Film Society
14 OCTOBER
MON ONCLE France 1958 (120 mins) Directed by Jacques Tati. The
socially awkward Monsieur Hulot, played by Tati, has a quixotic
struggle with France’s postwar infatuation with modern architecture,
mechanical efficiency and consumerism. Style rather than function is
uppermost in the setting of Villa Arpel. The film won the Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1958.
21 OCTOBER
THE SECRET AGENT Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands 2025. (162 mins)
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filno. This historical, political thriller
follows Armando (Wagner Moura), a former professor as he tries to
escape persecution amid the Brazilian military dictatorship which
began in 1964. During Carnival he visits Recife to see his son,
Fernando, who lives with his in-laws since his mother’s death. There
Armando befriends other political dissidents.
28 OCTOBER
THE MISFITS USA 1961 (125 mins) Directed by John Huston with a
screenplay by Arthur Miller, based on his short story of the same
name. It stars Clark Gable in his last film, Marilyn Monroe and
Montgomery Clift. Set in Nevada where Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe) meets
three men involved in hunting for wild horses. The characters are
outsiders and the world they belong to is disappearing. The film
explores the contrast between freedom and responsibility.
4 NOVEMBER
PANDORA’S BOX Germany 1929 (133 mins) Directed by G.W. Pabst and based
on Frank Wedekind’s plays. This silent melodrama stars Louise Brooks,
an American actress, at a time when German cinema was trying to woo
American filmmaking. Lulu is a seductive young woman whose nature
brings tragedy to herself and those who love her. It is a story based
on the Pandora myth. Overlooked at the time sound was first being
used, the film was rediscovered by scholars in the 1950s when it was
deemed it a classic of Weimar German cinema, along with METROPOLIS and
THE BLUE ANGEL. The film underwent significant censorship in a number
of countries.
11 NOVEMBER
HIGH NOON USA 1952. (85 mins) Directed by Fred Zinnemann. It stars
Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly and Lloyd Bridges and is based on John W.
Cunningham’s short story “The Tin Star”, first published in
Collier’s magazine in 1947. In Hadleyville, a small town in New Mexico,
Marshal Will Kane is newly married to Amy Fowler and prepares to
retire to another town, but when the vicious outlaw Frank Miller is to
arrive on the noon train, Will must decide either to face a gang of
killers alone, or leave town with his new wife. On its release,
audiences expecting a typical Western were surprised by the film’s
focus on moral and emotional conflict.
18 NOVEMBER
INTERSTELLAR USA 2014 (169 mins) Directed by Christopher Nolan. This
epic scientific fiction film is set in a dystopian future where Earth
is barely habitable. Ex-NASA test-pilot-turned-farmer, Joseph Cooper,
is raising his children, Murph and Tom, following his wife’s death.
Still he agrees to pilot the Endurance spaceship with group of
astronauts who travel through space in search of a new home for
humanity. They pass through a wormhole and come into a galaxy orbiting
a supermassive black hole, Gargantuan. Cooper transits this, emerging
inside a higher-dimensional tesseract (or 4-cube) and is able to
communicate with his daughter, Murph. The visual effects team on the
film created “Gargantuan” using real gravitational lensing equations,
which later helped real scientists better understand actual black
holes. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica
Chastain.
25 NOVEMBER
BURN AFTER READING USA, UK, France 2008. (96 minutes) Directed by
Joel and Ethan Coen. The film follows a recently jobless CIA analyst,
Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) whose memoir CD is found by dim witted
gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). They mistake the
memoirs for classified government documents and attempt to profit from
their find. The film also stars George Clooney and Tilda Swinton.
