THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT: A SPINE-TINGLING FILM LECTURE SERIES

Wednesdays at 1:00 PM -- October 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30, 2013

Autumn is nearly upon us, a time when the air turns crisper, when one can smell burning leaves in the distance, and when the days grow shorter. Or perhaps I should say, when the nights grow longer.

October is, of course, the month of Halloween, an annual tradition that evokes memories of childhoods past, of ghosts and goblins and witches cackling in the moonlight. Our passage into adulthood may force us into wingtips and high heels, but do we ever truly leave behind the thrill that comes from being scared out of our wits? Perhaps there's some primal urge in us that makes us squeal with delight from being frightened. How else do we explain the fun of sitting around the campfire and telling chilling stories?

I thought that I would devote my Fall 2013 film lecture series, Things That Go Bump in the Night, to movies that tap into our primal urges, our primal fears.

Anyone who knows my love of film is aware that I gravitate toward older movies, or at least toward those that are similar in style to those made during what has been often called the golden age of cinema. You have to know that the last thing that I would do is to inundate you with gratuitous blood and gore. I prefer the tack of showing films that build suspense, that lay out before you an evolving story that will increase your sense of unease or, perhaps, of dread. It's often not what is shown, but rather what is implied, that scares the dickens out of us.

Although the movies that I am presenting this fall  will be screened in the early afternoon, once the lights are turned down and the films begin, we'll be alone in the dark--collectively, that is. So bring a friend or a significant other with you, someone whose arm you can grasp when something on the screen suddenly makes your heart race or sends chills down your spine.

I look forward to seeing you in October when, together, we can rekindle our childhood fascination with things that go bump in the night...

Doug Swiszcz

Librarian & Film Enthusiast

The schedule:

Oct. 2nd: Psycho - Janet Leigh, who's absconded with some money from work, makes the mistake of checking into the Bates Motel in this Hitchcock classic. Co-starring Anthony Perkins. (1960 - B&W - 109 min. - Unrated)

Oct. 9th: The Innocents - Deborah Kerr is a governess who fears that her young charges are possessed by the spirits of a former governess and her sadistic lover. Based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. (1961 - B&W - 100 min. -- Unrated)

Oct. 16th: Rosemary's Baby - Mia Farrow is a young mother-to-be who comes to suspect that her husband and neighbors are involved in a nefarious plot concerning the baby. With John Cassavetes and Ruth Gordon. (1968 - Color - 136 min. - Rated R for profanity, a dream sequence involving sexuality, and frightening sequences)

Oct. 23rd: Dead Again - A Los Angeles cop (Kenneth Branagh) helps an amnesiac (EmmaThompson) to recover her memory with the aid of a hypnotherapist, but past life regressions reveal a disturbing link between the two of them. (1991 - Color - 107 min. - Rated R for language and violence)

Oct. 30th: The Others - A woman (Nicole Kidman) who lives with her two photosensitive children in a darkened old house fears that it may be haunted. (2001 - Color - 104 min. - Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and frightening sequences)

A Slice of Lemmon

A Jack Lemmon Summer Matinee Film Series

Wed., July 10-31, 2013 - 1:00
Library Auditorium

Hello Friends,

Summer has rolled around once again, and as I sit here composing this blog entry, the weather outside is hot and muggy. I know that the expression "dog days of summer" is normally used much later in the season, but I'm panting like a member of the canine family even now. I don't normally seek out the sun and heat during the summer. The hole in the ozone isn't getting any smaller, and I've always felt that it is not worth the effort to slather myself with sunscreen. For what? To then lie on a towel and sweat?

Why don't you join me in the cool comfort of the library's auditorium for my July film lecture series, saluting Jack Lemmon? I thought that I'd show a handful of Lemmon's comedic movies, even though we all know that he was a dramatic actor of distinction as well. But it's summer, after all. So I thought that I'd "serve up" something light and refreshing--namely, a slice of Lemmon.

We'll get to enjoy Jack's first feature film role, as a young filmmaker who takes a liking to dizzy blonde Judy Holliday, in It Should Happen to You. Directed by the esteemed George Cukor, the film looks at our culture's preoccupation with fame and celebrity. This movie opened in 1954--nearly a decade and a half before Andy Warhol spoke about everyone eventually getting their own fifteen minute of fame. Talk about being prescient!

Who doesn't love Some Like It Hot, the Billy Wilder-directed classic with Lemmon and Tony Curtis as two musicians in 1920's Chicago who disguise themselves as women to evade gangsters whose mob slaying they have witnessed. Here we have Lemmon the farceur on display, as his character gets caught up perhaps a bit too much in the pleasures of his masquerade. And the film has Marilyn Monroe at her breathless, jiggly best.

Wilder also directed The Apartment, with Lemmon playing the kind of role at which he would come to excel: the little man, lost in the sea of humanity, but trying desperately to carve out a niche for himself. Here, he's a small cog in the wheel at an insurance agency, who lends his apartment to his philandering bosses for their trysts. But is this the best way to climb the ladder to success, if it means compromising your self-respect? Shirley Maclaine co-stars.

We close the series with The Odd Couple, based on Neil Simon's successful Broadway play (and forerunner to the long-running Tony Randall-Jack Klugman TV series). One of several films that Lemmon made with Walter Matthau, it pairs the two as mismatched roommates, one a neurotic fussbudget, the other  a sloppy sportswriter. Lemmon's performance is filled with tics,wheezes, and just about anything else that could drive Matthau to distraction. And does. 

Come in from the stifling heat and join me for a good laugh this summer, watching an actor who stands as one of the exemplars of comedic acting. A chuckle, after all, is better than a sunburn.

Doug Swiszcz

Librarian and Film Enthusiast

Here's the schedule, at a glance:

July 10 - It Should Happen to You - 1954 - Black & white - 86 min. - not rated.

July 17 - Some Like It Hot - 1959 - Black & white - 120 min. - not rated.

July 24 - The Apartment - 1960 - Black & white - 125 min. - not rated.

July 31 - The Odd Couple - 1968 - Color - 105 min. - rated G.

Audrey in the Afternoon: A Film Lecture Series
Wednesdays at 1:00 PM, May 1 through June 5, 2013

I barely have to even mention her last name, right? Who among us was immune to the charms of Miss Hepburn, the bewitching, beguiling beauty with the petite frame and the big eyes? She was the perfect example of what a movie star was back in the days of classic films.

I'll be honoring Audrey in my latest film series for six consecutive Wednesdays at 1:00 PM, beginning May 1st.

From her first American movie, Roman Holiday, in 1953, for which she won the Best Actress Academy Award, this waif-like performer entered into a love affair with the public--a love affair that would last until her untimely death from cancer in 1993.

A drab bookstore clerk who becomes the toast of Paris high fashion in Funny Face. A young Belgian woman who decides to enter a convent in The Nun's Story. Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, transformed into the belle of the ball courtesy of Professor 'enry 'iggins in My Fair Lady. A young widow whose husband left behind a large sum of money in Charade (paired with Cary Grant). These are just some of the highlights of her career, in my opinion.

Would you ever guess that Audrey didn't think that she was particularly attractive? Or that she was very honest in admitting that her talents as an actress were acquired in piecemeal fashion, as she moved from one role to another? That she prized family enough to put her film career on hold for more than half a decade? All true.

Come rediscover the magic of Audrey Hepburn on the big screen. I can assure you that you'll fall in love with her all over again.

Doug Swiszcz
Librarian and Film Enthusiast

The lineup:
May 1st - Roman Holiday - with Gregory Peck - Black & white - 118 minutes

May 8th - Funny Face - with Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson - Color - 103 minutes

May 15th - The Nun's Story - Color - 149 minutes

May 22nd - Breakfast at Tiffany's - with George Peppard, Patricia Neal - Color - 115 minutes

May 29th - My Fair Lady - with Rex Harrison - Color - 3 hours, with one 15-minute intermission

June 5th - Charade - with Cary Grant - Color - 113 minutes

FOND OF FONDA: A MOVIE MATINEE LECTURE SERIES
Wednesdays at 2:00 PM
March 6, 13, 20, 27, and April 3, 2013

Hello Again-
It seems like forever since I've hosted a film lecture series at the Library. This time out, I thought that I'd salute one of our most revered actors from the cinema of yesteryear with a Henry Fonda series.
Fonda, with his tall, thin frame and reedy, midwestern-tinged voice, epitomized a kind of grace and quiet intelligence. Conscientious. Morally upstanding. Given to deliberation before offering his thoughts on an issue (and then speaking with that distinctively sloooow pace). A winning personifcation of the common man.

And yet there always seemed to be something else that percolated beneath the surface--a darker, deeper side that was not wholly scrutable. If Henry Fonda faced demons, he faced them alone. For a man who chose a profession in which communication is vital, Fonda was emotionally buttoned down in his private life. He was married five times; his children Peter and Jane found him remote. To him, life was about moving beyond your failures and disappointments, perhaps about rising above them.

But what Fonda couldn't express privately, he used in his art. Sometimes his characters were plain spoken; at other times, what was hidden behind that look in his eyes added complexity and nuance to his performances.

The films of Fonda's that I plan on showing include his career-defining role as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, in which he evinced a kind of resilience in the face of personal misfortune. Then there's young Henry as the naive, much put-upon heir to a brewery fortune who falls prey to Barbara Stanwyck in director Preston Sturges' screwball comedy The Lady Eve. Fonda reunited with his Grapes of Wrath director, John Ford, to portray Wyatt Earp in all of his principled glory in My Darling Clementine. The actor that we've come to equate with the voice of reason tries to face down dissenting jurors in 12 Angry Men. Finally, the series wraps up not with a theatrically-released motion picture, but with a videotaped performance for television of Fonda in his one-man, tour de force portrayal of famed lawyer Clarence Darrow.

I look forward to seeing you all at the beginning of March.

Doug Swiszcz

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Here's the rundown (all are Wednesday showings that begin at 2:00 PM):

March 6th: The Grapes of Wrath - 1940, black & white, 129 minutes, unrated.

March 13th: The Lady Eve - 1941, black & white, 94 minutes, unrated.

March 20th: My Darling Clementine - 1946, black & white, 97 minutes, unrated.

March 27th: 12 Angry Men - 1957, black & white, 96 minutes, unrated.

April 3rd: Clarence Darrow - 1974, color, 81 minutes, unrated.