Fun for the Whole Family, Really
Sick of trashy pop culture for kids? Try classic movies.
BY DANIEL AKST
Friday, April 14, 2006 12:01 a.m.
If exposing your kids to some worthwhile culture often seems a Sisyphean struggle--think of all the trashy and trivial fare that bombards them every day--maybe the best bet is to go ahead and enlist Sisyphus himself, in the form of Laurel and Hardy.
Just rent "The Music Box," a remarkable 1932 short in which Stan and Ollie must deliver a piano to a house accessible only by means of stairs so numerous and steep that the whole trip upward would give even Chuck Yeager a nosebleed. At once hilarious and visually sophisticated, "The Music Box" had my kids rolling on the floor when they were just 6 years old.
Until then their tastes in filmed entertainment ran to the usual cartoons and those hideous "Thomas the Tank Engine" videos featuring Sir Topham Hat, a boss so paternalistic that he might have made Ayn Rand into a kindergarten Marxist.
I rented Laurel and Hardy in a desperate attempt to find something that appealed to kids and adults, if in slightly different ways. Its success in our household led to "Duck Soup" (1933), in which the Marx Brothers combine my sons' two favorite elements--humor and gunfire. The boys even appreciated Margaret Dumont, the proper yet clueless matron whose appearances in another Marx Brothers picture led to good-night hugs accompanied by the following dialogue:
"Closer. Closer. Closer!"
"If I hold you any closer I'll be in back of you."
Such are the delights of a multigenerational classic movie habit. While the best family films nowadays are animated works such as "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles," in the old days, for better or worse, almost every film was a family film. Many were dreck of course, but thanks to DVDs we can ransack Hollywood's film libraries for the good stuff--and enjoy them together without worrying about nudity, foul language or excessive violence.
Watching some of these old pictures anew--and programming movie nights for 8-year-old twins and their 40-something parents--has been an eye-opening experience all around. Some old favorites inevitably disappoint. "The African Queen" (1951), for instance--despite Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn--is smothered by an oppressive score and schmalzy performances. Even though something finally does blow up, the movie left the kids and me cold.
But there are upside surprises as well. After a visit to the Intrepid Museum (a retired aircraft carrier in New York) we rented "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), which rocketed to the top of my sons' list of favorites. Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray and Bogart as the demented skipper deliver brilliant performances, but to my sons the ethical dilemma triggered by the captain's meltdown was only moderately interesting. On the other hand, the film's portrayal of life in the Pacific Navy (where their grandfather served) was fascinating. Also, there was hardly any smooching, always a plus with this audience.
As you might expect, extended romantic interludes aren't well tolerated by my guys. Neither are musicals, much to their mother's chagrin, although I managed to bunt my way on base in this department with "Damn Yankees" (1958), thanks to which my kids now know that the devil looks like Ray Walston and wears red socks.
Sports-related films, even Satan-free ones, are always a great way to get boys to watch something interesting, but I was surprised at what a touchdown we scored with "The Fortune Cookie" (1966), in which Jack Lemmon plays a cameraman bowled over by a Cleveland Browns running back. Walter Matthau, his shyster brother-in-law, cooks up a bogus lawsuit and seduces a lovelorn Lemmon into playing along. The boys understood clearly that some grownups here were trying to pull a fast one, and that the law can sometimes be an ass.
My sons are not yet clamoring for tort reform, but I do think they learn from these pictures. They are no strangers to existentialism, for example, thanks to Frank Capra, who showed us the emptiness and anomie of life in Bedford Falls had George Bailey never been born and taken the actions that he did. Someday my sons will read Sartre, and when they do I hope their slog is made easier by their memories of "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946).
They learn from the comedies as well. It is remarkable the extent to which such Marx Brothers films as "A Day at the Races" and "A Night at the Opera" are about beating down the doors of class and privilege (though one can only imagine the offended sensibilities Harpo's and Chico's screen personae might arouse if these films were made today). I can't wait till the boys are old enough to see more challenging classics like "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." Both deal with aspects of American history they should know about sooner or later.
Often my sons are inspired to see movies--such as the Harry Potter films--by the books they've read, but sometimes old movies happily reverse this process. Watching Clifton Webb in the original "Cheaper by the Dozen" (1950) inspired one boy to read the memoir on which it was based, while "The Caine Mutiny" led him to Alvin Kernan's "Crossing the Line," an underappreciated classic of shipboard life during World War II.
It's also fun inculcating a little classic cinematic literacy, which a film professor friend of mine complains is so often missing in his students. My sons may be third graders, but they know Alfred Hitchcock ("North by Northwest"), Ernst Lubitsch ("Trouble in Paradise") and William Wyler ("Memphis Belle" in addition to "Roman Holiday") and I hope soon will taste Preston Sturges ("Sullivan's Travels") and Stanley Kubrick ("Paths of Glory"). If we ever spring for a bigger screen, we'll break it in with Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
My sons have even learned something about business. From "The Man in the White Suit" (1951), in which Alec Guinness invents an indestructible garment, they got a jaundiced view of innovation, oligopoly and organized labor. And from "Champagne for Caesar" (1950), the funniest film you never heard of, they got a surprisingly contemporary look at the way business and culture feed off of each other.
"Champagne for Caesar" is the story of Beauregard Bottomley, an unemployed polymath who is rejected for a job at a soap company and decides to take revenge by bankrupting the outfit on its inane game show. Ronald Colman is great as Bottomley, but Vincent Price is transcendent as the company's chief executive and Art Linkletter shockingly good as the not-so-dumb game-show host. My sons thought this fast-paced sendup was great despite some romantic doldrums and a total absence of explosions.
Although we don't allow much TV, my guys do enjoy Jimmy Neutron and SpongeBob SquarePants. They go to museums too. But in these old movies they discover that art and commerce can coexist, and that there's an enormous cultural legacy awaiting them that we all can enjoy together, even on screen.
Mr. Akst is a writer living in Tivoli, N.Y.
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