Weekend Watch: Watching the watchers in 'Cinemania'

Today, it is possible to watch more than half of the movies ever made with the touch of a button. The 2002 documentary "Cinemania" takes us back to a time when being a dedicated cineaste required significantly more effort.

None of the five New Yorkers profiled here are married or work (four are on disability and one is independently wealthy), which means they can spend their days in one small repertory theater after another, meticulously cross-referencing screening times and public transit routes to cram in as many films as possible.

These movies aren't always easy to appreciate.

This obsessive moviegoing seems like a kind of mental hoarding; indeed, each of the subjects has a cluttered home to match. Roberta, the sole female of the bunch, lives in an apartment crammed with memorabilia of dubious value, including promotional plastic cups, and was banned from one theater for accosting an employee who ripped her ticket stub.

And yet they're all charmingly knowledgeable and intelligent. “A commitment to cinema means one must have a technically deviant lifestyle,” says 30-something trust-funder Jack in a particularly self-aware moment. Their company is fascinating for 80 minutes or so. Longer than that, and you might start pondering your own compulsive enthusiasms.

MGM

The characters of the 1952 masterpiece "Singin' in the Rain" have an especially urgent "commitment to cinema" — it's how they put food on the table. The movie may look so ancient to us, it's easy to forget it was itself a period piece. Set in 1927, it stars Gene Kelly as a silent film star struggling to make the transition to "talkies."

The midcentury studio musical is one of the pinnacles of American moviemaking. The first thing a viewer weaned on CGI spectacle will notice is the sheer physical talent on display: Vaudeville veterans like Kelly and Judy Garland did not require camera trickery or audio enhancement to wow audiences with their singing and dancing. Elaborate and beautifully executed set pieces become all the more impressive when you consider that they had to be pulled off entirely with practical effects.

These movies aren't always easy to appreciate; their rigid conventions and stylized emotion can seem corny and shallow to the uninitiated. And yet, they convey depths of feeling to rival any of the "grittier" films that supplanted them by the end of the ‘60s.

"Singin' in the Rain," for example, is at once a sophisticated romantic comedy, a sharp showbiz satire, and a crowd-pleasing display of song and dance. Nuanced meditation on the relationship between mass entertainment and art. It also provides a dazzling showcase for the charms of Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor, which in itself is worth the price of admission.