Wednesday Evening Film Series
Winter 2008
Technical Sponsor: Allied Video Productions
The Wednesday Evening Film Series is currently a partnership between the Humanities & Communications Department/Film Studies Program at Chemeketa Community College and the Historic Elsinore Theatre. The Wednesday Evening Film Series was launched by Chemeketa with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been showing movies to Salem audiences for over 30 years.
Historic Elsinore Theatre
170 High St SE, Salem OR 97301
503-375-3574
www.elsinoretheatre.com
Box office and doors open at 6 p.m., movies begin at 7 p.m. Films subject to change.
The Historic Elsinore Theatre in partnership with the Chemeketa Community College Humanities Department and Film Studies Program present a program of silent and classic movies.
Our Classic Series of six movies begins January 9th with the sparkling romantic comedy, The More the Merrier. The winter series, Genre Masters, offers a sampling of great directors and performers who have provided us with some of the best examples in a category of studio film production. The selections include an Astaire & Rogers musical, a celebrated Chaplin comedy, a moody film noir thriller, a landmark Western masterpiece, a brilliant romantic comedy, and an adaptation of a John Steinbeck novel that is still widely regarded as one of the great, inspirational movies of the American cinema. Program notes offering commentary will be provided at the Classic Series screenings.
Parallel to the Classic Series is our Silent Series of four movie evenings, beginning January 16 with Battleship Potemkin. This series celebrates the mastery of legendary silent screen artists such as Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton from the fertile era when great directors like John Ford and Sergei Eisenstein were inventing the language and poetry of cinema. The silent film presentations will feature superb quality, digitally restored films from archival prints, correct projection speed, and live accompaniment by Rick Parks at the "Mighty Wurlitzer Organ."
Please join us on Wednesday nights for the opportunity to see great movies, with friends, projected on the big screen as they were originally shown, in one of America's grand movie palaces, beautifully restored to its original glory!
Tickets are $5 each and can be purchased at the Historic Elsinore Theatre, online TicketWest.com and at all Tickets West locations. Phone 503-375-3574 for information. Box office and doors open at 6 pm, movies start at 7:00 pm.
Classic Series Coordinator:
Robert Bibler.
Silent Series Coordinator: Rick Parks.
| January 9 | |
| 7 p.m. | The More the Merrier (George Stevens, USA, 1943) |
Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actress, Story, and Screenplay, this is easily one of the best American comedies. The setting is our nation's capitol, where the sudden influx of military personnel and government workers during World War II created a severe housing shortage. Feeling patriotic pressure to do her part, proper working girl Connie Miligan (Jean Arthur) sacrifices her privacy and rents half of her small apartment to an elderly meddler, Mr. Dingle (Charles Coburn, in an Oscar-winning performance). Dingle then sublets half of his half to a guy carrying an aircraft propeller around the city, Army Sergeant Joe Carter (Joel McCrea). Miss Miligan's exasperated sense of propriety crashes headlong into the social ineptitude of her new boarders. With expert comic timing, director Stevens beautifully orchestrates the criss-crossed trajectories of this mismatched ménage á trois through the tight spaces of a crowded apartment and the social upheaval of wartime Washington, D.C. A guaranteed pleasure. Absolutely not to be missed! 104 minutes.
| January 16 | |
| 7 p.m. | Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, Russia/USSR, 1925) |
| The Boat (Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline, USA, 1921) |
Deplorable conditions on board a Russian armored cruiser trigger a violent mutiny. The sailors' revolt becomes the rallying point for the oppressed Russian populace. In the port of Odessa, citizens turn out in support of the mutineers. When the ruthless white Russian cavalry arrives to crush the rebellion on the Odessa steps, the most famous and most quoted film sequence in cinema history is born. Brilliant cinematography and crisp realism are coupled with Eisenstein's groundbreaking "shock attraction" montage.
Battleship Potemkin changed movie editing forever. One of the most influential silent movies. Beautifully restored in 2007 by the Deutsche Kinematek. 69 minutes.
The Boat stars Buster Keaton as an inventive boat builder who wants to take his family out boating. The expedition turns out to be anything like Buster planned in this hilarious short comedy. 20 minutes.
| January 23 | |
| 7 p.m. | Follow the Fleet (Mark Sandrich, USA, 1936) |
In this fifth musical pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Astaire is a seaman in the navy. Shore leave in San Francisco reunites him with his former dance partner, Sherry (Rogers). Meanwhile, Sherry's sister (Harriet Hilliard, later of Ozzie and Harriet fame) is pursued by Astaire's navy mate, "Bilge" Smith (Randolph Scott). The romances are assisted by Betty Grable, Lucille Ball, and great Irving Berlin songs, such as "Let Yourself Go" and "Let's Face the Music and Dance." 110 minutes.
"Astaire and Rogers at their most buoyant." —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Four stars. Delightful musical." —Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide
| January 30 | |
| 7 p.m. | Through the Back Door (Alfred E. Green, Jack Pickford, USA, 1921) |
Through The Back Door stars Mary Pickford as Jeanne, a native Belgian whose widowed mother (Gertrude Astor) remarries. Jeanne is forced to stay on a farm in Belgium while her mother and new husband live in luxury in America. Years later, WWI forces Jeanne to immigrate to America, but when she cannot reveal her identity to her mother, Jeanne finds work as a maid in her mother's house. A rarely seen Pickford film. Restored by the Mary Pickford Institute and Timeline Films with color tinting. 89 minutes.
"There's still something about Mary! Pickford is back in movie-star style. And why not? She virtually invented movie stardom." —Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
| February 6 | |
| 7 p.m. | Stagecoach (John Ford, USA, 1939) |
Among the great adventures in cinema is the journey of a memorable group of misfit passengers by stagecoach through a mythic frontier wilderness—filmed in Monument Valley— to the dubious civilization of Lordsburg in John Ford's Western masterpiece. The wilderness threats to the passengers' survival are rivaled by the destructive prejudices and social divisions on board the coach. Stagecoach catapulted John Wayne into stardom, with his sensitive portrayal of a gallant loner outlaw, the Ringo Kid, and established John Ford as the master of the genre. The gorgeous, innovative photography influenced Citizen Kane. Must be seen on the big screen. With Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, John Carradine, George Bancroft, Andy Devine. 96 minutes.
"[It is] impossible to overstate the influence of Ford's magnificent film, generally considered the first modern western." —Time Out Film Guide
"One of the great American films, and a landmark in the maturing of the western, balancing character study and peerless action." —Leonard Maltin
"Perhaps the most likeable of all Westerns, and...a movie that has just about everything—adventure, romance, chivalry." —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
| February 13 | |
| 7 p.m. | The Iron Horse (John Ford, USA, 1924) |
The restored The Iron Horse was screened at the 2007 Venice Film Festival for an audience that "began cheering a full minute before it ended." When it played in New York at Lincoln Center last November, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote: "There are many ways the West was won cinematically, and one of the most exciting remains The Iron Horse. Set mostly after the Civil War and shot on location in 1924, primarily in Nevada, this romanticized account of the construction of the transcontinental railroad aims to tell the story of a fragmented nation's unification. The familiar western themes are all in evidence... But what makes this sweeping epic lift off the screen is everything else its director, John Ford, adds to the genre mix, including breathtaking vistas, interludes of quiet realism, and crowds of people on the restless move… Everyone and everything is often thrillingly in motion in The Iron Horse." Scratches and dust have been digitally removed and the original color tinting restored. 133 minutes.
"As in Stagecoach, each scene and each character looks fresh struck at the mint of myth, while every frame asserts that this is the making of America and of the American cinema." —Time Out Film Guide
| February 20 | |
| 7 p.m. | Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1936) |
In 1936, Chaplin reprised the tramp for one last screen appearance in Modern Times, a beloved classic, and perhaps the most popular of Chaplin's films. The tramp gets a job in an assembly line, where the giant factory machinery threatens to consume him. There is a serious message in this satire of dehumanizing mass production, but critic Pauline Kael notes that Modem Times is "one of the happiest and most lighthearted of the Chaplin pictures." Amid the ingenious comedy, Chaplin's tramp, by his tawdry appearance and disarming nobility, raised issues of hunger, homelessness, and social cruelty. The tramp's silent dignity endures late into the sound era, in a movie many fans regard as a favorite. Restored from the original negative. 89 minutes.
"Consistently hilarious, and unforgettable." —Leonard Maltin
| February 27 | |
| 7 p.m. | The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1925) |
Among the ten best films ever made, according to Sight and Sound's poll of international film critics, The Gold Rush is a hilarious and touching comedy, built on very dark themes. The rugged Klondike during the last great gold rush of 1901 provides a backdrop of epic scale for a nearly perfect blending of comedy and compassionate drama. Chaplin's tramp faces starvation while searching for gold in a frozen landscape and social rejection when seeking shelter in a cold, cruel boomtown. There he meets a beautiful, disillusioned bar girl (Georgia Hale). The film's comic sequences are legendary and timeless. With Mack Swain. Restored from the original negative. 82 minutes.
"[An] extraordinarily sweet and graceful comedy." —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
| March 5 | |
| 7 p.m. | Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, USA, 1947) |
A film noir equal to such great classics as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, Out of the Past is a dark jewel. Robert Mitchum plays Jeff, a former detective hiding from his past, operating a gas station in a sleepy, small town. Drawn back into the underworld by a dangerously charming gangster, Whit (Kirk Douglas), and a stunningly sensual femme noire (Jane Greer), Jeff struggles to stay ahead of the complex deceptions and double-crosses. The snappy dialogue is witty, and the narrative unfolds like a dream. Lyrical and haunting. With Rhonda Fleming and Steve Brodie. 97 minutes.
"The definitive flashback movie… Beguiling and resolutely ominous, this hallucinatory voyage [is] one of the most bewildering and beautiful films ever made... The mood of obsession was never more powerfully suggestive... Once seen never forgotten." —Time Out Film Guide
"Classic example of 1940s film noir, with dialogue a particular standout." —Leonard Maltin
| March 12 | |
| 7 p.m. | The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, USA, 1940) |
The Grapes of Wrath is John Ford's most popular and acclaimed masterpiece. A powerful visualization of Steinbeck's parable of the fall from innocence, expulsion from the garden, and the search for a new Eden, the film focuses on the displaced dust bowl farmers of the Great Depression and the Joad family's journey to the promised land of California. Ford and cinematographer Greg Toland achieve a miraculous balance between artfully beautiful compositions and a stark vision of the simultaneous erosion of land, family, community, and identity. Henry Fonda's perfectly realized characterization of Tom Joad is a performance of such spiritual intensity that it gives profound credibility to Ford's transcendent values and touches the soul of any audience. Nominated for seven Academy Awards. Ford and actress Jane Darwell won Oscars. A New York Film Critics Award went to Ford for Best Director. 129 minutes
"One of the great American films, an uncompromising adaptation of Steinbeck's novel." —Leonard Maltin
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The Film Studies Program at Chemeketa Community College offers courses in film appreciation. See the College catalog or the quarterly Schedule of Classes or contact Steve Slemenda at 503.399.6237 for further information.
Historic Elsinore Theatre 170 High St SE, Salem OR 97301 503-375-3574 www.elsinoretheatre.com
All films at the Historic Elsinore Theatre. Box office and doors open at 6 p.m., movies begin at 7 p.m. Films subject to change.
Updated January 2008 by the Marketing and Student Recruitment Department.