Dave Fleischer's Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)

Essay not available at this time.

Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930)

The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, is an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat. It stars the iconic Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola, a cabaret singer, and Emil Jannings, as Immanuel Rath, a teacher at a boy’s Gymnasium.

This film is known for marking the start of the historical Dietrich-Sternberg collaboration, and also being one of the first German films to employ sound. But, this film provides more than just these two milestones.

Lola and Rath are two drastically different characters. Rath embodies austerity while Lola epitomizes liberation. The narration follows the authoritative Rath down his path of self-destruction. The film begins with Rath catching his students looking at risqué photos of Lola Lola, the headliner at the local cabaret The Blue Angel. Rath then goes to the club, in attempt to stop them in the act. Much to his demise, there he meets Lola, the infatuation begins, and his integrity crumbles.

Many look at this film as an allegory for the state of Germany before the first World War – Rath symbolizing Germany’s peremptory disposition and Lola representing the countering force. Rath’s downfall, then, would represent Germany’s ruin. Whether or not this was Sternberg’s intention, The Blue Angel captures the sentiment of the time and the downtroddeness that defeat yields.

Cinematically the dark shadows render a sinister effect, and the characters always seem at the edge of danger. Lola personifies this mood. She embodies a dark exoticism not seen in prior films, an unbridled sexuality not present prior in the cinematic world. Her sexuality, however, is not what makes Lola a compelling character; it is her inaccessibility. She possesses both masculine and feminine traits, passivity and muscle, and her fluctuation between these traits give her power and depth. This energy inspired the femme fatales of the later film noir movement.

Looming danger, sexuality, cultural revival, and the emancipation of women were prevalent in the Weimar Republic, and this film provides a window into the condition of the German state.

This film’s significance, however, does not solely lie in its historical context. It is also an examination of the human psyche. Stemberg uses the relationship between Rath and Lola, and their fluctuating dependence on themselves and society, to question man’s self-reliance. Ultimately he questions whether or not satisfaction can be derived from others, and from the self.

Although this film possesses many cinematographic conventions of the time it still holds poignancy. Stemberg’s use of imagery, jest, and character interplay provide a palpable gateway to the past and a connection to the current cinema

Ella Coon
Film Club Co-President

Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Essay unavailable at this time.

Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

Your Humble Commentator wants to talk about something fairly peripheral to tonight’s film, but the gist will be that you want to watch one of Sylvain Chomet’s films in a particular way, and it may be slightly different from how you expect to be watching The Triplets of Belleville. Let’s begin with a little story.

This summer I took daughter #3 to see Disney’s Tangled at the Riverview Theater. A impressive show, Tangled provides the usual well-drawn storybook characters – repressed but plucky heroine, roguish but vulnerable hero, cute animal sidekick (a chameleon), exasperated animal sidekick (Flynn’s horse), and a witchy villain. And the plot moves along with deftly handled comic and tragic turns. The laughs come easily and so do tears. Watching Tangled, one is reminded why Disney has been the best at providing animated features since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937; honorary Oscar for innovation in 1939). I walked out of the theater thinking, “it’s hard to make an animated feature more polished than that.”

And I drove home, dropped off daughter #3 and picked up daughter #1, and drove back to the Riverview to see Sylvain Chomet’s most recent animated feature, The Illusionist (2010). In it, a down-on-his-luck vaudeville prestidigitator travels around Europe performing in run-down theaters to nearly non-existent crowds. In one inn, he meets and befriends a waifish girl, who decides to travel with him to the big city where he is trying to survive on what engagements he can scare up. They live together, she explores the big city, dreams about a better life, finds it, and that’s about it. It may not seem like much, but it is an undeniably beautiful film. I found myself as impressed by what it didn’t do as by what it did. And I found myself comparing the two films, struck by how different they were, and how much that revealed about what our culture has come to expect of the animated feature film.

For one, where Tangled was polished, The Illusionist was rough. One feels free to follow where it leads, to peer into its nooks and crannies, to ponder its suggestions. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard’s film (the Disney film) leads you to clear, familiar places. It’s hard to watch Tangled and not see reflections of earlier Disney movies, subtly shifted to give the impression of newness. Likewise, the Disney film controls your emotions, giving you big laugh gags followed by tear-jerking melodrama (the hero dies! after sacrificing first his selfishness, then himself for the heroine! then – get another handkerchief – he comes back to life!). Chomet paints a more muted, bittersweet picture – you may chuckle but at moments that are slightly disturbing, and you may be disturbed at moments that are darkly funny. But what emerges from the Chomet experience is a sense that you’ve encountered a true portrait of what life is like. And that it has been presented to you with a simple charm, like a small gift hand-wrapped in yesterday’s giftwrap.

Yes, Disney’s Tangled is presenting a fairytale, not at all the same thing. We want romance, intrepid heroes overcoming adversity, and neat conclusions from those movies. And Disney gives that to us with panache and professionalism. That’s expected.

From Chomet, though, Your Humble Commentator wants you to relish the unexpected, the magic of depicting human life in all its quirkiness. The Triplets of Belleville has an awkward narrative, not easy to follow at first. But the story in not the priority. Watch the characters. Watch the magic. Watch the life.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1993)

The Truman Show is that rare triumph of family filmmaking that introduces its viewers to something bigger than children’s movies. It is made with perfect Hollywood ease, an easy-to-follow plot, and somewhat exaggerated acting. Still, that it pushes its viewer to think is undeniable.

I remember watching the film in elementary school and having a discussion about it afterward. Up until then, my movie-watching had consisted mostly of cartoons and musicals, repeated about ten times each thanks to the wonder of VHS. It was then that I discovered a movie that genuinely gripped and confused me, with a shocking twist two-thirds of the way through. Even more shocking than the twist of plotline was the presence of anything unpredictable at all in a storyline.

The initial appeal has faded, but I’ve watched Peter Weir’s The Truman Show several times since and I keep finding new questions. What does Truman tell us about human consciousness? How does the rubber idiot of Dumb and Dumber transform into a transfixing, thoughtful actor? (This is a question that comes up again in Jim Carrey’s best movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.) Is the movie responsible for those people who schizophrenically believed that they were in a television show – dubbed “Truman Syndrome” by the Institute of Psychiatry in London?

Still, the biggest question is: How did Weir know? Just a decade into the future, Americans are fascinated by televised private lives, from Octomom to Jersey Shore. Not since Network has a movie so accurately predicted the future of popular culture.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
Film Club

The Evolution of Jim Carrey, Actor

It’s worth considering Noah’s question regarding Jim Carrey’s transformation from elastic clown to amiable naif in his career. He approaches his early movies, driven by a kind of manic hyperactivity, as if his goal were to become a Tex Avery cartoon character (which he pretty much does in Chuck Russell’s The Mask). But in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which Film Club will screen in February), he’s more human, more a part of the film, more consistently someone to whom life-changing events happen, and, in the end, more watchable.

It’s also worth noting that Carrey is not the first late-night sketch comedian to make this transition. Watch Bill Murray mug and smirk his way through early films like Stripes, Ghostbusters, Meatballs, and Caddyshack, then note the mellower, wryer, more bittersweet characters that he plays in Rushmore or Lost in Translation. Will Ferrell, too, relied on his ironic clueless, self-absorbed jerk act through movies like Anchorman and Talladega Nights, but turned to a more serious, three-dimensional role in Stranger Than Fiction. Heck, even Adam Sandler, after a number of screechy steroidal arrested-adolescence films like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison (and Little Nicky, which we’d rather scrub our eyeballs with cleanser on a wire toothbrush than have to watch again), tried to move from the look-at-me medium of feature length sketch comedy to true movie acting in Spanglish. Not successfully, mind you, but he tried.

What we learn, perhaps, is that while "Saturday Night Live" and "MADtv" and "In Living Color," post-prime time sketch comedy series, may boost an actor to popularity (especially if the opportunistic comedian comes up with a memorable catch-phrase), it’s still a long way to serious acting. In fact, said comedian may be hampered by the kind of characters one develops in those kind of shows – they tend to be one-dimensional, built on a idiosyncratic characteristic, and a bit improvisational. As you watch Truman, take note of Carrey’s ability to blend himself into the texture of the film and to use his usually plastic face more subtly, showing Truman’s struggle with confusion, alienation, and adversity. Compared to Fire Marshall Bill, he’s almost a different species.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook’s Mulan (1998)

Have you ever had a craving to watch a movie filled with adventure? A comedy? A musical? Mulan is all of these wrapped up in one glorious package! This adventure about a girl who runs away from home to replace her father in the military is one that I have enjoyed my whole life.

As a child, I begged for movie nights not because of the tacos or popcorn or a break in oh-so-stressful playdates, but because of Mulan. I would be truthful in saying that I watched this movie at least three times a week from age four to age seven, with some spurts and starts. After that age, I think I slowed down to a mere once a week, and am still continuing. That is about 1,040 views total. Yes, I am a little obsessed, but with good reason! It is an amazing film.

The characters are spectacular – a headstrong girl defying the male dominant military to save her father; a strong soldier (and attractive at that); an overenthusiastic lizard that thinks he is a dragon; a group of stereotypical male soldiers – and the family (including an eccentric grandmother) all bring an aspect that everyone can at least find one part to relate to. The characters are so filled with emotion and life that they can make everyone laugh and cry and everything in between. My favorite scenes are not only the funny ones, but the moments where the feeling of unhappiness and loss makes me want to reach out to the characters on the screen.

With all the emotion, this film could never be boring. Even though the movie is set in ancient China, it can still be related to present events. Families face losing members to war and death, like Mulan and her father. Families also have certain expectations children may or may not agree with. However old this movie gets, some part of it remains relevant to our modern life, and thus it never gets old. Women are forever fighting for equality. Mulan herself offers a strong role model for girls and represents the situations they face, like trying to fit in with the norm. Mulan is a princess story where the princess rescues the prince (not to mention all of China).

So, this movie is for everyone, and that does not mean just ‘family friendly,’ as in for ten years and under, but the whole scope. As a kid, I viewed Mulan as a hero. As a teenager I still do. And I can never sit through it without singing along. Adults can enjoy the catchy songs and emotion filled plot just as much as everyone else. My favorite character is Mushu, voiced by Eddie Murphy, who has most of the great lines and keeps the movie funny, a good balance between the harsh emotions of war and the tone of leaving family for the unknown. Mulan’s transformation from docile femininity to tough warrior is one that I have used as an example throughout my life, from dressing up in her clothes to singing her songs to the idea of being strong in the face of every situation. So enjoy Mulan, a powerful movie with strong ideas, beautiful imagery, enthusiastic songs, and incredible characters, definitely one of Disney’s strongest creations.

Charlotte Hughes
Film Club

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)

To fully analyze Psycho is equivalent to categorizing every species in the Amazon; it ain’t going to happen. Psycho is one of the most analyzed, critiqued, and studied movies of all time. It is acclaimed as the best horror film ever. But why is this so? You would think that as time progresses, with the advent of CGI, directors would be more able to scare us, right? Psycho goes toe to toe with all these movies and is just as scary. Movies like The Uninvited, or The Host seem to employ large amounts of special affects, but are they any more effective than Psycho is at scaring our pants off? I would argue no.

Psycho is a master example of a film operating at two distinct levels. First, it has the ability to evoke visceral reactions in the audience, the surface level of the scene. We understand the characters are in danger, and we feel scared. We see the bad guy in the mirror’s reflection, and we are surprised—all films seem to master this feat easily. What doesn’t come as easily to most directors is the ability to operate at the second level. Hitchcock controls the aesthetics of the movie, altering the viewer’s perception of the scene and overwhelming their senses. Psycho is rich in such cinematographic genius, something that raises Psycho above movies like The Ring or Friday the 13^th.

In Phoenix, Arizona, Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a secretary having an affair with a stud muffin named Sam Loomis (great name, Loomis). Crane wants more from her adulterous partner, but they never come to a conclusion about their future. Crane works in a real estate agency and on a whim steals 40 G’s that were meant to purchase a home. As she is driving to her home she sees her boss and she becomes panicked. Her paranoia sends her fleeing to California. Along the way she is pulled over by a police officer and being further rattled, she decides to switch cars at a used car lot and stay at the Bates Motel. Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins in one of the best performances in film, greets her warmly at the motel. And the rest is film criticism history.

In an era of The Blob and Invaders from Mars, Psycho shocked and disturbed audiences. I will admit that I love this movie and I am biased, but I can also admit it has lost some of its shock value. Psycho’s violent scenes have lost some of their power. The infamous shower scene and the scene in the basement of Bates’ home have lost some of their ability to scare as CGI and special affects sweep our theaters. But this is just the first level of the film. The surface has become dulled and lost its gleam, yet the smooth 1950’s body is still beneath over six decades of technological advancement. One of the most innovative twists in this movie is that (spoiler alert) the main character is killed midway through the movie. Hitchcock allows us to become comfortable with Crane, we want her to succeed, to make it to California, we become attached. This makes her death even more devastating to the audience. The nature of the scene is first person. As much as we identify with Crane, we identify with the danger she is in, in the shower scene. We feel the danger, and thus Hitchcock is successful.

Psycho sets the groundwork for generations of horror films. Psycho creates two things, the lead female in distress and the psychological thrasher. First, Crane defies the norm. She breaks the patriarchal status quo: stealing from her work, sleeping with a married man, evading the police, and being flirtatious with a lonely man. This movie created the sexy starlet in danger. Also Hitchcock creates the most successful psychological killer in a movie to date. Think Mike Meyers in Halloween, or Jason in Friday the 13^th, these killers are Norman Bates’ direct descendants. Hitchcock shows that Bates is a troubled killer, but he also shows the human condition in Bates. The killings are sexually based and thus they are random. He does not kill by choice, rather he is “forced” to kill based on his sexual desires. Hitchcock plays on our innate fears of those around us. Psycho, and Bates can only be looked at through a psychological lens, another feat the Hitchcock mastered, when others had just attempted it.

Psycho defies normalcy. The quiet 1950’s home and family is nowhere to be found. The main character is killed halfway through the movie, it is in black and white, and even the quick-witted detective is killed off early. Hitchcock defies normalcy, and thus creates this film with the abnormal power to still scare our pants off decades later.

Conor Dowdle
Film Club President

Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963)

In Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 fantasy and emotional stratum coalesce in a visceral story centered on the egotism that motivated Fellini. This iconic film accounts Guido Anselmi’s (Marcello Mastroianni) attempt to make another hit film. Ultimately an autobiographical confession, based on Fellini’s own self-doubt and emotional state, 8 1/2 delves into the realms of narrative obfuscation and internalized moral skirmish through the self-righteous protagonist, Guido.

Federico Fellini’s last film shot in black and white, 8 1/2 exhibits radical changes from his previous neorealist films. This film centers on the theme of egotism and introspection, which is arguably what Fellini’s earlier films focus on also, but 8 1/2 tackles the subject differently. Instead of the focusing on a brooding search for acceptance of oneself and the absurdities of life Fellini tackles the subject of failure and the artistic process.

He diverges from his connection with Guido towards the end of the film. Plagued by procrastination and the malady of idleness, Guido retreats into himself, he becomes his primary focus. This self-involvement however is not constructive. Guido fails to complete the film he is working on, unlike Fellini. Fellini narrates the difficulty of the artistic process through Guido, describing the sensations that accompany.

Copious with surrealist and absurdist imagery Fellini draws the audience into a world similar and dissimilar to reality. Connected to the emotional response invoked by these scenes the audience fixates on ambiance of the film and less on empiricism. It enraptures the audience bringing them closer to the actualities of life that most commonplace cinema possesses.

It is the application of surrealism that makes this film so celebrated. Interweaving fantasy, memory, realism, and absurdism it is considered to be Fellini’s most influential film. By describing the difficulties of film making he created a masterpiece. This intimate exposure is what makes the film special. Not circumventing self-criticism or immorality Fellini admits to fault in a spritely way.

Lauded, this film has received two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design was nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. It has received praise from the New York Film Critics Circle, and received all seven prizes at the Italian Natioal Syndicate of Film Journalists.

Ella Coon
Film Club

Costa-Gravras’s Z (1969)

What is “Z”?

“Z” is a massive cross-breed. It’s in French, takes place in Algeria, and its director is Greek. More importantly, it combines two rarely crossed genres: politics and thrillers. Political films are often deeply grounded in the reality of a situation, looking at things in the simplest format. Thrillers often move far beyond logical motivation, showing only what will send the most adrenaline into our bloodstream. “Z” not only combines these genres, it makes them brilliant.

“Z” was shockingly relevant at the time of its release. It was not the average politically connected film that immortalized political situations fifty or five hundred years ago. “Z” looked at the death of the politician Grigoris Lambrakis under circumstances still being debated at the time. Its worldwide recognition, complete with a Cannes Palme D’Or, spread the word about Lambrakis.

“Z” is entertaining. Jean Louis Trintignant won awards for his performance as The Examinating Magistrate. Mikis Theodorakis’ score made him a household name (Mr. McVeety brought his vinyl copy of the soundtrack to school, referring to it as “a relic”), along with “Zorba the Greek.” It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, extremely rare for both foreign and experimental films.

“Z” is a landmark. Ty Burr, Boston-based film writer, notes its “slick cinematic urgency” and its “ease with genre filmmaking.” Most films that deal so poignantly with political themes do so with dull period piece work and Hollywood gloss. “Z” stands apart from all these films.

The title comes from a Greek word meaning “He is alive,” a protest phrase relating to Lambrakis’ death. Despite the fact that this film, too, is out of political relevance, as a work, it is still very much alive.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
Film Club

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s A Town Called Panic (2009)

As you walked in to the film tonight, you got a little plastic army man, common plaything of 1960s and ‘70s children, or as we here at Film Club Central are calling it: Your Stop-Action Animation Starter Kit^©. Because, really, this is all it takes. You find some small objects or clay, grab your camera and take a picture, move the object a little bit, take another picture, and repeat until you’re famous. Like Ray Harryhausen or Nick Park. You can do this with your Barbies (as Todd Haynes did with his famous bio-pic of Karen Carpenter, “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”) or GI Joes (if you go to www.gijoefest.com, you’ll find a whole film festival devoted to stop-action films starring the macho dolls) or simply random objects (post-its, rubber bands, Pixie Sticks, dice, a dollar bill, candy corn, Rubik’s Cubes as in “Western Spaghetti by PES” on YouTube).

Now the trick is obviously to get enough stuff moving that you can approximate life, humor, character, story, and all the other stuff that makes a good film. Stépahne Aubier and Vincent Patar have done that with Panic au Village or, as it is called in English, A Town Called Panic. Using a wide variety of small plastic toys, they’ve created an entire rural community where one’s shape, be it pig or horse or indian or cowboy or Atlantean, is not an impediment to one’s role in life or ability to behave in hilariously human ways. In fact, one might argue that it is not in spite of the actors being small plastic toys but because of their being small plastic toys that we’re able to explore more fully the comedy of human nature.

When the film opens, Cowboy and Indian are coming to realization that they’re unprepared for their roommate Horse’s birthday. What ensues, which involves an over-abundance of bricks, a robot penguin, a crushed house, piano lessons, stolen walls, tractors, kleptomaniac sea people, mad scientists with a snow-ball catapult, and more that we aren’t going to list here, is less panic than manic. The insanity of the plot stands in stark contrast to the warmer domestic comedies of Nick Park’s claymation Wallace and Gromit films or the alien jerkiness of Ray Harryhausen monsters in 1950s and ‘60s sci-fi films like Jason and the Argonauts. Aubier and Patar’s world has the same innocence, charm, and crazy non-sequitor rambling that one would expect if children really were just playing with these toys.

And that’s what there is to love about stop-action work. It has a D.I.Y. quality that means it never moves very far from your imagination. Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of craft, cleverness, and pain-staking work in Aubier and Patar’s film. But it looks like they simply made it in their bedroom one weekend.

Now, not everyone who watches a movie secretly wants to be a film-maker, but as movies become increasingly technical and expensive (Avatar, anyone?), they feel in some ways more alien, more distanced from our own imaginations. Certainly James Cameron or George Lucas would argue that computers are allowing us to expand our imaginations in ways we never could before, to create fantasies that look like reality. But you don’t sit in the theater saying, “I could do that.”

So right now pick up your army man. Walk him across your leg. Maybe you make him say “Hi there. Does this gun go with my outfit?” And maybe, if your friend is taking pictures, you could make it into a short film. And just like that, you’re a star.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Phil Tucker's Robot Monster in 3-D (1953) and National Geographic's Sea Monsters 3D (2007)

The Rubicon and SPA Film Club present
"3-D: Then and Now"

Then… Robot Monster

In 1953, the first major motion picture in 3-D (Man in the Dark) hit theaters. Patrons donned their anaglyph glasses, sat in stadium seats and watched as American cinema changed forever.

In that same year, 25-year old Phil Tucker directed and released Robot Monster, a science fiction movie shot and projected in dual-strip, polarized 3-D. The stereoscopic photography in the film is high quality for the time, impressive from a crew that had no experience with the previously unused camera rig. In spite of this accomplishment, Robot Monster is considered one of the worst films ever made.

So why would we choose it? Because it is SO bad, it’s good. Who can resist a character like the evil “Ro-man” who comes to earth in his bad gorilla suit and diving helmet to exterminate all the “hu-mans” remaining after the rocket explosions, lightning storms and giant lizard attacks? Or odd courting rituals like tying a woman up to show her deep, undying affection? And who can forget moments like Ro-Man’s impassioned line (think Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” speech): “I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet? Yet I must - but I cannot!” Try getting that one past an SPA English teacher in an essay. No, actually… please don’t.

This film is wonderfully terrible and an important 66 minutes of 3-dimensional history.

Now… Sea Monsters 3-D: A Prehistoric Adventure

The way monsters are depicted in National Geographic’s Sea Monsters is a stark contrast to the 3-D of the 1950s. While Robot Monster focuses on adding depth behind the screen, the Sea Monsters swim toward the viewer. In truth, both effects are created by playing with depth perception but that is not the point: truly, you will be carried away by the mysterious creatures in this animated documentary.

Sea Monsters shows what marine life looked like in prehistoric times, and you will see no gorilla suits, here: everything from the Dolichorhynchops family we follow through the film to the amazing Styxosaurus, a fish larger than an adult male, is connected to archeological discovery.

Not only is Sea Monsters 3-D, but it was shot in IMAX for the biggest of the big screens. National Geographic cut no corners making this film; they brought in big names like Tony Award-winning actor Liev Schreiber to narrate; Richard Evans, David Rhodes and Peter Gabriel collaborated on the score. Think of Cameron Crowe’s 1989 film Say Anything, John Cusak and boom box and you’ll recall how iconic Gabriel’s music can be in a film.

And speaking of the 1980s, when I was in elementary and middle school 3-D films made a comeback, especially with sequel thrillers. Jaws 3-D (1983) and Friday, the 13^th 3-D (1982) hit the screens and had me covering my eyes but peeking through my fingers. So when The Rubicon staff said, “Let’s do a 3-D issue,” I couldn’t help but think terrifying … and fun!

Today 3-D is more popular than it has ever been. With the invention of Real 3-D and 3-D televisions, the big screen magic 1953 film patrons experienced can be replicated in the comfort of your own family room… or in Bigelow Commons. Enjoy the shows!

Kathryn Campbell
The Rubicon Adviser

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)

We entitle this accompaniment to our screenings “Why We Picked This Film,” but we really want to call this one “Why You Should Watch More Silent Films.” The reasons we hear not to watch silent films are legion and often non sequitor – they’re old (?), they’re boring, they didn’t know how to make “real” movies back then, they might be hard to understand because they don’t have words, etc.

But really there’s only one thing keeping people from seeing some really great films from the silent era – they’re different – and that’s not really a good reason to skip what might be a very fun experience. So here are three reasons why you should jump at the chance to see silent films, not that those chances materialize very often.

1. Silent films have retro cool potential. In an era when most of us are wearing ‘70s t-shirts, listening to early rock-and-roll music, and letting “Mad Men” return us to the style and sexism of the 1960s, there’s caché in exploring the style and stand-out examples of film-making dominant at the beginning of the form. Now, it’s not like folks are dipping into the silent era and stealing techniques, looks, or content for modern “retro” silent films. But “coolness” is a state of mind. If we are excitedly reliving the patriarchal oiliness and style-over-substance vibe of the ‘60s, why shouldn’t we celebrate the kooky human-as-clown comedies of Max Sennett or revel in our knowledge of the first filmed versions of vampire flicks (Nosferatu, 1922) or westerns (The Great Train Robbery, 1903) or animated cartoons (Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, 1906). If we don’t think of silent film as a archaic technology but more as a style of film-making, then, seeing Battleship Potemkin becomes a social interaction, the establishment of a certain kind of cultural cred, and you’re only “in” if you’ve seen a few.

2. Silent films are wacky. We won’t go into the history of the form, but very little in a silent film looks like movies today. There’s a certain goofiness – part technology, part style of the time, part viewer’s unfamiliarity – that comes off the screen. So in that sense, watching a silent film, from the comedies of Buster Keaton to the historic epics of D.W.Griffith, is not like going to the a movie but like going to a completely different visual experience, and because it is an unfamiliar one, it’s weird. But weird is often fun. Think about the strangest food you’ve ever eaten, or when you and your fiends jumped into a hole in the ice at Widji, or maybe the first time you heard a Tom Waits song, and you thought, “okay, that was weird ... but fun.” Weird + fun = wacky, really, and many of the things we do for the first time, if we’ve never thought about doing them before or they don’t conform to our conventional expectations, are wacky. That’s the silent film experience. So you get home from Battleship Potemkin, and your parents ask “what have you been doing?” You say, “I’ve been watching this wacky movie where people don’t speak out loud, so they do a lot acting with their faces and gesturing with their arms. It was pretty cool.”

3. Silent films are fun because they’re different; it’s all the other stuff that becomes boring. We suspect that this summer you are likely to watch only movies that are made only in 2011, and not only that but maybe only movies made in 2011 about male superheroes (Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America, X-Men: First Class). There’s a certain sameness to the American film-going experience. Then every once in a while a movie comes along that’s a lot different from what we’re used to seeing, something like Blair Witch Project, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or anything written by Charlie Kaufman, and we celebrate its difference, its breath-of-fresh-air-ness. The fact that silent films are different, that they give us a moment to cleanse our palette and to rethink what it is that we get from the other films we go to, that they’re wacky, is their value to us. While people do like familiarity (the only reason MacDonald’s exists), failure to experience “the different” traps us in a culture of mediocrity. Difference is experience; difference is life. And life is better if you’re becoming more experienced, trying new things: ice hole baths, grasshopper tacos, muy Thai martial arts films, Tom Waits’ cover of “Heigh Ho,” Snakefinger, black lighting, hot dog eating contests, Tiny Tim and his ukelele ... well, you get the picture.

In some ways, Battleship Potemkin is neither that cool, nor that wacky, nor that different. It tells a simple story of a group of sailors, fed up at mistreatment, protesting their condition, and the resulting revolt against authoritarian rule. We hope, though, that viewers set aside any fear of the no-longer-conventional techniques and style and enjoy one of the best films ever made.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Chen Kaige’s Farewell, My Concubine (1993)

To the Chinese, history is the most important teacher. There is a Chinese saying: 前事不忘后事之师 (qiánshì bú wàng hòushì zhī shī) or “The past not forgotten is a guide for the future.” In order to understand the present and predict the future, one must look to the past. Some of the most well-known Chinese novels, plays, and movies illustrate the importance of history to the Chinese. Farewell, My Concubine is no exception. The film is an exploration of Chinese history and the place of the individual who is caught up in its epic sweep.

2011 marks the completion of the first century of a Chinese republic. The overthrow of the Qing Dynasty was the end of two-thousand years of imperial rule. China was thrown into chaos as warlords and imperialist powers divided it up. Growing up, I always heard stories of my grandfather’s childhood in China, before his migration to Jamaica, West Indies. He was born in the last years of the Guangxu Emperor, and was a young boy when Puyi, himself only three years old, was crowned the Xuantong Emperor. He was to be the last emperor of China. My grandfather’s youth in early republican China was marked by battles between warlords and bandit raids. Indeed, China had been thrown into turmoil. My grandfather chose to emigrate and left his ancestral land for the stability found in the British Empire, of which Jamaica was a colony.

My grandfather’s story is not unusual for those of his generation. Born in the Qing Dynasty, millions of Chinese were thrust into the brutal twentieth century. They suffered through civil and world war, as well as political and social upheaval. This film shows in stark realism and even brutality the revolutionary nature of recent Chinese history.

Throughout the film, we follow two actors, childhood friends, as they are caught-up in the traumatic events of twentieth-century China: the period of the warlords, the rise of the Republic of China, the second Sino-Japanese War, the rise of the Communists and the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and finally the tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The commitment of the actors to the Beijing Opera, a Chinese art form rooted in traditional Chinese history and culture brings them into conflict with a rapidly changing China. They become confused and disheartened as Chinese history comes crashing into their lives.

Because actors, alongside prostitutes, fell at the bottom of the traditional Chinese social ladder, the film is able to capture Chinese history through the lens of the marginalized. This includes not only actors, but homosexuals as well. There are no proscriptions against homosexuality in Confucian philosophy, and it has a long history in China. As long as a son or daughter married and produced grandchildren, they were fulfilling their filial duty. However, with the rise of Communism in China, with its emphasis on conformity, homosexuality was suspect. This stark treatment of homosexuality and its realistic and horrifying depiction of the Cultural Revolution led to the film being banned in China.

In 1966, Mao Zedong declared the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in an effort to expand his personal power. He came to believe that there must be a perpetual revolution in order to usher in the Communist utopian society. Mao declared the removal of all that was traditional in Chinese society. Writers, artists, filmmakers, teachers, religious leaders, and intellectuals had to conform to strict revolutionary norms. Those who did not demonstrate proper revolutionary enthusiasm were persecuted. Thousands of families were torn apart. Schools closed down. Teachers and parents were turned in by their own students and children. “Struggle sessions” were held in order to accuse and mock counter-revolutionaries. Palaces, temples, libraries and churches were turned into storage places or destroyed. Thousands died at the hands of others, or at their own. The Cultural Revolution was ten years of social turmoil from which China is now only beginning to recover.

Farewell, My Concubine not only explores Chinese history, but also the interplay between art and life. The Beijing opera Farewell, My Concubine is itself quite short; about fifteen minutes. Its protagonist is the concubine of the King of Han, whose kingdom is about to fall. As soldiers surround the city, his favorite concubine offers him wine and asks for his sword so she can dance with it. Fearful of the troops who will soon storm the city, the concubine commits suicide with the king’s sword. Surrounded by animosity, and fearful of being outcast, the concubine dies. In the movie, the play becomes a timeless depiction of fierce loyalty in the face of adversity. Parts of the play echo events in the actors’ lives. Art and real life become intertwined until it becomes hard to discern where one begins and the other ends.

Farewell, My Concubine is ultimately about the decision of ordinary people to survive and adapt or to recoil from the events around them. In the end, the film leaves us with these questions: how do we treat those who differ from us, how do we remain loyal to our friends, what is the relationship between art and life, and how do we shape our own destiny in the midst of history’s grand sweep?

Mr. Aaron Bohr
Guest Commentator

Jerome Robbins’ and Robert Wise’s West Side Story (1961)

We could write on so many aspects of Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story – the ground-breaking choreography, the cutting edge music, the maturity of former child-actress Natalie Wood, the weirdness of Richard Beymer’s post-Story film career, the imminent fading of the musical as a viable Hollywood genre – but really Your Humble Commentator isn’t fully qualified to take on those topics in this short space. So, today, we want to talk about the Shakespearean adaptation film. Film Club has made it a habit to screen one of these each year, including recently Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet, (Hamlet).

Robbins and Wise’s West Side Story is, of course, Romeo and Juliet set in a modern, or 1960s, New York. But a more specific question is: is it Shakespeare? A purist will tell you that what makes Shakespeare Shakespeare is language; it’s not his play if they don’t say “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun,” and transform the ether into living space with his awe-inspiring imagery and syntax.

The story, on the other hand, is not original even to Shakespeare. Many versions came before he wrote the play in the mid-1590s, including a major poem by Arthur Brooke, “Romeus and Juliet,” published in 1562, on which much of the play is based. So why don’t we say that West Side Story is really a version of “Romeus and Juliet”? The easy answer is because Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet famous, and no one today has heard of Arthur Brooke. A more complicated answer is that Shakespeare’s work stands so tall that his versions of stories (and all but two of his plays are based on external sources) blot out their antecedents and affect our impressions of every version that follows, even without his words.

A brief aside: Your Humble Commentator once attended the Centenary Shakespeare-on-Film Conference which took place in 1999. A centenary conference celebrates, obviously, the 100-year anniversary of something, so that suggests that the first Shakespeare to be committed to film occurred in 1899. The film, specifically, was a one-minute short, a scene from King John. But think about that: the first Shakespeare film had none of his language (because films were silent) and only one excerpted scene from the play (one minute instead of two and a half hours of narrative). In addition, the film was made more as a novel advertisement for a stage production going on at the time than intended as a stand-alone albeit brief feature. That said, the world’s foremost authorities of the field known as “Shakespeare on Film” gathered together and celebrated this anniversary despite the original film’s rather tenuous ties to Shakespeare’s work.

That’s how it goes. Even without Shakespeare’s language, we consider adaptative versions of his plays still akin to Shakespeare’s work. Whether you watch Ten Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew) or She’s the Man (Twelfth Night) or Forbidden Planet (The Tempest), you are going to enter into a conversation that is as much about Shakespeare as it is about the film you’re watching. Take She’s the Man. Twelfth Night is a rather complex comedy, both subtle and direct in its characterizations and plotting in ways that can be made to please on many levels. She’s the Man, its adaptation set in a modern boys school where Amanda Bynes is “passing” in order to hold her twin brother’s place at the school, play soccer and, eventually, get close to a boy she likes, is a farce, a physical and unsubtle form of comedy. Without Twelfth Night, She’s the Man draws commentary as a product of the teen sex comedy genre and is either remarkable or not as a result of its generic choices. With its connection to Twelfth Night, Bynes’ character, Viola, must contend with all the Violas of history, and Andy Fickman’s film enters into a conversation that necessarily includes 400 years of Shakespearean precedent.

So as you watch West Side Story, you are also watching Romeo and Juliet; the parallels and deviations are part of this larger conversation. What does it mean that we’re telling a version of the same story 400 years later? How are Tony and Romeo related? Or Maria and Juliet? Does the musical genre suggest, metaphorically, that Shakespeare’s language, when brought into the modern age, becomes song – structured, lyrical thought? What other ways does the conversation between the two works leave you understanding both better, more deeply?

Or ignore Shakespeare. West Side Story is one of the great films of the 20^th century, and a great story, something that both screenwriter Ernest Lehman and Shakespeare recognized as they adapted it for their respective mediums.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Stephen Frears’s High Fidelity (2000)

One question we encounter frequently with film, because so many movies are derived from books, is 'which is better, the original text or the cinematic version?' In a way, this is an unfair question. After all, each medium stands on its own, so a movie is either worthy or it isn’t regardless of where its script originates. What’s more the question tends to get asked only when the book is of note. Alfred Hitchcock, for example, made a great movie called To Catch a Thief (1955) with a screenplay from a David Dodge book of the same name. As much as we say about Hitchcock’s auteurist and distinctive approach to film-making, the movie followed the text very closely. But no one remarks on that because few have ever heard of the book.

That’s less true of a book and movie like High Fidelity (or for that matter True Grit, a highly acclaimed novel from the 1960s that has now been made into two famous movies, the most recent of which, by the Coen brothers, may win an Oscar). A conversation about High Fidelity frequently includes references to Nick Hornby’s novel. In both works, John Cusack plays a local record shop owner who spends much of his time reviewing the rollercoaster of his romantic relationships. The most charming aspect of Hornby’s book is that Rob specifies his moods and concerns by making lists – lists of albums, lists of his own life events, lists of musicians. At one point, for example, he lists his top five break ups of all time.

But Rob’s lists represent a desperate attempt to put the things that happen to him romantically in some sort of context because he “fails to comprehend the complexities of the female gender [and] surrounds his attempt to understand his current challenging break up through the examination of his past failed romances.” Rob fights off this pattern of self loathing and self deprecation by creating the lists and constantly asking his friends to create lists, like ones of their top 10 artists of all time. When it comes down to it, Rob is a true music lover, and a true romantic. He’s struggling to find out who he is, and ultimately, why did those girls dump him!

In the book, these lists are hilarious little side-bars, which evoke for the reader either mystification (what’s that about???) or sympathetic connection. They’re like organized similes. For director Stephen Frears (The Grifters, The Queen), the challenge is to take something fairly literary but essential (the lists say a ton about Rob’s character), and translate it into a medium that is visual and realistic. Part of the success of the film version is Frears’ choice of John Cusack, an award winning actor, to play Rob.

John Cusack’s Rob is hopelessly lost, forever confused lover boy of the late ‘90s. Cusack is the kind of actor whose sincerity and perpetual youthfulness allow him to pull off the very literary sort of lines that open the film: “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? Rob tries to answer the questions we are too scared to ask ourselves! Was she the right one? Or did I just let the right one slip between my fingers? Shit… is there even someone who is the one?” NO body talks like that. But by the end of the speech, we like Rob, partly because we like Cusack.

So where does all this get us? If you haven’t read the book, it won’t matter. The movie is the movie. Cusack is Rob. The writing is engaging and fun. If you have read the book, you have the option on a great conversation. The question is never “which is better?” It’s how do the two works talk to each other? What does Cusack do to your original impression of Rob? What did Frears choose to leave out, and what effect did that have? What insights did the film’s changes (differences from the original text) reveal about what the film-maker thought about the story? Or what impact did experiencing the story in a visual medium rather than a literary one have on you? Those are fun questions. We hope you enjoy High Fidelity and come up with some questions of your own. Or if you haven’t read the book, maybe you’ll check it out so you can.

C. Dowdle and R. Findlay
Film Club