Missouri Southern Film Society
Program Schedule

Eager-to-please frosh Harold Lloyd makes the team as a tackling dummy and waterboy, but finally gets his chance at the Big Game. Lloyd's satire of football mania was his biggest success ever. "One of the authentic comedy classics of the American screen." -- Andrew Sarris.

Sept. 30
Brief Encounter
(England, 1945)

David Lean's deeply-felt love story adapted from Noel Coward's screenplay, from England. Visit a David Lean tribute. In 1957, in association with producer Sam Spiegel, Lean moved out of England and into international production with his epic adaptation of Pierre Boulle's Japanese prisoner-of-war story The Bridge on The River Kwai. Other credits include Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). With an armload of Oscars behind him from his three most recent pictures, and massive box office earnings between them, Lean was established as one of the top "money" directors of the 1960s.

Oct. 14
Bed and Sofa
(Russia, 1927)

Abram Room's masterpiece of intimate relations, minutely observed, from Russia. A housing shortage forces a man to move in with a married woman friend. This a most unusual Soviet silent film not only because a housing shortage implies an imperfect socialist system, but because this is a humorous, naturalistic drama, little concerned with politics. Directed by Abram Room; featuring Nikolai Batalov, Ludmila Semyonova, and Vladimir Fogel. Visit International Historic Films for more information.

Oct. 28
Bell 'Antonio
(Italy, 1960)

Mauro Bolognini's sex comedy/satire from Italy. One of the best-known of Bolognini's 41 films, the 1960 work is a biting commentary on the role of women in Sicily, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale.

Due to equipment failure, it is necessary to phase out the 16mm film format and substitute with videocassette and DVD presentations for the second half of the 2003-2004 season. However, two scheduled titles were either unavailable in these forms or public performance authorization could not be obtained, resulting in changes for the March 9 and April 6 showings.

Feb. 24
Yojimbo
(The Bodyguard)
(Japan, 1961)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa, this is a tounge-in-cheek samurai western that hilariously satirizes greed, linking it to paranoia, stupidity, pomposity and cowardice. A nonchalant samurai, played by Toshiro Mifune, turns the frenzied plotting and activity of warring factions to his own advantage, with almost no effort on his part.

March 9
Les Bonnes Femmes
(The Good Girls)
(France, 1960)

This neglected French New Wave rediscovery chronicles the lives of a quartet of young shop girls who yearn to break away from their dreary existences. Director Claude Chabrol effectively destroys the myth of gay Paree and the Cinderella shop girl with a devastating, almost cinema verite portrait of real lives of working women.
J. Hoberman of The Village Voice labeled it a "Masterpiece…deeply unsettling…Unlike anything in Chabrol's oeuvre."

March 23
Angi Vera
(Hungary, 1978)

Pal Gabor's award-winning portrait of a naïve but earnest young woman, from Hungary. Set in 1948 Hungary, a young nurse dares to speak out against the corruption and poor conditions in her hospital.

April 6
The Red and the White
(Csillagosok, Katonak)
(Hungary/Russia, 1968)

Banned for many years in the USSR, this is a hauntingly powerful film about the absurdity and evil of war. Set in central Russia during the 1918 Civil War, the story details the murderous entanglements between the Soviet Red soldiers and the counter-revolutionary Whites in the hills along the Volga. Howard Thompson of The New York Times labeled it "A splendid picture with the screen put to thrilling use by Hungary's master director scenarist, Miklos Jancso."