This week I watched Electric Dreams for the first time since its native eighties. It is by no means a milestone for the seventh art, but it remains on my most recent favourites list, now more than ever. Watching it now made me realise how much this film has influenced me.

The story is about an architect, Miles, who buys a computer to help him stay organised. The computer somehow develops “artificial intelligence” after he pours champagne all over it (or after the computer “overloads” after he gets it to connect to his firm’s mainframe; can’t go wrong with redundant plot devices). The conflict arises when both architect and computer fall in love with the beautiful cellist next door, Madeline. I will not reveal the dramatic resolution.

When I watched the film in 1984 or 1985 (while my age was in single digits), it was exciting to me on two counts: it had computers, and it had electronic music. By that time I was well into both, with my Oric Atmos and my Bontempi. But now I can draw several parallelisms between the film and my subsequent course.

For one, I’m an architect. Not only that, but in some scenes of the film the computer is busy optimising Miles’s design for an anti-seismic brick using stochastic techniques similar to those used in my research work. There are some similarities in terms of my interests in electronic music as well. The computer is shown composing music for Madeline; the first research proposal for my PhD involved the development of algorithmic methods for the translation between music and architecture. As part of that, a computer program would “compose” music using a 3D model as input.

Furthermore, it is a poorly hidden fact that have a female cellist fetish. It is clear to me that the Coke-commercial-like romantic depiction of Madeline getting busy with her instrument between her thighs was an early influence.

But the absolute shocker for me was how much Madeline, played by Virginia Madsen, looked like the first girl I fell completely head over heels for years later, when I was 14. I have been idly theorising that early film-watching defined norms of female beauty for me, but after this I’m pretty certain that’s the case. (Other actresses who affected me similarly were Mia Sara in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Yvonne Elliman in Jesus Christ Superstar who was partly responsible for the, uhm, you know, the asian thing.)

If you missed Electric Dreams in the eighties you can watch the trailer. I’m off to London tomorrow!