A life in films

If my childhood were a film, I would be Tim Roth and sing «Do Re Mi» with Claudia Cardinale.
At 6: «Play me the song of death».
The very first film I can really remember was the Sergio Leone classic, and that's how it came about: My father was sitting downstairs in the TV room in his armchair with his back to the door, and I had sneaked downstairs. A group of cowboys were waiting for a train on the television. Nothing happened. I don't know if you can still remember the film, it's brutal and beautiful and not for children, but very little really happens in the first 40 minutes. I thought at the time: aha, so that's television. Of course, I stayed on the doorstep for three hours with cold feet. At some point, a woman appeared (Claudia Cardinale) and the world turned round. Considering that I'd only seen her in a film, it's worrying how often and how tenderly I thought of her in the aftermath: Where are you? With whom? Do you think about me sometimes?

At 8: «The Sound of Music».
The film is about Marie (Julie Andrews), who works as an au pair for the Trapp family and sings with the children. I loved the cheesy story with its pre-yesterday gender image. I sang along loudly in front of the TV: «Doe, a deer, a female deer, ray, a drop of golden sun ...», and wished our au pair looked like Andrews or could at least sing like her. I must have watched the film ten times, always with my sister. At one point she sighed and said: «Stop it, you can't sing.» A part of me has never been happy again since that day.

At the age of 12: «Dirty Dancing».
«That was the summer of 1963. When everybody called me Baby and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came and I thought I'd never find a guy as great as dad ...» I know the entire beginning of this eerily bad teen film by heart. And, to be honest, most of the rest of it too. At some point I didn't want to watch it anymore, I wanted to experience a summer like that myself.

At 14: «Octopussy».
My father and I spoke on the phone almost every day. In our conversations, we stick to a tried and tested triad of topics like ageing people on a banister: airport lounges, frequent flyer tickets and James Bond films. We share a strange weakness for the British secret agent. The first Bond we saw together: «Octopussy».
At 16: «Reservoir Dogs».
At 16, my favourite film was still «Terminator II», although I knew it couldn't be that. Then came Quentin Tarantino's first film. I instinctively suspected that this film was something special. And that I wasn't. My enthusiasm wasn't for the depiction of violence. It was about the dialogue, the music, the look. And about Tim Roth. A loser, an anti-man with crooked teeth and narrow shoulders who dies miserably at the end and yet somehow towers over everyone. If he's cool, I thought, then so am I.

Mikael Krogerus
is an author and journalist. The Finn is the father of a daughter and a son, lives in Biel and writes regularly for the Swiss parents' magazine Fritz+Fränzi and other Swiss media.