Nancy Scott
Saturday Night at the Movies, Manhattan, 1961
Last Year at Marienbad had just opened, and although we professed to liking avant garde movies, I’d rather have had a good laugh with Melina Mercouri in Never on Sunday, but we stood in line in the pouring rain outside an Art Film house, a gust of wind having stolen our umbrellas, then dripping wet, found seats and settled in to ninety-three minutes of stunning, though incomprehensible, cinematography; yes, there were three characters, shifting viewpoints, a Baroque castle, trees without shadows, but we left the theater shaking our heads, wondering if we could have an opinion that made any sense, then managed to hail a cab and found ourselves snickering about the film, until the thick, middle-aged cabbie wearing a Yankees’ cap, a Hungarian name on his hack license, said, You guys just come from Last Year at Marienbad? and we said, Yes, and he said, Did you understand it? and we admitted, Not really. He adjusted his cap and turning to eye us, said, Surrealism. You know what that means? Not wanting to appear morons, we said, Yes; then he said, Let me tell you what the movie’s about. While zigzagging through traffic, he explained non-stop the significance of the black and white film and whether the other guy was really her husband or if any of the conversations ever took place. Crossing the Queensborough Bridge at warp speed, the rain now pelting the windows making it almost impossible to see, he critiqued the film reviews, and bucketing the cab to a stop at our destination, he said, Get it now? Before we could collect our wits to answer, he nodded, knowingly, Best movie I ever seen.
First published in phat’itude, 2011
Nancy Scott is the author of five collections of poetry and managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets' Cooperative in New Jersey. Her poetry and flash fiction have appeared in numerous online and print journals, including Mudfish, Slant, Witness, Poet Lore, The Ledge, Pemmican, Segue, qarrtsiluni, and Journal of New Jersey Poets.