Review of For the First Time

For the First Time is a very beautiful movie worthy of a Lanza. We saw it when we were beginning to see the difference between the birds and the bees.¨For the first time, for the first time, I'm in love...¨ After that, all of us pre-teeners were trying to do a Lanza. Ít is extremely hard to find this kind of movie nowadays. The hundreds of million dollars needed to make a movie like this exceeds all our expectations, and the results often leave us frustrated, disgusted and disappointed. Maybe I'm down with Norman Desmond Syndrome, but I prefer the movies of the yesteryear, like this one. It is said that before one kicks the bucket, even if one is sick, one looks good. Eeriely, this is so with Mario Lanza. He gives his all here, and unsurprisingly so. After the decade of the fifties, gone forever is the Golden age of Hollywood when art is done for art's sake. Then came the Beatniks and the Hippies and the GenXers. Suddenly we are left with performers who challenge the lucidity of Ms. Anita Bryant and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Our so-called movie moguls nowadays sadly lack the will to tap the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, José Carreras or Andreas Bocelli. O Sole Mio seems to belong to another dimension. Ubinam gentium sumus?