This season’s SummerScape Film Series celebrates a remarkable decade in the history of British cinema by screening a diverse selection of enduring masterpieces from the immediate postwar era. As if mirroring a contradictory, post-traumatic mood of relief and disillusionment, the films offer either giddy comedy or sardonic tragedy, with little in between. For instance, director Carol Reed’s The Third Man, with a script by novelist Graham Greene and a memorable performance by Orson Welles, has long been considered a noir classic, a definitive statement on “the death of Europe.” In similar brooding tones, the distinguished partnership of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell produced what must be considered their best film, Black Narcissus, an intensely erotic and tortured psychodrama about Anglican nuns in the Himalayas. Yet at the same time, Ealing Studios was entering its golden age with a string of light British comedies, best exemplified by the works of its most accomplished director, Alexander Mackendrick. The Scottish regionalism of both Tight Little Island and The Maggie amounts to an almost nationalist polemic, with first the bossy English and then the naÏve Americans as the respective targets of social satire.
Also featured are films that contextualize the featured composer of this summer’s Bard Music Festival, Edward Elgar, within his familiar cultural landmarks. David Lean’s Oliver Twist still stands as the definitive cinematic adaptation of a Charles Dickens work; the rarely seen Outcast of the Islands, directed by Carol Reed, holds the same distinction with respect to Joseph Conrad. And The Red Shoes,with its ballet theme, and the recently made Topsy-Turvy, evoking the world of Gilbert and Sullivan, are widely viewed as two of the most accomplished cinematic treatments of the world of music and stage performance. All films will be shown at 7 pm in the Center for Film, Electronic Arts, and Music in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center. All Film Tickets: $7.50 DOUBLE BILL Tight Little Island 1949, directed by Alexander Mackendrick 82 minutes The Maggie 1954, directed by Alexander Mackendrick 92 minutes Tight Little Island (a.k.a. Whisky Galore!) and The Maggie were the first and fourth of director Alexander Mackendrick’s films for Britain’s Ealing Studios, a name synonymous with British comedy. Adapted from Compton Mackenzie’s novel, which was based on a true story, Tight Little Island tells of a Hebridean Island caught in a whisky shortage, whose villagers determine to “liberate” a wrecked ship whose hold contains 50,000 cases of the precious fluid on which their society depends. The Maggie is also about a boat, a dilapidated old puffer whose captain tricks an American businessman into chartering in order to pay for repairs. July 8 The Man in the White Suit 1951, directed by Alexander Mackendrick
Mackendrick was known for well-narrated comedies that pit innocence against cynical experience. Based on a play by Roger MacDougall, who wrote the screenplay with John Dighton, The Man in the White Suit is the story of scientist Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness), who invents an indestructible fabric that repels dirt, and naÏvely expects it to revolutionize the clothing industry. Of course, both the clothing manufacturers and workers’ unions understand this as a threat to their livelihoods, and they can agree on one thing: Stratton must be stopped. 85 minutes July 12 The Blue Lamp 1950, directed by Basil Dearden The Blue Lamp is probably the most famous of all British police films, and gave birth to an archetype of the genre: the unimpeachable PC George Dixon, played by Jack Warner. Scripted by ex-policeman T. E. B. Clarke, the story tells of Tom Riley and Spud, two of the new, more reckless and less professional breed of criminals to emerge from the war years, whose robbery exploits result in the shooting of a policeman. 84 minutes July 15
The Fallen Idol 1948, directed by Carol Reed
Based on a Graham Greene story, this is a coming-of-age tale full of Oedipal overtones, mid the aftermath of a suspected murder. While his parents are away, Felipe, an ambassador’s son, becomes convinced that the family butler, his best friend, has killed his wife, and tries to protect him from the police. The great English stage actor Ralph Richardson plays the butler in a magnificently understated performance. 94 minutes July 19 The Third Man 1949, directed by Carol Reed
Reed’s best-known film is also one of the high points of Britain’s postwar Golden Age. Again based on a story by Graham Greene, the action takes place in decrepit postwar Vienna, where Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) comes to look for his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Martins is told that Lime was killed when he was hit by a car, but when a discrepancy arises as to whether two men or three carried the body away, Martins’s doubts lead him to unravel a heinous criminal scheme. 104 minutes July 22 Outcast of the Islands 1952, directed by Carol Reed
Filmed in Ceylon, Reed and screenwriter W. E. C. Fairchild’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1896 novel allows for much exotic atmosphere and exploration of “multicultural” themes before the word existed. Trevor Howard plays the manager of a shipping company whose love for the daughter of a Sulu pirate leads him to betray his mentor by divulging a secret shipping route. The realism benefits from the fact that Aissa, the fatal love-interest, is played by the half-Algerian, half-French newcomer Kerima. 102 minutes July 26 Topsy-Turvy 1999, directed by Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh’s tendency to show his characters as troubled, flawed, and struggling to overcome their limitations takes a colorful turn in Topsy-Turvy, his costume comedy about Gilbert and Sullivan. The story opens as the famous pair give birth to their comic opera, Princess Ida, which is a tremendous flop. The two must reinvent
themselves, taking inspiration from a Japanese exhibition to concoct The
Mikado, with which they return to the top of their form. 160 minutes July 29 Black Narcissus 1947, directed by Michael Powell
English director Michael Powell and Hungarianborn writer Emeric Pressburger were an inspired partnership whose passionate fantasies went against the grain of postwar realism. Black Narcissus, a story of Anglican nuns who establish a school and hospital in the Himalayas in the teeth of hostile natives, was daring in its frank portrayal of a nun’s repressed sexual desire for a local bureaucrat. Deborah Kerr stars, but relative unknown Kathleen Byron, as the sister who abandons the order to pursue a tragic love, turns in an unexpectedly intense performance. 100 minutes August 2 The Red Shoes 1948, directed by Michael Powell
The definitive ballet movie, The Red Shoes reunites Powell and Pressburger, whose realism is interwoven with fantasy when an aspiring dancer becomes possessed by her ballet shoes. Young Vicky Page (Moira Shearer, who went from unknown to star with this role) falls under the spell of the director of the Ballet Lermontov, but also falls in love with the troupe’s composer. Unable to continue dancing if she gets married or marry if she continues dancing, she is led to her fate by the shoes themselves. 133 minutes August 5 Oliver Twist 1948, directed by David Lean
Acclaimed director of Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Bridge on the River Kwai, Sir David Lean brought Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist to the screen two years after his success with Great Expectations. The story of an orphan who escapes the workhouse to get taken up by a gang of pickpockets led by the charismatic Jew Fagin is given a visually lavish setting. The subtle irony of Alec Guinness’s masterful performance as Fagin temporarily caused Oliver Twist to be banned in America for anti-Semitism, but the film, coscripted by Lean and Stanley Haynes, is now acknowledged as perhaps the best of Lean’s epics. 116 minutes August 9
