The Films of Fritz Lang

The Man in the Monocle

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of expressionism. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States. (Wikipedia)


Films:

Fury
PN1997 .F87 1990

M
PN1997.L38 M2 1997

Watch the trailer for Metropolis:


Click here for a filmography.


Books:

Fritz Lang : the nature of the beast / by Patrick McGilligan
PN1998.3.L36 M38 1997

The films of Fritz Lang : allegories of vision and modernity / Tom Gunning
PN1998.3.L36 G86 2000

Fritz Lang / by Lotte H. Eisner ; [translated by Gertrud Mander and edited by David Robinson]
PN1998.A3 L357713 1977

The cinema of Fritz Lang, by Paul M. Jensen
PN1998.A3 L359

Metropolis; a film by Fritz Lang
PN1997 .M436 1973

Aloha, Mr. Hand! (and see YOU next semester)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High
WU Mabee AV PN1997 .F348 2004

Can there be anything about life in high school, particularly life in a suburban California high school, that the movie-going public hasn't already seen? Well, maybe there can. A little bit of it turns up in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," a jumbled but appealing teen-age comedy with something of a fresh perspective on the subject.

Cameron Crowe, who wrote the screenplay and the book on which it's based, spent a year masquerading as a high school student, making some very funny, believable notes on how his new friends really felt and sounded. Mr. Crowe chose to leave himself out of the resultant book, which didn't hurt it at all; questions about how he could know what had been said in a place like the girls' bathroom were rendered beside the point by the witty tone of his stories and by the ways in which they rang true. Amy Heckerling's film has no chief character either, and in this case it's more of a problem. The movie didn't necessarily need a reporter in it, but it needed a more distinct center than it has.

"Fast Times at Ridgemont High" begins not at high school but at a shopping mall. That's where most of the kids spend their time, and an amazing number of them seem to work in fast-food restaurants. There is Brad (Judge Reinhold), who declares, "I shall serve no fries before their time." There's Brad's sister, Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who complains petulantly to her friend and co-waitress, Linda (Phoebe Cates), "You're the one who told me I was gonna get a boyfriend at the mall." There's Mark (Brian Backer), who pines for Stacy from afar or at least from the movie theater across the way, where he works as an usher. And there's Mark's friend Mike Damone (Robert Romanus), who gives Mark lots of free advice about how to handle women. To demonstrate some of this, Mr. Damone stops at the mall's record store and tries out some of his best lines on a lifesize cardboard cutout of Debbie Harry. He particularly stresses the aphrodisiac qualities of "Led Zeppelin IV."

All these young actors are relaxed, funny and natural. But the movie's real scene stealer is Sean Penn, as a pink-eyed surfer named Jeff Spicoli who wouldn't dream of holding down a job. Spicoli's dream is to describe surfing to a television interviewer as "a way of looking at that wave and saying 'Hey, Bud, let's party.'" Spicoli thinks nothing of ordering a pizza delivered to his history classroom, though his teacher, Mr. Hand, doesn't take it that easily. Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) is so bothered by Spicoli's truancy that he sends other students out to catch him in the hallways. "You're wrong," yells Spicoli confusedly after he's been lured into the classroom on one such occasion. "There's no birthday party for me in here!"

When the movie captures the awful sound of a high school band imitating the Eagles at a prom or the spectacle of two fast-food workers discussing their companies' secret sauces (one is ketchup plus mayonnaise, the other is Russian dressing), it's onto something that is both amusing and real. And Miss Heckerling sounds this note often enough to make her film both worthwhile and disappointing simultaneously. There's a lot to make her film likable, but not much to hold it together.

Mr. Crowe's book, notwithstanding its amiably light tone, has a certain amount of grit; it has its share of deaths, drug problems and other bleak moments, including one young girl's vividly recalled abortion. Miss Heckerling's film, before being cut down to its present R-rated form, reportedly contained that abortion scene and some explicit sexual episodes. Her film can do just as well without them, since most of it is too fluffy and insubstantial to accommodate anything raw. There's evidence here that she was after something other than a cheerful, casually diverting movie, but she hasn't achieved much more.

"Fast Times at Ridgemont High" is quite messily assembled in some places, and there are moments when the director's comic timing is conspicuously off. The music, which ought to be one of the movie's bigger selling points, is for the most part thrown away. Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, the Go-Go's and various others contribute songs that seem to drift in and out of the movie distractingly instead of helping to propel it along. ~Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Watch the trailer:

Katharine Hepburn Films

Katharine Hepburn was born 100 years ago on the 12th of May in Hartford, Connecticut. She died in June 2003. Here are a few of the classic films from Mabee Library's collection that Hepburn made during her lifetime.



Adam's Rib
PN1997 .A265 2001

Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin's witty and intelligent script (despite many improbabilities, such as the conflict of interest in having a husband and wife contest the same case, and the plausibility-defying circus-like theatrics that Amanda deploys in the courtroom) propels this funny and barbed courtroom comedy. The legal and gender-fueled debates at the center of the film may seem somewhat antiquated today, but the intelligence and wit that inform much of the film's dialogue are still surprisingly fresh. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn share an onscreen ease and familiarity usually reserved for long-married couples. Ironically -- given that the film is about the legal ramifications of a woman's shooting of her philandering husband -- they had become an extramarital item themselves by the time this film was being made. Judy Holliday gives an unexpectedly affecting performance as the woman wronged, while bug-eyed Tom Ewell is solid as her weasel-like philandering husband. However, David Wayne as the lascivious piano composer/neighbor of the feuding legal eagles gives the most impressive supporting performance. His best line? "Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers." Technically, the film is very conventional. Outside of the opening sequences, in which George Cukor's camera roams the busy streets of rush hour New York, the film has a stage-like feel, with static shots of the battling spouses dominating the proceedings. Perhaps Cukor didn't want to distract us from the real star of the show, the clever and insightful Kanin/Gordon script. ~Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide

The African Queen
PN1997 .A31 1992

Yes, you know that the amusingly juxtaposed boozy sailor (Humphrey Bogart) and missionary's sister (Katharine Hepburn) will eventually see past their opposite-world differences to find love. But getting from A to B has never been so much fun as it is in this John Huston masterpiece. The African Queen is a sterling example of the kind of rollicking adventure that makes classic film enthusiasts pine for the old days. It has it all: action, comedy, and romance that unfold in a perfect synergy of plot, character, and dialogue. The film was deservedly nominated for four key Oscars: for Huston and James Agee's screenplay, for Huston's directing, and for Bogart and Hepburn, though only Bogart won (the only Oscar of his career). Bogie and Hepburn were in the primes of their careers here, and their talent shows. We buy that they grow to love each other, and the actions and incidents that prove their devotion -- Rose jumping into the leech-infested water to help Charlie, for example -- come across with genuine emotion. The only easy point of criticism (a big one for those who like their plots tight) is the ironic nautical coincidence that brings about our heroes' salvation. The beautiful on-location filming in the then-Belgian Congo and British Uganda was legendarily difficult. But, like Charlie and Rose trying to get that boat down the river, Huston and his team never gave up. Filmgoers everywhere should be thankful for that. ~Matthew Doberman, All Movie Guide

Bringing Up Baby
PN1997 .B753 1996

Bringing Up Baby is the quintessential screwball comedy, and one of the crowning comic achievements in the careers of director Howard Hawks and stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It may also be one of the defining examples of comedy feature film at its purest and most basic. At the time of its release, it seemed to close out the screwball genre: the portrayals in film inflated and punctured an array of movie (and social) stereotypes in as fine a style had ever been accomplished. The screwball comedy originated in the depths of the Great Depression as a reaction to the despair of everyday life, as well as to the publicized antics of wealthy fops and heiresses who seemed oblivious to the fact that people were literally starving to death. The idle rich were the genre's essential ingredient, from satirical pre-screwball efforts such as Zoltan Korda's Cash (an especially offbeat example since it was made in England) to pioneering Hollywood screwball comedies like Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey. As time passed, however, other targets became acceptable, including intellectual "eggheads" and eccentric members of officialdom. Bringing Up Baby skewers all of them and more -- including over-zealous psychiatrists and blustery, pretentious upper-class stuffed shirts -- hitting the bullseye with each one. Apart from its acting, pacing, and verbal acrobatics (an essential element of any Howard Hawks talking picture), Bringing Up Baby is a masterful achievement precisely because it distills its diverse ingredients down to the characters. The plot, such as it is, deals with mistakes and mistaken identities (right down to heiress Hepburn's pet leopard) but is really about nothing -- absolutely nothing, to paraphrase a standard articulated by Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s. Even the one main element of the "story" -- the search for a missing dinosaur bone belonging to the museum where Cary Grant's character works -- is such an obvious, ridiculous comic device, a comedic equivalent to Hitchcock's "MacGuffin" concept. The screwball comedy was never quite the same, nor was any filmmaker or cast able to build a film on such slight material so successfully ever again. Indeed, most attempts that followed -- and there were ever fewer as the 1930s gave way to the 1940s -- seemed increasingly more pallid, awkward, and unimpressive. ~Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The Philadelphia Story
PN1997 .P521 1992

We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he's being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.'s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar keester. A couple of years after the breakup, Tracy is about to marry George Kittridge (John Howard), a wealthy stuffed shirt whose principal recommendation is that he's not a Philadelphia "mainliner," as C.K. was. Still holding a torch for Tracy, C.K. is galvanized into action when he learns that Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell), the publisher of Spy Magazine, plans to publish an exposé concerning Tracy's philandering father (John Halliday). To keep Kidd from spilling the beans, C.K. agrees to smuggle Spy reporter Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) into the exclusive Lord-Kittridge wedding ceremony. How could C.K. have foreseen that Connor would fall in love with Tracy, thereby nearly lousing up the nuptials? As it turns out, of course, it is C.K. himself who pulls the "louse-up," reclaiming Tracy as his bride. A consistently bright, bubbly, witty delight, The Philadelphia Story could just as well have been titled "The Revenge of Katharine Hepburn." Having been written off as "box-office poison" in 1938, Hepburn returned to Broadway in a vehicle tailor-made for her talents by playwright Philip Barry. That property, of course, was The Philadelphia Story; and when MGM bought the rights to this sure-fire box-office success, it had to take Hepburn along with the package — and also her veto as to who her producer, director, and co-stars would be. Her strategy paid off: after the film's release, Hepburn was back on top of the Hollywood heap. While she didn't win the Oscar that many thought she richly deserved, the little gold statuette was bestowed upon her co-star Stewart, perhaps as compensation for his non-win for 1939's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Donald Ogden Stewart (no relation to Jimmy) also copped an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Philadelphia Story was remade in 1956 with a Cole Porter musical score as High Society. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Woman of the Year
PN1997 . W598 1997

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn costarred for the first time in the delectable romantic comedy Woman of the Year. Tracy plays New York sportswriter Sam Craig, who becomes incensed at comments about the uselessness of sports made by foreign correspondent Tess Harding (Hepburn). Sam and Tess subsequently use their respective columns to carry on a feud-at least, until they finally meet face to face. After Sam takes Tess to her first baseball game (one of the funniest scenes ever committed to celluloid), the two fall in love. Once married, however, their happiness is threatened by their wildly divergent lifestyles (Sam hadn't intended to spend his honeymoon helping to hide a prominent European refugee from the authorities, nor is Tess prepared for her husband's rowdy sports-oriented pals). When Tess is voted "Woman of the Year", a jealous Sam walks out on her. She endeavors to win him back by cooking him breakfast-with disastrous results. Despite their oil-and-water relationship, Sam and Tess are made for each other, and they're back together for the final fadeout. A hands-down winner at the box office, Woman of the Year earned a "best original screenplay" Oscar for Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin. Nominated for an award was director George Stevens, an RKO contractee brought to MGM at Hepburn's insistence. And need we remind you at this late date of the subsequent lifelong romance between stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn? ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Here are a couple books from the library's collection that Hepburn wrote:

The Making of The African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind
PN1997.A31163 H47 1987

Me: Stories of My Life
PN2287.H45 A3 1991