Watching old movies is always a very melancholy experience for me for this reason. To think that everyone in the film you are watching is dead, when they seem s

Watching old movies is always a very melancholy experience for me for this reason. To think that everyone in the film you are watching is dead, when they seem so alive before your eyes. (Interesting thing I read once about the Hanna-Barbera cartoons with the canned laugh track - it was using some old recording that had been knocking around since the 20s. So if you watch them now, the whole action is ringing with the laughter of the long dead. Now how's that for a macabre thought!)