Coming of a Certain Age

Everyone talks about the firsts; we recall (most of) them fondly: kisses, true loves, jobs, children.
We don't talk about the lasts: the last day you worked, the last day you drove your car, mowed the lawn, prepared something to eat, went to the bathroom by yourself.

An episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre, 'Their Own Executioners,' aired recently on WXMI HD (Comcast 295); it did an interesting take on what I'll call "Coming Of a Certain Age" stories, and balanced it well with youthful angst on the other side of the maturation teeter-totter. It isn't the flipside of Catcher in the Rye➚, but it was a pleasant, nostalgic echo of generation beginning to acknowledge it.

It was written by Luther Davis (who has a terrific history of TV to his credit, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0205065/#Writer ➚) and featured a young Dean Stockwell accused of murder; at one point Stockwell shouts "your driving me crazy," a line from Rebel without a Cause ➚ that audiences at the time would have recognized immediately.

The characters and writing are outstanding, and Hesrschel Bernarndi's delivery incredible (he also acted in one of my favorite pictures, Irma le Douce➚[1]).

Coming of age stories tend to get our attention, probably due to most of us having an immediate wistful connection to them, and nearly a lifetime to reflect.

Life changes at the other end are different; it is a difficult thing to watch a person age, retire, lose the ability to drive, become sick, dwindle and eventually die. They have only months or a few years to consider their obsolescence; little is written about them, and what is, is written by those on the outside looking in. (Arthur Miller's Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman➚ comes to mind, or Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger ➚, though Lemmon may be more middle-age/midlife crisis.)

Kraft Suspense Theatre 'Their Own Executioners' is a type of this story; not explicitly so, and probably not intentionally so, but there is enough of it to digest it on that level.

Download and put together Kraft Suspense Theatre 'Their Own Executioners' here:[2]

http://www.mediafire.com/?be4so3pow31n2➚

Combine with MasterSplitter here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bmm5f1te8e3jf➚
OR
Free HJ-Split here:
http://download.cnet.com/HJ-Split/3000-2248_4-10550268.html?tag=mncol;1 ➚
(Both will run as portable apps.)

I'd never heard of Kraft Suspense Theatre before. What I've watched so far has been very good. It doesn't have the surprise endings or ethereal qualities of Twilight Zone or Hitchcock or others in the genre; it's driven by the acting, which is quite good. I'm surprised, given as much retro TV and radio I've consumed, that I'd never heard of it before.

[1]
The first time I saw Irma le Douce was on the late late late show. I was alone, in my teens, in Holly, MI at my Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Ken's house on Pollock road. I watched in their den, a thickly carpeted and draperied room with rich browns and tans of wooden furniture, statuettes, and reliefs brought back from their missionary days in Africa. I watched with the lights off, enjoying the moon through the bare trees of the woods behind their house. (Their backyard was marvelously wooded; I could easily imagine deer and American Indians there a couple hundred years before.) The whole house was asleep but me. If I recall correctly, it was the same night as a massive brownout across the eastern US and I was watching coverage of the looting.

I happened to turn the channel to the beginning of this charming story about a French policeman rounding up a bunch of prostitutes and my pubescing mind was instantly engaged. There is a marvelous innocence of mature themes in older films, especially when painted in broad Technicolor strokes by familiar and friendly faces.

It's a wonderful if naive film from a wonderful director on a very old theme - the damsel in distress. Having survived the 70's, I read and watched far more stories that presented jaded, gritty views of prostitution and those that participate in it. (George C Scott in Hardcore,➚ eg, written by fellow alum Paul Schrader). There is a piece of me that wants to see the Cinderella side of any story (a la Pretty Woman ➚), but I don't let that show too much, as it's often perceived as hopelessly Pollyanna, or worse, uninteresting.

Still, it's a wonderful story, with wonderful actors, with a delicate innocence that touched me in a time and place that would stick with me for the rest of my life. Thank you, Billy Wilder.

[2]
.ts files can be played easily by Media Player Classic (http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/ ➚) or VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org/ ➚)