Going To The Movies
When the war ended and it dawned on me that never again was I likely to play a leading role in the streets of London, I started to live a rich, full life by proxy. I took to the movies.
To minimize my guilt in going to the pictures . . I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking companions. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, 'And you, Crisp, what are you doing here? ' I would never have dared to reply, 'I'm just enjoying myself, Lord.' . . If, however, I could gesticulate towards a friend and shrug my shoulders, I might be thought to have performed an act of sacrifice.
Even so I managed to go to the pictures - and never alone - on an average once a week for many years; sometimes I went three times in three consecutive days and, very occasionally, twice in one day, thus spending seven hours out of twenty-four in the 'forgetting chamber'. Real life became for me like a series of those jarring moments when the screen goes blinding white, the jagged edge of a torn strip of film flicks one's eyeball and there is a flash of incomprehensible numerals lying in their sides (like a message in code from Hades) before the dream begins again.
I gladly saw almost any film unless it was English.
To minimize my guilt in going to the pictures . . I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking companions. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, 'And you, Crisp, what are you doing here? ' I would never have dared to reply, 'I'm just enjoying myself, Lord.' . . If, however, I could gesticulate towards a friend and shrug my shoulders, I might be thought to have performed an act of sacrifice.
Even so I managed to go to the pictures - and never alone - on an average once a week for many years; sometimes I went three times in three consecutive days and, very occasionally, twice in one day, thus spending seven hours out of twenty-four in the 'forgetting chamber'. Real life became for me like a series of those jarring moments when the screen goes blinding white, the jagged edge of a torn strip of film flicks one's eyeball and there is a flash of incomprehensible numerals lying in their sides (like a message in code from Hades) before the dream begins again.
I gladly saw almost any film unless it was English.