Film, Music & Theater   

This year will be the 50th anniversary of such iconic movies as Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nashville, Night Moves, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This course will look back at these and other popular films that captivated audiences in 1975. We will place these films in the cultural contexts of American life in the 1970s as well as the artistic contexts in the New Hollywood Cinema and the rise of blockbuster filmmaking. We will discuss how and why they have resonated with viewers then and now, and we will come away with a new understanding of what it means for a movie to be a classic.

This course will explore the lives and careers of actors and actresses in the 1930s and 1940s who prided themselves on their abilities to inhabit any role. In addition to focusing on notable legends like Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Hepburn and Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, and Judy Garland, the course will also note the lesser-known actors of the era like Luise Rainer and Robert Donat. The course will conclude with an examination of one of the most storied years in Hollywood history: 1939.

To quote 42nd Street, "think of musical comedy, the most glorious words in the English language." Using various clips from Broadway and movie musicals, this course will explore five categories: movies to Broadway musicals, Broadway to movie musicals, off-Broadway musicals, message musicals, and show biz musicals. Join us as we dissect and discuss one of America's true art forms, musical comedy.

This course will explore films where people live in oppressive contexts. Some films will be viewed in class while others will be watched by individuals on their own. We will cover broad concepts: national socialism and antisemitism, slavery and Jim Crow, life behind the Iron Curtain, immigration, anti-immigration perspectives, and totalitarian personality cults. The movies we will watch are cinematically excellent, and may include: The Shop on Main Street (1965), Aferim! (2015), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), The Lives of Others (2006), and A Better Life (2011).