Autumn and the Movies

Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Billy Crystal) "fall" in love.

As I sit here snacking on peanuts and candy corn and sip my hot cider, I am thinking of how fall represents different things to different people. Some await the new fall television season. Children are at the beginning of the school year and young adults are going away to college. As Tom Hanks says in You've Got Mail (1998), "Don't you just love the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies." The fashion conscious are getting out their warm clothes they love to wear. For fans it means football. For movie goers it means the end of the summer blockbusters and the beginning of the release of Oscar contenders.

For me, it represents falling leaves and plenty of work blowing and raking them to the curb. It is also a time when my wife and I visit a local orchard to collect apples and to make homemade pies and applesauce. When our children were younger we would pay a visit to a locally famous pumpkin farmer and let our sons pick out the biggest one they could carry. Autumn has a romanticized, cozy feel to it. From songs like “Autumn in New York” to those Vermont postcards of country fields framed by orange and red foliage, fall seems so inviting indeed. Hollywood has not been numb to this mood and has help to perpetuate the warmth, beauty and traditions of the season.

As I have already mentioned the song I may as well mention the movie, Autumn in New York (2000). This May/September romance weeper was not well received or a box office hit but it does feature the leads, Richard Gere and Wynona Ryder, walking through a leaf covered park as they fall in love. One of the more famous romantic films to take advantage of that setting is When Harry Met Sally (1989). Rob Reiner filmed Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan walking through a warm and romantic yellow and orange leaf covered park.

Falling leaves are to autumn what falling snow is to winter. As Los Angeles does not have the same traditional season changes as the northern parts of the country, they have to film movies taking place in autumn elsewhere or fake it. For the first Halloween movie, the film’s crew bought paper leaves and spread them out for Jamie Lee Curtis and the rest of the cast to walk over. After a scene was shot, the leaves were collected to be reused in another.

Speaking of Halloween, scary movies are another fall tradition. There have long been horror movies but they were not always connected to trick or treating. Halloween (1978) was one of the first to truly take advantage of the holiday. In later installments we see just how Michael Meyers became so disturbed and it takes place on Halloween.

One of the earliest depictions of children actually celebrating Halloween in a movie is in Meet Me in St Louis (1944), where a precocious Margaret O’Brien and her friends pretend to terrorize their neighborhood. They are shown throwing furniture into a large bonfire. Was Halloween really that exciting for children at one time? There has since been many films that show children celebrating Halloween. In Hocus Pocus (1993) three kids must spend Halloween night saving their town from three witches while in Casper (1995) some teens get their Halloween party ruined by some ornery ghosts. Let’s not forget that E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) takes place in the fall and the climactic scene on Halloween night.

Gertie (Drew Marrymore) and E.T. are dressed for trick or treating.

One of my favorite movies with an October setting is Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). It starts with showing a baseball game as the World Series traditionally takes place at the end of October. It then shows us leaves blowing over a cemetery and finally we meet two sweet old ladies who hand out goodies to trick or treaters and dote on their grown nephews, when they are not too busy poisoning guests in their home. It was filmed in black and white but it still catches the feel of October perfectly.

Sure, fall is a return to school for some, extra work around the home for adults and all about costumes and carving pumpkins for the children. For me, it is a great time to watch a movie. Let the leaves blow and the young scurry off to class. Before the game comes on, relax on your couch in front of a movie and forget for the next two hours that you have leaves to rake and storm windows to close.