The Six Week Film School

Welcome to the home page for the Six Week Film School. Here you'll find links to articles and resources that will provide context for the films, both individually and as they fit in the series. All materials presented below are of course optional; don't worry, we won't grade you on whether you did your homework.

You are welcome to attend any individual film in a series, or join us for all six. All films are free to attend. We do ask that you reserve yourself a seat or RSVP in advance. Just click the link to on the "class" you would like to attend and put your name down. Each night will feature a brief introduction and post-show discussion led by Illinois State University's William Thomas McBride.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Six Week Film School: Classic Broadway Stage to Stylized Hollywood Screen

Based on the play by Tennessee Williams, this renowned drama follows troubled former schoolteacher Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) as she leaves small-town Mississippi and moves in with her sister, Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), and her husband, Stanley (Marlon Brando), in New Orleans. Blanche's flirtatious Southern-belle presence causes problems for Stella and Stanley, who already have a volatile relationship, leading to even greater conflict in the Kowalski household. Directed by Elia Kazan. FREE to attend. PG / 127 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride, along with Dave Krostal for a discussion following the film.

09/26 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

Dutchman

An African-American man named Clay (Al Freeman Jr.) rides the New York City subway and becomes the fixation of a white woman, Lula (Shirley Knight), who is seemingly sexually attracted to him. Lula's brazen attempt to seduce Clay in public feels menacing, and he rejects her advances. She becomes increasingly threatening and Clay eventually snaps, no longer able to remain polite in the face of her anger. His reaction, though, has severe repercussions. Directed by Anthony Harvey. FREE to attend. NR / 55 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

10/03 @ 7pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

History professor George (Richard Burton) and his boozy wife, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), return late one Saturday night from a cocktail party at the home of the college president, Martha's father. Martha announces that she invited another couple, newly appointed instructor Nick (George Segal) and his timid wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis), over for a nightcap. When the younger couple arrive, the night erupts into a no-holds-barred torrent of marital angst and verbal tirades. Directed by Mike Nichols. FREE to attend. NR / 132 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

10/17 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

Boys in the Band

Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is hosting a birthday celebration for a pal when he gets an unexpected visit from old friend Alan (Peter White). The problem is, Alan is straight -- and extremely straitlaced -- and everyone else at the party is gay. Michael hopes to conceal his sexuality from Alan, but this charade doesn't last. After being outed, Michael turns on Alan, accuses him of being a closeted gay and forces him to partake in a revealing party game that has devastating consequences. Directed by William Friedkin. FREE to attend. NR / 119 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

10/24 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

True West

Austin (Gary Sinise), a Hollywood screenwriter living comfortably in suburban Arizona, is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of his prodigal brother Lee (John Malkovich), whose menacing demeanor and pugilistic attitude draws Austin further and further into conflict until he must finally engage his brother in an intense psychological battle for his ideals, and perhaps even his life. Directed by Allan A. Goldstein. FREE to attend. NR / 110 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

11/07 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's revered drama focuses on Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman), an aging traveling salesman in the midst of a major crisis. Burdened by financial woes and distanced from his wife, Linda (Kate Reid), and two grown sons, Biff (John Malkovich) and Happy (Stephen Lang), the increasingly unstable Willy dwells on various memories of his family and his career as he looks back to find out what went wrong with his life. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff. FREE to attend. PG / 136 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride, along with Sally Parry & Bob McLaughlin for a discussion following the film.

11/14 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

From Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner,1940)

JUDY O’BRIEN [Maureen O’Hara] (dancing onstage, dress straps rip-male audience members taunt) Go ahead and stare. I'm not ashamed. Go on, laugh; get your money's worth. Nobody's going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your 50 cents' worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won't let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here?

(camera pans l to r well-heeled and ashamed male in tuxedos and reproving female audience members)

With your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of. It's a thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We'd laugh right back at you, only we're paid to let you sit there...and roll your eyes, and make your screamingly clever remarks. What's it for? So you can go home when the show's over, strut before your wives and sweethearts... and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I'm sure they see through you just like we do.

Tess Slesinger & Frank Davis (screenplay); Vicki Baum (story)

From series curator William Thomas McBride:

"On my way out of the Normal Theater following the post-screen discussion of one of Scorsese’s films, a female patron approached me and asked why not do a series of female directors? I have been working on our new series ever since—and given the current cultural moment regarding harassment and gender inequality in Hollywood, Washington, and everywhere else, the timing of Wonder Women Directors seems perfect. Joining me for individual screenings will be Shari Zeck, Interim Dean, Milner Library, Illinois State University; Li Zeng, Head of Theatre and Film Studies and Film Minor, Illinois State University; Chamere Poole, Dept. of English Ph. D. candidate, Illinois State University; and Ann Johnson, Dept. of Sociology Masters student, Illinois State University, who will discuss the overarching cultural concepts of sex, power, history, and film style in these six films directed by women."

Back to School with Wonder Women!

Christopher Strong

Female aviator Lady Cynthia Darrington (Katharine Hepburn) and Parliament member Sir Christopher Strong meet at a party, where the free spirit and the married politician are instantly attracted. Christopher's wife, Lady Elaine, invites Cynthia to stay at the Strongs' summer house, where she grows even closer to him. Mindful of the damage an affair would do to Christopher's career and family, the couple parts, but they soon realize they can't live without each other. From 1933. NR / 78 min. Directed by Dorothy Arzner.

01/24 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT

The Hitch-Hiker

Ray (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert's (Frank Lovejoy) fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker (William Talman) they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. From 1953. NR / 71 min. Directed by Ida Lupino.

This class will include guest lecturer:

Li Zeng, head of ISU's Theatre and Film Studies

01/31 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT

A League of Their Own

Lost in Translation

Selma

Wonder Woman

Fall 2017 - From ALICE to SILENCE: The Scorsese Style

Martin Scorsese - The Source Material

“Marty Scorsese is one of the greatest living filmmakers. He’s earned the right to independently finance a movie and make the movie he wants to make."

- Megan Colligan, Paramount’s marketing and distribution head on SILENCE (2016)

Listen to William Thomas McBride discuss the Six WeekFilm School and Martin Scorsese on WGLT.

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE - Wednesday, September 27th at 7:00pm

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE - Notes from class

More on ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

TAXI DRIVER - Wednesday, October 4th at 7:00pm

William Thomas McBride's Chapter on TAXI DRIVER
From series curator William Thomas McBride: "Last night's post-film lively discussion, concerning Scorsese's style, hand gun violence, and Sunday night's Las Vegas trauma, concluded with an audience member's question: "Was Scorsese's ending of his film a dream?" Interesting points were made on both sides. Driving home Wednesday evening my wife found this article, citing critics, DeNiro, and Scorsese, and seems to settle the question.

More on TAXI DRIVER

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST - Wednesday, October 11th at 7:00pm

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST - Notes from class

More on THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

GANGS OF NEW YORK - Wednesday, October 25th at 7:00pm

GANGS OF NEW YORK - Notes from class

More on GANGS OF NEW YORK

HUGO - Wednesday, November 1st at 7:00pm

More on HUGO

SILENCE - Wednesday, November 8th at 7:00pm

More on SILENCE

“My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.”

- Martin Scorsese

When we awake with a vivid dream fresh in our memory, or are regaled by someone else’s dream narrative, we often launch head on into an analysis of the latent meaning of the dream’s manifest content. Without hesitation, and usually without trained expertise, we apply common principles of psychology and insights about gender, myth and popular culture, and make claims relating to biographical knowledge of the dreamer as well. The spectacularity of dreams is often attributable to both the uncannily realistic nature of them and their cinematic quality. Early on in its development, Hollywood (and Hitchcock) fell in love with Freud, and given cinema’s dreamlike status, it is rather easy to see why. Hitchcock’s psychoanalytic bent is evident in many of his titles: PSYCHO, VERTIGO, FRENZY, STAGE FRIGHT, SHADOW OF A DOUBT. His 1945 film SPELLBOUND took the extraordinary steps of hiring as co-writer and psychiatric advisor, May E. Romm M.D. and, as dream sequence designer, surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Freud characterizes dream form as Darstellbarkeit (suitability for display) whose plastic representation exhibits the visual and auditory modes we associate with film over and against a novel or epic poem. Just as we translate Freud’s monumental publication, Die Traumdeutung (1900) as The Interpretation of Dreams, so these Six Week Film School semesters center directly on the art of interpretation (hermeneutics). This scholarly search for meaning in texts originates as Biblical exegesis and Midrash, soon branching out to legal, philosophical and aesthetic hermeneutics, all marked by a concern with the relation between interpretive subject, text, and argument. As we have been discovering, the metaphors film style employs, like the ones populating our dreams, are simple and commonplace—often to the point of being clichéd. Of all of the films that most consistently and fluently speak the stylized language of cinema, it is those directed by Alfred Hitchcock. And it should come as no surprise that Alfred Hitchcock began his film career as an Art Director and composer of storyboards—hand-drawn images composed prior to shooting that depict and direct what each shot in the film should look like—a practice he continued throughout his life in film. This Six Week semester promises to deliver fun along with the language and interpretive "skill set" necessary to read films and other narrative texts via their formal elements. Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol conclude their little 1957 Hitchcock book this way:

Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the entire history of cinema. Perhaps only Murnau and Eisenstein can sustain comparison with him when it comes to form.

While Hitchcock's oeuvre certainly invites our formal analysis of its cinematic language and a feminist, masculinist, queer problematizing of its psychosexuality, we will not limit our investigations there—grindhouse theory (PSYCHO, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN), ecocriticism (THE BIRDS), music theory (VERTIGO, PSYCHO), marxist and trauma studies (most films)—are all fruitful approaches and welcome.

William Thomas McBride discusses the Six Week Film School theme of "Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Style"
William Thomas McBride discusses the Six Week Film School on WGLT
Alfred Hitchcock Wiki Mainpage
1000 Frames of Hitchcock
“Hitchcock’s Stylized Capture of Post-Adolescent Fatheads.” by William Thomas McBride. Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Ed. Debbie Olson. Palgrave-McMillan, 2014, pp 237-263.
DIAL H FOR HITCHCOCK (1999)
The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory 2nd Edition by Tania Modleski