I Miss Saturday Night at the Movies!
"Well, Saturday night at eight o'clock I know where I'm gonna go"
- The Drifters, "Saturday Night at the Movies" (1964)
For almost 40 years, Canadian film connoisseurs living in Ontario knew where to go to watch classic cinema, old and new, family friendly and freaky as hell. Unlike the Barry Mann-Cynthia Weill composed Drifters' gem, we Ontarians needn't go out to experience Saturday Night at the Movies. Instead we could curl up on the couch in front of the TV while our passionate host invited us to have our minds blown. This may seem lazy but given the fact that 5-6 months of the year is FREEZING COLD, having such stimulating culture beamed into your living room was a minor miracle. Nowadays there is even less reason to go out with Netflix, YouTube and countless films available for download, legally and otherwise, at your fingertips. That being said, I miss the charm and intellectual stimulation of a little TV show on basic cable which pointed me in directions I may never have ventured if left to my own devices.
Saturday Night at the Movies (SNAM), not to be confused with the US show of the same name which aired on NBC in the 1960s, premiered on TVOntario (TVO) on March 30, 1974. The host was Elwy Yost. Elwy, the pipe-smoking son of a pickle manufacturer, came across as one of the warmest, kindest and most genial presenters in the history of television. He was a grandfatherly figure who had the innate ability to make anyone, from the viewer to the interview subject, at ease. However, just when you let your guard down, he would hit you in the face with some of the most challenging and riveting films you'd ever seen. The first film Elwy presented in 1974 was Through A Glass Darkly by Ingmar Bergman. While I wasn't alive for the TVO screening, I have watched this Bergman film and I'll tell you, if you haven't seen it, Through A Glass Darkly is as dark as night and as bleak as a February in Siberia. I've only seen it once and must admit that I didn't care for it at the time. However, by screening such a dark picture, in Swedish with subtitles to boot, SNAM set the stage for decades of adventurous programming. Yes, many a Hollywood film was screened, including Speed written by Elwy's son Graham, yet the film choices seemed to stem from the quality of the flick rather than any conscious targeting of a coveted demographic. Also, the format was very cool with that week's films tied to an overarching theme. The Bergman films shown during the debut episode were packaged as Three Films in Search of God.
I watched a lot of late night films on TV in the 90s. It's hard for me to remember where I saw everything. There were so many channels to choose from presenting interesting cinema - CityTV, Bravo, Showcase, MoviePix (where for the first time I saw some of my all-time favs, The Hustler, Scarface (with Al Pacino), Dressed To Kill, Harold and Maude, They Might Be Giants, The Birds, The Shining... to name a few). So, it's difficult to pinpoint every film from SNAM that inspired me, however I have a sneaking suspicion Spoorloos (The Vanishing) , The Last Detail and The Killing are on the list.
Beyond the actual films, SNAM was known for its incredible interviews. At the peak of the show's popularity, TVO even flew Elwy to Hollywood to interview legends such as Robert Mitchum, Greer Garson, John Frankenheimer and Frank Capra. When Elwy left the show in 1999, well-respected film critic Thom Ernst continued the tradition of challenging films and intellectually engaging conversation until the final episode on August 31, 2013. We're approaching the two-year anniversary of SNAM's demise and I think it's time to put that institution back on the air. There are so many themes still left to explore and besides... winter's creeping in.
