|
|
Press Room
4 by 4 Film Forums Continue
Four FILMS
Four MONTHS
Four FABULOUS DISCUSSIONS
Coolidge Corner Theatre
290 Harvard
Brookline MA 02446
September 23
One Flew Over the Cuckoo¹s Nest
Hosted by Professor Tom Yuill
One Flew Over the Cuckoo¹s Nest is about control. Mental patient Randall P.
McMurphy¹s romantic, witty, doomed rebellion against the
institutional power inspires his friend and confidant, the ³Chief,²
to transcend his self-imposed limitations. The film tests our
assumptions about free will, genetic make-up, and the influences of
one¹s environment. McMurphy¹s rebellious response to Nurse Ratched
and the rules of the institution is unsuccessful, but his creative
response provides both the inspiration and the plan which liberates his friend.
Shakespeare¹s Hamlet gives examples of two kinds of individuals. The
first, Hamlet like our quirky protagonist, McMurphy prefers to think
of himself as creative, rational, a self-empowered person whose
identity results from his own work, his own imagination, his own
desires. The second believes power is something you take from others.
Claudius, like Nurse Ratched, operates under the assumption that an
individual is only as significant as the force he or she can leverage
against others in the room. The first type may respect customs on an
aesthetic or moral level Hamlet loves poetry, McMurphy the World
Series but tends to feel disinclined to follow rules. The second type
needs rules to use as impositions on others. Systems of control and
surveillance are an answer to the second type¹s prayer. A system of
punishment that begins with psychological and emotional attacks and
progresses only gradually to physical attacks are attractive to
particularly dangerous versions of the second type. We will examine
McMurphy¹s creative response to a crippling systemic attack, and
discuss its implications where impositions of the second type who can be seen on tv¹s across the country are concerned.
October 28
The Wall
Hosted by Professor Dave Lefkowitz
In this film forum, David Lefkowitz, Assistant Chair of Audio
Production, will discuss the idea of the concept album and discuss
how musical lyrics and sound production can play a role in film
production, delivering a storyline as well as captivating a mood to
an audience even before a video track is created.
Pink Floyd¹s The Wall (1982) was filmed in a way that utilized
musical lyrics to tell a story rather than using traditional narration or dialogue.
Discussion will be based on the effectiveness of this movie-making
style as well as how music can be associative in nature, creating
powerful imagery that can be produced into a film.
Which comes first, the video or the audio?
.
November 25
Hannah and Her Sisters
Hosted by Professor David Reeder
Hannah and Her Sisters is the 1986 comedy film by Woody Allen that
tells the tangled stories of three sisters Hannah (Mia Farrow), Holly
(Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) during the two years that
begin and end with Thanksgiving dinner. The movie was written and
directed by Woody Allen who appears as Farrow's hypochondriac
television producer ex-husband Mickey. The film's superb supporting
cast includes Michael Caine as Hannah's philandering second husband
Elliot, as well as Maureen O'Sullivan and Lloyd Nolan (as Hannah's
parents), Max von Sydow, Julie Kavner, Daniel Stern, Lewis Black,
Joanna Gleason, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Sam Waterston and many others.
Although this film was nominated for seven Academy awards, [Best Picture.
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Director, Best
Supporting Actor (Caine, winner) & Best Supporting Actress (Wiest,
winner), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing] it
is the significant achievement of the collaboration between Woody
Allen and Cinematographer Carlo DiPalma (Il Deserto Rosso, Blowup)
that is the focus here. The films impact is due to the evolution of
the mis-en-scene or master-scene method used by Allen (and long-time
collaborator Gordon Willis) with DiPalma's addition of a fluid,
moving camera. The contributions of camera crew and Production Designer Stuart Wurtzel will also be covered.
December 9
Chinatown
Hosted by Professor Barry Zaltman
Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and
Faye Dunaway, is a 1974 film noir detective story set in Los Angeles
during the early forties. Polanski masterfully quotes the noir genre
and in an unexpected double take casts John Huston, Director of the
noir classic, The Maltese Falcon, as the heavy in Chinatown.
Interpretively, the film is rich and mutilayered. It is engaging as a
mystery, but more profoundly, it invites a comparison to Sophocles¹
play, Oedipus the King. Polanski appropriates several parallel themes
from that Greek tragedy to drive the action on a palpable and
gripping subconscious level. And, as in Dionysian Theater, the ending
is horrigying, while being psychologically inevitable.
|
|
|
