My mum never knew her father’s parents – her grandparents – actually, she never even got to know her father for he died shortly after her birth – complications he’d long carried with him from WWI. Errol Forde Clancy was his name. First generation Australian, a son of Irish immigrants. Speaking of films…my Nan (mum’s mum) would often recount the story to mum (and mum, as a consequence to us kids) of Granddad refusing to stand up in the cinema when the national anthem played (back then of course still God Save The King – as it would have been at that time, during the reign of George V – and film being in its infancy). “He wouldn’t stand up for me!”, he’d say to my Nan, “so why should I do it for him?”
I’m sure he’d have felt differently had Advance Australia Fair been the anthem.
Somehow just one word…one quirk from mum’s Irish ancestry filtered through audibly…and it was her way of saying the word “fill-em”. I never knew anyone else who’d say it like that…unless they were actually Irish.
It’s audible in Jim singing it in Thirty Frames A Second…he actually says it that way too – with his talking voice.
I love the word. Sometimes the sound of a word, its intonation when spoken, can give it as much significance as its actual definition. Such is the case with “film”.
