From 30's to 40's

I've spent a considerable amount of time getting to know the scope of cinema that was the 1930s. It was a colorful decade, full of lots of great characters and the actors and actresses who portrayed them. Once again, I mounted my steed. I looked ahead to the untraveled road that I've yet to discover. I faced forward, ready to take on the films that lie before me, whether they be good or bad. I couldn't help but take one last look behind me, and wave a fond farewell to the characters and people that I met in the past decade. I turned around and saw a bevy of hands in the air, waving, wishing me well on my journey: Caesar Bandello, Count Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, The Little Tramp, Tom Powers, Tony "Scarface" Camonte, Shanghai Lily, Fred and Ginger, The Marx Brothers, Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, Peter Warne, Nick & Nora, Captain Blood, Robin Hood, Godfrey the Butler, Longfellow Deeds, Manuel the Fisherman, Snow White and her seven tiny pals, Rocky Sullivan, David Huxley, The Ringo Kid, Jefferson Smith, Dorothy Gale, The Tin Man, The Scarecrow, The Cowardly Lion, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. I'd spent the last four months getting to know those characters and some of them I'll remember more fondly than others.

I faced forward. I saw a road marked "The Forties" and I took it. I was immediately bombarded by the sight of the films that lie ahead of me. There were ninety-one of them, but some stuck out over others: Fantasia, The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York, How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, The Ox-Bow Incident, Laura, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, The Lost Weekend, Brief Encounter, It's A Wonderful Life, Red River, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Third Man. I look forward to the months that I'll spend getting to know these and all of the films from the new decade. The decade of the 1940s.

Your courageous journeyman,
Andrew

March 6, 2010 9:45pm