“Did I pass my Dylan movie fave on you? – the line from Blood on the Tracks – “‘Love is so simple,’ to quote a phrase” – tagline from Children of Paradise… a GREAT thing.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx – Benj DeMott, in private correspondence to the author.
June 1964, Brandx graduate (just), Trafalger Square, before one soap box or another (Ban the Bomb? Save the Hedgehog?), sees Bob F. (Class of ‘63), sandals-guitar him, Converse low-cuts-flag football me, different corners of a 1500-pop. world then, fellow ex-pats now, he tips: “The greatest movie ever made.”
I had never contemplated such a thing. Theater, yes; symphony, sure. Russian novels and Renaissance oils warranted “great.” “Dr. No,” said my roommate, “the greatest movie since Giant” – mockery by its utterance. “The 400 Blows,” Jon B., putting-in-place all foreign, B&W, climactic-walks-on-empty-beaches, “didn’t even have one.”
I went where Bob F. said.
“Les Enfants du Paradis.”
And carried Baptiste’s longing for Garance, lost to him in the crowd of white-faced fools, on my 60-day Eurail pass, packed beside my pining for the girl I’d lost, an ocean and continent away. Sang “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “You Don’t Know Me” and “Since I Fell for You” in Paris and Rome and on the sands of Palaioikastritsa.
Saw Les Enfants in Philadelphia (at Penn’s Irvine Auditorium and, later, the Bandbox), in Chicago (the Clark), and Berkeley (Telegraph Rep) – this time – three years later – that girl beside me.
Beside each other still.