La Zona Fantasma: The Slowly Disappearing World

Back in August, Maruja Torres sent me an endearing, wistful article (“For JM,” she ventured to call it), though I have not had a chance to acknowledge receiving it until now, since I have been away for the past month. I would hate to have come off as rude, though, because I was very touched by the piece, and most especially by the warmth with which she spoke of her old friend, the writer Terenci Moix, who died not long ago. Moix, she assured her readers, had been the only person in the world with whom she could have a conversation about not only the marvelous Italian cinema of the 1950s and ’60s, but its most obscure actors and actresses as well, incidental and charming as they were. I understand how she feels, because with the death of Guillermo Cabrera Infante several months back, I myself have been reminded that there is one fewer person in the world who will understand who I’m talking about when I mention names like Elisha Cook Jr., Arlene Dahl, Henry Daniell, Dolores Hart, Robert Morley, or Diane Varsi. Cabrera Infante would have instantly been able to connect a face to every one of those names and hundreds more like them, and he could have easily recalled their most significant—though always secondary—performances as well, thanks to an encyclopedic memory and an appreciation of film so genuine that, on more than one occasion, he very openly admitted to me that as a man of letters, he had gleaned much more from the movies than he ever had from books, or even his own life experience. Luckily for me, I still have a few friends and a brother or two who could read this brief, improvised list and not write me off as an eccentric kook or a pretentious jerk, and who would know who I was talking about. We all have our own personal troves of obsessive knowledge, and just as Terenci could recite the entire pantheon of Italian cinema off the top of his head, Cabrera Infante felt a special devotion to classic American movies. If, while in his presence, I were to mention the name of John McGiver, he would jump up and cry “Oh, yes, yes! Now there was a man who was funny without ever trying too hard, as in Man’s Favorite Sport? or Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” And if I were to confess to him that the first woman I ever fell in love with on the big screen was Rhonda Fleming (when I was very, very young), he would not only recite her complete filmography but he would also regale me with the most salacious tidbits from...