Movie Madness!

As a movie buff, I've been spending some time in Toronto staking out the film scene. My first target was the Mt. Pleasant theatre, a quaint old-fashioned movie house complete with a marquee and box office (but not its own website, it seems). I was lucky to catch Toronto’s last screening of Sunset Song, a truly affecting picture whose photography of the Scottish highlands was fully embraced by the colossal size Mt. Pleasant’s single screen. In addition to Sunset Song, the Mt. Pleasant regularly selects acclaimed films independent and international directors not found in today’s multiplexes. If you’re adventurous and don’t mind a Hungarian rom-com in between Marvel sequels, I highly recommend it. As for me, I’ll be back!

The Mt. Pleasant has a very cozy, old fashioned atmosphere. The Germans call it 'Gemütlichkeit.'

Later in the week I visited the Mecca of Toronto’s film community, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, home of the Toronto International Film Festival. While the festival takes place in September, the Lightbox is open all year round, and a single visit reveals how much the city loves movies. As I walked into the showing for Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s 1954 musical adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, I was handed a pair of 3D glasses. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but since the film was made whilst 3D was in its infancy, it’s pretty risky to show it in that format. Nonetheless, the effect was very sharp, suggesting the Lightbox paid a lot to get such a good restoration. Now, I’m usually not a 3D kinda guy, but it really did give the movie a certain zing which it doesn’t have in two dimensions, leaving me even more dazzled at Ann Miller’s rendition of “Too Darn Hot.” 

The best part, though, was actually seeing the movie with other people. The stereotype that old movies are for old people was proven false at this showing. I’d bet money that twenty-somethings were half the audience—and it was a big audience. Moreover, watching “the classics” in public really is sort of a bonding experience. When lots of people are familiar with a movie, every emotion is heightened. A good example is how often and intensely the audience laughed at the jokes in the film, many of which flew over the top of my head when I’d seen it before.

Finally, you can’t not scope out Toronto’s movie scene without visiting Reg Hartt’s Cineforum. According to legend, Reg has been showing his collection of 16mm film prints to Toronto since 1968 from the comfort of his own home. I first heard about Reg Hartt the way many people do, by catching sight of his notorious flyers stapled on street poles around the city.

While I’d usually be cautious to enter a stranger’s home, on his blog Reg has posted about the Cineforum’s financial troubles, so I knew this was my only opportunity to engage with a Toronto living legend. I was quite nervous approaching his Bathurst street home, but after some small talk I realized he was as amicable as any other wonderful Canadian. The Cinefourm is quite a sight: immediately entering the front door of Reg’s house lies a small projector room covered wall to wall with posters, monster masks, and other cine-kitsch. Now, it’s quite fashionable these days to have a “home theater,” which usually means a couch and some chairs pointed at a flat-screen TV, yet the Cinefourm is a home theater in the most literal sense of the word. Instead of a big screen TV, Reg really does have a screen comparable to any small movie house, with an entire room devoted to office chairs for the audience (not that that’s hard to believe). 

The movie scheduled that afternoon was Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives, a film from 1925 about a retired European lieutenant who seduces wealthy American women for their money. While I quite enjoyed the film, I was even more interested in Reg’s vast knowledge of movie history, which he was keen to share at key scenes of the film. In all, I walked out with an ultimately richer appreciation for film heritage and the creative process behind moviemaking, including the lengths directors go to get certain shots and reactions from their actors.  

Two gentlemen of Toronto