CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Spring Film series will begin Feb. 5 with a screening of the classic “Sunset Boulevard.”
“Sunset Boulevard,” which stars William Holden, Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim, is director Billy Wilder’s masterpiece about faded silent film star Norma Desmond, played by Swanson, and her delusional relationship with studio screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by Holden. The 1950 film exposed the seamy underside of the glamorous Hollywood film industry.
The spring lineup:
• Feb. 19, “My Favorite Year,” 1982, directed by Richard Benjamin, and starring Peter O’Toole, Mark Linn-Baker, Joseph Bologna and Lainie Kazan. Set in 1954, during the Golden Age of live television, “My Favorite Year” is part screwball comedy, part affectionate snapshot of a bygone era and part incisive commentary on the role that movie stars play in people’s lives. A brash comedy writer (Linn-Baker) for a fictional variety program is given the task of watching over the show’s unreliable guest star, Alan Swann (played by O’Toole in an Oscar-nominated performance), a swashbuckling matinee idol with uncontrollable desires for women and alcohol.
• March 5, “The Freshman,” 1990, directed by Andrew Bergman, and starring Matthew Broderick, Marlon Brando, and Bruno Kirby.
Broderick plays Clark Kellogg, a freshman entering New York University who accepts a job as a private courier for a shady character, Carmine Sabatini (Brando), after his money and belongings are stolen at Grand Central Station.
• April 16, “Enchanted,” 2007, directed by Kevin Lima and starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Susan Sarandon and James Marsden. A classic Disney-animated princess enters the live-action world after she falls down a well and lands in Times Square. The princess takes up residence in the home of a cynical divorce lawyer and his lonely daughter while she waits for her prince to come. A disarmingly sweet-tart film that simultaneously critiques and reinforces notions of Disney princesses and their happily-ever-afters.
A panel discussion on “Girls, Women, Princesses and Queens in Two and Three Dimensions” featuring UI scholars follows the screening. Panelists will include Pat Gill, professor of gender and women’s studies; Sarah Projansky, professor of cinema studies and of gender and women’s studies; and Sarah Rasmusson, graduate student in the Institute for Communications Research. Christine Catanzarite, senior associate director of IPRH and a professor of cinema studies, will moderate the discussion.
The IPRH film series, inaugurated in 2000, is thematically linked with the IPRH topic for each year. The theme for the 2008-09 series is Disciplinarity: Films on Film.
“As the IPRH continues its yearlong examination of the topic of disciplinarity, the film series takes the opportunity to turn its attention to film itself,” Catanzarite said. “The fall semester lineup considered the act of creating film art – from the pressures facing directors both real and fictional to the growing pains of the early film industry.
“The spring schedule takes up the issue of film from the other side of the lens, examining what it means to be a movie fan – from the thrill of meeting a larger-than-life idol to the flash of recognition that comes when life begins to imitate art; all of these films consider the process of watching films and being shaped by the magic they can create.”
The film series is free and open to the public. All films will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Room 62 of Krannert Art Museum, 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign
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For more information, visit the IPRH Web site, or contact Catanzarite at catanzar@illinois.edu.
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