Film 50: History of Cinema

January 20, 2010 - April 28, 2010

Rashomon, March 3

If you want to explore the aesthetics and history of film, this is the place to start. PFA and the UC Berkeley Film Studies Program copresent the film-lecture course Film 50, now in its eighteenth year. An undergraduate course designed for non–film majors, Film 50 is open to the public as space permits. Students learn to view film as a complex picture language and to understand how it articulates narrative, psychological, social, and ideological themes. This year’s course, taught by Marilyn Fabe, has a special focus on representations of memory and the past.

Special admission prices apply: General admission, $11.50; BAM/PFA members, $7.50; UC Berkeley students, $5.50; Seniors, disabled persons, UC Berkeley faculty and staff, non–UC Berkeley students, and youth 17 and under, $8.50. Programs often sell out, so we recommend advance tickets, which are available on this website, at the PFA box office and BAM admissions desk, or by calling (510) 642-5249.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
3:00 p.m. Introduction: Cinema and the Representation of Memory and the Past
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. This informative illustrated lecture introduces students to film language and to the themes of the course.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010
3:00 p.m. From the Cinema of Attractions to Narrative Integration
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Bruce Loeb on piano. This program showcases the wonders of early cinema and traces the beginnings of film narrative.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
3:00 p.m. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene (Germany, 1919). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Bruce Loeb on piano. The quintessential German Expressionist film translates narrative and psychology into stunning set design. (82 mins)

Wednesday, February 10, 2010
3:00 p.m. Citizen Kane
Orson Welles (U.S., 1941). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. A childhood memory is the ultimate red herring in Welles’s audacious debut, which still tops many critics’ lists of the best films of all time. (119 mins)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
3:00 p.m. Spellbound
Alfred Hitchcock (U.S., 1945). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Analyst Ingrid Bergman probes the guilt-ridden psyche of Gregory Peck and finds clues to a murder in this Hitchcock whodunit. With Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou. (127 mins)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010
3:00 p.m. Pursued
Raoul Walsh (U.S., 1947). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Robert Mitchum is haunted by a childhood nightmare in this great noir-Western, a combination of Freudian psychodrama and fated family tragedy. (101 mins)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010
3:00 p.m. Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1950). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Visual proof of the relativity of truth, Kurosawa’s legendary film remains a revelation. (88 mins)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
3:00 p.m. Night and Fog
Alain Resnais (France, 1956). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. An extraordinary study of the Nazi death camps, and the human capacity to remember and forget. With A Visitor from the Living by Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah. (95 mins)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
3:00 p.m. Last Year at Marienbad
Alain Resnais (France, 1961). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. It’s déjà vu all over the place in Alain Resnais’s elegant, labyrinthine puzzle, written by Alain Robbe-Grillet and starring Delphine Seyrig. With Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon. (108 mins)

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
3:00 p.m. Memories of Underdevelopment
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Cuba, 1968). Guest Lecturer: Andre Rosario. This groundbreaking Cuban work explores the experiences and reveries of a bourgeois writer after the revolution. “A profound, noble film.”—N.Y. Times (97 mins)

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
3:00 p.m. Annie Hall
Woody Allen (U.S., 1977). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Woody Allen’s universe is expanding—and his relationship with Diane Keaton is imploding—in what might be Allen’s most winning comedy. (94 mins)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
3:00 p.m. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Michael Gondry (U.S., 2004). Guest Lecturer: George Larkin. When Jim Carrey falls for Kate Winslet, it’s almost as if they’d met before. Charlie Kaufman’s script uses a goofy science-fiction conceit to consider the vagaries of love and memory. (108 mins)

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
3:00 p.m. The Beaches of Agnès
Agnès Varda (France, 2008). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Varda takes a cinematic stroll through her long career—and the history of French film—in this jovial first-person documentary. (110 mins)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
3:00 p.m. Waltz with Bashir
Ari Folman (Israel, 2008). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Folman’s animated recollection of the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of West Beirut is part history, part personal memory, part dream. (87 mins)