"Judgement at Nuremberg" • "The Serpent's Egg" • "Shall We Dance" The Arena Theater Film Club's December Films
The Arena Theater Film Club returns with three films featuring the work of Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kramer and Friz Freleng Mark Sandrich.
Opening December's film offerings is "The Serpent's Egg". Producer Dino De Laurentis put the considerable weight of his company (and its financial support) to bring this Bergman film to a wide audience. The director was on a roll at the time and De Laurentis believed the timing (1978) was right for this big budget Bergman film.
It's early November, 1923. Jewish-American brothers Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine) and Max Rosenberg, and Max's ex-wife Manuela Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann) had a trapeze act in a circus touring through Europe, but a recent wrist injury to Max sidelined the act. The three remained in Berlin, Germany generally depressed with rampant inflation leading to Abel taking up the bottle to cope. The Jewish are also being blamed for many of society's problems, but Abel fears no impact on him provided he stays out of trouble. Manuela, who ended up living in a rooming house on her own while working in a cabaret, are reunited when Abel tells her that Max committed suicide. Feeling at a loss both professionally (with the demise of their act) and emotionally due to Max's death, Abel and Manuela turn to each other for comfort, and support they both clearly need.
Abel's life becomes even more complicated when Police Inspector Bauer (Gert Fröbe), who handled Max's suicide case, questions Abel about a series of other recent mysterious deaths near his home. Abel begins to believe that he may be set up to take the fall solely for being Jewish. It's a complex story under Bergman's direction.
"The Serpent's Egg' screens Monday, December 6 at 7:00pm. The film is rated R, has a running time of 120 minutes, and is in English and German with subtitles.
One week later, Germany is once again a significant part of the plot, the cast is dominated by both American and German actors, and death is on the mind of everyone. However, the storyline and subplots are both well-known, well understood, and involve death and human destruction.
Stanley Kramer—as he does so well—takes a recent historical event, creates a narrative, and then brings a solid cast together to tell the tale. In "Judgement at Nuremberg", Kramer brought together a cast that included Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, William Shatner and Werner Klemperer. Each role is shaped to present a credible telling of the painful end of the war, and the necessary blend of the facts of the horrors of war.
The plot of the 1961 film is well-known among Baby Boomers, historians, and film buffs. In 1948, a series of trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by an international tribunal, headed by American legal and military officials, with the intent of bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity. However, by that time most of the major figures of the Nazi regime were either dead or long missing, and in the resulting legal proceedings American judges often found themselves confronting the question of how much responsibility someone held who had "just followed orders." "Judgment at Nuremberg" is a dramatized version of the proceedings at one of these trials.
Originally written and produced as a play for television, the screen version of Judgment at Nuremberg was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, with Maximilian Schell and Abby Mann taking home Oscars for (respectively) Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The film screens Monday, December 13 at 7:00pm. It's rated PG-13 and has a running time 178 minutes.
The final film offered by the Film Club this month is "Shall We Dance". Screening on Monday, December 27 at 7:00pm, the 1937 film stars Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. This is vintage Rogers and Astaire (or Astaire and Rogers, if you prefer.)
Gossip threatens to halt the budding romance between a ballerina and a tap dancer who find themselves in the midst of some very much unwanted publicity.
In these days when much trans-Atlantic travel was via steamship, ballet star Pete "Petrov" Peters arranges to cross the Atlantic aboard the same ship as the dancer he's fallen for but barely knows: musical star Linda Keene. By the time the ocean liner reaches New York, a little white lie has churned through the rumor mill and turned into a hot gossip item: that the two celebrities are secretly married. The ballet dancer and the showgirl fake their marriage for publicity purposes before falling in love for real in this delightful musical comedy starring Astaire and Rogers in their seventh film together. Numerous mistaken-identity gags ensue.
As was typical of the era (and the genre)a number of well-known songs make their way into the movie-goers consciousness: Included in George and Ira Gershwin's score are "Slap That Bass," "They Can't Take That Away From Me," "They All Laughed," and "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off," the latter of which features Fred and Ginger in a showstopper on roller skates. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.
Directed by Friz Freleng and Mark Sandrich, the film is unrated and has a running time of 109 minutes and is not rated.
Admission for all Film Club movies is $7 for Arena Theater Association members, guests welcome at $10. Cash at the door, please, maximum audience 55 people. Face coverings required except when seated while eating or drinking.
The Arena Theater Film Club is a membership-based film society which meets the first, second and fourth Mondays of most months at the Arena Theater to screen and discuss a variety of movies, including recent independent releases, classics and foreign films. Screenings are $7 to current Arena Theater members (memberships are $60 per year); their guests are welcome at $10 each. For a schedule of upcoming films, visit the Arena Theater Film Club’s website, www.arenatheaterfilmclub.org.
