Now screening

What am I excited about these days? A stack of lip-smacking DVDs from the library. NYPL's online catalog system of choosing videos and placing them on hold obviates any foreseeable need for Netflix or Kim's rental.

The stack at present is an embarassingly telling assortment: Crawford, Davis, and Garland titles, and an old BBC miniseries. Homo, homo, homo! Tonight a co-conspirator in vintage screen cackling will come over to my apartment and help me make inroads: our choices are "The Possessed," "The Letter," and "A Star is Born." I already watched Davis's "The Star" by myself (also starring Sterling Hayden and the infant Natalie Wood). It was pretty weak, to be honest.

But to me a greater treasure than any of these is the 1979 BBC video of "Pride and Prejudice," dramatized by Fay Weldon. This series aired on Masterpiece Theatre in 1980, when I watched it with my parents. It was my first exposure to the literature and costumery of the British Regency, and it changed my entire worldview. Today the dramaturgy and long-take video style of this miniseries will strike some as dated and static. But I appreaciate this approach. The subtlety of the acting and the language are permitted maximum impact.

Getting back to the homo dimension of this video...
More than anything else the wide eyes of my childhood drank in the fresh faces of the attractive cast: sweet and heavy-lidded Elizabeth Garvie as Eliza, chiseled and gorgeous David Rintoul as Darcy, and blond dreamboat Peter Settelen as Wickham. Today, decades later, I find I still have crushes on Darcy and Wikham. And a fascination with Eliza's hair and necklines.