At the Movies

(from 2010)

Home cinema is all very well, and it is wonderful to collect the films you really love to watch again and again. But nothing can replace the collective experience of being in a movie theater – particularly a large and full one – as emotions like laughter and fear are transmitted throughout the whole audience. As an ardent film buff I have one memorable moment from 1962.

There was a double bill in a local run-down movie house that we called the “flea pit”. The main attraction for the audience must have been some horror picture because that night the viewers at the front of the auditorium were virtually all male in their late teens and early twenties. Perhaps the girls were with their boyfriends further back – I don’t remember – but where I was sitting that night was male. It was likely a double X bill. In the UK, certificate X meant that you had to be sixteen to get into the cinema. The picture that caught us all out was “The Miracle Worker” – also certificate X. Why the authorities decided that those under sixteen should be protected from this movie I still cannot fathom.

It was always a very noisy experience at this cinema – what was sometimes wryly called “audience participation” – often an entertainment in itself. The film started with the usual shouted witticisms and occasional missiles of empty ice cream tubs thrown about. (I think the limited staff used to melt away unless something really serious happened).  But soon things quietened down dramatically as everyone found themselves unexpectedly engrossed in the story of Helen Keller, blind and deaf from nineteen months – and the efforts of partially sighted Annie Sullivan to reach her and help her. Anne Bankcroft played Annie and Patty Duke played Helen. They had already played the roles for a couple of years on Broadway I discovered much later. When the battle to get Helen to fold a napkin was played out – for slapstick laughs to begin with – there came a dawning realization that this movie was a bit out of the ordinary. A few nervous laughs, and then the audience were silent. You could say absorbed.

But the real killer was the last few minutes of the film. A house-trained Helen plays up when presented to her family who have always misguidedly spoiled her. An attempt by Annie to exercise control results in a major tantrum and Helen is dragged unceremoniously to the pump to wash. Suddenly, there at the pump as the water splashes over her hands, the penny drops. Helen remembers the word she knew before illness robbed her of sight and hearing – and repeats in baby talk the word “water”. The connection is made – the hand signs she has mimicked throughout are words and things – the bridge to true communication is made.

I can remember it vividly today – row upon row of macho young men sniffling away into their popcorn – then making sure the evidence was wiped away before they left the cinema.

The decades have gone by – I bought the film on VHS and then DVD – now sensibly reclassified as PG (parental guidance only). It still packs a punch. One can see the staginess in some scenes nowadays, but seeing that end I am transported back to the 60s and an emotional wallop I hadn’t been expecting and really wasn’t prepared to deal with the first time around.

There are other films that stay with one that also have that special effect – “Twelve Angry Men” “To Kill a Mockingbird” – every so often (perhaps when ill and in need of a comforter) one goes back to them. But for me – it has to be the Miracle Worker. It was the best film Anne Bancroft ever made – and she made several good ones.