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The First Transition:
World Cinema in the 1930s

Lecturer: Jonathan Rosenbaum

From September 3 through December 10, we offer a series of fourteen programs entitled The First Transition: World Cinema in the 1930s, with weekly lecture/discussions by Jonathan Rosenbaum, internationally renowned film critic and author of numerous books including Discovering Orson Welles. The series is made possible in part through the sponsorship of American Airlines, the Film Center’s Educational Underwriter, and is presented in cooperation with the School of the Art Institute’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism. Additional screenings of the films on Friday do not include Jonathan Rosenbaum’s lecture. Admission to all First Transition programs is $4 for Film Center members; usual admission prices apply for non-members.

-- Martin Rubin

This two-part series is a “prequel” to my 2007-8 series The Great Transition: World Cinema in the 1950s and 1960s only in the sense that the latter transition alludes to the New Wave, whereas the “first transition” alludes to Italian neorealism. More specifically, the first part of the series deals with prewar cinema in a variety of cultural contexts, concentrating on Hollywood during the Depression, with side-trips to Japan, Germany, and France. The second part of the series, The First Transition: World Cinema in the 1940s, will be presented in spring 2009.

-- Jonathan Rosenbaum

SCARFACE
1932, Howard Hawks, USA, 90 min.
With Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak

The most lurid and dynamic of the early gangster classics, SCARFACE was reputedly based on writer Ben Hecht’s idea of mixing the violent rise of Al Capone with the decadent history of the Borgias. Paul Muni gives a ferocious performance as Tony Camonte, an ambitious Chicago hoodlum with a coin-flipping best friend (George Raft) and an overprotected sister (Ann Dvorak). 35mm. (MR)

Friday, August 29, 6:00 pm
Wednesday, September 3, 6:00 pm

I WAS BORN, BUT. . .
(UMARETE WA MITA KEREDO)
1932, Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 91 min.
With Tatsuo Saito, Mitsuko Yoshikawa

Ozu’s best-known silent film, I WAS BORN, BUT… is a raucous comedy that darkens with disillusionment when two rambunctious boys see their dad grovel before his boss, leading them to embark on a hunger strike. Silent film with recorded piano accompaniment by David Drazin. 35mm. (MR)

Wednesday, September 10, 6:00 pm

CITY LIGHTS
1931, Charles Chaplin, USA, 86 min.
With Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill

Widely considered the pinnacle of Chaplin’s art, CITY LIGHTS plays sentiment and slapstick off each other to devastating effect. He plays a tramp whose outcast state is overlooked by two complementary characters: a blind flower girl who thinks he’s a millionaire, and a millionaire who’s too drunk to care. Silent film with synchronized music score (composed by Chaplin). 35mm. (MR)

Friday, September 12, 6:00 pm
Wednesday, September 17, 6:00 pm

M
1931, Fritz Lang, Germany, 105 min.
With Peter Lorre

Lang’s gripping account of a police manhunt remains one of the cinema’s most profound visions of crime and its impact on society. Peter Lorre delivers an unforgettable performance as the child-murderer caught between the machinery of the law and the machinations of the criminal underworld. In German with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)

Friday, September 19, 6:00 pm
Wednesday, September 24, 6:00 pm

VAMPYR
1932, Carl Dreyer, Denmark/France/Germany, 70 min.
With Julien West, Sybille Schmitz

Dreyer’s avant-garde horror film centers on a young traveler who encounters two sisters transfixed by a mysterious force. This genuinely strange film is less a coherent plot than a disorienting yet hypnotic series of gauzy images and tour-de-force sequences, most famously a coffin-ride seen from the point-of-view of the corpse. In German, English, and Danish with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)

Friday, September 26, 6:15 pm
Wednesday, October 1, 6:00 pm

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