Friday, October 6, 2023 - 6:00pm
October 6 – Don't Look Now (1973), 110 minutes, directed by Nicholas Roeg, starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.
This CinemaLit event will be held Online on Zoom
Laura and John Baxter (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) are grieving their young daughter, Christine, who drowned in a pond at home in England. While in Venice, they encounter a woman who claims to have seen Christine on the other side. Laura is transfixed; John is skeptical. Director Nicolas Roeg toys with our expectations of time and space, crawls into the tormented psyches of the Baxters, mixes the macabre with the erotic, and exploits the eerie decay of Venice off season with astounding power in this stylish and hugely admired film. Expect to be unsettled. (Image used with permission of Paramount Pictures.)
October 2023 CinemaLit – Shades of Gothic
We're devoting October at CinemaLit to movies that have varying relations to the human fear response. Our films play on different moods while crawling under our skin. Reincarnation, possession, insanity, torture, prophecy, ghosts, and clairvoyance are featured. Our films take turns being eerie, disturbing, funny, campy, and genuinely horrifying. Let's creep out with Don’t Look Now (1973), The Haunting (1963), and The Pit and the Pendulum (1961).
Matthew Kennedy, CinemaLit’s curator, has written biographies of Marie Dressler, Joan Blondell, and Edmund Goulding. His book Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, was the basis of a film series on Turner Classic Movies.
“I don't have a favorite film,” Matthew says. "I find that my relationships to films, actors, genres, and directors change as I change over the years. Some don't hold up. Some look more profound, as though I've caught up with their artistry. I feel that way about Garbo, Cary Grant, director John Cassavetes, and others."
“Classic films have historical context, something only time can provide,” Matt observes. “They become these great cultural artifacts, so revealing of tastes, attitudes, and assumptions.”
Mechanics' Institute members Free
Non-Members $10
Register with Eventbrite below.
CinemaLit Films
