I took another look at five old films recently, films I hadn't seen since they first came out. And I'm sorry I did.

I had seen them for the first time at the Mayfair Theatre, an art-deco house in Miami, Florida, where I grew up (after being transplanted from New York City). And perhaps my once fond memories of the films I'm going to discuss are connected to the place where I first saw them – predictably, a place (1605 Biscayne Boulevard) where only a large mall, the Omni, now stands. The Mayfair was Miami's premiere art-house cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, showing lots of foreign films but also a fair sampling of the so-called New American Cinema. I used to drive there at night, alone, in my Austin-Healey as often as I could during my senior year of high school, as well as during summers and holidays away from college. Much to my parents' dismay, I liked seeing movies alone, and I liked driving my sports car downtown (from suburban, at the time even rural, Hialeah) to the theater where I'd see them.

I especially loved those tense moments just before the movie began, the sense of pure promise and incipience they held. Blissfully holding on to the bottom of my seat or the rails of my chair, I would play a little game with time, a game that had several variants, all of them designed to heighten the mystery of beginnings.