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.
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