Your Best Film Ever?

When someone asks ‘What is your favourite film?’, it is like a litmus test of your character. You are being judged. Are you sentimental, shallow, informed or deep? More accurately, what self-image are you trying to project with your answer? I invariably say the same film, not because it is the best film I have ever watched, but because no other film has had such an impact on me. That alone demands my honesty. There were many factors that maximised this lasting cinematical impression:

• My age – I was 8. It was the new year of 1978. Christmas had just been and I was ripe for adventure
• The Cinema Experience – In my childhood, going to the cinema was a BIG treat. It was a birthday event normally, happening only once or twice a year (I’m not royalty; the second time could have been an invite to a friend’s birthday treat). The cinema was as auspicious as a church. It had uniformed ‘guards’ on the doors, sweeping carpeted staircases to the ‘circle’ and balcony seats. Red velvet on everything, and even a small display of popcorn and a few boxes of overpriced Maltesers and Poppets to stare at as your mother dragged you past them.
• And at 8, it was all so HUGE.
• The massive screen, with the heavy velvet curtain and asbestos ‘Safety Curtain’ that had to be drawn slowly back like a massive present being opened. Stereo sound! Folding seats that sprung up and a shiny brass ashtray on the seat back in front of you. The whole thing was magnificent. If you were exceptionally lucky you may even get bought a plastic flavoured ‘orange’ drink in the interval. Woo Hoo!
• There were no video players. There was no such thing as DVD. TV had 3 channels, and only showed very old films and even then only at the weekend before the broadcasters shut down for the night. Seeing a film, a new one, was a onetime event! Going to see it a second time was unheard of. That would be like having two Christmases in a single year. You stared at the film goggle eyed, trying to absorb it completely, because this experience would have to last you at least 7 years until they may show it on the telly as a New Year special event...if you were lucky. I remember weeks after arguing in the playground about character names as details were already getting confused, and had no references to check them against.
• Before this film, there had been nothing like it..i mean NOTHING. Everything of its genre had visible strings and crude special effects, done as ‘impressions of events’ to assist the imagination, but not to fool it.

Yes, it was Star Wars. Not dated still, but a bit shallow in depth. It blew me away. My school books had little X-Wing fighters shooting at Tie Fighters all over them. I had some grubby trading cards (never enough to make the combined picture they made when reversed and put together as a set) that smelt of chewing gum, and I stared at them for hours. I had a copy of most of that film etched into my mind as a child, with some details missing, as were most of the names and actual dialogue, but it was there.

After that film I was taken back to the car like a balloon on a string. We drove down a duel carriage way road with street lamps on both sides. The glowing bulbs streaking past the car window was like the hyperspace stars as seen from the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit. I can still see those street lights today over 30 years later. Not the best film ever, but the BEST film for me.