UB Takes Humanities Downtown With Angelika Film Series

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The humanities -- they're not all Heidegger, Satie and George Herbert Mead.

Humanities researchers also are interested in Claudette Colbert's gams; Robert DiNiro, fat as a pig, and Akira Kurosawa's meditation on the nature of truth. This is because in one sense or another, the human constructs and concerns of film also are central to humanities' scholarship.

The film images above come from "It Happened One Night," "Raging Bull" and "Ran," three in a series of 14 exceptional films and seminars that University at Buffalo humanities faculty will co-sponsor with the Angelika 8 Theater in downtown Buffalo.

The series, "The Angelika Film Seminars: Conversations about Great Films," will run at 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights from Jan. 19 through April 26 in the Angelika 8 Theater, 639 Main St., Buffalo.

It will feature outstanding films produced from 1933-85 in a broad range of genres -- farce, musical comedy, film noir, documentary, fantasy, westerns, biography and more -- followed by seminar discussions led by members of the Department of English in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

Members of the public are invited to attend and participate in any or all of the seminars for the price of a ticket, or they may register for the course through UB's Millard Fillmore College and earn three undergraduate credits.

The seminars were developed in connection with a UB undergraduate course, "Contemporary Cinema 441." The instructor, Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the UB English department, says the films were selected because they were cinematically innovative, as well as critical and popular successes of their time.

The course itself and the seminar following each screening will examine elements that comprise a classic film, including its relationship to cultural mythology and to social, cultural and political issues that were contemporaneous with its production.

In addition to Christian, seminar leaders will be Stefan Fleischer, associate professor of English, and Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of the Humanities. All three have published and lectured on the subject of film and culture, and have taught university courses related to that topic.

"Culture and Cinema 441" is expected to be a popular course and its discussions lively because they will involve first-time viewers, like students who may never have seen these films, and participants from the community, some of whom will recall the impact of a film's original release and can speak to their understanding of its meaning and significance.

The film/seminar schedule follows. Jackson says it could be altered slightly if a good 36mm. or 16mm. print of a scheduled film cannot be obtained.

• Jan. 19: "The Public Enemy" (1931), definitive gangster film directed by Wild Bill Wellman. Two Irish punks who grew up together in a Chicago slum rise to the top as vicious gangsters during the prohibition era. The movie stars James Cagney, in one of his best roles; Jean Harlow; Joan Blondell and Mae Clark, who gets a grapefruit in the face.

• Jan. 26: "42nd Street" (1933), musical comedy about the stage life of hoofers directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell and George Brent

• Feb. 2: "It Happened One Night" (1934), classic romantic comedy starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable

• Feb. 9: "Triumph of the Will" (1934), Leni Riefenstahl's visually brilliant and controversial documentary that uses the metaphor of athletic performance to celebrate the Third Reich

• Feb. 16: "A Night at the Opera" (1935), classic Marx Brothers farce with music, directed by Sam Wood and featuring Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle Hart

• Feb. 23: "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940), superb dramatic adaptation of the John Steinbeck classic about dustbowl farmers, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda

• March 1: "Double Indemnity" (1944), Billy Wilder's incendiary mating of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as lovers and murderers

• March 15: "Beauty and the Beast" (1946), not THAT one! This is Jean Cocteau's exquisitely delicate, dream-like version, one of the great cinema classics, starring Jean Marais and Josette Day.

• March 22: "High Noon" (1952), directed by Fred Zinnemann, Academy Award-winning western drama starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly as his very young bride

• March 29: "On the Waterfront" (1954), Elia Kazan's disturbing film about personal destruction wrought by mob control of the New York City waterfront, starring Karl Malden and Marlon Brando

• April 5: "Touch of Evil" (1958), conceived and directed by Orson Wells, a stunning classic of film noir that explores corruption and abuse of power. It stars Wells, Charleton Heston, Marlene Dietrich and Janet Leigh.

• April 12: "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), Irving Penn crime/action drama romanticizing the pairing of legendary psychopaths stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway

• April 19: "Raging Bull" (1980), Martin Scorsese directs Robert DiNiro in this film about the career of boxer Jake LaMotta. It is considered by some to be DiNiro's best performance.

• April 26: "Ran" (Japan, 1985), eerie Kurosawa classic illuminates the nature of "truth" through the unlikely offices of a small group seeking refuge from a thunderstorm.