A Movie Scene Quiz

You got it.

I can sleep tonight.

Oldie:

On the evening after the Graduation Dance, he proposes to her and she promises to wait for him to become a successful lawyer. She's elated, until she returns home to find her stepfather, alone and drunk.

Peyton Place.

Yes to Peyton Place. Sorry I didn't get back here sooner. Take it away, EOE.

Oldie:
When his father gave her mother a tour of their home, they came to the closed door of the library. He opened it and both were surprised to find his son and her daughter inside, sharing a kiss.

A Summer Place?

Or that other Troy Donahoe picture:

Parrish?

Neither.

Father is a Bachelor

CLUE, Please.

While her mother made a visit to the priest to discuss somehow preventing the young man from courting her daughter, the daughter snuck away from the woman hired to teach her Italian, and went out looking for her suitor.

EOE - I am stumped. OK, another clue, please.

There's Always Tomorrow
Journey to Italy
These Wilder Years

After putting her to bed, they discussed the situation. While the mother was hovering around the possibility of actually allowing their daughter to marry the young Italian man, the father dismissed the idea completely and instead, wanted to talk about putting her in an institution.

I know I didn't see this one, but it sounds exciting. HELP someone.

I would if I could!

Thanks Mac. Im running out of ideas for movies that fit before 1961. Maybe it has to do with royalty, or is a Foreign Movie.

It sounds like Light in the Piazza, but I thought that was a 1962 movie, and therefore not an oldie.

Hi Bree. It sounds like Light in the Piazza to me, too, but an oldie is prior to 1960.

OOOPS!!!!! I did it again.
Light in the Piazza is correct.

I can't think of another scene at the moment -- I just got home from hearing Barbara Cook in concert at Lincoln Center, and I'm floating too high on the gorgeous music I heard to think of anything else right now.

I'll be out a lot this weekend, so if someone else wants to take the next turn before I come up with anything, please go ahead.

I still haven't thought of a new scene, but I thought I'd vamp for time by posting a link to an interesting article from today's New York Times. The article starts by talking about the "knotty philosophical questions" that concern the characters in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which I liked a lot, by the way), and then it goes on to say that such questions are at the heart of many classic Hollywood romantic comedies. For example, did you know (I sure didn't) that:

"The Hollywood romantic comedy, at its apex in the mid-1930's and early 40's, was a sleek vehicle for philosophical inquiry. Lurking beneath the glossy, silver-toned surface of movies like "The Awful Truth" and "The Philadelphia Story" -- or, rather, displayed on that surface, disguised as witty banter and romantic vexation -- are a set of knotty ethical puzzles and epistemological conundrums of the sort illuminated in the work of sages like Plato, Emerson, Wittgenstein and Kant" ?

If you made it through that quote and still want to read the rest of the article, you can find it at:

Charlie Kaufman's Critique of Pure Comedy