My Favorite Movies — Sabeeha Rehman

My son Saqib asked me the question.
Without a doubt: #1: Gone with the Wind.
Have you seen it?
Yes? Then you know why it’s #1.
No? Then go see it. Actually, go stream it. We are talking the 2020s.
They say that the movie can never be as good as the book. Well, this is one movie that is better than the book. It puts a face to what the reader could only imagine as the captivating Scarlett O’Hara and the dashing Rhett Butler. It gave voice to Scarlett’s imploring Ashley (the loser), venting her frustration over ‘goody-goody’ Melanie; seeing the glint in her eye as she seizes the opportunity to seduce her sister’s fiancé, and you chuckle as she taps her heels to the music, her feet tucked safely beneath her reluctant widow’s black gown. Rhett Butler wearing his cynical smile and his black tails over his ruffled white shirt, rescues her from her misery, bidding $150 for dancing with Mrs. Charles Hamilton.
“But she is in mourning; she won’t agree.”
“Oh yes I will.”
Clark Gable could kill you with that knowing smile. He knew his Scarlett.
She shoots off to the dance floor. Arms outstretched, both in black, they skip and hop to the shock of the onlookers. They didn’t give a damn. The dialogue in the book could not conjure up the charm that Clark Gable displayed as he whistled out from behind the chair startling the rejected Scarlett with ‘Has the war started?’ At no time in the pages of the book could one picture what we saw on screen as the camera zoomed out of Vivian Leigh standing on the railroad platform and the wounded soldiers on the ground started filling the huge screen until you gasped. And who can forget the opening: the soundtrack, the tree, dark against the setting sun, and the letters of the movie title Gone with the Wind flying off the screen, blown with the wind; or the ending: Tomorrow is another day. It was the wish of David O’Selznick, the producer who died in 1965, that his epigraph state: “Here lies David O’Selznick who made Gone with the Wind.” He didn’t know that one day, eighty years after the movie was made—it was a 1939 movie—that Netflix would remove it from its listing, citing racial insensitivities.

P.S. Three weeks after posting this blog, I watched this movie again on a plane, flying back from Pakistan. This time I was appalled and offended at the opening script. Slavery glorified! How is it that I didn’t catch this earlier? I suppose this time I was watching it from an evolved perspective.

#2: The Sound of Music
Now that you have watched, I am sure. Isn’t it super delightful! The most romantic moments were when the Captain is singing edelweiss and the camera moves over to Maria, watching him, and falling in love. Then she is out on the patio, teaching the young boy to dance, and the colonel interrupts, “Allow me, will you.” They dance. He, oh so elegant and oh so handsome; she bewildered, innocent, but holding her own and they dance. Then the moment. They stop. Time stops. The world stops moving.
When we were in Salzburg in 1996, I visited the movie set—preserved since 1965—I couldn’t help but hop into the gazebo and sing away: I am sixteen, going on seventeen.
Julie Andrews, in her crisp British English, will always be Maria, and Christopher Plummer, much to his chagrin as a Shakespearean actor, is best remembered as the Captain.
This movie has endured, enchanting children, teens, and memoir writers in our 70s. The sounds of its music will live on.

#3: The Godfather
I am not a violent person, nor am I a criminal, but what was it about the mafia that was so gripping. Marlon Brando topped it as the aging don, his husky voice commanding respect and instilling fear. Diane Keaton as Al Pacino’s very American girlfriend, had no idea what she was getting into. We knew, which made it all the more enticing. It had it all: family ties, loyalty and betrayal, faith and faithlessness, crime and punishment, compassion and cruelty, violence and tender moments. It was disturbing for me to know that I found this story fascinating. Why was I not repulsed by a movie loaded with crime. Seeing this movie, I didn’t know what to make of myself. I was twenty when I first saw it in 1972, and sixty-five when I watched it the second time. It’s appeal still confounds me.

#4: Forrest Gump
Wasn’t this the most adorable, loveable movie of all times. I believe this is the movie that made Tom Hanks a star. Correct me if I am wrong. Remember what Forrest would say each time someone called him ‘stupid’?
“Stupid is what stupid does.”
We all fell in love with “stupid” Forrest.
My favorite lines:
His friend Jenny introduces her son to Forrest and tells him that the little boy’s name is Forrest.
“Like me,” he says.
“I named him after his daddy.”
“He got a daddy named Forrest too?”
We laughed in that moment, and his innocence was heart-breaking.
“You are his daddy, Forrest.”
That was 1994. This year, in 2022, I saw the Bollywood version of Forrest Gump at the AMC theater in Union Square, Lal Singh Chadda with Amir Khan. This is a theme artists need to continue to resurrect: you don’t have to be smart to be good.

That’s All Folks.