Collaborations x Images
Header
Collaborations x Images
Collaborations x Images
Images X The Clark: New Hollywood Auteurs
Free Admission | Clark AuditoriumSupport for this series comes from an Arts Build Community grant, awarded by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation..
Bonnie + Clyde
(1967)
Thursday, December 5, 6pm
Half comic fairy tale, half brutal fact, Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967, 111m) is based upon the Barrow Gang that terrorized the South in the 1930s. Part of the changing of the guard in Hollywood, the film ushered in an era of violent and sexually liberated film making. Although Truffaut’s style was a primary influence, it reclaimed the American gangster movie from the nouvelle vague. Reflecting both folk legend and the affinity of the antiwar generation for outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde has a glee then so new, now so imitated.
A New Leaf
(1971)
Thursday, December 12, 6pm
Elaine May’s antic and macabre 1971 comedy reveals the essence of marital love more brutally than many melodramas. Walter Matthau plays Henry Graham, a lazy Manhattan heir who is stopped cold by the news—delivered in riotous euphemisms by his lawyer—that he’s broke. After a terrifying vision of having to buy ready-to-wear, he must marry rich, fast. Henry impresses his chosen prey, Henrietta Lowell (May), an awkward, lonely heiress and a botanist, with his displays of chivalry. With his imperious managerial style, he puts her chaotic household in order—because he plans to inherit it, sooner rather than later. Having started out with the hatred, dependency, and surrender that it takes most couples years to achieve, Henry and Henrietta prove as suited as regular folks for marriage until death do them part—one way or another.
The Godfather
(1972)
Thursday, December 19, 6pm
Filmed with classic simplicity and daringly underlit, The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972, 175m) was originally envisioned by Paramount as a low-budget quickie. But Coppola fought for a period setting, fought to shoot in New York, and fought for a bigger budget. Not wanting to use Hollywood’s idea of Italian actors (they talka lika Luigi), Coppola was part of the new move toward casting New York theater and TV-trained ethnic actors—even casting former wrestler Lenny “The Zebra Kid” Montana, just out of Rikers, as Luci Brasi.
The Exorcist
(1973)
Thursday, January 16, 6pm
One of the most frightening films ever made and banned from video release in Britian for over ten years, The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973, 122m) is the story of an atheist actress who turns to two Jesuit priests to free her twelve-year-old daughter from what she has come to believe is demonic possession. Written by a devout Catholic intellectual, William Blatty, it is an unsettling combination of honest belief in evil and film as storytelling. Friedkin took strident, dictatorial measures to maintain a pervasive feeling of fear on the set, at times refrigerating it to just above freezing.
Phantom of the Paradise
(1974)
Thursday, January 23, 6pm
“More magnificent than you ever dreamed.” Brian De Palma’s 1974 rock opera Phantom of the Paradise
(92m) remains a connoisseur’s cult classic, 50 years after its release. Disfigured composer Winslow Leach (William Finley) seeks revenge on Swan (Paul Williams), the heartless producer who stole his music, which Leach wrote for Phoenix (Jessica Harper), the woman he loves from afar. Williams’ wicked rock music powers Brian De Palma’s outré musical, which combines elements of Gaston Leroux’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” Oscar Wilde's “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and Goethe’s “Faust.” A cult classic among cult classics.
Young Frankenstein
(1974)
Thursday, January 30, 6pm
As the serious side of New Hollywood took its inspiration from the French New Wave, the comic side embraced the burlesque of vaudeville filtered through 1950s television. Writer and director Mel Brooks’s pioneering vulgarity looks both tame and edgy from today’s perspective—cheap and risky in a way that reflects America back to itself, then and now. That’s
what good comedy does. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974, 106m) is a disciplined farce, run amok. A parody of the mad scientist, Dr. Frankenstein’s grandson, played by Gene Wilder, stares at the world with nearsighted, pale-blue-eyed wonder. He reaches what was for the 1970s hits a new kind of controlled maniacal peak, beyond where Peter Sellers had been, and sillier. New Hollywood had fun, too.
Jaws
(1975)
Thursday, February 6, 6pm
A film that Steven Spielberg did not want to make—even after it wrapped, Spielberg was convinced that his career was over), Jaws
(Steven Spielberg, 1975, 125m) relied on the creative improvisations of three no-name actors (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw) and the creative editing of Verna Fields. She believed firmly that was you can imagine is more frightening than what you can see. Shot on the open ocean, Jaws is a populist, post-Watergate look at corrupt authority. Watch for the John Milius-scripted speech about the Indianapolis..
Rocky
(1976)
Thursday, February 13, 6pm
If Bonnie and Clyde
signaled the arrival of New Hollywood, Rocky
(John G. Avildsen, 1976, 119m) offers a glimpse into how the fall of the old Hollywood studio system created new opportunities. During that chaotic moment, Sylvester Stallone wrote the script for Rocky
, eventually taking a deal that gave him the starring role. By the 1980s New Hollywood had given way to a more formulaic approach, but in 1976 Stallone could write and star in a film that played to his strengths and toned-down the sentimentality and stereotypes, just enough. Is it any wonder that the Rocky franchise does well when the dominant mode of the movie industry's faltering, whether it is 1976 or 2015 (the year Creed
came out)?
Girlfriends
(1978)
Thursday, February 20, 6pm
When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan (Melanie
Mayron), trying to be an artist while making ends meet as a bar mitzvah photographer on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love. A wonder of American
independent cinema by Claudia Weill (who, when she was admitted to the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences as a director in 1981, was one of only four women ever to have
received that honor), Girlfriends is a remarkably authentic vision of female relationships that
has become a touchstone for makers of an entire subgenre of films and television shows about
young women trying to make it in the big city. This 1970s New York time capsule captures the
complexities and contradictions of women’s lives and relationships with wry humor and
refreshing frankness.
Raging Bull
(1980)
Thursday, February 27, 6pm
With this stunningly visceral portrait of self-destructive machismo, Martin Scorsese created one of the truly great and visionary works of modern cinema. Robert De Niro pours his blood, weat, and brute physicality into the Oscar-winning role of Jake La Motta, the rising middleweight boxer from the Bronx whose furious ambition propels him to success within the ring but whose unbridled paranoia and jealousy tatter his relationships with everyone in his orbit, including his brother and manager (Joe Pesci) and his gorgeous, streetwise wife (Cathy Moriarty). Thelma Schoonmaker’s Oscar-winning editing, Michael Chapman’s extraordinarily tactile black-and-white cinematography, and Frank Warner’s ingenious sound design combine to make Raging Bull a uniquely powerful exploration of violence on multiple levels—physical, emotional, psychic, and spiritual.
Images X The Adams
Images Cinema and The Adams Theater are thrilled to co-present this series, the first of multiple collaborations for Images Cinema around the Northern Berkshires. These six selections from the 1930s-1960s represent some of the greatest achievements when the original Hollywood studio system was at the height of its power. This period was also when The Adams Theater was originally operating as movie theater, and we are celebrating that history with these classic films. Support for this series comes from an Arts Build Community grant, awarded by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation..
Modern Times
(1936)
Thursday, September 12 at 7pm
Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette Goddard). With its barrage of unforgettable gags and sly commentary on class struggle during the Great Depression, Modern Times—though made almost a decade into the talkie era and containing moments of sound (even song!)—is a timeless showcase of Chaplin’s untouchable genius as a director of silent comedy.
The Wizard of Oz
(1939)
Thursday, September 19 at 7pm
A young farm girl and her little dog are magically transported into the enchanted land of Oz via a Kansas tornado. As they travel down Oz's Yellow Brick Road to find the Wizard and ask him to send them home, they encounter a wonderful, funny, terrifying and, ultimately, enlightening group of characters, human and otherwise. This 1939 award-winning film classic (Best Score and Best Song Academy Awards) is a perennial favorite that has recently been meticulously restored.
Casablanca
(1942)
Friday, September 20 at 7pm
Academy Award winners Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman light up the screen in one of the most enduring romances in movie history--Casablanca. Rick Blaine (Bogart--The African Queen, The Caine Mutiny) owns a nightclub in Vichy-controlled Casablanca, frequented by refugees desperate to escape German domination. Despite the ever-present human misery, Rick manages to remain uninvolved in World War II now raging across Europe and Northern Africa. But all that changes when Ilsa Lund (Bergman--Gaslight, Notorious) walks through the front door of Rick's club--Rick must now choose between a life with the woman he loves and becoming the hero that both she and the world need.
Buy tickets for Casablanca here!
Rebel Without a Cause
(1955)
Thursday, September 26 at 7pm
James Dean stars in a movie that shocked the United States with a performance that still electrifies the screen twenty-five years after his untimely death prior to the film's release. In this archetypal drama of teenage angst and rebellion, three high school students who should lead idyllic lives in their stable, comfortable suburban families explode with a violence and sexuality that their parents cannot understand. This film--which ripped the façade from the post-war American dream to expose the rage of the country's youth--resonates with an energy that has made it a modern classic and a powerful coming-of-age story.
Buy tickets for Rebel Without a Cause here!
Vertigo
(1958)
Thursday, October 3 at 7pm
Alfred Hitchcock's romantic story of obsession, manipulation and fear. A detective is forced to retire after his fear of heights causes the death of a fellow officer and the girl he was hired to follow. He sees a double of the girl, causing him to transform her image onto the dead girl's body. This leads into a cycle of madness and lies.
The Graduate
(1967)
Thursday, October 10 at 7pm
Benjamin, a recent college graduate very worried about his future, finds himself in a love triangle with an older woman and her daughter. Based on the novella by Charles Webb, written shortly after he graduated from Williams College.
Marketing Signup
Marketing Signup
custom footer
Your community-based movie theater.
A Berkshire tradition for over 100 years, Images Cinema is a non-profit, community-supported movie theater that celebrates film as an art form, a source of entertainment and learning, and a means to cultivate an engaged community.
Footer
