A double film screening as part of the A Crash Course in Ex-Centric Living programme: a classic Hollywood masterpiece and a short film that provides a close look at its characters' every gesture.
The Hidden Gesture: War and Melodrama in 30s Hollywood, Christopher Strong
- Date:
- 27 Jul 2024,
16:00–17:25
- Age restrictions
- 18+
The Hidden Gesture. War and Melodrama in Hollywood’s 30s and 40s
2023, Dana Najlis
Argentine
5 minutes, English with Russian subtitles
Documentary
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The movement of a hand, the turn of a shoulder, shaking legs—in her concise but thoughtful and elegant short film The Hidden Gesture, Argentine-born Dana Najlis looks at Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s. In seemingly random movements, she senses and through editing conveys the symbolism that reflects the inner drama of those turbulent decades, when life could both triumph or be destroyed.
Christopher Strong
1933, Dorothy Arzner
United States
78 minutes, English with Russian subtitles
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Colin Clive, Billie Burke, Helen Chandler
Shot from Christopher Strong, 1933
Najlis’s film takes a fresh look at the movements and mannerisms of the stars of classic Hollywood, and tries to see them as more than just gestures and theatrics. This provides an especially powerful perspective on films that were themselves critical of the tools of Hollywood cinema. One such film is Christopher Strong by Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in American studio cinema between the two wars. This both sentimental and tough film about the first (and last) love of a famous aviator may look like a typical melodrama of its time, but time and again it turns Hollywood clichés inside out, demonstrating that they cannot accurately convey the truth of a woman’s life, willpower and feelings.
This screening will be the Russian premiere of The Hidden Gesture. War and Melodrama in Hollywood’s 30s and 40s.
