In fact, Richard Donner's "Superman" (1978) is surprisingly slow-starting. The scenes of young Clark Kent's boyhood and adolescence might seem pointless if we didn't know, "and someday…that child will grow up to be Superman." The high school football scene, where the future Man of Steel gets bullied and has a cute girl snatched away from him, pay off later in establishing Clark Kent as a shy and, yes, mild-mannered reporter. But they also raise the intriguing question: Who is this being, anyway.

He is clearly not human. His body is not from our world. It's probable he can't reproduce here, or perhaps even have sex with the cute girl -- or Lois Lane. Toward the end, when Lex Luthor's girlfriend kisses him, his response (before flying off to stop an earthquake) is positively Vulcan-like; he wonders why she kissed him before, and not after, freeing him from the Kryptonite.

Christopher Reeve, who must have spent his career in a love-hate relationship with the character, does a more nuanced acting job than he's usually credited for. As Clark Kent he's not merely mild-mannered, but performs with a wink to the audience because we know who he really is. Much of his dialogue is double entendre. Pushing his glasses up on his nose, looking like an undertaker in his blue suit, his hair coated with greasy alderman stuff, he may be 6-foot-4 and have the physique of a god, but Margot Kidder's Lois Lane doesn't take the bait. Perhaps she senses there's something… off… about Clark. She swoons for Superman and literally flies away with him, but then how could anyone think Superman looked like Clark Kent? Superman doesn't wear glasses. Is she seduced more by the superpowers than by the personality?

Probably. As Clark Kent, Reeve deliberately channeled a touch of Cary Grant in "Bringing Up Baby." As Superman, he goes to some pains to have no personality at all. It would be fatal to play Superman as a hero, and Reeve and Donner understand that. He had no personality in the comic books and has none here. He exists as a fact.

Young Clark Kent is saddened when his human foster father (Glenn Ford) has died of a heart attack. His foster mother (Phyllis Thaxter) has been warm to him in their grief. But soon Clark leaves her (walking off straight through a field), and explains that he must be about his father's business. He's apparently unmoved that the widow will be left alone on the farm. Mrs. Kent takes it well: "I knew this day would come."