"Daddy" movies

Every Monday this past summer (much to the initial consternation of my family) was “Monday Night at the Movies with Daddy” (movies of my choice), soon shortened to “Daddy” movies (to be said with a condescending tone and with a roll of the eyes!).

Initially the choices of movies were met with some apathy and a lot of questions. As the summer went by I think everyone began to anticipate and enjoy our time together. The great storytelling and the style of these movies began to win everyone over. Of course, just being together as a family was important too, and one of the main reasons for the whole idea in the first place.

“Daddy” movies are classics from the golden age of the movie studios. Ty Burr describes these types of movies in his great book, The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together.

“Today I look at the movie offering afforded my kids and am stunned into depression at the pandering narrowness…live-action kid films have prostrated themselves on the altar of cross-marketing. A child could go from January to December without having his or her brain interestingly taxed – without seeing a movie that wasn’t slavishly geared toward mini-me taste in stars, fashion, music, and flippant attitude…[Classic movies] were made during the golden age of the film studios, from the silent era through the early 1960’s…With any luck, my daughters will be able to go through life lacking that fear of old movies – and, much more to the point, old culture – that keeps so many children and their parents locked in an eternal, ahistorical Now. The only way to comprehend Now, of course, is to understand Then. More than almost any other art form, movies show the way back.”

Or as Nathaniel Bell describes classic movies,

“…movies in which the men wear suits and the women dress for dinner.”

These are movies that have style and morals, and thus, retain their power. Besides the fact that they are all generally appropriate for all ages, it is also a way back into an older and simpler America. As my oldest daughter said recently while watching one of these movies, “I would have liked to have lived back then. It was a whole lot simpler.” (The conversation about “the good ole days were not always good” will come eventually. Her comment is true, however, things were simpler.)

These are movies that aren’t stuck in the cult of “the Now”. C.S. Lewis said something similiar about old books. The thought can be applied to old movies too.

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books… The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.”

There is a lot to be said about looking back. Greg Koukl makes a great point.

“Everything we need to be fruitful and productive, to be trained in righteousness, to be adequately equipped for every good work, has already been revealed. For Paul, all the old stuff was all the right stuff.

New movement of the Spirit? Maybe. And maybe not. I don’t have to decide. Instead, I’m taking the safe route by heeding Paul’s advice and focusing on the old movement of the Spirit. And so should you.”

Of course, Greg is speaking to something completely different and in no way can old movies be compared to Holy Scripture. The idea, however, I think is important. Lets not throw out the old to worship at the altar of “the New”, or “the Now”.