I watched The Snowgoose this past Saturday.
It is a movie that touched me, oh so many years ago, when movies were
made to play at such strings within each heart.
But this attachment started even before my viewing of that movie.
I already hungered to read (I
suppose since my mother read my now-long-dead brother and me the story of Rascal from Reader’s Digest), and each month I had found stories from the back
pages—and one month, a December—for that was the month that
heart-feelings were then still allowed—for the first and the last time, the Digest chose to publish fiction, The Small One and The Snowgoose—and Paul Gallico.
I already knew this author, although I did not
recognize it at the time: I had grown
with Walt Disney and his own complement, which included The
Three Lives of Thomasina. Soon
Gallico would go on to mega-stardom in Hollywood with The Poseidon Adventure, which I did watch, then read—unmoved,
disappointed. But that was later; for now, at this long-ago Christmas, I read
about a small boy and his donkey—more detail escapes me—and about a man who
chose to die so that he might be made whole and about a tangle-hair orphan who
understood that need—and that man’s love—at last. I wept, as I wept now. I torn out and kept the illustration of the
girl, Frith, with me for many years.
Someday, perhaps a son or a grandchild shall happen across it and
wonder. Perhaps he will have read this
and smile with tears as I do now.
But there is more: there is the movie. I must have been sixteen, and my father, who
shared my love of sweet and sentimental, watched it with me. (How sentimental? Once he had played the theme music from “The
Vikings” for a Seattle uncle-by-law—a "man of the world" because of money and company
held—and I could see that uncle raise his eyebrows and turn from the
spectacle. But I knew; I understood.
The eight-track tape was mine, after all.) We both appreciated the movie: Richard Harris
had already reached our isolated farmstead via his impassioned poetry reading
on The Tonight Show. I only wished
then that Philip’s portrait of Frith and Fritha was more like the
by-then-tattered clipping I cherished.
We both waited with anticipation for the rerun.
My father and I shared little
else than this ability to live inside a well-crafted story, to experience
it. Once toward the end of his life and
when I was full of myself, with self-righteous indignation about a topic he
held dear, he turned on me and said, “You are the most critical person I have
ever known.” Those words stopped me, and
incensed me, and wounded me. My father
and I kept uneasy guard against each other from that point.
Then I did not understand what
connections my father had to speak so harshly to his only daughter. I do not know everything now, but I do understand
why he connected with The Snow Goose. While I only saw a sad ending, and a
death of a man and a girl’s releasing a snow goose to the wilds at that end, my father saw the isolation, the need for love and empathy, the need for acceptance. These were also my father's needs.
When the Internet made available so much—that which had been only a
wistful, passing thought—along with other favorites, I looked for The Snow Goose—and cursed Richard Harris
that he held this movie captive within his lifetime—looking to others to forget
such tripe, such motley, hackneyed work (if I had within me the powers to quote
Shakespeare at this time, I would—to curse Harris by his own presumed
standard). I knew that a California
university housed it in its archives—and that for me to indulge my desire I
would have to go there and be permissioned a private viewing.
Even I recognize the
impossible. But I never stopped
searching, hoping that one day and by protest, the barriers would break.
And protest there has
been for a number of years (if Harris were alive, I would say, “You do
understand protest, I believe, Mr. Harris? Wasn’t it your own Irish indignation that
brought you your following in our own war-torn country? And what about your own
supposed scorn of sentimentality? Why
did you and Jenny Aguiter accept that cameo in another sentimental children’s
movie, even after you had moved on to sophistication—and Miss Aguiter to . . .
well, I wouldn’t mention what; let it
suffice that you can find much in today’s “cloud” of information). There are
others who have desired this movie—perhaps, I should say, have needed this movie. I have signed petitions and made
comments with these others.
And the wall began to show
chinks falling, breaks appearing. Two
years ago, a man in Utah offering an obviously pirated edition at an outrageous
price—I almost caved, but I thought of the theft and resulting profit and
steeled myself. And then, this week, the
break: I went to fill my queue at
Netflicks (sometimes I forget and go weeks and months without movies—until I
catch the charge on my bank statement) and on a whim, searched for “Harris,
Richard” and “Snowgoose.” No Snowgoose,
but then I took a chance and Googled the same.
And there it was, so here I am—with two purposes.
First, and this for those of you still
as “unconnected” as I, yet with a similar childhood experience, go to YouTube
and search fruitfully (if you don’t mind the grainy quality: perhaps quality will replace unconditional re-viewing of this movie on my “bucket
list”). And second for my father, who
would have been one hundred years old today, I understand; I accept your criticism; and
I wish I could share this movie with you again.
