BUFFALO FILM SERIES/FALL 2000

Aug. 30: THE GRAND ILLUSION, 1937, directed by Jean Renoir

Not just a great war movie, but one of the great movies of all time. Roger Ebert calls this film, starring Jean Gabin and Eric von Stroheim, "a meditation on the collapse of the old order of European civilization." Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels called it "Cinematic Public Enemy Number One" and ordered the negative seized.

The Russians got the negative from the Germans after the fall of Berlin and it eventually made its way to a film archive in Toulouse, France. The negative was discovered only a few years ago, which is why viewers will be able to see a brilliant print of Renoir's brilliant film.

Sept. 6: 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.

Sept. 13: LAURA, 1944, directed by Otto Preminger

A detective falls in love with the portrait of a murder victim one summer in pre-air-conditioned Manhattan. Jean Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price and Dana Andrews star in what critic Tim Dirks describes as "one of the most stylish, elegant, moody classic film noirs ever made."

Sept. 20: NOTORIOUS, 1946, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

"Alfred Hitchcock's 'Notorious,'" wrote film critic Roger Ebert, "is the most elegant expression of the master's style...It contains some of the most effective camera shots in his -- or anyone's -- work, and they all lead to the great and final passages in which two men learn how very wrong they both were. This film, along with 'Casablanca,' assured Ingrid Bergman's immortality."

Great screenplay by Ben Hecht and performances by Cary Grant and Claude Rains.

Sept. 27: ALL ABOUT EVE, 1950, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz

This witty and superbly acted film won six Oscars. Leonard Maltin calls it a "brilliantly sophisticated look at life in (and around) the theater, with a heaven-sent script by director Mankiewicz." Roger Ebert calls Bette Davis' performance in this film "her greatest role." It also provided her most memorable screen line, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." The story got a second life decades later as the Broadway musical "Applause."

Oct. 4: PATHS OF GLORY, 1957, directed by Stanley Kubrick

One of the great anti-war movies and one of Kubrick's best films. Viewers will see one of Kirk Douglas' best performances. Banned in France for 20 years because the French government didn't like the way it depicted the ruling elite.

Oct. 11: LA DOLCE VITA, 1960, directed by Federico Fellini

Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg and Anouk Aimée star in Fellini's brilliant social epic about people on the make, people on the way down and the perfect inaccessibility of love. This is a film of unforgettable images -- Christ dangling from a helicopter, Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain, Mastroianni separated from everyone by a small lick of water that might as well be the entire Mediterranean Sea. It is a film almost without afternoons: most of the action takes place late at night or early in the morning -- nights and mornings full of expectation and exhaustion, interrupted with moments of brutal sun-drenched revelation.

Oct. 18: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? 1966, directed by Mike Nichols

Burton and Taylor at their best in the film version of Edward Albee's play, a war story, love story and tragedy all at once. The screenplay, happily, is almost a direct transfer of the play, including lines like this one, said by the husband, George (played by Burton): "All I said was that our son, the apple of our three eyes, Martha being a cyclops, is a beanbag and you get testy."

Oct. 25: MIDNIGHT COWBOY, 1969, directed by John Schlesinger

Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in the only X-rated picture to win a Best Picture Oscar (subsequently downtuned to "R"). Hoffman's second major screen role as creepy Ratso Rizzo is light-years away from squeaky-clean and terminally confused Benjamin Braddock in "The Graduate" two years earlier. "Midnight Cowboy" was nominated for six Academy Awards and won three of them -- best picture, director and screenplay. Hoffman and Voight both were nominated for best actor and probably split the vote. The award that year went to John Wayne for "True Grit," although not many films depict a life in terms as gritty as this one.

Nov. 1: ALL THAT JAZZ, 1979, directed by Bob Fosse

A semi-autobiographical drama/musical about death, ego and art, with Roy Scheider as Fosse's alter ego, Joe Gideon, and Jessica Lange as Death, an astonishing lady whose smile is so inviting that you'd follow her anywhere.

Nov. 8: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE RIVETER, 1980, directed by Connie Field

In the 1930s, women were told it was unfeminine to work; they should stay home and take care of the family and let men do the real work. Then World War II came along and the men went off to fight it, so the U.S. government mounted a campaign that assured us that good, feminine women would find ways to handle tough factory jobs. When the war ended and the men came back, the propaganda field reversed itself. "Good" women were those who stayed home with the kids and made supper for him-who-worked. This time, the propaganda didn't accomplish its goal so well. Connie Field's documentary explores this key sequence in American feminist consciousness.

Nov. 15: THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER, 1989, directed by Peter Greenaway

Helen Mirren serves her husband one of the most gorgeously photographed, superbly prepared and horrific meals in film.

Nov. 29: BURNT BY THE SUN, 1994, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov

The first half of this Academy Award-winning film is set in the Russian countryside during the languorous summer of 1936, where the family of a hero of the Soviet Republic is enjoying the good life. Gradually, the reality of the Stalinist purges intrudes. What is beautiful turns horrific. Matters of honor turn out to be manifestations of evil. All action takes place in the course of a single day, but depicts a political lifetime.

Dec. 6: XIU XIU, THE SENT-DOWN GIRL, 1998, directed by Joan Chen

A brutal film set in China during the Cultural Revolution, about a young girl who learns about betrayal and evil.

Further information about the films and their contexts, the directors, actors and other crew, and notices of any last-minute changes in schedule are available on the seminar's Web sites: http://www.buffalofilmseminars.com or http://www.filmbuff.org .