Family Hitchcock

My mom’s been staying with us for the past 6 weeks, +/– a few days back at my brother’s, and it’s been great getting to know her all over again. Because I left home for college and never moved back home, there’s a distinct line of living under her roof as a child/adolescent and now living with her as a full-grown adult in my own home.

One of the things I learned is the fact that she was a big cinephile before she got married. She said she’d sometimes watch two to three films a day in Hong Kong back in the ’50s and early ’60s. She mentioned Doris Day singing “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” in a famous movie about a murder. I had no clue but of course Ryan knew it was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much from 1956. She last saw this film when she was about 20 years old.

We watched it together last night at home. Even though there weren’t any Chinese subtitles for her this time around, she remembered quite a bit, like the [<<< SPOILER ALERT >>>] crashing cymbals and the assassin’s face and the gun pointing from behind a curtain. 

When I’m 81, will I remember details from films I watched when I was 20? Will I remember Speed or Pulp Fiction? Probably not, but I wouldn’t rule it out completely.