Read Online The Film Club by David Gilmour - Free Book Online Page A

down; you must have been in love or heartbroken, you must have been wound up about something when you saw them because now, viewed from a different trajectory, there’s no magic left. I showed him Around the World in 80 Days (1956) which, with its glorious shot of a balloon floating over Paris at sunset, had knocked me out when I was his age but now seemed appallingly dated and silly.
    But some films still do it, still give you a thrill years and years later. I showed Jesse Mean Streets (1973), a movie that Martin Scorsese made at the very beginning of his career. It’s about growing up in New York’s violent, macho Little Italy. There’s a sequence near the beginning I’ve never forgotten. With the dramatic chords of the Rolling Stones’ “Tell Me” in the background, the camera follows Harvey Keitel in his passage through a red-lit bar. Anyone who has gone into a favourite bar on a Friday night knows that moment. You know everyone, they wave, they call out your name, the whole night is before you. Keitel snakes his way through the crowd, shaking hands here, exchanging a joke there; he’s dancing slowly, just in the hip, to the music; it’s a portrait of a young man in love with life, in love with being alive on this Friday night with these people in this place. It also bears the signature of a young filmmaker’s joy, a moment of transport, when he’s doing it, he’s actually making a movie .
    There were other great moments, Gene Hackman rousting a bar in The French Connection (1971). “Popeye’s here!” he cries, rushing down the counter, pill bottles, switchblades, joints hitting the floor. There’s Charles Grodin’s double take in Ishtar (1987) when Dustin Hoffman asks him if Libya is “near here.” Or Marlon Brando’s monologue in Last Tango in Paris (1972) about a dog named Dutchie who used to “jump up and look around for rabbits” in a mustard field. We watched Last Tango late at night, a candle burning on the table, and at the end of the scene I could see Jesse’s dark eyes staring over at me.
    â€œYep,” I said.
    There’s Audrey Hepburn on the fire escape of a brownstone Manhattan apartment in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), her hair wrapped in an after-shower towel, her fingers gently strumming a guitar. The camera takes it all in, the stairwell, the bricks, the slim woman, then changes to a medium tight shot, just Audrey, then blam, a full close-up, her face fills the screen, those porcelain cheekbones, the sharp chin, the brown eyes. She stops strumming and looks up, surprised, at somebody off-camera. “Hi,” she says softly. That’s one of those moments people go to movies for; you see it once, no matter at what age, you never forget it. It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defences and really break your heart.
    I sat smitten as the credits rolled, the theme song fading, but I sensed a reserve on Jesse’s part, as if he was reluctant to walk across a carpet in muddy shoes, so to speak.
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œIt’s a peculiar movie,” he said, suppressing a yawn, something he sometimes did when he was uncomfortable.
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œIt’s about a pair of prostitutes. But the movie itself doesn’t seem to know that. It seems to think it’s about something sort of sweet and nutty.” Here he laughed. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful about something you really like—”
    â€œNo, no,” I said defensively. “I don’t really like it. I like her .” I went on to say that Truman Capote, who wrote the novella the movie was based on, never liked the casting of Audrey Hepburn. “He thought Holly Golightly was more of a tomboy, more of a Jodie Foster type.”
    â€œFor sure,” Jesse said. “You just can’t imagine Audrey Hepburn as a hooker. And the woman in that movie is a