From the Bard Observer (September 9, 1964). I ran the Friday night film series during most of my time at Bard College, and in many cases, I was booking these films in order to see them for the first time (although, as I recall, not in the cases of North by Northwest, Zazie, Jules and Jim, This Sporting Life, Freaks, or The Phenix City Story). –- J.R.
Sept. 12 KEY LARGO (See page 4 for a review.) [Note: this was a reprint of James Agee’s original review of this film in The Nation.]
Sept. 18 TROUBLE IN PARADISE. Continental comedy borne up out of the early thirties, directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
THE PASSION OFJOAN OF ARC. Mlle. Falconetti suffers in public and in silence. Directed by Carl Dreyer in 1928.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sept. 25SAWDUST ANDTINSEL Also known as “The Naked Night”. The only Ingmar Bergman film Bard can afford (also one of the best). A circus setting; made in 1953.
Also: “Jammin’ the Blues,” 10 minutes of Lester Young, Harry Edison, Jo Jones and others.
Oct. 2 FREAKS/THE PHENIX CITY STORY A double feature devoted to le film maudit: 2unconventional American “B” pictures—the first an unclassifiable and unsettling 60-minute story of sideshow life, the second a sensational “exposé” of corrupt Alabama politics, filmed on location.
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Oct. 9 NORTH BY NORTHWEST Alfred Hitchcock’s most exhaustive and authoritative movie, encompassing everything from the U.N. Building to Mount Rushmore. In color, with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.
also: “Gorilla My Dreams,” a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
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Oct. 16 ZAZIE An hour and a half of anarchistic, occasionally frightening slapstick, all shot in beautiful color. Directed by Louis Malle in 1960; based on the novel by Raymond Queneau; in French.
GREED Zolaesque realism and Zasu Pitts. Directed by Eric von Stroheim in 1923; based on Frank Norris’s McTeague. One of the great silent pictures.
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Oct. 23 RICHARD IIILawrence Olivier’s production of Shakespeare’s play. With Olivier, Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Ralph Richardson and others; in color.
also: “Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra,” a silent satire on Hollywood.
Oct. 30 IVAN THE TERRIBLE PARTS I & II The last two films of Sergei Eisenstein, both made in the mid-forties; musical score by Prokofiev; in black and white and color.
Nov. 6 THIS SPORTING LIFE Lindsay Anderson’s uneven but powerful story about a rugby player, made last year in England; with Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts.
also: “Pow Wow,” concerning a rehearsal of a college band in the rain.
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Nov. 13 HORSE FEATHERS The Marx Brothers. Groucho figures as the president of an all-American college and Harpo drops large blocks of ice from a second story window. 1932.
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS Orson Welles’s second film (made shortly after Citizen Kane), based in Booth Tarkington’s novel;with Anne Baxter, Joseph Cotton, and Agnes Moorehead. 1942.
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Nov. 20 VARIETY An hour of Emil Jannings and dizzying camera tricks, with a reputedly sordid story. A silent German film, directed by E. A. Dupont in 1925.
JULES AND JIM François Truffaut’s rapturous ode to practically everything, with Jeanne Moreau. Possibly the best film yet to have come out of the New Wave.
Dec. 4 IKIRU Akira Kurosawa’s celebrated story of contemporary Japan, made in 1952.
also: “All This and Rabbit Stew,” a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dec. 11 LE MILLION René Clair’s classic French comedy. One of the early sound pictures, made in 1930.
SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS A somewhat bittersweet comedy about Hollywood, directed by Preston Sturges in 1943.
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Since the budgets for this semester have not yet been granted this list is subject to some changes. Many of the films that have been requested — EAST OF EDEN, SHADOWS, and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, for example — have been omitted because they are no longer available. Suggestions are welcome.
JON ROSENBAUM
Bard Film Club
