All that meaning, fire and music...

My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theatre. In it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theatre.

...Well, no, not quite. My name is Caitlin. My native habitat is on my living room couch in front of a TV that's perpetually tuned to Turner Classic Movies. I'm not a film major, nor an aspiring actor. I have no connection to classic films beyond an almost obsessive enjoyment of them. I am essential to the film industry only insofar as an audience in general is essential.

I am a junior at Rowan University, and this blog is part of a class project. I'm a Writing Arts major with a French minor, an Honors concentration, and I'm looking into adding a Creative Writing concentration -- none of that has anything to do with classic movies, but I hope that it demonstrates my passion for learning about the things that interest me.

I'm relatively new to the world of classic cinema. Last fall, as part of my Honors concentration, I took a Film History course that introduced me to everything from the very first moving images recorded on film to the great screwball comedies of the 1930's. That class taught me to appreciate the films of my grandparents' and even great-grandparents' generation, and since then I've been watching every classic I can find. My favorite, if you haven't guessed by now, is Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950), but I've enjoyed a wide variety of movies and hope to see many more; anything older than my parents is fair game.

In addition to watching movies, I'd like to really study them as the art form that they are. In this blog, I'll be sharing any information I kind find about what went into making these films, and why they've stood the test of time.