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The awesome little aqua-colored exploration vehicle above is vintage from when Matchbox was made in England by Lesney. This little guy once came in an actual box, which will always be way cooler to me than blister packaging.
Recently I have been watching a lot of old movies, and I've been reflecting on cinema images that once looked cool, but like Matchbox boxes, have gone away.
Here are my top picks.
Dark rooms. The anticipation of what would be revealed in the developer tray is a coolness that is irreplaceable. Even more, though, was the look of the darkroom, with its moody red lighting often creating a melancholy loneliness. Digital photography can lead to great intrigue in movies, but not really coolness. Coolness takes time, and dim lighting doesn't hurt, either.
Smoking. I'm against smoking. That said, on screen it looked cool, particularly in black and white, and never smelled bad -- in other words, it was unconnected to the actual nastiness of the habit. I especially miss the style imparted when a gentleman lit a lady's cigarette, or, in some cases, visa versa. I also miss the emotions, from coyness to disdain, communicated in the way a cigarette case clicked open and shut. Those omnipresent images rightfully disappeared for the betterment of society, but even the Pink Panther and Audrey Hepburn smoked back then, and they both looked good doing it.
Hats. I miss the images of most hats, especially fedoras, although I doubt I will ever wistfully yearn for images of baseball caps turned backwards.
Typewriters. Writing always looked cooler when done on a typewriter, but a lot of that coolness was the sound. Typewriters would not have seemed so cool if they had gone chirp chirp chirp instead of click click click. Speaking of sound, I also miss that choppy, metallic robot voice that robots were once supposed to use. Now that machines can mimic real voices, how will kids pretend to be a robot?
Answering machines. A newer lost image of coolness, technology has largely rendered answering machines obsolete, so you don't get the same drama of coming home to a flashing red message button hinting doom, or a not-flashing red button, hinting heartbreak.
Phone booths. Like cigarette cases, the metallic click of a coin into a pay phone could take on desperation, sorrow, or emotional turnaround. Pay phones still exist, but are few and far between with nowhere near enough booths to allow a changing area for superheros or a place to hide when The Birds attack. For all their usefulness, cell phones may have single-handedly done the most damage to motion picture cool, although perhaps years from now when people communicate with implanted chips in their skulls someone will be reminiscing about how cool Jason Bourne looked flipping open a cell phone.
Analog dials. Whether on a radio, dashboard, or futuristic console, a digital light display will never have that same coolness, and, in some sci-fi movie instances, the same silliness.
These images are about a fantasy cool -- I never once actually missed typing on a typewriter (and have even more emphatically not missed correction fluid) or eating in a smoke-filled restaurant anymore than I have ever felt sad that the world was full of colors instead of only shades of black, white and gray.
Even so, watch Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past and tell me you can top that for cool.
Cool photo courtesy of Phil Pekarcik.
