Better Than Fiction?

I said something in a recent blog that now haunts me. I said that reality must be better than fiction, that the true life stories of my ancestors would move me more than any made-up story. But I just finished watching a movie that makes me wonder. I am still wiping away tears. Not because it ended sadly but because it ended perfectly, the way you would have hoped it would.  

One all time favorite of mine is Maytime with Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy. Another is Waterloo Bridge with Vivian Leigh and Robert Taylor. There’s also Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I could name a few others. These films I could see over and over, and I have. Each time they work on my emotions as deeply as when I first saw them. Not many movies can do that to me. Real life can too but in real life the tears cannot so easily be wiped away.

I remember when I was seventeen or so I got a job as an usherette in the Laguna Beach movie theater. That old theater is still there but I haven’t been in it for years and I wonder if it still has a balcony inside. I wore a uniform then and the balcony was my spot. Before the doors opened they used to play music and one piece would send me into the ether. It was Holiday For Strings by David Rose. Alone in the darkened movie house I’d turn off my little flashlight and stand next to the railing while violins played their magic and sent me soaring out into my future. As if I were on a rocket ship launched into the unknown space toward my future life, I could only see the stars. I couldn’t know where I was going or what I’d come across in life, but it was wonderful beyond words to be going there accompanied by such music! 

Oh, you ask the name of the movie I watched today, the one that prompted this blog? It was Random Harvest. I can’t imagine any actors other than Greer Garson and Ronald Coleman who could have made it more real or brought me to real tears. 

And here is another question: Who’s to say what is really real anyway? In some dimension, if it lasts, I suppose even fiction is real.