Moving to Italy: Movie Night

Although they forgot his 29^th birthday at Gabi, George’s parents had given him a Super 8 movie camera for his 28^th birthday the year before. During the journey to Italy, and on our arrival, we used his movie camera to record the sights around us because I wanted to show my sister where we lived and what our life was like. After we developed the film we wanted to see it before we sent it to her, so as we had done so easily in California, we went to the local camera store to rent a projector. We found no one who rented out projectors, even in the city of Casale, so we were disappointed. A short time later, Piero (the furniture store owner) invited George to go with him on a business trip to Rimini. While Piero conducted business, George browsed the shops. One of them was an electronics store that sold movie projectors, priced much less than the ones in Casale. On impulse, he bought one for $100. The same projector would have cost us no more than $75 in the States, and the money that we spent on it could have bought groceries for at least four weeks. George’s parents let him know what they thought of this extravagance, but I was very happy.

That movie projector was worth every penny we spent on it. Since it was a Dual 8, we could show both the Super 8 movies from our camera and the 8mm movies of my childhood, all in color, but of course with no sound. While George was in the store, he bought two black and white cartoons with Italian subtitles. 

At least one evening a week we set up the projector, all squeezed together on the new couch, and beamed our few movies against the newly painted blank wall. It’s hard to believe how much we delighted in the silent flickering images in that darkened living room. The movies showed the children a year younger, the twins crawling then walking, and the boys dancing crazily; or on our stop in England chasing pigeons in Trafalgar Square, and visiting my aunt, uncle and young cousins. We were also saddened at the memories of places and people we had left behind in California as we watched them smile and play at our going-away party in the park.

If the colored images of California saddened us, the black and white cartoons always cheered us. The children screamed with laughter as Tweety Bird outwits Sylvester again and again. He always wins. In the other movie, Wiley Coyote sets a series of traps for Roadrunner. Roadrunner seems headed for instant disaster, but he skates through without a scratch, while Wiley Coyote gets caught in his own trap. Always the children would ask to see them again, and always we’d rewind, rethread, and run them through once more. The plot never changed, and they could count on the same happy ending.

After the movies we sang lullabies to Margaret Ann and Matthew, holding them against our shoulders, swaying softly back and forth, then placing them down inside the cribs, gently, quietly. They cuddled with their blankets, inserted their thumbs, and soon fell asleep. For the next half-hour we sat on our new couch reading books in English to Paul and James, some we had brought, and some my sister had sent.  The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Are You My Mother? and others, reinforced their English skills. Then we crept them past the sleeping twins into their own beds and kissed them goodnight.

Finally it was our turn to read. To our great delight we had found a bookstore in Casale that sold used English-language books. Some were old textbooks, but many were fiction. It was in Italy that I became a fan of Agatha Christie, and even George, who had rarely read fiction, became hooked on her mysteries. We looked forward to the end of the day when, instead of sitting upright on hard wooden chairs playing endless games of cards, we could relax into opposite corners of our new couch and escape into fiction.

Slowly but surely we began to settle in Italy. But George still had to find work.