David Hoppe

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:: Bless you, TCM

And Dickens, too

By David Hoppe

I love Turner Classic Movies. While the old saw about cable TV - that it gives you a mess of channels, but nothing worth watching - is generally true, TCM is like a signal light on a foggy night, a ray of hope for an otherwise deranged medium.

I get TCM as part of the package Bright House zaps into my house each month. To tell you the truth, when I started subscribing I didn't know I'd be getting this gem. I happened upon it while channel surfing.

What a discovery. I've been crazy about old movies since I was a little kid. In those days the very presence of movies on television was a big deal. On some intuitive level I think I saw them as something other than the run-of-the-mill sitcoms, westerns and crime shows whose primary purpose was to sell soapflakes, cars and beer. The clothes they wore in old movies might have looked dated and the dialog sounded corny at times, but the stories were written and performed with a kind of class you didn't usually see on TV programs. Discovering old movies was like finding a portal that gave way to a richer order of experience.

Turner Classic Movies was created after mogul Ted Turner bought the MGM film library in order to provide a readymade source of programming for his cable-TV empire. The first thing Turner wanted to do with this treasure trove was colorize it - a truly hare-brained notion that was roundly shouted down by a chorus of moviemakers, historians and fans. Eventually he came round to the idea of creating a channel dedicated to showing vintage films 24 hours a day, uncut and without commercial interruption. In effect, a perpetual film festival - and an American cultural treasure on a par with most of the best museums in the land.

It's gotten to the point where I rarely consult the TV guide. If I'm in the mood to bake my face in front of the idiot box I simply turn to TCM. I'd rather catch a commercial-free B-movie already in progress with the likes of Gloria Grahame or Henry Daniell than a supposedly complete program on another network broken up by a parade of ads for erectile dysfunction drugs and air freshener.

The other night I turned on TCM and found myself in the middle of David Lean's 1947 production of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations . In case you don't know, Great Expectations is the story of an orphan boy named Pip and the strange, magical and often harrowing journey he takes to becoming a man in Victorian England. It's a corker of a story about love, loss and loyalty. In Lean's case, washed in black and white and silver gray.

I was reminded that Great Expectations is one of the few books I've had the time to read twice. The first time was in junior high. Then it was assigned again in high school. We saw the movie as well.

I know there was a lot of complaining both times. But as I watched this movie again I found myself feeling grateful for having had the chance to spend time with this ingeniously circuitous, emotionally involving tale.

Today I'm sure that many people, educators among them, would have doubts about the validity or relevance of teaching a story written in another century, involving characters who speak differently than we do and whose sense of time and place might be hard to comprehend. There sure wasn't anything like Pip's marsh in the Chicago suburb where I grew up.

But, while I didn't know it at the time, having to dig into Great Expectations turned out to be part of an excellent arts education. I learned something important by having to pay attention to Dickens' storytelling: How narrative can unfold over time through the revelation and development of human character - and how this form of art actually reflects the trajectory of our own lives back to us.

Even more important was the act of imagination it took for any of us kids to put ourselves in Pip's shoes. On the surface, you'd think there was nothing about this boy's life we could relate to. Until, that is, we took an imaginative leap. For this, the story's very strangeness became one of its greatest virtues.

The same holds true for classic films. That's why colorizing was such a dumb idea. When you watch these movies, you learn that all the colors you need are already in your head.