I’ve been thinking about the movies lately—I’ve always been a sucker for a good flick—and it occurs to me that films have both formed and deformed us in a variety of ways. The cinema has, of course, held up a funhouse mirror of reality to our nation since those early silent images flickered across screens over a century ago. These delighted a nation that was mostly rural and cockily aggressive after riding to the rescue of our European allies during the First World War. The “talkies” that followed provided many decades of pleasantly mindless entertainment—with an occasional dose of moral uplift to instruct us and bring tears to our eyes. Unsurprisingly, the movie stars glowed brightly in the eyes of audiences and formed a unique and unbreakable bond with people who saw these strangers as central players in their own Read more