When we met Ira Sachs in the IFI back in September while he was here promoting his latest film Passages, he made reference to films he was showing his kids and how he wanted to educate them across all genres. He showed us his extensive list which we felt any cinephile parent may wish to share with their own children.
As we approach Christmas, the season when parents spend most time watching movies with their children, we think it is apt to share his thoughts and recommendations. Hopefully you will get to share the wonder, marvel and perplexity. One foot note is that these are suggestions, you may wish to check in advance whether you feel the material is age appropriate for your own children and if you have the answers to their questions.
“My husband Boris and I raise our two kids, Viva and Felix, with their moms, Kirsten and Tabitha, who live in the apartment next door to us. Since our kids were toddlers, we’ve kept them on an adventurous and varied movie diet, and over that time, I’ve learned a few things about children and cinema that I think other parents, or other aunts, uncles, or people who like to spend time with kids — and like the movies — might gain from. On all other fronts, I don’t know if I have any valuable lessons to share — I make as many mistakes as the next dad — but on the path of raising cinema-loving kids, I think I’ve done many things right. Here are a few of the principles and patterns I hold to dearly.
At age two or three, begin with Buster Keaton and Looney Tunes. I don’t mean one or two Bugs Bunny cartoons, I mean the boxed set, and play as many of them as often, and repetitively, as possible. Chuck Jones is funnier than anyone, and the music is some of the best ever used in film. How better to introduce them to Yip Harburg, Schumann, Wagner and Irving Berlin, and much more fun for everyone than dragging everyone to the Philharmonic.
From four to eight, open your heart to live-action Disney movies from the 50s and 60s. You won’t expect them to be as good as they are: Swiss Family Robinson, Flipper, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Pollyanna, Old Yeller. Embrace the kids movies of the past (beautifully shot, terribly dramatic).
Watch anything and everything available in Technicolor: Leave Her to Heaven, National Velvet, Niagara, The Greatest Show on Earth (what an ending).
Don’t avoid talking about the racism, which is everywhere. Before 1970, it’s hard to find any American film where a Black person is allowed to say “no,” — Black people function in those movies purely to agree and to serve. It’s not better for Asian, Native American, and Latin characters in much of the history of cinema. Actively seek out movies that stand in contrast: The Learning Tree, Brooklyn, Akeelah and the Bee, Queen of Katwe. And older films like Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. If any movie should be considered a kids movie, in my book it would be Do the Right Thing.
When you can, and better on the screen, introduce the world of cinema outside of the US: Panther Panchali, Where is the Friends House, Donkey Skin, The White Balloon, I was born, but.
By nine, you’re really ready to introduce genre films: Westerns, Comedies, Noir and suspense films. We watched every Hitchcock except Psycho and Frenzy with our kids during the pandemic — half of which I’ve never seen before.
My kids are 11, and up until now, I’ve still found screwball comedy and Jacques Tati hard for my kids. Mon Once would be preferred to Playtime or Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. And Leisen’s Midnight is a better choice than The Front Page.
My kids still don’t like Preston Sturges.
Don’t be sad when the kids don’t like your favorite movies.
Don’t tell your kids in advance of their first viewing of Wizard of Oz that it turns to color. They will be as surprised as the audience was back in 1939 and gasp with the same astonishment.
Throw in some 70s curveballs: Bad News Bears, Car Wash, Thank God It’s Friday.
Introduce horror slowly and a little more carefully. Kids want to be excited, not scared. We’re working our way up to Psycho, by way of The Incredible Shrinking Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Carnival of Souls, and anything by Jacques Tourneur.
Disaster Movies can be fun: Poseidon Adventure, Avalanche!, Earthquake
Here’s a short list of almost definite winners, for the kids and the parents. So maybe a good place to start: Annie, The Invisible Man, To Be or Not to Be, I was a fugitive on a chain gang, Heidi (Alan Dwan),
Vertigo stunned us all.
Watch the movies all the way through — adults and children should share in a commitment not to give up halfway. Once you open that door, it will be taken. Being bored and restless is for all of us central to our experience of the movies, and can be endured.
Documentaries can be fun, particularly if they involve competition, or overcoming obstacles on the road to triumph: Spellbound, OT: Our Town, Chef Flynn.
This brings me to an important tenet: don’t show your kids your favorite films. Don’t bring them down nostalgia lane. Instead, discover new things together, like Mae West, or the Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart cycle of Westerns, or pre-code Horror films. From the start, I realized that I learned, and appreciated, as much from these screenings as my kid did. Don’t think of yourself as a know-it-all, but instead as someone eager to discover the new.
Make rituals for your family — movie nights on Thursday, or going to the cinema on Sunday mornings, like church.
Don’t make a fuss if a kid doesn’t like a movie. It’s ok, and move on to the next.
When you’re trying to decide what films to show your kids, ask yourself this question, “What would Marty Scorsese have watched when he was growing up?”
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Age 3
Paddington
The Freshman (Harold Lloyd)
Hold That Ghost
On the Town
A Hard Day’s Night
Age 4
The Good Dinosaur
Only Yesterday (studio ghibili)
City Lights
Forbidden Planet
Seven Chances
The Little Prince
National Velvet
Zootopia
Hans Christian Anderson
Superman
Superman 2
Annie
The Navigator
Singing in the Rain
Laurel & Hardy (Two Tars)
Chaplin (The Immigrant)
Harold Lloyd (Get Out & Get Under)
Safety Last
Kiki’s delivery service
Mulan
Tarzan
Cinderella
Tangled
101 Dalmatians
Little Mermaid
Sleeping Beauty
Ratatouille
Little Shop of Horrors
Fantastic Mr Fox
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
The Wizard of Oz
Kubo and the Two Strings
Willy W. and the Chocolate Factory
Meet Me in St Louis
Beauty and the Beast
The Thief and the Cobbler
Queen of Katwe
Trolls
Labyrinth
Hugo
Age 5
Moana
The Invisible Man
Monster Truck
Jailhouse Rock
Sing
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man
Lassie Comes Home
Lego Batman Movie
Lili
A Hard Days Night
The Nutty Professor
Smurfs Movie
Grandma’s Boy
Little Women
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Captain Underpants
It’s a Gift
Bad News Bears
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Spider-Man Homecoming
Despicable Me 3
Young Frankenstein
The Red Pony
Lego Ninjago Movie
3 Keaton Shorts
Prince and the Pauper
Paper Moon
The Man on the Flying Trapeze
Mothra
Coco
My Fair Lady
Wonder
Ponyo (Felix)
It’s a Wonderful Life
Edward Scissorhand
Jumanji
Ferdinand
The Gold Rush
Age 6
Dumbo
Mary and the Witches Flower
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
Bringing Up Baby
Girl Shy
Black Panther
Zoo
Horus Prince of the Sun
Peter Pan
The White Balloon
Godzilla vs. King Kong
Modern Times
The King and the Mockingbird
Monkey Business
Mamma Mia 2
Hotel Transylvania 2
The Meg
The Spy Who Dumped Me
overboard
Jurassic Park part 6
Son of Frankenstein
Ponyo
The Grinch
Small Foot
Goosebumps 2
Chef Flynn
West Side story
Ralph Breaks the internet
Amazing Grace
The Circus
Mary Poppins Returns
Age 7
Stars in My Crown
Grave of the Fireflies
The Learning Tree
What’s Up Doc
Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau)
The Muppet Movie
Night of the Hunter
River of No Return
Night of the Demon
Laura
Shazam
Hans Christian Anderson
Clue
Harvey
Daffy Duck & Other shorts
Crooklyn
Toy Story 4
The General
Double Indemnity
Donkey Skin
The Lion King
The Right Stuff
El Bosque Animado
Sherlock Jr
Sabotage
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Laurel & Hardy Shorts
City Lights
His Girl Friday
A Little Princess
Breaking Away
Hair
King Kong
Frankie
Mary Poppins
American Graffiti
Miracle on 34th Street
To Kill a Mockingbird
The King and I
The Aristocats
Age 8 and On:
Battling Butler
Some Like It Hot
Sounder
Little Fugitive
Suspicion
Freaky Friday
The Parent Trap
The World of Henry Orient
Tootsie
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Death Becomes Her
The Awful Truth
The Swiss Family Robinson
Finian’s Rainbow
The Philadelphia Story
Crip Camp
Fort Apache
The Trouble with Angels
Dames
Track of the Cat
Journey to the Beginning of Time
Old Yeller
Savage Sam
Make Way for Tomorrow
Dr. Doolittle
Our Hospitality
Night and the City
Annie
The Railway Children
ET: the Extra Terrestrial
Holes
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Bend It Like Beckham
Cuidado con el amor
Shadow of a Doubt
The General
Sweet Smell of Success
The Innocents
Cat People
The Saphead
Camp
The Gangs All Here
Some Like It Hot
West Side Story
Airplane
Dracula (Spanish-version)
A Night in Casablanca
Duck Soup
Thank God It’s Friday
Auntie Mame
National Velvet
The Big Store
Woman on the Verge of a….
Do the Right Thing
Akeelah and the Bee
Niagara
Stormy Weather
My Darling Clementine
Spellbound (doc)
Cabin in the Sky
Shop Around the Corner
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
How Green is My Valley
Lassie Come Home
To Catch a Thief
Car Wash
42nd Street
Gold Diggers of 1933
Gold Diggers of 1937
Footlight Parade
The Courage of Lassie
College (Buster Keaton)
The Miracle Worker
Flipper
The Trouble with Harry
Oliver!
Cabaret
Go West
The Tall T
At the Circus
Pardon Us
The Man Who Knew Too Much
My Octopus Teacher
My Bodyguard
Hail the Conquering Hero
Lady in the Lake
Mame
The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)
The Fashions of 1934
Miracle on 34th St
Holiday Inn
White Christmas
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Thin Man
The Lady Vanishes
The 39 Steps
Monsieur Hulot Holiday
To Be or Not to Be
Little Men
The Canterville Ghost
Young and Innocent
Sabotage
Downhill
Jamaica Inn
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
The Ox Bow Incident
Bell, Book and Candle
Vertigo
The Lodger
The Desperate Hours
Sounder
Gosford Park
Murder!
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Blackmail
White Heat
My Little Chickadee
She Done Him Wrong
Bad Day at Black Rock
Oklahoma
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Hester Street
The Yearling
Foreign Correspondent
On Dangerous Ground
Berlin Express
The Hitch-Hiker
D.O.A.
I Walked with a Zombie
Caught
Seven Men from Now
Rope
Lifeboat
Cape Fear
Spellbound (1945)
Early Living
Midnight
Murder at the Vanities
Death Takes a Holiday
Anne of the Indies
The Ghost Went West
The Roaring Twenties
Stage Fright
Remember the Night
High Anxiety
The Magic Box
Darling, How Could You?
Scarface
I Was a Fugitive on a Chain Gang
The More the Merrier
Winchester 73
The Naked Spur
The Public Enemy
Clash by Night
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Ride Lonesome
No Man for Her Own
Hands Across the Table
True Confession
In This Our Life
Park Row
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Dance, Girls, Dance
Road House
Topaz
Yours Mine and Ours
Five Fingers
The Boiling Point
Asphalt Jungle
Death on the Nile
Ace in the Hole
Follow the Fleet
Petite Maman
Our Song
Phantom Lady
Ministry of Fear
Hit the Road
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)
He Ran All the Way (John Berry)
Man of the West (Anthony Mann)
Heidi (Allan Dwan)
Black Widow (Nunnaly Johnson)
We Are the Best! (Moodysson)
Accused of Murder
The Mummy
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Treasure Island
Poseidon Adventure
Avalanche!
The Invisible Man
The Birds
Call Northside 777 (Hathaway)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Thieves Highway
The Prowler (Joseph Losey)
North by Northwest
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Territory
Me and My Gal
Carnival of Souls
Force of Evil
Piranha
The Plot Against Harry
The Marines Who Didn’t Return
Sadie McKee, Clarence Brown
The Wild Boys of the Road (William Wellman)
Piranha 2 – The Spawning
A Haunting in Venice
Murder in the Rue Morgue
Words: Ira Sachs
Photos: Donal Talbot
