Welcome to an exciting new year of great film... Our main venue is the Randall Museum (199 Museum Way, between the Castro and the Haight). Some films will be at Dolby Screening Room (100 Potrero Avenue), the original sponsors of Cine/Club beginning in 1998. Check the listings to make sure you show up at the right venue! We start with Coppola’s The Godfather, Parts I and II (a double feature!). These star-studded films are considered two of the finest American films ever made, and show the rise of an Italian immigrant from grocery boy to mafia kingpin and his family's struggle to hold on to power at any cost. Welles' Citizen Kaneis frequently named the "greatest film of all time." Its cinematography is legendary and the performance by Welles himself as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst is iconic. You owe it to yourself to be familiar with this film. Our third classic, Ray’s Pather Panchali, is a favorite of students whenever we show it. This film is the start of Ray's career and the first of the celebrated Apu trilogy. It remains one of the most vivid and powerful depictions of childhood in film. Next is Murnau's Sunrise. Murnau was a master of silent film and this is one of his greatest achievements. It won the first and only Oscar award for Unique and Artistic Production in 1929. Last is Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, a mixture of reality and fairy tale that is a favorite of past students and an excellent Christmas film to start your winter holiday. In addition to these classics, we've chosen some highly unique films that we hope will show you new ways of looking at the world in hopes that we might help you look at your surroundings in new ways: Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique, Pasolini's Teorema and Wong Kar Wai's Chunking Express. We include two sprawling epics about historical figures, one real one imagined, both glorious and sumptuous in their depiction of the past: Mnouchkine’s Moliere and Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. We've programmed several suspenseful thrillers to keep you perched at the edge of your seat: Hichcock's Rebecca, Scott's Bladerunner, Lang's M, Polanski's Chinatown and Melville's The Army of Shadows. This year also includes two rather edgy films about teenagers growing up in the UK: Arnold's Fishtank and Meadow's This is England. These are supplemented by three films about adults departing from traditional boundries in a struggle to find meaning, each with wildly different results: Kurosawa's Ikiru, Scorcese's Taxi Drivier and Vidor's The Crowd. Then we’ve got two brilliant comedies: the oft-quoted screwball by Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot, and the sizzling and dark Divorce Italian Style by Pietro Germi. Finally, we're bringing you several films by genuine mavericks; filmmakers whose unique style separates them from others: Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker), Bernardo Bertoucci (The Conformist), Francois Truffault (Jules and Jim) and Frederico Fellini (Amarcord). We want to remind you that you are always welcome to bring friends, your siblings, and even your parents! (You can always pretend you don’t know them…) We also want to explain the PARENTAL WARNING blurbs on some of the films. We don’t believe in talking down to our students. We think most of you are perfectly capable of understanding adult themes, and are not freaked out about nudity in films. This is one of the main reasons we discuss the films as a group afterwards. That said, some of the films we show do involve a frankness about sex or nudity that less sophisticated students might find disturbing, so if you’d be offended, don’t show up. That’s why we have a PARENTAL WARNING sign on them. These films are probably too much to handle for someone under 12 unless they are truly sophisticated and have already seen similar films at home with their parents.
Friday 26: Cine/Club: Randall Museum PLEASE NOTE: Due to the length of the film we are starting early. Refreshments at 5:00, film starts promptly at 5:30. Coppola's THE GODFATHER, Parts I & II (1972-74, USA) We begin with five hours of film that set a new standard for American filmmaking in the 1970’s. A long evening, but one that will keep you glued to the screen. What begins as the chronicle of an Italian Mafia family struggling to hold onto power becomes a social epic about the very American values of success, honor and family loyalty and how they can distort and destroy lives. These films are a cultural touchtone, referenced in academic roundtables and TV satires. Come see what all the fuss is about.
WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM: The Godfather films spawned generations of copycats, but this series, rather than glamorize the thrills of mafia life, dig down deep inside the myths and show the great toll that organized crime can have on a family. The story is strong, but what brings these films to life are some of the strongest, most memorable performances many of the great actors of the era: Pacino, De Niro, Brando, Caan, Duval, Diane Keaton, et al. They also etch periods of American history—the 40’s and 50’s—with great attention to social detail: from clothes and cars to dialogue and social structures. These mobsters take part in the same dysfunctional family outings that everyone else did; the wedding parties, baby’s baptisms, family arguments, funerals, and the materialist gains as they rise to power reflect the preoccupations of the capitalist middle class during that period. Part Two pairs the story of corruption and the tragic toll that hypocrisy and violence bring to the family with flashbacks to the original Godfather’s rise from grocery boy to Mafioso.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR Francis Ford Coppola is one the most important American directors of the 70’s—and these two films (along with Apocalypse Now) are considered his masterpieces. He is among the first generation of directors spawned by American film schools at NYU, UCLA and USC (Lucas and Scorcese are others). In the 60’s he began as one of schlock producer Roger Corman’s wonder boys, rising through the ranks to the point where he had enough clout to make these films. His zenith as a filmmaker climaxed with the epic undertaking of the Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now. Though he continues to produce and direct films to this day, his critical reputation rests with the 1970’s.