“Where Do We Go from Here?”

I believe this was the first movie I ever saw as a human being; vaguely, as I recall it, for I saw it in the 40s, a series of episodes in time, from the American Revolution…to…I cannot remember. As we grow older, as we age, the past in a cliche sense becomes starkly clearer — think of Bernstein in “Citizen Kane” talking about the young girl with the white parasol that he saw decades ago and still thinks about her. It is an instinctual imprint, is it not? very primal, and I like primal.

I know that after 16 the magic of movies no longer condensed on my soul as it did as a child. Movies can be dreadful but scenes can remain lithographed on one’s memory. Why is not the question to ask? It just is. I will ransack my mind and see if I can share with you what will never leave me.

In “Song of the South” James Baskett plays the “negro” hand who skips and hops up a crest with animated characters, brer rabbit, brer fox, with bluebirds flitting by, as the great, oscar-winning song, “Zippity–Do–Dah” is played. I walked out of that theater, at 8 or 9, completly and sweetly corrupted by that cheery and uplifting event. I recall how I almost slipped off my theater seat when the creature in “The Thing” punches his vegetable arm through a door, scaring me to death. I remember a movie in which stolid Fred MacMurray is injured and his horse saves him, Fred tying his arm to the stirrup and Smoky pulling him along. If you ask why these stay, my rejoinder is why are you wearing those socks today. Michael Rennie’s alien-like face was just perfect for “The Day the Earth Stood Still”; he pours diamonds into a young boy’s hand and explains it is the currency of his world. Delicious. Sabu flying on a carpet over Bagdad telling Prince Ahmad that he has done his duties and now he will be free; the adolescent emotion devoured my heart. The Genie in that movie as well as the monstrous battle between Sabu and a temple spider terrified and thrilled me. Kane whispering “Rosebud”; the last shot that Spielberg paid homage to in one of the Indiana Jones flics, and the Bernard Hermann music played dolefully as the camera slowly browses through the storage house, Kane’s things, ending up with the furnace and the Rosebud sled tossed into it, all corrosively, and memorably affected me. I often ask myself — sometimes clients, when in practice — what is my Rosebud? What would you, dear reader, choose to say as you last word before you enter the endless fray of the subatomic world?