Clive James at the movies

Critic, poet and TV star James, who died in November aged 80, wrote this article for Time Out Sydney in 2008

FOR MOST OF my waking life, I’ve been seeing almost every movie as it came out, and I formed the habit right here in Sydney. Near my home suburb of Kogarah in the late 1940s and 1950s there were three movie houses operating full blast. My mother used to take me to every change of double bill at the Ramsgate Odeon. A little later, still in short pants, I took myself to the Saturday afternoon matinee at Rockdale Odeon for a couple of action movies, four episodes from different serials, and 16 cartoons. Long pants having been acquired, I went solo to the Ramsgate double bill in the evening at least once a week, and, on another evening in the same week, to the double bill at the Rockdale Odeon. If the movie had Grace Kelly in it, I could see it repeatedly. I saw Dial M for Murder five times. Is there anything more ridiculous than a young man in love? Time after time in Dial M for Murder I was sending thought waves to the screen, warning Grace Kelly that her life was in danger. (Many years later, when I heard the news of her death in a car crash, I immediately had the guilty thought that I had not sent her a sufficiently powerful message.) My golden-haired beloved was also in Rear Window, and once again I sent messages of warning as the music cranked up the tension. She’s searching Raymond Burr’s apartment for the missing wedding ring! She’s found the ring! She’s signalling James Stewart but he doesn’t know how to tell her that Raymond Burr has come home early!

At the Rockdale Odeon, I existed mainly on Jaffas and Hoadley’s Violet Crumble Bars. For a high-end romantic movie at Ramsgate, I moved my sweeteating choices upmarket, culminating in the luxurious Cherry Ripe, still the alltime most sensuous Australian gustatory experience. Either out of lust for Grace Kelly or loathing for Stewart Granger, I choked on a Cherry Ripe while watching Green Fire. But sophistication was soon to arrive. Sydney University had a Film Society whose operating members were drunk at all times. Owing to the inebriation of the personnel in the projection box, the reels did not always come on in the right order. Thus my fourth viewing of The Sound Barrier was lent a unique dimension. In it,

Ann Todd falls in love with a handsome test pilot (Nigel Patrick) but he dies in a crash. In the Film Society version, he died in a crash and then she fell in love with him. But it was an off-trail British movie that knocked me sideways. It was Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and for three nights on the trot I absorbed the chemicals that transformed me into Albert Finney. By the third night,

I was talking with a Nottinghamshire accent.

I was ready for England. ■

“I choked on a Cherry Ripe at the Ramsgate Odeon”