I dunno about that. I watched it three times in twenty years, and I never got it.
Oh, yeah, I’d almost forgot about the time I was 15, hitch-hiking across Canada, and waited outside the theatre asking for spare change in order to see A Clockwork Orange. The only comment the cashier made when I finally had enough for a ticket was, “I was wondering what you were going to do with the money.”
*Gone with the Wind. *My parents took me, age 9. I slept through most of it.
My parents took the kids along to see Gandhi when I was 8. That was the first time I can remember seeing a serious, non-kids movie.
When I was a kid, they showed movies for a dollar or maybe fifty cents in the elementary school gymnasium on summer afternoon to give moms a break, I guess. They were almost always Disney or other similar fare of the “Herbie” variety. I went sometimes, but usually took a book.
One day I guess somebody brilliant ordered something completely different. The movie was “Animal Crackers.” I laughed like a maniac while the other kids just stared. They didn’t get it. I probably was about 8.
Dad took me, and me alone (no brother, sister or mom), to the theater to see Animal House. I felt pretty special that he had singled me out to see what I thought was going to be a wildlife documentary.
My dad took me and my younger sibs to see Billy Jack, but I didn’t feel very adult with my younger sibs putting their hands over their eyes most of the movie, and me doing same during the rape scene.
I guess the first movie experience that felt like I was adult enough was seeing Heaven Can Wait, a romantic comedy, with my dad.
The first non-kid movie I recall seeing was *Cat Ballou *at a drive-in. Mom and Dad bundled the 4 of us kids in the back of the station wagon (seat down, blankets spread out - we ranged from 4 to 11, me being the oldest.) I’m sure there was something more child-appropriate for the first feature and they expected us to crash.
I didn’t understand much of the movie, but I recall laughing at Lee Marvin singing Happy Birthday at the wake, and I remember being scared when the guy with the silver nose suddenly appeared!! :eek:
I saw the movie again years later and realized a *lot *went over my head. As for the first movie where I didn’t feel like a kid in an adult movie, I have no idea…
The first movie I saw by myself was Star Wars. The first movie I remember seeing that dealt with adult subjects was The Naked Civil Servant. To this day I’ll never understand why I watched more than five minutes of it. I must have really been bored that day.
Hawaii (1966). I was 12. There was brief nudity. I don’t recall much else.
Shane (1953) when I was about to turn 12. I had seen many B Westerns at Saturday matinees and had become used to that presentation of Old West values and situations. And I’m not sure whether it was that movie or High Noon (1952) that I saw first. Yes, High Noon is a year older but I didn’t see it for a while – and at a drive-in, so it could be later.
The shock value of seeing blood and the hero being made to look silly was what appealed to me then – and now – as a departure from formula Westerns. It was only later that I saw things like
Red River (1948)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
and it’s possible (don’t remember for sure) that I saw them on TV!
The candidates for first non-Western I have any decent memory of seeing would be:
Must be a Sidney Poitier thing, because mine was Lilies of the Field in 1963. I was nine and my mom took me, I think my dad was out of town on business. I remember I liked it a lot.
As far as movies shown in a theater, my first was The Poseidon Adventure. Not terribly heavy I know, but I don’t think it was meant as family entertainment; or at least not for six year olds. As for stuff on tv, I couldn’t say. My parents were big on watching tv and I don’t recall anything ever being off limits to me as long as it was on before my bedtime.
Well, my Dad was a cerebral fellow. and when he took me to 2001 back when I was 7 years old, I felt sort of proud. My Dad was telling me, in effect, that I was smart enough to understand a highfalutin’, intellectual movie.
When I DIDN’T get any of it, I felt stupid, and imagined I’d let him down.
My experience was similar, but it was The Betsy, with Katharine Ross stepping down into a pool. I bought a ticket for another movie - I don’t remember which - and just popped into the wrong theater. I felt like a real secret agent. 
My parents took me with them to go see all their grown up movies. I didn’t care what we were watching so long as I got my buttered pop corn and soda.
But I guess the first movie that I went to see that I felt like I was being a grown up (or intellectual) was The Breakfast Club when I was 15. Sure it’s about a bunch of angsty teenagers. But it wasn’t no Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It was a serious movie that took a serious look at some of the problems teenagers face at that age.
And then there’s St Elmo’s Fire…
Jory in 1973. It wasn’t the fist time I had gone to the movies without an adult, but it was the first movie aimed at adults that I went to alone. Linda Purl’s brief nude scene made me feel funny down there.
I was 13: “Summer of 1942”