Walter Matthau

Exhibit A In The Perils Of Mass Transit

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I’ve written before about the whole concept of certification, the idea (put forth by Walker Percy in The Moviegoer) that some places only become real to us once we’ve seen them onscreen.  And I’m hard pressed to think of a place for which that’s more true than New York.

Of course I’ve never actually been there.  But I can’t be the only one who feels like he has, because I’ve seen it in so many films and shows, heard it in so many songs, read it in so many stories.  In the best of those, the city becomes a living character in his own right.

Which brings me to a certain subway train… Continue reading →

The West’s Journey West: Thoughts On Lonely Are the Brave

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Even in my younger days, as I remember them, my favorite Westerns were always the films that dealt with the passing of the West.  I’ve always been drawn to stories of cowboys who struggle to come to terms with a time and place that no longer seem to have time or place for them or their values.  John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and – more subtly – The Searchers are classic examples of this kind of tale.

The one that has really stuck with me, though, is a film that distills that theme to its essence.  Its star still cites it as one of his favorite performances.  It helped launch the career of one of film’s greatest composers.  And it might just be my favorite Western. Continue reading →