IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom at the Vineyard Church
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), starring Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball, is one of a very small number of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age that was directed by a woman – Dorothy Arzner. We will view the film in the first session, and then discuss it in the second session by looking closely at a number of specific examples from the film and considering them in relation to the film as a whole. Discussion will be supported by recent research conducted by the instructor, who is in the process of writing a book about the film and is actively interested in the Elderwise community’s ideas about it. Matthew Solomon is a professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century, which won the Kraszna-Krausz Award for best moving image book. He has also authored a BFI Film Classics monograph on Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and, most recently, Méliès Boots: Footwear and Film Manufacturing in Second Industrial Revolution Paris.
