1960 Dilbeek, Belgium

Marleen Van Cauwelaert-My Grandmother
Born in 1943
Dilbeek, Belgium
Interviewed on September 15, 2019
By Felix Van Cauwelaert

When I first viewed my first film I was in a catholic school around 17 or 18 and I attended a course involving the critique of films in the subject of aesthetics and the art within the movies. It is actually quite a similar course to what you are attending at this moment. It was a black and white film called Bicycle Thief with Vittorio de Sica. I remember watching it on a projector in class, if I recall correctly it was about a thief in Italy after the Second World War. That was the very first film that I watched. This course was for us to learn how to criticize these pieces of art and look at the aesthetics and beauty of these films. The course was instructed by the man who wrote a very famous book regarding the aesthetics and such in films, I can’t quite remember his name, it’s been a very long time since I was a young girl.

There were many many other films that we watched, from all over Europe. I wrote down my absolute favorites and here they are, The Man with the Movie Camera, Some Like it Hot with Maryln Monroe of course, The Birds, Modern Times with Chaplin, oh how I loved him, High Noon, And God Created Woman. The actress in “God Created Woman” Brigitte Bardo, she was a sex symbol across Europe to us. She was tres chic and we all wanted to be similar to her.

I never went to a movie theater until much later in my life. In fact it was with my children. I took your father to go see a movie and that was the first time I ever went to a theater. When I was a child, movies were seen as decadent and my parents restricted me to ever to go to see a film in a theater. There were only theaters in the Brussels and it would have been very difficult for me to sneak away to the city to see a film.I still don’t enjoy the theater much, It is much too loud for my ears, so I don’t go much anymore. I was never very interested in going to a theater for a movie, that is why my first film I ever saw was when I was in “High School” And these films were very rarely from Hollywood or the States. We watched Russian, French, Italian and once even a Japanese film. The styles of these films were so unique and differing and I encourage you Felix to explore these foreign films! We would analyze these films to see the differences and again the difference in the aesthetics that each film presented to us. It was a very high level course for us, but I truly loved it. Even now I go to the Library and rent these films I watched when I was in taking the course and will watch them on my CD player at home. Now that I know you are taking this course, I plan on watching the same films as you so we can discuss them sometime soon.