"Pale Movie" is a song by British pop group Saint Etienne from the album Tiger Bay. It was released as a single in February 1994, and reached #28 in the UK Singles Charts. It also became a hit in other countries, reaching number 1 in Lebanon.
In common with the folk music theme of the Tiger Bay album, "Pale Movie" combines a Eurodance beat with Spanish folk-style guitars. The lyrics use surreal imagery to describe a man's love for a mysterious woman. Although the title is not sung, some of the words refer to cinema: "In the bed where they make love / She's in a film on the sheets. / He shows dreams like a movie, / She's the softness of cinema seats." Other lines are stranger: "her skin as white as the milk, / Just like a Sherpa Tenzing / under a Manila silk."
In an interview with Melody Maker magazine, keyboard player Pete Wiggs said that he considers the song "potentially brilliant" but "a bit of a failure"; he feels that the band "stuck too rigidly to our folk idea". He also adds that they only chose Spanish guitar so that they could go to Spain for the video (the video for the song features the band riding around the countryside of Nerja, Spain on scooters).
The cover art for the single features photographs of swimming tigers, presumably in reference to the album title.
Famous quotes containing the words pale and/or movie:
“I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never been worn at all, but was brand-new, and adequate to the occasion. I let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a fellow creature. I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to know that it was so cheap. A scientific explanation, as it is called, would have been altogether out of place there. That is for pale daylight.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I stopped reading movie magazines in the beauty parlor a couple of years ago because I could not accommodate any more information about something called the Lennon Sisters.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)