WELCOME BACK TO CINEMALIT!
Matthew Kennedy, curator and host
CinemaLit Film Series
January 2021 – Golden Silents
We start the CinemaLit 2021 season with a celebration of four great silent films. We've scheduled two highly consequential European dramas, Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) from Germany and Abel Gance's La Roue (1923) from France. Note: both films are over four hours long. We scheduled them at the beginning of the season so you could leisurely watch them over the winter break. Dr. Mabuse is neatly segmented into parts and acts for serial watching, and La Roue is in two parts, each in the typical length range of a feature film.
The other two films on the docket are stunning American comedies, Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. (1924) and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). They clock out at a relatively compact 46 and 88 minutes, respectively.
Short or long, funny or sad, domestic or imported, these are four very special titles from the distant film past.
January 8 – Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) – 268 minutes
Fritz Lang's early film Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (Dr. Mabuse der Spieler) was impressively ahead of its time. Based on multiple novels by Norbert Jacques, it foreshadows police procedurals, James Bond, and film noir. The title character belongs on a list of indelible villains real and fictional – from Rasputin to Svengali to Hannibal Lecter.
Dr. Mabuse, played with appropriate dread by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, runs a criminal empire in Berlin. He uses disguises, theft, abduction, counterfeiting, gambling, and hypnosis to achieve his objectives. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor is in pursuit, knowing the perpetrator only as "The Great Unknown."
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler is a textbook study of German Expressionism on film. It's rife with extreme camera angles, chiaroscuro lighting, forced perspective, and stylized make-up and acting. The high artifice is extended to storytelling, which tended toward the fantastic. The criminal genius Mabuse joins the vampire of Nosferatu and the mesmerist of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as supreme menaces of classic German Expressionist films. And in Dr. Mabuse we see the direct relationship of German Expressionism to film noir, as Lang's later American career includes the noir classics Scarlet Street, The Blue Gardenia, The Big Heat, and While the City Sleeps.
For all its commitment to unsettling visuals, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler also looms as a major cinematic rendering of harsh conditions in Germany between the wars. Its themes of stock market volatility, urban social decay, and human's suggestibility to men of dark motives were common angst in the Weimar Republic. Klein-Rogge described the mad doctor as "a symptom of a Europe that was falling apart … a guiding force, a creator, if only in destruction."
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.”
INSTRUCTIONS FOR JOINING THE CINEMALIT SALON
First watch the selected film on Kanopy. All you will need is either a Mechanics' Institute library card, or a San Francisco Public Library card, which will give you access to Kanopy and its treasure trove of movies. Make a reservation for our CinemaLit Salon as usual via Eventbrite and watch the film on Kanopy at your leisure. You will receive a link to the Friday night CinemaLit salon on Zoom one day in advance, and then an additional reminder roughly two hours in advance. On the night of the salon click the Zoom link and join us.
If you do not receive a Zoom Link by 4:00 PM on the day of the event, contact Pam Troy at [email protected].
KANOPY INSTRUCTIONS
Mechanics’ Institute members can now sign up for FREE access to Kanopy, a wonderful film streaming service. To sign up:
1. Click on THIS LINK.
2. Click on the large orange login button that reads, “Log in to milibrary.”
3. Enter the 14-digit bar code from your MI Library card
4. Set up your account following Kanopy’s instructions, including your email and a password.
5. Kanopy will send verification to your email address.
You’ll be able to choose from a wonderful selection of films, including classics, pre-code, foreign films, and documentaries, including the films we’ve scheduled this month for CinemaLit.
If you are not a Mechanics’ Institute member, consider membership and click HERE to join online:
Or, you can check with your public library to see if they are Kanopy members. If so, you may use your public library card to set up a Kanopy account.
Register with Eventbrite below.
If the green TICKET button is not immediately visible, scroll down on the right in the Eventbrite window until it appears.
CinemaLit Films
