Starting tonight, four University of Texas profs will host weekly screenings that aim to shine a light on some of cinema’s most iconic pictures.
One of the RTF department’s most beloved professors, not to mention a formidable film scholar, Charles Ramírez-Berg opens the series with tonight’s screening of High Noon. The screenplay, care of HUAC blacklisted writer Carl Foreman, should put you on high alert for McCarthy allegory in this taut Western, but that context only heightens the emotional complexity of the piece. Not interested in emotional complexity? No problem: High Noon functions just as well as a cowboy thriller, with a nail-biting ticking clock at its core (remember the title).
The screening is free, open to the public, and held in the the 2nd floor of the brand-spanking-new Belo Center for New Media’s 2nd floor BMC Auditorium.
Future Thursdays promise film archivist Caroline Frick holding forth on Bogart-and-Bacall keeper The Big Sleep; Glenn Frankel presenting The Searchers, the subject of his much-praised new nonfiction book; and Richard Lewis hosting 1990’s A Shock to the System – he’ll discuss the midlife crisis as represented in that film and others, like American Beauty and Thelma and Louise.
For more on the series, visit the RTF homepage.
This article appears in February 15 • 2013.
