Somewhere In Europe Circa 1945
Thursday, February 17 to Sunday, February 20, 2005
Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium
53 Wall Street
Sponsored by European Studies Council, YCIAS, Film Studies, Department of Art History, Whitney Humanities Center, Department of History, and Hellenic Studies
Thursday February 17
3:30 – 5:30 PM
– Henry V (Laurence Olivier, England, 1944, 135 min.) Laurence Olivier’s famous patriotic adaptation from the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s play. Olivier’s first attempt at direction finds in Shakespeare’s Henry V the rhetorical needs of wartime England.
5:30-7:00 PM Reception
7:00-8:00 PM Keynote lecture: “New Beginnings? The Ending of World War Two and the Filmic Imagination”
Mark Mazower (Department of History, Columbia University)
8:00-10:00 PM
– Contemporary newsreels.
– The Last Chance (Leopold Lindtberg, Switzerland, 1945, 104 min.) The winner of the first Cannes festival award in 1946, this neo-realist film deals with the plight of refugees escaping the Nazis in wartime Switzerland. The themes of the right of refuge and the nature of neutrality are newly topical in light of current Swiss - and pan-European – debates. One of several postwar films that have multi-lingual soundtracks.
Friday February 18
8:30 coffee & croissants WHC foyer.
9:00-10:30
– Contemporary newsreels.
–Naples episode of Rossellini’s Paisa
– Days of Glory (Mario Serendrei, Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1945, 71 min.) A documentary compilation of footage, partly shot by Visconti, depicting the German occupation of Rome, key episodes from the Italian resistance and the liberation of the Italian north. Visconti’s sections deal with the trials and executions of the Italian fascist collaborators.
10:45-11:30 Panel and discussion: Noa Steimatsky, Frank Snowden, Francesco Casetti (Università Cattolica, Milan; Yale Spring 2005), Ora Avni.
1:30-3:00
– Soviet newsreels.
–Dark is the Night ( Odnazhdy nochiu ) (Boris Barnet, USSR, 1945, 81 min.) This film, with Barnet as actor and director, was thought to be lost before its rediscovery a decade ago. Shot in 1944, it tells the allegorical story of a Russian schoolgirl who helps to hide several Russian soldiers amidst the ruins of war-torn Stalingrad. Daring in its portrayal of a defiant Russian community and of the consequences of resistance. 3:15-4:00 Panel and discussion: Katerina Clark, John MacKay, Laura Engelstein
6:30-9:30
– Contemporary newsreels
–Introduction: Charlie Musser
– A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings, comments E. M. Foster, 1945, 40 min.) Jennings’s film is addressed to Timothy, a baby who is born on the fifth anniversary of the Second World War hostilities, and follows the first three months of his life. Representing the war through the experiences of British people, the film juxtaposes radio reports of battles on the German front with images of devastated England, while the narration wonders what kind of world will emerge at war’s end.
– A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell, England, 1944, 95 min.) Set in wartime England, Powell’s film follows three characters who set out to solve the bizarre mystery of the ‘glue man,’ who has been pouring glue on the hair of women out with servicemen. Anxieties about the arrival of outsiders and the crumbling of tradition are balanced by mystical scenes of landscape and architecture as historical continuity.
Saturday February 19
8:30 coffee WHC foyer
9:00-11:00
–Newsreels
– The Murderers are Among Us (Wolfgang Staudte, Germany: Soviet Zone of Occupation , 1946, 85 min.). This is the first postwar German film production; a “rubble” film, set in the bombed ruins, it blends neo-realism and expressionism. The film is preoccupied with war-guilt and the guilt-by-association of wartime bystanders.
– Mills of Death (shot by Czech documentarist Hanus Berger, recut by Billy Wilder for distribution in the Allied Zones of Occupation in Germany, 1945, 22 min.). Controversial documentary about the liberation of the death camps.
11:15-12:00 Panel and discussion: Brigitte Peucker, Katie Trumpener, Laura Heins, Christine Mehring
1:00-4:00
– Long is the Way/Lang ist der Weg (Herbert B. Fredersdorf and Marek Goldstein, Germany/USA, 1948, 77 min) Produced in the American zone of occupied Germany, this is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish point of view. The film is notable not only for its improvisatory aesthetic, internationalism, and multi-language soundtrack, but also because its stars are survivors of Poland’s Yiddish theater scene.
– Somewhere in Europe (Geza von Radvanyi, Hungary, 1947, 100 min.) The first post-war Hungarian film and neo-realist in aesthetic, Somewhere in Europe concerns the plight of youth orphaned by the war and with the gang as a substitute for the prewar family.
4:15-5:00 Panel and discussion: Paula Hyman, Benjamin Harshav, Ivan Szelenyi, Edward Stankiewicz
5:00-5:30 Pan-European discussion and audience questions.
8:00-10:30 PM
– Introduction - Sylvie Lindeperg (University of Paris III)
– French newsreels
– Les Portes de la Nuit (Marcel Carné, France, 1946) Scripted by Jacques Prevert and starring Yves Montand, Carne’s film deals with the aftermath of Paris’s occupation, and the results of both collaboration and resistance.
Sunday, February 20 - France: 1945 – 1946
9:30 Panique (Julien Duvivier, France, 1946) Adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, Duvivier’s film is set in the slums of Paris in the aftermath of the war. Themes of guilt, exoneration, and punishment figure in this thriller which follows a respectable loner framed for murder by his neighbor and her guilty lover.
11:00-12:00 Panel: Sylvie Lindeperg (University of Paris III), Thomas Kavanagh
12:00-1:00 Sandwiches provided with video screening of clips from Farrebique
1:00-2:20 Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson, France 1945 16mm.) Robert Bresso n’s second feature, based on a novella by Denis Diderot and with dialogue written by Jean Cocteau. The film follows the vengeful maneuverings of a society lady as she initiates an affair between her aristocratic ex-lover and a woman with a mysterious past.
2:30-3:30: Concluding Panel: The New Realism and La Nouvelle Avant-garde with Dudley Andrew, Noa Steimatsky, Sylvie Lindeperg, Thomas Kavanagh, Ivone Margulies (Hunter College).
