Program Notes
Program Notes: Kansas City Confidential (1952)
Kansas City Confidential is one of those minor B movie masterpieces, crammed with tough guys, a noirish aura of desperation and greed, and featuring a surprisingly complex script.
Program Notes: Hud (1963)
Viewed today, Martin Ritt’s Hud isn’t the electrifying experience that greeted audiences in 1963. Back when the social and cultural blinders of the Eisenhower years were still in place, it was an incendiary movie.
Program Notes: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)
For years it was accepted that Evan S. Connell’s novels were unfilmable. But the unshowy approach of the 1990 film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge nicely approximates the experience of reading the book.
Program Notes: Lilies of the Field (1963)
Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Sidney Poitier was pretty much the only African American leading man in Hollywood. With Lilies of the Field he became the first African American man to win the Oscar for best actor.
Program Notes: Scrooge (1970)
Perhaps Charles Dickens was writing musicals and didn’t realize it. Scrooge has all the hallmarks of musical theater - emotional catharsis, bigger-than-life characters, and innate moral sense.
