Women to be featured in upcoming Sheldon films
Rv dree Lukow . . . .
By Greg Lukow
Women in Film, an exclusive Sheldon Film
Theater presentation, debuts this weekend with the
showing of Orphans of the Storm at 3 and 7 p m
T f
S f.
Film critic and author, Molly Haskell, who will
speak Friday at the Sheldon Women in Film
presentation.
Friday and 3, 7 and 9, p.m. Saturday.
The series was assembled for the Sheldon Film
Theater by Molly Haskell, film critic for the Village
Voice and author of From Reverence to Rape-The
Treatment of Women in the Movies.
Haskell will be in Lincoln for the series' first
showing. She will speak Friday night, after the 7 p.m.
showing of Orphans of the Storm.
Her book is one of at least three on the subject
released last year, when there was a remarkable lack
of significant female movie roles. During that time,
Liv Ullmann held the fort on her own as the only
major actress maintaining any degree of consistency
in receiving worthwhile parts. Even considering
Chinatown, the Faye Dunaway revival has been rather
shallow, and a movie such as the new one from John
Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence, is a rarity
in modern American cinema.
Flapper, vamp missing
Haskell's selections are not a chronological survey
of the various women types that rose and fell with
the relationships between society and cinema during
the Roaring 20s, the Depression, or the World War II
and postwar periods. The flapper and vamp of the
silent period are missing, as are the 30s goldigger, the
40s pinup or the 50s blonde goddess.
Instead, she has focused on not always popular,
but important films dealing with timeless themes and
conflicts, problems and pleasures. They deal with
conflicts between marriage and career, pregnancy,
dominating women, subdued women, the values of
the family and of maternal awareness.
Filmed in 1921 and directed by the great
pioneer-father of the American cinema, D.W. Griffith
(Birth of a Nation, Intolerance), Orphans of the
Storm is the only silent film in the series. Starring
Lillian and Dorothy Gish, sisters in both the film and
real life, it is a story of their entrapment in the
turmoil of the French Revolution.
Lillian Gish, for more than a decade, had been a
Griffith favorite and his biggest star. She perfectly
represented his idea of the innocent but courageous
Victorian female the type of woman that had been
dominant in his films produced in the second decade
of this century.
Emotional actress
- Gish made her greatest and most popular films for
Griffith, films that in retrospect validate her standing
as the finest, most delicately emotional actress of the
American silent screen. Orphans was her last film for
Griffith.
Yet, Orphans of the Storm remains one of
Griffith's two or three best films. Set in epic scope
with his traditional melodramatic techniques and last
minute rescues (of Lillian from the guillotine), the
movie contains a special warmth and beauty that
emanates from the doting affection between the Gish
sisters. Like elegant dolls, they kiss each other on the
lips and fondle each other in a now extinct display of
open, yet innocent, love.
Katherine Hepburn film
Among the films in the series are Ninotchka,
(1939) one of the last and best of the Ernst Lubitsch
touch films and featuring Greta Garbo; Daisy Kenyon
(1947) starring the premier protagonist of the 40s
woman's films, Joan Crawford; Ingmar Bergman's
Brink of Life (1957); and Katherine Hepburn in
Christopher Strong (1933). This last film is unique to
the series because it is the only film directed by a
woman, Dorthy Arzner. She is a competent (but
largely forgotten) professional and prolific studio
system director who preceded. Ida Lupino's adequate
tokenism by two decades.
Again, showings are at 3 and 7 p.m. only on
Friday and at 3, 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday. Films will be
shown in the Sheldon Auditorium and there is no
admission charge.
P
Cinema 1: Flesh Gordon; 1:30,
3, 4:30, 6, 7:30 and 9 p.m.
"Cinema 2: Airport 1975; 1:30,
3:30, 5:20, 7:10 and 9: 10 p.m.
Cooper Lincoln: Harry and
Tonto; 7:30 and 9:40 p.m. .
Douglas 1: Pardon My Blooper;
1:30. 3:25, 5:20, 7:15 and 9:45
p.m.
Douglas 2: The Towering
Inferno; 1:45, 5:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Douglas 3: The Towering
Inferno; 2:00, 5:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Embassy: A Touch of Sweden;
11:15, 1:45, 4:15, 6:45 and 9:15
p.m.; Thaw the Frigid Bird; 12:45,
3:15, 5:45 and 8:15 p.m.
Hollywood & Vine 1: Life and
Times of Xaviera Hollander; 1:30,
3, 4:30, 7:30, 9, 10:30 and 12 p.m.
Hollywood and Vine 2: Blazing
Saddles; 1:30, 3:30, 7:30 and 9:30
p.m.
Joyo: The Trial of Billy Jack; 1,
4 and 7 p.m.
Plaza 1 & 2: Earthquake; 2: 1 5,
4:45, 7:15 and 9:40 p.m.
Plaza 3: The Front Page; 1:15,
3:25, 5:30, 7:45 and 9:55 p.m.
Plaza 4: The Longest Yard;
2:30, 4:40, 7 and 9:15 p.m.
State: The Island at the Top of
the World; 1:30, 3:45, 6 and 8:15
p.m.
Stuart: The Godfather, part 2;
1:30 and 7:45 p.m.
Friday
8 a.m. -5 p.m. Registration
Drop end Add-Nebraska Union
215C-Centennial Room
9 a.m. -Builders-Red
Coats-Union 232
9:30 a.m. -Psychology
48C-Union Auditorium
10 a.m.-7 p.m.-ASUN Book
Exchange Union Conference
Rooms
(O 472-2200 "q)
WALK-IN WEST DOOR
HEALTH CENTER
v ?( v J L
( A !
Monday, January 27
8:00 PM
Pershing Auditorium
Tickets $6.50
Available in Omaha
ai nonicio vUVJU 1 ,uoauw'
and the Daisy; in Lincoln at
Brandeis, Miller & Paine
(dt.&gtw) Dirt Cheap,
Nebraska Union South Desk,
The Daisy and Pershing
Aud. Box Office.
(A BAMBOO PRODUCTION.)
daily nebraskan
page 9
friday, january 17, 1975