THOSE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE BLACK AND WHITE FILMS

The weather has finally warmed up these last few of days, hot sunny 
and windy with the whole countryside in imminent threat of going up 
in smoke, just like summer is supposed to be here, ready for an air 
conditioned Christmas. I never used to like the heat, and I still 
don't in many cases, but living alone I can go about naked and it's 
much nicer that way, I even look forward to it.

I just finished writing about art as a consumable in the other 
post, and in fact with my supply of old movies on VHS cut off, and 
not much worth watching on the TV channels without excessive 
advertising, I'm pretty short of sources to consume that particular 
art. I got through that expensive box set of "The Last Detective", 
which was in fact even better than I remembered, no doubt because 
all the ads pissed me off so much when I was watching it on TV 
about ten years ago. My memory had dutifully forgotten all the 
plot-lines as well, so it was all pretty much new to me - my poor 
memory helps a lot to combat the consumability of art!

But now I've moved on to the Internet Archive, supplementing all 
the obscure documentary films that I've been pulling off there for 
years with some old B/W movies that are out of copyright in 
Australia (over 70 years old, assuming they're not restored 
versions in which case a shorter duration of copyright applies 
after the publication of that edition, but I can't actually be 
bothered working _that_ hard at being legal). Unfortunately they 
can be pretty ticky to find after exhausting the limited entries in 
the "film noir" category, but I'm starting to get the hang of 
searching for them by director, actor, etc.

So, whenever I have access to a decent internet connection I'm now 
pulling down all the scraps of Hollywood's golden age that I can 
lay my hands on (it seems to be pretty American-biased, though I 
hope to find more British films as they made great stuff back then 
too). They're clearly having quite an effect on me because the 
other night I lay in bed singing this short little thing to myself:

See them and hear them,
nearer to near them,
those beautiful women,
of the black and white films.

Dreams made of grey,
lit by a golden ray,
those beautiful women,
of the black and white films.

Bursting from the screen,
from an age now just a dream,
that distant time you've seen,
with those beautiful women,
of the black and white films.

I'll admit it's a pretty tragic state of affairs for a bloke to be 
singing that to himself alone in bed, but well, I guess that's how 
it is.

 - The Free Thinker