In the film The Magic Box, which was made in England in 1950, the
great English actor Robert Donat plays William Friese-Greene—one of the
people who invented movies. The Magic Box was packed with guest
stars. It was made for an event called the Festival of Britain. You had
about fifty or sixty of the biggest actors in England at the time, all
doing for the most part little cameos, including the man who played the
policeman—that was Sir Laurence Olivier.I saw this picture for the first time with my father. I was eight years old. I’ve never really gotten over the impact that it had. I believe this is what ignited in me the wonder of cinema, and the obsession—with watching movies, making them, inventing them.
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