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A recent survey taken among FYE store customers revealed a) that “less than a quarter of Millennials (Customers between the ages of 17 and 30) have watched a film from start to finish that was made in the 1940s or 50s”, and that b)  millennials find black and white films “boring”.

Now, who are FYE customers? Enter any FYE store, which is found mostly in shopping malls across the country, and you will see it’s a place, where you can buy, trade and sell used CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays. Recently made movies and music are heavily pushed and displayed. Much of the FYE crowd will be in awe of IMAX and Spotify but will yawn at VistaVision. Not all millennials shop at FYE.

A lot of this imagined “anti-classic movement” among millennials is due partly to exposure. So much of current Hollywood and mainstream media can be found online or on TV, overshadowing indie films and the classics. Flip thru your cable channels and most everything is product filmed within the past few months. You have to hunt through the airways for that Akira Kurosawa marathon or that silent film festival. Teenagers during the 1970s had minimal choices of what to watch and listen to. Looking at a New York City TV Guide from 1977, I saw that on one random Sunday, the New York City-based TV channels showed a total of twenty movies. Out of this twenty, ten were produced between 1931 and 1959. Four were made in the 1960’s. The remaining six films were more recent to 1977. Two of them were foreign films with subtitles. This is before home video and cable, so if you were a teenager catching a movie at home, the majority of films available to you were in black and white. Most of us 1970’s teenagers were cool with our intake of Abbott and Costello, Clark Gable and Bette Davis equaling our intake of the then current moviehouse icons like Burt Reynolds, Hans Solo and Sally Field. Before we got to college, even non-film fans thrilled to Humphrey Bogart’s falcon and Baby Jane Hudson’s surprise din-din. This is because we chose to take in the thrill. Nothing was forced on us. Today, gigantic posters in FYE depicting Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Spiderman and THE FATE AND THE FURIOUS dwarf and overshadow the few Hitchcock films and MGM musicals collecting dust in the FYE DVD rack.

Classic movie fans on the internet lost their cool over a recent game show which featured a college-aged girl being quizzed on who was the female lead in the 1938 ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. She was given four choices – the top film actresses of 1938 – Olivia De Havilland, Joan Crawford, and others. She blushed, saying “I never heard of any of these women!” Well, internet – this young woman is not stupid, she was never introduced to these actresses. Another culprit is the way classics are often forced upon kids. Teachers and parents will say to a young viewer – “The movie I am going to show you is not like that Spiderman crap you watch. I’m going to show you CITIZEN KANE.” Well, the young viewer is now predisposed to find fault with the tale of good ol’ Charlie Kane.

A friend of mine who falls into the Millennial category watched, on his own, THE MYSTERIOUS AIRMEN, a silent 1928 serial that was recently released by Sprocket Vault DVD. The Mysterious Airman is “Pilot X”, a homicidal flyer sabotaging the efforts of an honest air freight company. He even has a trained monkey who can sneak into headquarters and steal secret plans. Beautifully restored, with a musical score by that terrific silent film accompanist Dr. Andrew Simpson, THE MYSTERIOUS AIRMEN is an exciting view of primitive and often highly dangerous early aviation.

“MYSTERIOUS AIRMEN was just so cool! The psycho in the air with his evil monkey! ” my twenty-something friend exclaimed, while he checked the latest sports scores on his phone. “It was exactly like THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA – but with airplanes!” This friend, who also loves video games, is very politically minded. He took up my suggestion to watch Frank Capra’s MISTER SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON.

His girlfriend told me – “He was yelling at the screen!” He soaked in evil senator Claude Rains siccing his crooked political army on honest Senator Smith (James Stewart). “He was all into the movie, talking back to the 1939 image – ‘He’s a nice guy! (meaning Stewart) Why are you bastards being such assholes?!”

I recently hosted a Halloween marathon of classic horror films at the clubhouse of a senior living facility. The most recent of the films was Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO. At about the time Vera Miles was to find the real Mrs. Bates in the fruit cellar, a very young nurse wheeled her elderly patient into the clubhouse. They sat next to me, and I noticed the young nurse’s puzzled reaction to the film that was all new to her.

“This is PSYCHO,” I told her. “Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous movie.”

“Who is he?” she asked. Rather than school her with “Well, you’ll be surprised to learn that there are films older than THE MATRIX,” I said nothing. Then I put on the next film.

“This one stars Abbott and Costello.” She never heard of them. Then I started ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Within ten minutes she was laughing away.

“How do you spell them?” she asked as she started to bring up more Abbott and Costello videos on her phone.

(Editor’s note: I teach film history at The School of Visual Arts, and everything Glenn is saying is true.  Each year, a dozen or more icons of the past slip into obscurity.  I find it exhilarating because with any luck I can bring them alive again, and it’s such a thrill to see students reacting passionately to these phantom images of the past.)

 

The politically minded “mill” will root for Mister Smith in Washington, and the “mill” with the overbearing job will laugh along with Bud and Lou. Don’t force it on them. Millennials do get it.