Did you ever think you might actually miss the Cold War? Feel a twinge of nostalgia for a time when we knew exactly who our enemies were? Yearn for those glory days when we didn't question whether we were the good guys, even if we should have?
I never expected to and yet as we mark the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall, I've been hit by a wistful wave, especially for the heroes and villains of cinema past who roamed the Eastern Bloc with wits sharp and weapons at the ready.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 30 words Type of Material: Correction
"Fail-Safe": An article on Cold War films in Monday's Calendar section said that in the movie "Fail-Safe" missiles were headed for Moscow. In the film, bombs were headed for Moscow.
My particular malaise is no doubt due, in part, to our own general confusion about the current state of world affairs. And if we the people are confused, Hollywood is in a complete quandary: unsure of the good guys, trying not to offend the bad guys, and with no clear idea of how best to channel all that confusion into films.
That wasn't so much the case when our conflict with the Evil Empire felt concrete, as did our reactions to it: the nightmares of global annihilation, the bomb shelter mentality and the rising paranoia at the spies lurking everywhere with their intricate plots to outsmart us -- perhaps the greatest offense, if not peril, of them all.
Those fears so ignited the imaginations of filmmakers that we now have a treasure trove of films with the imprint of those roiling emotions on all manner of stories. The Cold War represents, if not quite the birth of certain film genres, the first deep exploration of them. These movies helped put fears and foibles alike into perspective -- sometimes terrifyingly so, other times with a whimsy that was liberating.
We all have our favorites, but here, in completely capricious categories, are mine. And if you'll send us a few of yours, we'll let you know later this week if there's a consensus on the Cold War's greatest hits.
Alien invasion
Hollywood began to process the nation's sense of Cold War paranoia with a rash of sci-fi films that filled theaters in the '50s, their subtexts rich in what the "aliens" might be capable of. Although the 1956 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and 1951's "The Thing From Another World" are among the kitschy best, I love Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" best with its silvery alien preaching the power of peace, a story echoed many times in many ways through the years, although I'm particularly fond of John Sayles' 1984 ghetto vision in "Brother From Another Planet."
Who can you trust?
