006: See an old film in a new cinema

The Orson Welles classic 'Touch of Evil' was playing in a local cinema, so I braved the driving rain and sleet and hail and a lingering odour of popcorn and went. 

The first thing I learned was that old movies aren't as good as new movies. I don't mean to say that they're deficient in plot or acting or craftmanship; rather they're on shitty film compared to the pin-sharp digitally-enhanced crowdpleasers issuing forth from Hollywood's highly-polished digestive system. The film was blurry and small and in narrowscreen, if that's a term at all. 
Orson Welles filmed his noir in a deep spiritual blackness. There was a lot of visual blackness too. Also a lot of scenes near the start didn't seem to start, only end, as sentences began two or three words in and people left buildings they never seemed to enter in the first place. 

All this created an unsettled feeling - was this a bad cut of a good film thrown up on a screen by uncaring money-grubbing cinematrons in the knowledge that anything, no matter how unscrubbed, would find an audience by virtue of its reputation?

By the end of the second reel, I had been caught up in the story and the print didn't matter anymore. A nice thing about old stuff, whether it's movies or music or art or grandmothers, is that you notice influences. There are shots, characters, and mannerisms that come through strongly and remind you of their future echoes in films from the '80s and '90s. 
I've got a lot of films to watch—I'm slogging through 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die—so there's no doubt that when one pops up in the big screen listings I'll put it in my calendar. Some films simply weren't made to be viewed on a laptop.