The Moviegoer: Film Love - Chicago Reader

The Moviegoer is a local film buff’s diary collecting the best that Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to offer.

The most interesting fact about me that I save for those occasions when people want to hear is that my husband and I got engaged after a week. That’s not to say that the most interesting thing about a woman is her marital status, of course, but it’s quite a story, an aberration in what has hitherto been a fairly ordinary life. (Any abnormality seems to be confined to my head.) It’s all the more relevant to this column because my husband is Ben Sachs, who, when I met him, was a full-time film critic readerand who I work with Cine-File.

This weekend was our wedding anniversary. Eleven years ago, on October 12th, we got married; We had gotten engaged almost a year earlier, exactly a week to the day after our first date. And what did we do that day? We saw a film – the one by Don Siegel The seduced (1971), presented by the Chicago Film Society at the Portage Theater. It was a Wednesday, as the film society’s screenings always took place back then and still take place regularly today. A week later we saw John Ford’s 1927 silent film Upstreampresented again by the Chicago Film Society at the Portage Theater. That night he asked me to marry him, I said yes, and here we are – movie lovers in love.

A steamboat is being pulled over a hill while two people stand by it — A still image of *Fitzcarraldo* (1982) Credit: Courtesy of Mad Arts

So of course we spent this weekend watching films. Three, to be exact: Powell and Pressburger The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Werner Herzogs Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Jean-Pierre Melvilles Army of Shadows (1969). Regarding how these films might relate to marriage, Colonel Blimp is the most obvious choice, as the story covers much of the title character’s life, including the women – well, actually a woman whose likeness and character he seeks out in later companions (all played by Deborah Kerr) – that he loves.

But it was Fitzcarraldo This struck me as an allegory of marriage. The film famously (or infamously, depending on how you look at it) pulls a boat over a mountain, both on screen and in real life. This reflects Fitzcarraldo’s relentless ambition to amass a fortune as a rubber baron in order to build an opera house in the Peruvian jungle. The mountain is life, and the boat is marriage, pulled over it against all odds. And it’s not necessarily that hard (relationships are always hard to some degree, but loving my husband is the easiest thing I’ve ever done), but there’s so much in the way that it feels like a miracle, if anyone, let alone Second, can accomplish such a seemingly impossible feat. After all, love is the opera, the reason why everything is worth it.

It’s always a pleasure to see a Melville film on the big screen, even though there’s nothing to do with marriage in a film about the French Resistance. But of course love also applies to friends. I saw one with one Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (better than I expected!) and with another I celebrated her birthday by watching the excellent double feature she programmed at Facets, Peter Strickland Made of fabric (2019) and a television film, I’m dangerous tonight (1990) by horror master Tobe Hooper. The theme of the double feature was “Dressed to Impress,” as both films are about enchanted dresses that have devastating effects on those who wear them. This was my first foray into scary movies this month, but there’s more to come as I complete the entire Music Box of Horrors marathon this weekend.

Anyway, to my husband, I love you. Very much.

Until next time, moviegoers.

More from the moviegoer . . .

🎥 Sole search

🍿 Women make films

🎬 Sunshine and blowjobs