Introduction

My name is Phil Beck, and this is my first entry. I created this blog to feature some of the writing I am currently doing about films. I am a lifelong film buff, having been introduced to classic Hollywood films at a young age by my parents, Pat and Jack Beck. They encouraged me to watch them when they showed up on TV, and we often watched them together. I remember sitting in front of our old black-and-white set in the 1960s, watching It Happened One Night, Little Caesar, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and many more of my early favorites. I loved going to the movies when I was a kid, and we went often as a family (which includes my younger brother, Roger, also a film buff). But at a young age, I especially liked going by myself, or with friends, to the Saturday matinees at the Skokie Theater (in, of course, Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up). The theater would be filled with screaming kids, mostly boys, yelling at the screen, throwing candy at each other, running up and down the aisles. While I did my share of those things, I was more often watching the movies because I was fascinated by everything up on the screen. I saw lots of Japanese monster films, Jerry Lewis comedies, and other typical kid fare, but I also remember one afternoon watching The Bridge on the River Kwai, and practically not blinking the entire time. I discovered foreign films in high school through a Public Television series called Film Odyssey, hosted by Charles Champlin. On that program, I saw films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Seven Samurai, The 39 Steps, The Blue Angel, and many others, all so different from the films I was used to watching. This opened a whole new world for me. When I first went away to college, at the University of Missouri, I would go to see movies shown on campus 3 or 4 nights a week. I wanted to see everything, and I tried to. It was there I discovered, among others, two fascinating filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard and Yasujiro Ozu, director of two of my favorite films, Tokyo Story and Late Spring.

Later, in graduate school at the University of Iowa (in Iowa City, where I still live), I first majored in English and got an M.A., then switched over to Film and Broadcasting, where I studied film theory, criticism, and history, and got a second M.A. While I was never the most distinguished writer or scholar in the film program, I wrote a few papers I'm still quite proud of, even got one or two of them published in film journals of the time. That was long ago, however, and I did not pursue a career in academia, but took a job in the library at the university's School of Law, where I have been for the past 21 years. I have therefore been through several phases of involvement with films in my life, but the one thing that has remained constant is my interest in watching and thinking about films. This past summer, I began to write reviews of some of the more interesting movies I was seeing, because I missed writing about film and I felt I had something to say that others might find of interest. I have had a couple of reviews posted at the website of a local arts and culture publication, The Little Village, which you can find online at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/. In addition to my reviews, many good articles on films by the paper's staff writers are posted there, and I recommend them all. The other reviews I have written, and will continue to write in the future, I am going to post here. I am inviting comments and criticism, because I would welcome a dialogue with as many people as possible about the films I have chosen to write about. You can add your comments after each entry, or you can email me at goodphilla@aol.com. I hope you find what you are about to read interesting in some way. Thanks for checking out this blogspot.

Phil Beck