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Focus
on Film: The Movies and Us
Commentary
provided by Howie Movshowitz
Director of Education at Starz Film Center at UCD and
Colorado Public Radio film critic
Movies
shown and discussed in the 2004 pilot series:
Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson, is one of those
films that now confounds Hollywood studios because it's smart, funny
and it's made for grown-ups - and the studio PR crews comprehend
none of those qualities. Michael Douglas plays a teacher of creative
writing at a small college in Pittsburgh. He's making a mess of
his life and winds up driving around town with a precocious student
(Tobey McGuire), both of them drinking and smoking various substances.
His editor (Robert Downey Jr) is in town for the college literary
festival, with a very tall cross dresser in tow. And there are also
questions about who shot the college president's dog and who snatched
Marilyn Monroe's jacket. This is about as good as Hollywood gets,
and it's a good film to talk about afterwards. 112 minutes.
Wild Strawberries
Sweden,
1957
Ingmar Bergman
An aging doctor (Victor Sjostrom) is about to receive a great career
honor. But the night before, he has disturbing dreams. The next
day, as he drives along with his daughter-in-law (Ingrid Thulin),
a series of events, encounters, memories and more dreams force him
into a profound re-examination of his entire life.
City Lights
For many people, City Lights is Charles Chaplin's most fully and beautifully realized film. In the story, Chaplin's "Little Fellow" (as Chaplin called him) befriends a young blind woman selling flowers on a street corner, and a relationship grows from there. The film is about social class, social pretention, life in The Great Depression, and, as is always the case with Chaplin, the film is about money and his fantasies about coming to the rescue of young vulnerable women. The film came out in 1931. Virtually all movies by that time used synchronized sound, but Chaplin refused to have his characters speak, which added a certain daring to the enterprise. He did, however, add one more dimension to his enormous talent -- he composed the entire musical score for the film. City Lights also has what may be the greatest ending in the history of film.
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