It’s finally October; the drive-ins are closing; and until spring, teenagers will have to find somewhere else to eat their frozen pizzas and do their smooching. Neither teen-aged nor much of a movie-smoocher myself, I nonetheless attended the final night of the season at one of our local drive-ins recently, and on my way home stopped at my favorite pub, the Flying Fish, for a beer. There I had the poor taste to complain so loudly at the way I had just spent my evening that the bartender finally asked me why the hell I kept on going to movies, anyway.
I argued for an hour—being uninclined by temperament not to try justifying even my tritest velleities; but the upshot was that I had no answer. Years ago, I would have said I liked movie stars. Later on, I would have boasted an interest in film technique. More recently, I would simply have pleaded a frankly voyeur interest in watching human faces. But after the past summer, during which I have lapsed into a movie seat almost every night, and with the exception of God’s Little Acre, have seen, I believe, everything released for national distribution, including A Certain Smile, I found I could not defend myself.
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