GOING TO THE MOVIES
Edith Kurzweil
THE MOVIE GOER
When Jane and Jerry and J ody and John decide to go to
the movies they expect to be entertained. Two hours later, some film
critics assume that they walk out with an education, or at least with
an improved or a freshly whipped up social consciousness.
The coverage in editorials and reviews of the opening shot in
Working Girl
alone, for instance, with the Statue of Liberty and the
rest of New York Harbor as backdrop for Tess McGill's daily com–
mute from Staten Island to Wall Street, has evoked some of the fol–
lowing comments : it boosts 'American patriotism; it embodies false
ideologies of progress and opportunity which are underlined when
Tess tells her girlfriend that she has to miss a party and the good
times with her live-in boyfriend, because she must go to night
school . Even the "magnificent photography" along with the "gor–
geous lyric" of this scene and the "excellent direction" by Mike
Nichols , it has been pointed out , are no more than successful dis–
guises for the formulaic nature of this modern Cinderella plot.
Maybe because I didn't go to see this movie in order to review
it, or because I went when I had two hours between appointments, I
was seduced by the panache of this opening. And I must confess, I
didn't bring all my sociological guns to it : I relaxed. Among other
things, I was wondering whether this ferry which I last rode towards
the end of World War II - when we used to have dates by going back
and forth on the same nickel, or by going on picnics and hikes in the
fields of rural Staten Island - really has become as spiffy as the one
in the film. And I took in, and was taken in by, the photography of
downtown New York, a scene I still respond to with the same elation
I felt when I arrived as a refugee. Having left behind my critical self,
I was rooting for Tess by the time she got off the ferry and into her
office, and I settled in to be diverted by this whacky comedy. Doesn't
every movie goer have such personal reactions, at least until he or
she feels compelled to analyze them "scientifically," be it in terms of
audience response or from a political or moral perspective?
