When I travel, I like to go to the movies. I know some say, why go into a dark movie theater in another country – you may just as well be at home? But I think being at the movie theater in another country or state is a cultural experience. I remember being in Kingston, Jamaica and listening to the loud Jamaicans caterwauling throughout the film (of course, I can’t remember what movie it was). Or being in an outdoor theater in Germany with my sister in my Mom watching West Side Story dubbed in German – that was an unforgettable experience.
Lucky for me, I was just in Paris visiting my nephew who is studying there this year and of course I wanted to go to a movie. Nick, my nephew, has been enjoying some old classic American films this year which are surprisingly ubiquitous in Paris – the Parisians, I learned, love archetypal American movies, the more iconic the better: John Wayne, westerns etc. Nick and I found A High Wind in Jamaica at the La Filmoteque Quartier Latin. This film from 1965 (the year of my birth!) has Anthony Quinn as a pirate accidentally kidnapping a passel full of children – these children turn out to be bloodless heathens and the pirates end up being the dupes. It was entertaining but kinda hokey.
There were only a smattering of moviegoers at La Filmoteque Quartier Latin, a basement theater with the smell of thousands of movie goers, musty upholstered seats, and some other odor I couldn’t quite place. Nick said Parisians don’t eat and drink in the movies (How un-American!) – so we snuck in some French cookies, some petite buerres avec chocolate or some such thing – and sunk into the familiar yet different transporting world of being in a foreign movie theater – that’s my kind of travel!
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