Winter 2009, Thursday 1st Show • Americanarama!

A stroll back to yesteryear on Main Street, U.S.A.

At first glance, the focus of this series may appear comically narrow: nostalgia films produced in Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s that idealize small–town American life at the end of the 19th century. Yet truly, this represents a significant subgenre of films, as evidenced by the major filmmakers who worked within it: Ford, Lubitsch, Welles, Minnelli, Sturges, Hitchcock, and others are all represented here, while films by Vidor, Capra, and Griffith could easily have fit in as well. more

The historical context for these films is both obvious and obviously important. After a decade of excitement and opulence, Americans now facing Depression and another World War were forced to ask themselves, “Where did we go wrong?” They looked to a transitional period of the nation’s history, just long enough after the Civil War for Americans to regain their confidence in their standing in the world. The U.S. was playing host to world’s fairs, as depicted in Meet Me In St. Louis (1/8), while distinctively American styles of song and literature were developing. Americans could celebrate the conquering of the Wild West, while still enjoying its status as a largely undeveloped frontier, as in Ruggles of Red Gap (2/2). Sure, the Gilded Age had its robber barons, labor unrest, and race riots – but that was all happening in the ever–growing cities, not on Main Street. Unlike some of the other films, however, Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (2/19) does not gloss over the troubling implications of this transition period. With his typically wonderful cast, Welles tragically depicts how the coming industrialization of the country tears apart the middle–class family.

The literary antecedent to the Americana films of the ‘30s and ‘40s was Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s 1937 celebration of family life. The satirical quips and good–natured persona of humorist Will Rogers also helped set a template for nostalgia films, meanwhile establishing him as America’s new Twain. Rogers himself appears in two movies in the series, John Ford’s Steamboat ‘Round the Bend (1/22) and Henry King’s State Fair (1/29). A couple films – Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (2/26) and the Raoul Walsh musical The Strawberry Blonde (3/5) – are adapted from popular plays and, while abandoning the small town for the big city, still retain the romanticized Gay Nineties attitude. Remember the Night (2/12) draws upon the ultimate American nostalgia producer – Christmas – to tell its charming story of a return home to family.

While most of the films in the series were made during the Great Depression or World War II, there are a couple outliers. The Midwestern setting of Harold Lloyd’s silent feature The Kid Brother (1/15) from 1927 notably contrasts with the urban landscapes of his more famous films like Safety Last. Coming long after the primary wave of Americana films, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 comedy The Trouble With Harry (3/12) actually represents an extension of a theme that he had been developing since the ‘40s. Hitchcock took perverse pleasure in creating serene depictions of small–town American life, only to shatter them with the insertion of some menace, represented in Shadow of a Doubt by a serial–killer uncle, and in Harry by a mysterious corpse. It’s a fitting conclusion to the series, as later directors like David Lynch would pick up on this theme for their own films about small–town life.

No one would mistake the films in this series as accurate portrayals of fin de siécle America, of course. As nostalgia tends to do, it softens some of the rougher edges, over–sentimentalizes at times, and ignores large chunks of history that run counter to its thesis. Will Rogers himself put it best: “Things ain’t what they used to be, and probably never was.” Yet for those of us raised on cinema nearly a century after the events of these films take place, these movies are in some sense the best record we have – not just of the turn of the century, but of the attitudes of the ‘30s and ‘40s that made this subgenre possible. It’s a kind of double nostalgia for us, then. Even if we know that there was no real point in American history made up entirely of taffy pulls, ice cream socials, and carousel rides scored by Stephen Foster songs, we still wish for a moment we could live in it, and we also wish we could still make films that depict it with proud and unabashed sentimentality. EC close

Thursday, January 8 • 7:00 PM • 113min
Meet Me in St. Louis
Vincente Minnelli, 1944 • Vincente Minnelli created an enduring classic in this charming musical about a middle–class family waiting a year for the opening of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The four Smith daughters must contend with their romantic longings, as well as their father’s unexpected transfer to New York before the fair has arrived. Some of Judy Garland’s most memorable performances are found here, including “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The film’s popularity created a surge in nostalgic Americana films following the war. 35mm

Thursday, January 15 • 7:00 PM • 84min
The Kid Brother
Ted Wilde, 1927 • Harold Lloyd drew upon his Nebraska upbringing to play Harold Hickory, the runt in a family of strong men led by his father, the sheriff of the small town of Hickoryville. A traveling medicine show arrives and Harold finds himself in love with the carnival’s owner, Mary Powers. His father is wrongfully accused of stealing town money, actually purloined by the strongman Sandoni. It’s up to young Harold’s brains to save the day. Today, the film is regarded as one of Lloyd’s best and features some of his most memorable sequences, particularly a scene where he climbs a tree to catch a glimpse of his beloved Mary. 35mm - Silent with piano accompaniment by David Drazin.

Thursday, January 22 • 7:00 PM • 81min
Steamboat ’Round the Bend
John Ford, 1935 • The last of Will Rogers’s three collaborations with John Ford was released after Rogers’s tragic death in a plane crash in 1935. Here he plays Dr. John Pearly, the owner of a steamboat in the 1890s that also serves as a floating wax museum and a venue for him to sell his highly alcoholic medicine. The film co–stars another classic American humorist, the great Kentucky writer Irvin S. Cobb, whose “Judge Priest” stories were the basis for the previous Rogers/Ford film. The outpouring of national grief following Rogers’s death caused the studio to cut the planned final shot of Rogers waving farewell. 35mm

Thursday, January 29 • 7:00 PM • 97min
State Fair
Henry King, 1933 • More than any other director, Henry King specialized in folksy and sentimental representations of Americana. State Fair is one of his best efforts, appropriately pairing him with the down-home charm of Will Rogers at the peak of his career. Rogers plays Abel Frake, a farmer who takes his family to the Iowa State Fair in hopes of winning a blue ribbon with his hog Blue Boy. The film would be remade twice, notably adapted into a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1945, yet Rogers’s dry wit makes the original still the superior version. 35mm - not available on DVD

Thursday, February 5 • 7:00 PM • 90min
Ruggles of Red Gap
Leo McCarey, 1935 • Perhaps the easiest way to grasp Americana is to set it in relief against other cultures. In this charming comedy, Charles Laughton stars as Ruggles, an English butler who is wagered and lost by his upper class master in a poker game. As a result, the terrified Ruggles is sent to a small town in the wild west of 1908. Released the same year as his masterful turns in Mutiny on the Bounty and Les Miserables, the film features one of Laughton’s finest performances, particularly in his moving recitation of the Gettysburg Address to a crowd of cowboys in a saloon. 35mm

Thursday, February 12 • 7:00 PM • 94min
Remember the Night
Mitchell Leisen, 1940 • Before Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray teamed for this lovely and relatively unknown Christmas film. MacMurray is an assistant DA who takes pity on Stanwyck, a shoplifter he’ll have to prosecute after the holidays. He takes her to his home in Indiana for Christmas where she’s overwhelmed by the love of his family, including Beulah Bondi, Hollywood’s greatest player of mother characters. It doesn’t take long, naturally, for criminal and prosecutor to fall in love. Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay, his last before turning to directing, and it’s full of his trademark wit and elegance. 35mm - not available on DVD

Thursday, February 19 • 7:00 PM • 88min
The Magnificent Ambersons
Orson Welles, 1942 • Orson Welles notoriously had the control wrested from him by the studio for his follow–up to Citizen Kane, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s 1919 novel. Butchered as it may be, Ambersons remains one of Welles’ finest works, and by extension one of the greatest pieces of all American cinema. The film tells the story of the decline of the Ambersons, a wealthy family in turn–of–the–century Indiana. The cast, made of several regulars from Welles’ stock company, is superb, particularly Joseph Cotton and Agnes Moorehead, and Bernard Hermann once again delivers an iconic score. 16mm - not available on DVD

Thursday, February 26 • 7:00 PM • 112min
Heaven Can Wait
Ernst Lubitsch, 1943 • Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), a wealthy member of New York’s elite, heads straight to Hell upon his death. His Excellency (Laird Cregar), a Satan–like figure, however, doubts whether Van Cleve has sinned enough to be qualified to enter. To prove his case, Van Cleve proceeds to tell his life story, in all its sordid detail, concentrating on his long relationship with his wife Martha, played by Gene Tierney. Ernst Lubitsch’s only completed Technicolor film is a typically charming and sophisticated comedy about the upper-crust of fin–de–siècle society. 35mm

Thursday, March 5 • 7:00 PM • 97min
The Strawberry Blonde
Raoul Walsh, 1942 • In this delightful musical comedy, James Cagney plays Biff Grimes, a dentist in 1890s New York who has long been in love with the gold–digging Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth) yet loses out to his sleazy rival Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson). Even after he marries another woman, played by Olivia de Havilland, Biff’s infatuation with Virginia continues. Throughout, Cagney and the gang perform classic numbers like “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home” and “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie.” The Epstein brothers (Casablanca) adapted the script from a popular play by James Hagan. Archival 35mm - not available on DVD

Thursday, March 12 • 7:00 PM • 99min
The Trouble with Harry
Alfred Hitchcock, 1955 • The menace growing underneath picture–perfect small–town America was one of Hitchcock’s trademark themes, particularly in his favorite film, Shadow of a Doubt. Here, in an uncharacteristic work, he depicts with deadpan humor what would happen if a corpse were to mysteriously appear in the middle of a scenic Vermont town. Townspeople, including Edmund Gwenn and John Forsythe, act remarkably nonchalantly as they all imagine how they might have been accidentally responsible. This twisted black comedy, Hitchcock’s funniest film, marks the screen debut of Shirley MacLaine. 35mm