From dak at sarai.net Thu Jun 3 11:32:54 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 11:32:54 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] JUNE 2004 Message-ID: <200406031132.54900.dak@sarai.net> FILM @ SARAI: Film Genres Revisited - THE WESTERN Friday, June 4, 2004, 4:30 pm STAGECOACH (1939) Directed by John Ford, 96 minutes John Ford's first sound Western, 'Stagecoach', shot John Wayne to stardom and elevated the prestige of a genre that had previously been considered a B-movie genre. With rumors in the air of a possible Apache attack, a motley group of travellers in a small New Mexico town board the Overland Stage bound for Lordsburg. Among them are the pregnant Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt); timid liquor salesman Peacock (Donald Meek); Hatfield, an aloof gambler (John Carradine); Gatewood (Berton Churchill), a pompous, embezzling banker; and two who have been exiled from town, alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell) and Dallas (Clair Trevor), a prostitute. Along the trail, they pick up the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), an outlaw who's escaped from prison to take revenge on the Plummer brothers for destroying his family and framing him for murder. As their journey progresses, the hypocrisy of the supposedly respectable passengers becomes clear, and it's the tainted outsiders who display courage and humanity. Described by Orson Welles, who watched the film innumerable times before making 'Citizen Kane', as his cinematic textbook, 'Stagecoach' intertwines humor and sharp characterization into an exciting plot that includes a spectacularly photographed chase in Monument Valley. Friday, June 11, 2004, 4:30 pm THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) Directed by John Ford, 130 minutes In John Ford's stark, melancholy swan song for the conventional frontier Western, aged Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) returns to the small town of Shinbone with his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), for the funeral of his friend, Tom Doniphan (John Wayne), where he recounts for reporters his relationship with the man. His arrival in the town years earlier as a newly minted lawyer had been welcomed with a vicious beating by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), a flamboyant thug hired by powerful business interests fearful of the lawyer's intentions to stump for statehood. Doniphan, a rancher and feared gunman, finds Stoddard unconscious, takes him into town, and continues to protect him, particularly after coming to realize that the woman he loves cares more for the lawyer. Despite Doniphan's warnings that the only law in the region comes at the end of a gun barrel, the stubborn lawyer insists on teaching the illiterate townspeople about the rule of law in a democratic society. When Stoddard is elected as the regional delegate to the territorial convention, Valance baits the politician, a notoriously inept gunman, into a showdown. The film, which plays like a Western version of Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, reflects the aging director's ambivalence about many of the beliefs that had animated his earlier work. Shot on two soundstages because of a limited budget and Ford's poor health, 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' blends a stripped-down look with an intentionally fractured, ambiguous narrative to stand as a haunting elegy for the fearless gunman, the endless wilderness, and the loss of freedom their vanishing betokens. Friday, June 18, 2004, 4:30 pm ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969) Directed by Sergio Leone, 165 minutes Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), the power-hungry owner of a railroad company, hires Frank (Henry Fonda), a gunfighter without a conscience, to kill anyone who stands in the way of the completion of the railroad. After Frank murders land owner Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), McBain's widow (Claudia Cardinale) hires two killers of her own to protect her and gain revenge: a mysterious, harmonica-playing desperado (Charles Bronson) and his rogue sidekick (Jason Robards). Using techniques previously unseen in the genre, Sergio Leone utilizes close-ups, color, and Ennio Morricone's trademark score to create a tense and somber meditation on death. Soon-to-be legendary Italian directors Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci collaborated with Leone on the screenplay of this Spaghetti Western. Original distributor, United Artists, refused to release the film with Henry Fonda cast as the cold-hearted, sadistic killer in the lead role, so Leone took the deal to Paramount, who ultimately distributed the film. Friday, June 25, 2004, 4:30 pm DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) Directed by Kevin Costner, 180 minutes In 1865, Civil War hero Lt. John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) asks to be reassigned to the western frontier before it disappears. At his isolated post he develops a relationship with the peaceful Sioux Indians and a white woman, Stands with Fist, who lives among them, finding greater kinship with them than with his own people. But as the military ruthlessly push west, the Indians' existence is threatened and Dunbar finds himself torn between two cultures. As the Sioux nation prepares to head for winter camp, Dunbar makes one last trip to Fort Sedgwick to retrieve his journal. Union soldiers, however, now occupy the fort and capture him. Upon learning of his abduction by Union soldiers, Sioux warriors attack the soldiers escorting Dunbar back east, killing most of them and rescuing Dunbar. Dunbar then flees with Stands with Fist into the Black Hills just before Union troops move on the Sioux camp. The film, a directorial debut for Kevin Costner, is critical of European expansion into Native American territory and is applauded for its presentation of the Sioux society. Much of the film is in Lakota, the Sioux language, and is subtitled. Cheers, Ranita Chatterjee The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 Tel: (+91) 11 23960040 (+91) 11 23942199, ext 307 Fax: (+91) 11 23943450 www.sarai.net All screenings are held in the Seminar Room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054. Programme subject to last minute changes.