Cinema is growing old

When you see someone in a painting from the previous centuries, you do not think about whether they are dead or alive, they have a timelessness to them that freeze them in time. Nevertheless they are. I usually watch contemporary movies, movies for the oldest from the 80's. Recently, I came to discover more classics, even going to the black and white ones. You see the life of characters in motion, with their youth, and in a way, it only looks like a period piece, played by comtemporary actors. Well, perhaps they speak a bit differently, perhaps the style is sometimes odd, the lighting artificial, the technology poor. But still, they remain very much alive.
Then there are those actors we all know died, in tragic incidents, or getting older, they are separated from their role, and become these persons, with lives of their own, and they happened to die, just like everyone else.
Lately, I have been watching intensively the whole retrospective of the movies staring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. I think I've already watched five of them. They were in chronological order, so I saw them evolve, both in their acting, but also how the cinema industry was evolving as well. And then it stroke me. They are growing up, growing older, and eventually, all these people in the movie died, they all did, it was too long ago. But they are so alive, still, almost like the painting from the previous centuries. But this is a first, a document that is as alive as you and me, with people speaking, moving, laughing... Cinema is growing old, the first generation is already dead, so is the second one. We are creating those memories, documents of our past which seems more and more palpable, as if we could finally travel in time. It is beautiful, and sad at the same time. They gave their emotions, we feel attached very much to them, as if they were alive, close enough, growing old, but slowly, reachable. I would have loved to meet Katharine Hepburn, she looks like she was a wonderful lady, very creative, very devoted to cinema, with ideas that belong so well to our present time, almost as if we all were born too late, she was early, but she belongs here, now.
But all this is a fading image in a screen, it is the magic of cinema, the feeling for an hour or so that you are traveling, sharing, loving new people in a very intimate way, all characters of a bigger and longer story, humanity.