover would watch as every serious movie lover knows.

 

Unfortunately at this time we did not have a video machine, which was soon to be sorted out at about 9 years old when we got a Betamax. The Betamax would then present problems of its own but I will get to that a bit later. Looking back at home entertainment, I think we were lucky enough to have temporary viewings at home. On Louis Botha Johannesburg, we were fortunate enough to have projector hire .My parents did occasionally hire a projector, and being the event it was we would invite the aunts and uncles over, but not before we cleared the kitchen (yes, being Italian it was the kitchen and not the lounge) and hung up the big white sheet on the wall. I recall watching Zorro at this stage. I don’t think the movie left any impact on me other than fooling around AS Zorro on the primary school playground.

 

At this stage, luckily my cousin had gotten himself a video machine, a top loader VHS machine. It was a few years later that he would need to use a brick to keep that top loader closed. Luckily all machines know have a front loader. Yay, that’s one for technology. Anyway, back to my cousin. At this stage it seemed that all him and my uncle were interested in was karate movies. That goes for my dad also. Being from Italy and not having a good handle on the English language, the simple karate and westerns were on the dish usually, but anyway, I think I have already mentioned this. Those karate movies seemed to be in endless supply. At the time, they were great, but after watching hundreds of them I must admit that I cannot even remember the name of one of them.

At this point and before we had a video machine the only other option was the movie at the Patterson park hall and the kiddies movies in Norwood . The park hall was not the best of the experiences. I recall watching “ Alligator “ there and it scared the wits out of me. I would be looking down the toilet staring and feeling happy that I did not live in New York. The park hall was nice except for two irritating reasons. The one involved the fact that when the movie started the kids would start screaming and would keep quite for a while .I wonder if Kids movies are still like that today. The other was the irritating plastic spider that my brothers friends would throw around. I know it does sound a bit wussy, but I was young and in the dark I couldn’t stand those things. Norwood was a much more respectable cinema. After watching the like of Annie and Return of the Jedi , I had no problems , so I will move over to the next topic .

 

At this point somewhere we had acquired our Betamax video machine. It was a wonderful thing and the shop that sold it to us, even had seven movies, which we could loan for a few days with no charge. One of the movies was based on some German bank robbery, where they hire the house next door to the target, so that they can work out the plan. I am sure in our minds we have snippets of these movies that we watched when we were young, but have completely no idea what they are called and never will you find out, I know they had a column in the Empire magazine which you could send in your faded memories and they would try and identify the movie. I wonder what their success rate was.

 

Anyway, Beta movies were great. I remember going to the video shop as any other kid and not having a clue as to what to watch. It was normally the flashier boxes, or if it contained a Chuck Norris in a King Solomon / Indian Jones style , then that had some appeal also . I am sure there was a movie like that ,what was the name?..

 

Luckily at this point I did not have any critical thoughts about movies, so Greystroke and Raw Deal seemed to be pretty good movies. At this point all was rosy, enjoying movies when I started noticing that available Beta movies were getting fewer and fewer (die hard VHS fans have got the same old feeling also at the moment) . Somehow the great Beta had lost some corporate war, and I was to suffer for quite a while by not watching any new release anymore and having to finally stand in the deep corner of the video shop shifting through a few odd boxes .

 

Anyway, the next movie that I would watch would change the way I looked at movies for the rest of my life. It would be Witness.

 

End of part 1.

 

Part 2

 

Yes, what was it about Witness.  It was one of the first movies that we reviewed at Highland North Boys High School. It was the first time, like any other teenager that we actually sat down and started analyzing the movie ( because we were forced to . ) Anyway , wow , suddenly everything seemed to be different . One person would be standing in a specific spot for a reason occasionally and different colours had different meanings.  I guess it was from this point that ( like anyone else ) I have got to the

point where I give 50 % of the movies a miss , because there is just nothing there to hold the attention ( I believe this is why attendance is also quite low in South Africa ) .

 

We watched a few movies in the school period. The mostinteresting being “ Chariots of Fire “, not because of the movie itself, but due to the fact that on when day when one of theteachers left the media library, one of the pupils took Chariots of Fire out and placed a blue movie in. I wont go into the blue movie thing, but let it be said that it was quite a day. In South Africa until democracy, there was no pornography.

If there was it was normally a friend’s father that had gone to France or Germany (and others too) and had snuck in one of the movies.

 

The next evolution in movies was in college and around college. As my hours in college were generally short and it took a year off after school, I suddenly had lots of time during the week to watch movies. The thing about movies is that sometimes you will only start watching something interesting once you have reached saturation point of the usual movies.

 

And there was a lot of decent movies coming out in the 90’s. The really good special effects were still new and had only started creeping in from “ The Abyss “. However there was still a limited supply of good new movies. At this stage a true fan of the movies will start looking backwards and start looking for the gems .

I found that you can only really do this if you are start looking at the books . The first and still the best movie book was John Brosnon’s Science fiction book . The comments are honest and reading the book really opened my eyes to all the interesting movies that are hidden in time. I guess my point here is that if you really want to watch movies , you need to actually read .

 

After this I went traveling a little bit . I was happy to try watching movies in the different countries . I was surprised to find that in the one Vienna film house, the price of the movie ticket depended on where you sat and in the San Francisco I couldn’t believe it that on the opening weekend of Star Wars 1 they actually sold you movie seats without allocating a seat . It was mad house in there. In Rome, I was not happy to find that the the guy had converted some back room of his house into a movie house with tiles and conference room chairs .I know, you are asking who goes to Rome to watch movies , but after a few weeks , I normally can't stand to see another Renaissance Church. London theatres were ok , however you had to keep one eye on the  clock or else if that movie was a bit to long you would find yourself loosing the tube and freezing to death..

 

When I got home from traveling, I found myself at home with my parents and jobless. Affirmative action and my bad CV hit hard. I found myself watching movies, but I soon realized that watching movies could also loose enjoyment if you watch to many and you have not done anything constructive.

You need a reason sit back and relax before you can just sit back and relax. So strangely enjoyment from watching comes from not watching for the most part. These days I watch one movie a week only and enjoy it even if its bad . Well , except for “ Saw “ with the worst acting in decades….

 

Finally I found a job, and got free access to the Internet . My poor employees. If I was a company I would seriously ban the internet for employees.  There was nearly all that I wanted on it.  I think its great, as I don’t have to pay R20 anymore for the monthly movie magazine that never came out on and occasionally even came out a month later. However it’s a bit hard to lay back with your pc on your bed while you are relaxing and

reading something ..

 

However I don’t know if having more access or quantity is necessarily better as mentioned above. There is a lot to be said about limitations in the world and the enjoyment, but this is not a philosophical site...for now.