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.

Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! The Evolution of the Movie Musical

A Film Lecture Series Presented by Librarian Doug Swiszcz 

 

 Wednesdays, September 26-October 31, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Barrington Public Library

We're all familiar with the image: a euphoric Gene Kelly, so happy that he is in love that--inclement weather be dashed--he just has to sing and dance in the street. Pouring rain can't dampen his spirits; that's how effusive his feelings are.

On the stage, song and dance are an accepted means of expression.  What about song and dance in the movies? Film is a more natural, realistic medium--worlds removed from the artifice and high degree of stylization that we think nothing of when we experience live performance.

But once the technology of talking pictures came about, movie makers attempted to wed the artifice of the one medium with the naturalism of the other. It was definitely a growth process. Early movie musicals were often revue-style productions that featured singers and dancers performing "face out,"  as if they were on a proscenium stage, in a Broadway theater. Many early movie musicals, in fact, revolved around a "let's put on a show" story, as if the only way that filmgoers would readily accept the idea of people breaking into song and dance was if these "numbers" took place on stage within the movie.

Movie musicals really started coming into their own when song and dance were used in a cinematic way, with a camera that incorporated their rhythm and movement to advance the story, or to reveal characters' feelings. In the film that opens my series, Love Me Tonight (1932), the Rodgers and Hart song "Isn't It Romantic" is introduced by a tailor (Maurice Chevalier) in the city of Paris, and is then taken up by other characters, through various means of transportation, to the countryside, where we find it being sung by a lovely princess (Jeanette MacDonald). Here, we see music used as a means of linking two disparate characters--the lowly city tailor and the high-born princess in her country chateau.

Of course, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers used song and dance as a kind of "courtship ritual" in the many movies that they made together--he wooed, she initially demurred, but in the end they ended up in each others' arms.We'll see such a love story told through dance to a tuneful Irving Berlin score in Top Hat (1935).

Musicals written specifically for the screen were quite common in the hey day of movie musicals--and no studio excelled at this form better than MGM, thanks to a creative and technical team headed up by producer Arthur Freed. And with talents like Judy Garland and Gene Kelly--whose films Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), respectively, will be shown as part of this series--how could they go wrong?

As the golden age of the Hollywood musical started to decline in the late fifties and early sixties, we saw movie studios increasingly turning to Broadway properties to transfer to the screen (for fear that audiences would not come to a movie musical unless the show already have a proven track record on stage). Some of these adaptations were quite successful, but many of them were unimaginative transcriptions of their stage version. Like the early movie musicals, these movies were staged and filmed in such a way that the casts might as well have been up on a proscenium stage. Where was the cinematic expression that could enliven these properties? Of course, not all such adaptations were so static and "stagey." The film version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) presented a robust adaptation of a smash Broadway musical.

As tastes in popular music changed, Hollywood musicals all but died out. Younger film audiences, raised on rock music, were less likely to be captivated by characters bursting into song up on the screen. But director Rob Marshall found a way to adapt the Broadway musical Chicago (2002) into a film so that it appealed to these younger moviegoers. The snappy, savvy movie went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in the year of its release--the first film musical to earn that accolade in over 30 years.

I hope that you will join me for this look at the evolution of the movie musical.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Doug Swiszcz

The line-up:

Sept 26^th Love Me Tonight (1932) -- Black & white -- 89 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct  3^rd  Top Hat (1935)  -- Black & white -- 101 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct 10^th  Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) -- Color -- 113 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct. 17^th  Singin’ in the Rain (1952) -- Color -- 103 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct. 24^th Fiddler on the Roof (1971) -- Color -- 181 minutes -- Rated G.

Oct 31^st  Chicago (2002) -- Color -- 113 minutes -- Rated PG-13.

                        

JAMES STEWART ON THE BIG SCREEN: A FILM LECTURE SERIES

Hello Friends:

Why not escape from the summer heat to enjoy five movies starring one of filmdom's most beloved movie stars, Jimmy Stewart--or James Stewart, as he was always officially billed.

Stewart. It almost makes one think of the word STALWART. The website yourdictionary.com defines this word as follows: "A description for someone who is loyal and strong or for something that is reliable and sturdy." Perhaps the website should feature a photo of James Stewart next to its definition. Few other actors conjure so vividly an image of reliability, strength, and loyalty--traits that spring to mind when we use the term "All American."

Certainly these traits, when coupled with honesty, idealism, and integrity, are on exhibit in Stewart's portrayal of Jefferson Smith in the film that opens the series, director Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But while Smith was a career-defining role for Stewart, there was a tendency, perhaps, to assume that, because the actor played characters who possessed these traits, they were uncomplicated and one-dimensional.

Following Stewart's stint of duty as a bomber pilot during World War II, he returned to acting a changed man. The war had aged him, and he brought a less light, more complex sensibility to most of his screen portrayals from that point on.

For example, the five westerns that Stewart made with director Anthony Mann brought a darker, psychological dimension to the genre. Winchester '73 is one such film that will be featured in this series.

He also appeared in four films for director Alfred Hitchcock, including Vertigo, in which he plays a man who becomes obsessed with a woman to the point that he wants her look-alike to be in his thrall. In Rear Window, which will be shown during this series, Stewart plays another obsessed character, this time a convalescing photographer who takes to watching his neighbors. Is it possible that he is projecting many of his unresolved feelings about interpersonal relations onto the lives of the people in whose windows he is peering?

The series is rounded out by two romantic comedies: The Shop Around the Corner, an Ernst Lubitsch-directed confection that derives its sweetness from its Old World setting and characters; and Bell, Book & Candle, a late fifties piece of whimsy with Stewart's book publisher falling under the spell of beautiful witch Kim Novak.

Here's the series schedule -- all films are on Mondays at 1:00 P.M.

July  9th -- Mr. Smith Goes To Washington - Idealistic scout master Jefferson Smith is appointed to the senate and tries to fight corruption. With Jean Arthur, Claude Rains. 1939 -- Black & white -- 129 minutes.

July 16th -- The Shop Around the Corner - Two employees in a Budapest shop clash, but are unaware that they are sending anonymous love letters to one another. With Margaret Sullavan. 1940 -- Black & white -- 99 minutes.

July 23rd -- Winchester '73 - A man tries to find his father's murderer and the one-of-a-kind rifle that was stolen from him. With Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea. 1950 -- Black & white -- 92 minutes.

July 30th -- Rear Window - A photographer with a broken leg fears that a neighbor was murdered. Co-starring Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter. 1954 -- Color -- 112 minutes.

Aug.  6th -- Bell, Book & Candle - A beautiful witch (Kim Novak) casts a spell to make a man fall in love with her. With Elsa Lanchester, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs. 1958 -- Color -- 106 minutes.


I look forward to seeing you all in our air-conditioned movie theater here at the Barrington Library.

Doug Swiszcz
Librarian and Film Enthusiast