Theme: Rebellion, Redemption, and Romance
Anniversary Screenings
65th Anniversary of John Ford's Stagecoach (1939)
60th Anniversary of Otto Preminger's Noir Hit Laura (1944)
50th Anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954)
50th Anniversary of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954)
40th Anniversary of Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
40th Anniversary of Pier Paolo Passolini's Gospel According to Saint
Matthew (1964)
Director Tributees
Alfred Hitchcock: Notorious (1946) and Rear Window (1954)
Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940)
Mike Nichols: The Graduate (1967)
Chris Eyre: Smoke Signals (1998)
Sherman Alexie: The Business of Fancydancing (2002)
Religious Studies
Films
Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss(1986)
Pier Paolo Passolini's Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964)
Kon Ichikawa's Burmese Harp (1956)
Richard Brooks' Elmer Gantry (1960)
The Music of: Andre Previn, Leonard Bernstein, Michel Legrand, David
Raksin, Franz Waxman, Paul Simon, Luis Enriquez Bacalov (Kill Bill),
and Akira Ifukube (Godzilla) The Screenwriting of; Ben Hect, Sinclair
Lewis, Buck Henry, and Sherman Alexie And the Actors: Dana Andrews,
Irene Bedard, Ingrid Bergman, Marlon Brando, Tantoo Cardinal,John Carradine,
Charlie Chaplin, Lee J. Cobb, Catherine Deneuve, Paulette Goddard,
Cary Grant, Dustin Hoffman, Shirley Jones, Grace Kelly, Burt Lancaster,
Karl Malden, Patti Page, Vincent Price, Claude Rains, Thelma Ritter,
Eva Marie Saint, Jean Simmons, Jimmy Stewart, Rod Steiger, Gene Tierney,
and John Wayne.
August 31, Cline Library, 7:00pm Oscar Winners Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry [Richard Brooks, 1960,146 minutes] "Burt Lancaster shines as the titular Elmer Gantry, a revival preacher with a questionable past and uncertain motive, in the epic film that won Oscars for Lancaster, Shirley Jones and the script by Richard Brooks. Written with an assured bite, Gantry skewers "that old-time religion" with a dramatic wit rarely seen in this era. Never corny (though its modern-day analogues most surely are), the film was a huge success in its day." --Christopher Null . Members of the Religious Studies Faculty will introduce tonight's film and help lead the discussion following.
September 7, Cline Library, 7:00pm Fully Restored with New Footage! Modern Times [Charlie Chaplin, 1936, 87 minutes] "For all its comedy, Modern Times is a film born of serious concerns. Chaplin had a horror of automation, which he saw as symptomatic of a trend in modern life to turn people into machines, with machine lives and thoughts. At the time this movie was being made, the rich and powerful were organizing, either through totalitarian ideologies or through control of goods and technology. The sweetness of life was becoming lost, and Modern Times was Chaplin's comic response. Modern Times marked the last appearance of Chaplin's Tramp character and the first in which his voice was heard. Near the finish, Chaplin finds an ingenious way to let us hear his voice, without conceding the necessity of spoken dialogue "-- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle. Professor Joseph Boles from Humanities, Arts, and Religion and Professor Paul Helford from the School of Communication will introduce tonight's film and help lead the discussion following.
September 14, Cline Library, 7:00pm
65th Anniversary Screening
Stagecoach[John
Ford, 1939, 96 minutes]
"Stagecoach is a classic Western from
film auteur John Ford. This film - his first sound Western - was a
return to his most-acclaimed film genre after a thirteen year absence
. Ford's reputation was elevated considerably by this film - it was
nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director,
Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and
Best Film Editing, and won two awards for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas
Mitchell) and Best Score (for its compilation of 17 American folk tunes
of the 1880s). This revolutionary, influential film - a story of redemption
- is considered a landmark quintessential film that elevated westerns
from cheaply-made, low-grade, Saturday matinee "B" films
to a serious adult genre - one with greater sophistication, richer
Western archetypes and themes, in-depth and complex characterizations,
and greater profitability and popularity as well. By 1939, the Western
genre had fallen out of favor, but Stagecoach helped reinvent the genre,
providing for its rebirth"-- Tom Dirks, The Greatest Films. Paul
Helford will introduce tonight's film and help lead the discussion
following.
September 21, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Cannes Film Festival Winner
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [Jacques Demy, 1964,87 minutes]
"Clearly
created as homage to the MGM musicals of the Fifties, The Umbrellas
of Cherbourg remains unusually modern with its acceptance that life
ain't like the movies. Writer/director Jaques Demy eliminates all non-singing
dialogue and allows the lyrics to be more a reflection of reality than
anything the average Hollywood product would dare. Catherine Deneuve
is Genevieve, the teenage assistant in her mother's brolly shop in
Cherbourg , who falls for Guy, a garage mechanic. Genevieve's mother
isn't over the moon about this pairing and is only too delighted when
Guy is called up for his military service in Algeria. She sets about
match-making Genevieve with a suave diamond dealer Roland Cassard ,
whom she hopes will solve her financial worries, as well as securing
a respectable life for the family, little realising that Genevieve
is expecting Guy's baby. This may sound like the perfect set-up for
a soap opera, but what makes the film stand out, apart from the fact
that it is a musical, is its reluctance to go all the way with the
melodrama. The most striking part, though, is the extravagant score
by Michel Legrand. The mind boggles as to how you compose for a film
like this, since it's not a case of occasional staged numbers, but
a continuous flow of music, suited to voices of ordinary actors, discussing
subjects such as teenage pregnancy, car repairs and that ultimate dream
of opening one's own petrol station! "--Nicola Osborne. Professors
Joseph Boles and Paul Helford will introduce tonight's film and help
lead the discussion following.
September 28, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Charlie's Hilarious Anti-Fascist
Satire!
The Great Dictator [Charlie Chaplin, 1940, 124 minutes]
"Charlie
Chaplin's first talkie, made over a decade after the introduction of
sound, stands as a brave and controversial piece of filmmaking. Satirising
Adolf Hitler, Chaplin plays a dual role: firstly as Adenoid Hynkel,
the great dictator of the title and despotic ruler of Tomainia; and
secondly - in a stroke of genius - as an amnesiac Jewish barber, who
returns from the trenches of the First World War to discover that his
shop is now part of a ghetto presided over by thuggish storm troopers.
Playing on the coincidental similarity between Chaplin's mustachioed
tramp and Hitler himself, The Great Dictator was frequently criticised
for attempting to turn the Nazis' rise to power into comedy. Indeed,
Chaplin claimed that he would never have tried to burlesque mass genocide
once the truth of the Holocaust became known after the film's release.
Exaggerating Hitler's animated demagogic style at the microphone into
complete absurdity, Chaplin's childish satirical swipes work because
of - and not in spite of - their refusal to accept Nazism as anything
other than an outrageously bad joke. Ridiculing the anti-Semitic policies
of the party (after the Jews, Hynkel promises to wipe out the brunettes;
he, of course, is both) and demoting Hitler to the level of a clown, "The
Great Dictator" exposes the farcical base of fascism, bursting
the swollen bubble of reactionary pomposity with deafening finality.
The result is an incredibly effective satire. No wonder Hitler, Mussolini
and Franco banned it outright." -- Jamie Russell, BBC. Professor
Joseph Boles and Paul Helford will introduce tonight's film and help
lead the discussion following.
October 5, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Gene Tierney and Hollywood's Most
Haunting Score!
Laura [Otto Preminger, 1944, 88 minutes] "Film noir is known for its convoluted plots and arbitrary twists, but even in a genre that gave us The Maltese Falcon, this takes some kind of prize. Laura has a detective who never goes to the station; a suspect who is invited to tag along as other suspects are interrogated; a heroine who is dead for most of the film; a man insanely jealous of a woman even though he never for a moment seems heterosexual; a romantic lead who is a dull-witted Kentucky bumpkin moving in Manhattan penthouse society, and a murder weapon that is returned to its hiding place by the cop, who will ''come by for it in the morning. That Laura continues to weave a spell--and it does--is a tribute to style over sanity. No doubt the famous musical theme by David Raskin has something to do with it: The music lends a haunted, nostalgic, regretful cast to everything it plays under, and it plays under a lot. It is Clifton Webb's performance as Waldo Lydecker that stands at the heart of the film, with Vincent Price, as Laura's fiance Shelby Carpenter, nibbling at the edges like an eager spaniel. Both actors, and Judith Anderson as a neurotic friend, create characters who have no reality except their own, which is good enough for them." --Roger Ebert Professor Joseph Boles from Humanities will introduce tonight's film and help lead the discussion following.
October 12, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
40th Anniversary Screening of Pasolini's
Epic!
Gospel According to St. Matthew
[Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964,
136 minutes]
"This is not a cinematic interpretation of the life
of Christ. It is the life of Christ as mood and as atmosphere, made
with simple storytelling devices. Pasolini does not bother with exposition
explaining the political or social situations during Christ's era.
He does not try to understand the motivations behind the characters.
He simply films the Gospel of Matthew using simple camera effects and
coating the entirety of the screen with a fluid-like movement that
sets this film apart from any other Biblical film ever made. If you
do not know the story of Christ, this is not the film to start with,
because it does not explain the characters or the story in the way
that a narrative would. But if you are familiar with the Gospels, then
Pasolini's film will be a revelation: By converting Christ's story
into moving poetry, it has never seemed as profound, nor Christ's teachings
as beautiful. Rather than search for Pasolini's political agenda in
The Gospel According to St. Matthew, it is best to consider the film
as a poet's response to literature that has deeply moved him. In his
own words, Pasolini admitted to his "tendency to see something
sacred and mythic and epic in everything," and he called his film
a 'maximum of the mythic and epic' (Pasolini on Pasolini, Indiana University
Press, p. 77) "--Danel Griffin, Film as Art. The film's director
was awarded the Golden Lion and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice
Film Festival and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Members of
the Religious Studies Faculty will introduce tonight's film and help
lead the discussion following.
October 19, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
"the most elegant expression
of the master's visual style" --Roger Ebert
Notorious [Alfred Hitchcock, 1946, 101 minutes]
"US intelligence
man Devlin (Cary Grant) is assigned to watch Alicia Huberman (Ingrid
Bergman), a socialite whose father has been convicted of spying for
the Nazis. Alicia seems not to share her father's political leanings.
Devlin soon has a job for her. He wants Alicia to go to South America
and, using her family name, infiltrate Alexander Sebastian's chemicals
operation. Alicia meets Alexander and the two are soon married. But
Alexander becomes suspicious of his wife and, with his domineering
mother, plots her demise. With Notorious Hitchcock brought his spy
thrillers into the nuclear age " --Keith H. Brown, Edinburgh University
Film Society. Professors Joseph Boles and Professor Paul Helford will
introduce tonight's film and help lead the discussion following.
October 26, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Winner of Eight Oscars and Four
Golden Globes!
On the Waterfront [Elia Kazan, 1954, 108 minutes]
"A crusading indictment of corruption and those who, by keeping silent, abet such acts, On the Waterfront impresses through all-round superb performances. In the New York docks, the Union is all-powerful. A handful of crooks, led by the misnamed Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), hold workers and owners alike in a strangulation grip. If you're on the inside, like the brothers Terry (Marlon Brando) and Charley Malloy (Rod Steiger), then life is sweet. Kickbacks, bribes and cushy watches await. This edifice is, however, built upon the principle of divide-and-conquer. ..As the numerous struggles (over morals, power, conscience and love) that impel On the Waterfront play themselves out, its many levels of meaning shift in and out of focus. Sometimes even within the space of a single shot, Elia Kazan's direction ensures that several bases are hit in succession. Reflecting the endlessly creeping sands of peoples' emotions and loyalties, this fluidity gives the film an enclosing sense of reality. Yet beneath this motion a single foundation persists, an argument over the pros and cons of being an informer. Without passing judgement Kazan draws out both sides of the issue, showing how both are right and both are wrong (an impressive trick!) " -- Damian Cannon, Movie Reviews UK. Professor Paul Helford will lead tonight's discussion.
November 2, Cline Library, 7:00 pm Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Thelma Ritter! Rear Window[Alfred Hitchcock, 1954, 112 minutes] "One of the most engrossing and, in its own way, groundbreaking, studies of voyeurism is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. The film is universally regarded as a classic, and a strong cadre of critics, scholars, and fans (myself included) considers this to be the director's best feature. Not only does the movie generate an intensely suspenseful and fascinating situation, but it develops a compelling and memorable character: L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), a top-flight photographer who, as the result of an accident that left him in a leg cast, is confined to his upper-story Manhattan apartment. He amuses himself by gazing out his window at the building opposite, and builds pictures of each of the inhabitants from the glimpses he catches of their lives. The second phase of the movie is devoted to the murderous act. It is presented in such a way that, at least initially, we're not sure whether a crime has been committed or whether Jefferies is overreacting to a series of circumstances and coincidences. Simply put, Rear Window is a great film, perhaps one of the finest ever committed to celluloid. All of the elements are perfect (or nearly so), including the acting, script, camerawork, music (by Franz Waxman), and, of course, direction. The brilliance of the movie is that, in addition to keeping viewers on the edges of their seats, it involves us in the lives of all of the characters"-- James Berardinelli. Professors Paul Helford and Joseph Boles will lead tonight's discussion.
November 9, Cline Library, 7:00 pm "This is Benjamin. He's a little worried about his future." The Graduate[Mike Nichols, 1967, 105 minutes] "It is seldom that we find a film that still holds up today even though 36 years have passed since it was first released.. The Graduate directed by Mike Nichols stars Dustin Hoffman in his first major role as Benjamin Braddock who does not know what to do with his life after graduating college.The Graduate would be nominated for 7 Academy Awards in 1967 and would win for Best Director Mike Nichols who deserved the because of the brilliance of the directing in this movie, all the transitions, shots and scenes are put together very nicely and how the film incorporates the music by Simon and Garfunkel is unforgettable. The Graduate would also be listed as #7 on the American Film Institutes best 100 movies ever made "--Tom Petrov. Professor Paul Helford will lead tonight's discussion.
November 16, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Winner at Sundance and American
Indian Film Festival !
Smoke Signals [Chris Eyre, 1998, 88 minutes]
"No wonder this unpretentious, funny and soulful American Indian
movie was voted the audience favorite at the Sundance Film Festival
this year. It's an experience that, even through moments of tugging
sadness, makes you want to cheer. Well-acted, well- written, with spare,
beautiful imagery, Smoke Signals has it nailed. Adam Beach stars as
Victor Joseph, a young man who has been estranged from his father for
more than a decade. He lives on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation
in Idaho. Ostensibly the middle of nowhere, it's a breathtaking place
touched by the lonesome shouts of amusing, striving humanity. But life
for Victor Joseph is anything but empty. A handsome, strapping guy,
he holds in sullen silence a roiling anger over his dad's desertion
of the family. Victor learns that his father is dead and tries not
to care. But he's goaded by a nerdy friend, Thomas Builds-the-fire
, into traveling to Phoenix, Ariz., to collect the remains. They have
only a small amount of cash, some of it donated by Thomas, but it's
enough to take the bus most of the way.... Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne from
Klamath Falls, Ore., directed the film with heartening sensitivity
toward the plainspoken lyricism of the characters. Beautiful in both
its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film
abounds in easygoing humor. Smoke Signals is, at heart, about the meaning
of family and connections, but it also clicks as an on-the-road adventure
with Victor and Thomas playing off each other."--Peter Stack,
San Francisco Chronicle. Professor Paul Helford will lead tonight's
discussion.
November 23, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Powerful Documentary about Life
in Beneres!
Forest of Bliss [Robert Gardner, 1986, 99 minutes]
"Forest of Bliss is a documentary devoid of English dialogue,
subtitles or voice-over, with no narration or explanation. Nominally
an ethnographic study of funerary practices in Benares, it straddles
ethnography, cinema verite and experimental filmmaking. Exquisitely
photographed without lapsing into sententiousness, precisely constructed
but never stiff, Forest of Bliss captures the mystery and beauty of
its subjects and their lives, without abstracting or sentimentalizing
them. One imagines it as the sort of film that Levi-Strauss (or Bataille)
might have made. In Forest of Bliss, Gardner uses cremation rituals
and funerary preparations as shorthand for the metaphysical ideas they
reflect and realize. His understanding of those metaphysical ideas
as fundamentally dialectical is reflected in the quotation from Yeats'
translation of the Upanishads with which he begins the film: "Everything
in this world is eater or eaten, the seed is food and fire is eater.
Forest of Bliss spans the course of a metaphorical day...Throughout
the film, Gardner uses opposing pairs of simple, iconic elements to
represent the cyclical, dialectical forces which animate the rituals
he documents. The river has a living and a dead side; the purifying
river reflects the sacred fire; bodies are rhymed with the wood measured
for the cremation pyre and a smashed gourd of water with the cracked
skull of a cremated corpse. These pairs, rhymes and oppositions are
not explained, but simply presented as they appear in the rituals and
the world"--Brian Frye, Senses of Cinema. Members of the Religious
Studies Faculty will introduce tonight's film.
November 30, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
Winner at Venice Film Festival!
The
Burmese Harp [Kon Ichikawa, 1956, 116 minutes]
"Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama, Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese
Harp is the lyrical story of a Japanese soldier in Burma at the close
of World War Two. The soldier, Mizushima is sent on a mission by his
Captain to inform another unit of the Japanese surrender and to convince
them to stop fighting. When the unit refuses to give up and is destroyed
by the British Army, only Mizushima remains alive and must come to
terms with his nation's defeat. Pretending to be a Buddhist monk, he
undergoes a religious conversion when he comes face to face with the
staggering amount of death and destruction he sees as he travels across
the region in search of his unit. Determined to honor and bury the
dead, Mizushima is conflicted about remaining in Burma to live a life
of service or returning to Japan to help rebuild his own country. While
the depiction of the soldiers is idealized, The Burmese Harp transcends
its limitations to become a universal testament not only to the madness
that prevailed in Burma, but to the unspeakable horrors of all war "--
Howard Schumann . Members of the Religious Studies Faculty will introduce
tonight's film
December 7, Cline Library, 7:00 pm
"a moving, beautiful film "--Kevin
Smokler
The Business of Fancydancing
[Sherman Alexie, 2002, 103 minutes]
"Filmmaking
is a tough language for artists fluent in another medium to master,
but Fancydancing is a riskier and surer leap than Julian Schnabel's
similarly self-referential Basquiat. Like Schnabel, Alexie shows a
genuine cinematic touch. He preserves the wily, surreal blend of pop
culture, tribal folklore, and slacker irony present in his writing.
He's also able to draw incredibly subtle performances from his entire cast... The reality of reservation life where suicide is a leading cause of death makes the memory of childhood's small pleasures seem like a lost paradise. In a beautiful scene, Alexie cuts between the men reminiscing poetically about this paradise and images that bring it to life without a trace of mawkishness. The scene's poignancy is tempered only by the pleasure of discovering that Alexie is as talented a filmmaker as he is a writer"-Steven Boone , TimeOut New York. Professor Jeff Berglund will introduce tonight's film. ********************************************************
Tuesday Nights
Cline Library Assembly Hall 7:00PM
Free and Open to
the Public.
Call 928-523-9515 for information on films, parking regulations and
for copies of this brochure.
Thanks to: The College of Arts and Letters, the School of Communication,
and the Office of the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies
....and Cynthia Childrey, Claudia Bakula, Kathleen Smalldon, Beth Schuck,
Joyce Read, Bahe Katenay, Stephanie Keys, Delia Munoz, Charleene Fell
and Ruth Roazen and the rest of the Cline Library Staff. Special thanks
to Paul Helford and Moly Munger.
Special thanks to Appliance Service Today
Special thanks to Rebecca Wright and the Humanities, Arts, and Religion
staff.