On being bored watching movies.

We were talking about movies last night, and Henry said:

I hate movies.

It's not the movies, so much. It's how long they are.

After one hour of predictable complication, the second hour of predictable resolution is unbearable.

I sympathized, mostly. Not that I find everything predictable. Actually, I don't. My boredom takes the form of viewing each scene as something to be gotten through, to be tolerated. I have the feeling that nothing will happen, even though I constantly tell myself, it's a movie, something always happens, in every scene. But it's just going to be one of those movie things, that happen because something always has to happen to make it a movie. Two characters are having an ordinary time, and my usual boredom kicks in: Nothing will ever happen. I realize: But this is a movie, so it must. I reach a new level of bored: Yes, something violent will happen or be revealed or someone will get very concerned or upset for some reason.

For example, "Spellbound," which I watched last night: People would be sitting around talking about a swimming pool, and Ingrid Bergman would draw the shape of the pool on the tablecloth with a fork, and Gregory Peck would get all upset. That's not a good example of the way movies bore me though, because there's a cool little mystery about why parallel lines freak him out, which is what you remember if you haven't seen the film in a long time and decide to give it another go. But there are many unspiffy scenes with actors pretending to be psychiatrists, gliding along gloomily through a shadowy house that you're supposed to believe is a mental hospital.

Ingrid Bergman is either in her glasses, with her hair pinned back, and icily fending off what today we'd call sexual harassment but was apparently the daily norm at this place, or she's got the glasses off, her hair is mussed, and she's hot for her new boss -- Gregory Peck -- so that she'll get up in the middle of the night, put on a gorgeous bathrobe, and glide on up the shadowy stairway and right into his bedroom, in search of sexual harassment. I'm complaining about movies, but I loved that scene. Not only did icy Ingrid's sexuality emerge, depicted by a surreal sequence of opening doors that really felt like emerging sexuality, but her bathrobe had parallel lines on it, so Gregory Peck got another chance to subtly freak out. And poor icy Ingrid wasn't going to get to float through the doors quite yet.

And on to more scenes, scene after scene, with shadowy stairways and fusty, harass-y psychiatrist/actors and windblown outdoor shots to get your hopes up about Ingrid's sexuality and Gregory getting all worried again and when is that Dali dream sequence going to show up so we can turn this off and go to bed?