Butler's Cinema Scene

Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas

“Ninotchka” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, January 4, 2014, in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series America’s Greatest Year, which offers movies released in 1939.

For most of her career, the great Swedish star  Greta Garbo (1905-1990) was known as a dramatic actress. A tragic actress, in fact.

In films like “Flesh and the Devil” (1926), “Anna Karenina” (’35), and “Camille”(‘36), the ethereal-looking Garbo loved, suffered, and died. With regularity.

Audiences were riveted by Garbo’s subtlety of expression, something they were unaccustomed to in silent film. In just a few years she became the best-known woman in world, the “unapproachable goddess of the most widespread and remarkable mythology in human history,” according to social critic Alistair Cooke.

Garbo was considered the movies’ most mysterious and seductive leading lady. Most of her films were box office sensations, and the public became obsessed with her personal life and loves … a situation the fundamentally shy and insecure actress found distressing. As a result she went to extremes to shun unwanted publicity and protect her privacy.

Comedians and even animated cartoons often spoofed a line from Garbo’s film “Grand Hotel” in which her moody ballerina character says, “I want to be alone.”

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John Wayne in “STAGECOACH” (1939)

“Gone With the Wind.” “The Wizard of Oz.” “Stagecoach.” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” “Wuthering Heights.”

Vivian Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in “GONE WITH THE WIND”

What these great films have in common is the year in which they hit America’s movie screens. Film critics regard 1939 as the greatest year in Hollywood history, when more memorable movies were released than at any other time.

Throughout 2014, the Kansas City Public Library recreates the movie going experience enjoyed by audiences 75 years earlier. Each week, the free series Hollywood’s Greatest Year will present a movie from 1939.

Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon in “WUTHERING HEIGHTS”

To kick off the series, Yours Truly (Robert W. Butler,  former Kansas City Star movie critic,  proprietor of this web site, and a member of the Library’s public affairs department) is giving an introductory talk, 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year, on Sunday, December 29, 2013, at 2 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

A reception follows the event. Admission is free.

The actual films series begins the first Saturday of the new year in the Durwood Film Vault at the Downtown Library, 14 W. 10th.  All screenings are at 1:30 p.m. on Saturdays.  The first month is dedicated to comedy and features the films “Ninotchka” (Jan. 4), “Bachelor Mother (Jan. 11), “Idiot’s Delight” (Jan. 18) and “Only Angels Have Wings” (Jan. 25).

James Stewart in “MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON”

Embracing comedies, musicals, Westerns, heavy-hitting dramas, crime stories, horror, romance – virtually the entire range of films released by the major movie studios — the series includes 1939’s entries from such long-running series as Sherlock Holmes, The Thin Man, Andy Hardy, and Tarzan.

Hope to see you Sunday at the Plaza Library, then on Saturdays throughout the year at the Central Library.

| Robert W. Butler

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Paul Muni as Emile Zola

“THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA”screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 28, at the Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., as part of the film series Muni the Magnificent.

Its title notwithstanding,”The Life of Emile Zola” is anything but a conventional screen biography.

This Oscar winner for best picture could more accurately have been entitled The Dreyfus Affair, for that notorious case of military injustice is the film’s centerpiece.

We’re introduced to Émile Zola (Paul Muni) as a young man living in a freezing Paris garret in the 1860s (his roomie is painter Paul Cezanne) and trying to jump start his literary career.

Making the acquaintance of a weary prostitute, he interviews her, taking notes on her sad story and writing the best-seller Nana. He’s arrived.

The film then shoots forward several decades. Zola is now a well-established author whose naturalistic novels have scandalized many readers and revolutionized writing. As his old friend Cézanne notes, Zola has become fat and complacent.

And then the Dreyfus scandal hits the headlines in 1894.

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“12 YEARS A SLAVE”

Based on the true story of a free black man kidnapped and enslaved just before the Civil War, Steve McQueen’s film is not only about the horrors of slavery but also the toll that “peculiar institution” takes on those who practice it. Brilliant perfs from Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o.

“BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR”

Adele Exarchopoulous, 19, gives one of the greatest screen performances of all time as a French high school girl who falls hopelessly and totally in love with an older woman (Lea Seydoux). Abdellatif Kechiche’s film has been knocked in some quarters for its graphic sex scenes – but that’s 12 minutes in a three-hour movie that follows a young woman’s life over several years in astonishingly psychological detail.

“ENOUGH SAID”

Writer/director Nicole Holofcener is the master of the modern relationship film. In this wise, witty and wonderful comedy a divorced mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) finds herself befriending a trendy poet (Catherine Keener) while falling for the poet’s scruffy but loveable ex (the late James Gandolfini).  It’s a charming look at late love filled with juicy dialogue, dead-on performances and gentle social satire. (more…)

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