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The First Transition:
World Cinema in the 1940s

Lecturer: Jonathan Rosenbaum

From January 23 through May 6, we offer a series of fourteen programs entitled The First Transition: World Cinema in the 1940s, 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 second part of the series deals with postwar cinema in a variety of contexts, including American comedy (Sturges, Lubitsch, Chaplin), horror film (Val Lewton), French Occupation cinema (L’Herbier), film noir (Ulmer, Welles), Japanese cinema (Ozu), British cinema (Powell & Pressburger), neorealism (Rossellini, De Sica), and international masters (Dreyer, Eisenstein).

-- Jonathan Rosenbaum

DAY OF WRATH
(VREDENS DAG)
1943, Carl Dreyer, Denmark, 97 min.
With Thorkild Roose, Lisbeth Movin

This recent digital restoration recaptures the disturbing power of Dreyer’s austere yet stunningly sensual masterpiece. In a 17th-century society dominated by religious fanaticism and rife with suspicions of witchcraft, the young wife of an ecclesiastical judge embarks on a perilous love affair with her stepson. In Danish with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)

Friday, February 27, 6:00 pm
Wednesday, March 4, 6:00 pm

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
(aka STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN)
1946, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, UK, 104 min.
With David Niven, Kim Hunter

An RAF pilot (Niven) in the midst of a crash landing bonds with an American radio operator (Hunter); he is supposed to die, but divine mismanagement gives him a chance to plead his case before a celestial court. Powell & Pressburger rank among cinema’s greatest colorists, and Alfred Junge’s heavenly set design is unsurpassed in its detail and imagination, so we are especially pleased to present this classic fantasy in an archival 35mm print, courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment. (MR)

Wednesday, March 11, 6:00 pm

CANYON PASSAGE
1946, Jacques Tourneur, USA, 92 min.
With Dana Andrews, Susan Hayward

This unusually complex, vastly underrated, rarely screened western by stylist extraordinaire Tourneur (CAT PEOPLE, OUT OF THE PAST) is remarkable for its assured embrace of both materialism (an atypically explicit concern with business and commerce) and lyricism (gorgeous pastel colors, water imagery, Hoagy Carmichael as a wandering minstrel). Dana Andrews stars as a frontier entrepreneur involved in a murder trial, an Indian war, and a romantic pentagon. 35mm. (MR)

Friday, March 13, 6:15 pm
Wednesday, March 18, 6:00 pm

THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS
(FRANCESCO, GIULLARE DI DIO)
1950, Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 87 min.
With Brother Nazario Gerardi, Aldo Fabrizi

If you’re expecting a sanctimonious religious lesson, you have been misinformed. Rossellini’s easygoing masterpiece is funny (the Italian title translates as FRANCIS, GOD’S JESTER), earthy (the great opening scene immerses us in rain and mud), and, above all, joyful, in the fullest and most soul-expanding sense of the term. Casting real-life monks as Francis and his disciples, the film follows them through an episodic series of vignettes involving a tyrant, a pig, a leper, a group of birds, and other of God’s creatures. In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)

Wednesday, March 25, 6:00 pm

LATE SPRING
(BANSHUN)
1949, Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 108 min.
With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara

One of Ozu’s best-loved films, LATE SPRING initiates his mature period and the cycle of marrying-off-the-daughter plots that dominate his late work. In their quintessential roles, Chishu Ryu plays an aging professor, and Setsuko Hara is the dutiful daughter whose reluctance to marry moves her father to play a trick on her. The final scene, involving an apple peel, breaking waves, and a father’s tears, is one of Ozu’s most poetic and poignant. In Japanese with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)

Friday, March 27, 6:00 pm
Wednesday, April 1, 6:00 pm

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• The First Transition:
  World Cinema in the 1930s
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