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‘Metropolis’ to open film seminars
The 1927 sci-fi classic “Metropolis” will open the spring 2011 edition of the Buffalo Film Seminars, the popular, semester-long series of film screenings and discussions hosted by UB faculty members Diane Christian and Bruce Jackson.
Each session will begin at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, beginning Jan. 18, in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St. in downtown Buffalo.
There is no screening on March 15.
Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, and Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture in the Department of English, will introduce each film. Following a short break at the end of each film, they will lead a discussion of the film.
The screenings are part of “Film Directors” (Eng 438), an undergraduate course being taught by the pair. Students enrolled in the course are admitted free; others may attend at the Market Arcade’s regular admission prices of $9 for adults, $7 for students and $6.50 for seniors. Season tickets are available any time at a 15-percent reduction for the cost of the remaining films.
Free parking is available in the M&T fenced lot opposite the theater's Washington Street entrance. The ticket clerk in the theater will reimburse patrons the $3 parking fee.
"Goldenrod handouts"—four- to eight-page notes on each film—will be posted on the seminars’ website the day before each screening, and will be available in the theater lobby by 6:30 p.m. the day of the screening.
The silent masterpiece “Metropolis,” directed by Fritz Lang, tells the tale of a futuristic city divided into a working and elite class. The son of the city’s mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet, who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences. A 2010 restoration of the film will be shown.
The remainder of the schedule for the 22nd edition of the series, with descriptions culled from the IMDb online movie database:
- Jan. 25: “42nd Street,” 1933, directed by Lloyd Bacon. A producer puts on what may be his last Broadway show, and at the last moment a chorus girl has to replace the star.
- Feb. 1: “Ninotchka,” 1939, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Greta Garbo’s last great film, a sophisticated romantic comedy copied in at least four subsequent films—none of them nearly as good—and in one terrific Broadway musical, "Silk Stockings," with Cyd Charisse in Garbo’s role. Garbo plays a stern Russian woman who is sent to Paris on official business and finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
- Feb. 8: “Ossessione,” 1942, directed by Luchino Visconti. Banned in Italy by Mussolini, the film is the powerful story of the ill-fated love between Gino, a virile young drifter who arrives by chance at a roadside restaurant and filling station, and Giovanna, the beautiful young wife of the fat old man who owns the place. They kill her husband, but his death haunts the guilt-ridden Gino.
- Feb. 15: “Journal d’un curé de campagne/Diary of a Country Priest,” 1951, directed by Robert Bresson. A young priest taking over the parish at Ambricourt tries to fulfill his duties, even as he fights a mysterious stomach ailment.
- Feb. 22: “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” 1965, directed by Martin Ritt. British agent Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) refuses to come in from the Cold War during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission that may prove to be his final one.
- March 1: “Walkabout,” 1971, directed by Nicholas Roeg. Two young children stranded in the Australian outback are forced to cope on their own. They meet an Aborigine on a “walkabout,” a ritualistic separation from his tribe.
- March 8: “The Long Good Friday,” 1980, directed by John Mackenzie. Harold, a prosperous English gangster, is about to close a lucrative new deal when bombs start showing up in very inconvenient places. A mysterious syndicate is trying to muscle in on his action, and Harold wants to know who it is. He finds out, and bloody mayhem ensues.
- March 22: “Coup du torchon,” 1981, directed by Bernard Tavernier. Lucien Cordier is a washout of a cop in a village in a French African colony in 1938. He never arrests anyone and looks elsewhere when a dirty trick occurs. But one day, he turns into a Machiavellian exterminating angel.
- March 29: “Fitzcarraldo,” 1982, directed by Werner Herzog. The story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an extremely determined man who intends to build an opera house in the middle of a jungle.
- April 5: “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” 1983, directed by Nagisa Ôshima. In 1942, British soldier Jack Celliers (David Bowie) is taken to a Japanese prison camp run by Yonoi, a firm believer in discipline, honor and glory who thinks that allied prisoners are cowards when they surrender instead of committing suicide. One of the prisoners, interpreter John Lawrence (Tom Conti), is considered a traitor when he tries to explain the Japanese way of thinking.
- April 12: “The Grifters,” 1990, directed by Stephen Frears. A small-time conman is torn between his estranged mother and new girlfriend, both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.
- April 19: “Dayereh/The Circle,” 2000, directed by Jafar Panahi. Women struggle to function in the oppressively sexist society of contemporary Iran.
- April 26: “Blade Runner,” 1982, directed by Ridley Scott. Harrison Ford plays Deckard, a blade runner who has to track down and terminate four replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to earth seeking their maker.
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