CRYING VIOLAS

Movies are known for making people cry; sometimes for the right reasons, as in a sympathetic character dying, or occasionally for the wrong one, as in you kissing twelve bucks goodbye. (The paper kissing happens an awful lot these days.) I remember seeing a particular episode of the ABC news magazine show, 20/20, in the mid 'nineties. One of the show's segments was on the phenomenon of crying; the human ability to drip water from the eye. The story went on to detail some of the serious research being done on this human process. There were a few shots of test subjects sitting alone in a darkened room as clear fluid ran from the eyes as though there was a giant peeled onion held just off camera.

The best part of the show was when, during a shot of one of these crying folk, segment reporter John Stossel did a voice over that went something like this: "How do these researchers get people to cry for the experiments? They show them old movies." And in the program audio at that moment you could hear the movie's musical score; which just happened to feature a solo viola cranking away in the upper register.

Niagara Falls it was... or better still, Victoria Falls.

It was great.