The Reel McCoy Film Society

Screening world cinema and forgotten gems since 1990

Screenings are at 7:30pm every second Wednesday.

Click here for our entire July - December program (PDF download)

Upcoming screenings:

August 20
A TOWN LIKE ALICE

(UK 1956) 116 min.
Director: Jack Lee. Cast: Peter Finch, Virginia
McKenna.

In this moving drama of survival during World
War II, a group of British women and children
is forced by the Japanese to trek though the
jungle. No Japanese officer will take responsibility
for them and they are threatened with starvation and
disease. An Australian (Finch) helps them to survive
and he forms a relationship with the group’s
leader (McKenna). His passion for his hometown,
Alice Springs and his determination to survive and
return there inspires the group to continue against
the odds. Stoic understatement injects a quiet intensity
into the drama.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

September 3
BOB ROBERTS

(USA 1992) 102 min.
Director: Tim Robbins. Cast: Tim Robbins.

This is a mockumentary look at the Senate
campaign of conservative folk singer Bob
Roberts (Robbins), and the lone reporter trying
to foil him. Marking the directorial debut of
Robbins (who would next go on to make Dead
Man Walking), the film uses satire, cameo
appearances by real-life media people
and songs penned by Robbins himself to
look at American politics in a way that will
probably be forever relevant (and particularly
now in another US election year).

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

September 17
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK

(USA 1939) 103 min.
Director: John Ford. Cast: Claudette Colbert,
Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver, John
Carradine.

Gilbert ‘Gil’ Martin (Fonda), a civilized man
from the East coast colonies, finds himself a
loving bride, Magdel ana ‘Lana’, (Colbert)
and takes her West to start a homestead in the
Mohawk Valley. Gil joins the American militia,
but when the Indians attack the rebellious
colonists, instigated by the British, their home
and belongings go up in flames, Lana loses their
baby. Destitute, they move and find a wealthy
old widow, who is happy to put them up in her
fine estate in exchange for help from both of
them, but the horrors of war catch up, even the
fort isn’t guaranteed safe. Ford’s first film in
colour.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

October 1
PAISÀ

(Italy 1946) 120 min.
Director: Roberto Rossellini. Cast: of 1000s.

Rossellini with Federico Fellini as a co-writer
set six stories in the context of the US march
through Italy in 1943 and 1944. Each episode
involves a different situation and group of actors
in a new district of Italy. The film starts in Sicily
and ends up by the River Po in northern Italy.
The common theme is communication or lack
of it, particularly between the Italians and the
Americans, who are variously seen as invaders,
liberators or fair game for the poverty stricken
locals. The tone, too, varies from wry humour
to tragedy. The film often seems more like a
documentary than a composed movie but the
neo-realistic style powerfully conveys the
bitterness of war , using amateur actors and real
locations effectively.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

October 15
NOTHING SACRED

(USA 1938) 74 min.
Director: William A Wellman. Cast: Carole
lLombard, Fredric March.

Written by Ben Hecht who also co-wrote The
Front Page which became Hawks’ classic His
Girl Friday, this biting fast-paced satire has an
elderly, drunken doctor misdiagnosing a young
woman (Lombard) as having a rare terminal
illness. An ambitious New York reporter
(March) picks up the story. When he learns that
the diagnosis is wrong, he convinces her to go
along with the charade for the publicity. She is
built up by his newspaper into a national heroine.
Comic misunderstandings abound until she is
inevitably exposed as a fraud. The reporter has
to resolve a tricky situation. This film was one
of the first in colour.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

October 29
EXOTICA

(Canada 1994) 104 min.
Director: Atom Egoyan. Cast: Mia Kirshner,
Elias Koteas, Don McKellar, Victor Garber,
Arsinée Khanjian, Sarah Polley, Calvin Green,
David Hemblen, Peter Krantz, Jack Blum,
Damon D'Oliveira, Billy Merasty, Ken McDougal.

The club Exotica is the central point in a
Canadian city (presumably Toronto, though it
is not named) for the stories of an auditor, a DJ,
an erotic dancer, a pet store owner and a
babysitter to unfold, reveal and intertwine. the
Egoyan made this just before his well-received
The Sweet Hereafter, and the slow burn of the
plot and revealing developments towards the end
are similar in esoteric feel. Marketed as an
“erotic thriller”, the eroticism isn’t conventional
and the thrills are softly handled.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

November 12 (6:30pm)

6:30pm - Annual General Meeting
Come along and have your say.

7:30pm - NIGHT AND THE CITY

(UK 1950) 94 min.
Director: Jules Dassin. Cast: Richard
Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh
Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan, Herbert Lom.

London noir.  En route to France, courtesy the
McCarthy witch hunt, where he would create the
epochal fusion of Euro and Hollywood sensibilities
that is Riffifi, Fox’s Zanuck detoured activist director
Julie Dassin to England to safeguard his investment
in Gerald Kersh’s downbeat novel, now too ‘hot’
a project for Hollywood. Seizing the Red Scare
metaphor of the frantic American pursued abroad,
Richard Widmark gives a career-highlight portrayal
of the downwardly mobile hustler kept aloft only by
his own hot air.  With cinematography showing
its German Expressionist roots, Night and the City
does for London what Reed and Welles did for Vienna
in The Third Man.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

November 26
KUMONOSU JO (Throne of Blood)

(Japan 1957) 110 min.
Director: Akira Kurosawa Cast: Toshiro Mifune,
Isuzu Yamada.

Kurosawa (as writer and director) transposes
Shakespeare’s Macbeth from mediaeval
Scotland to feudal sixteenth-century Japan.
Washizu (Mifune) is a samurai warrior who is
told by a witch that he will become Emperor.
He and his scheming wife Asaji (Yamada) plot
and murder so that the prophecy is fulfilled, but
it ultimately leads to Washizu’s downfall. It has
been said that the stylised use of images in the
film is visual poetry that replaces the poetry of
Shakespeare’s text, instead of a more literal
translation. There is much reference to Japan’s
Noh theatre, as well as the history of the samurai
class. This film is considered by some to be the
best cinematic adaptation of the Bard’s “Scottish
Play”.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

December 10
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

(USA 1935) 90 min.
Director: Sam Wood. Cast: The Marx Brothers,
Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Margaret Dumont,
Sig Ruman.

Considered by many lovers of the famous
brothers to be up there with Duck Soup as the
funniest of the MB films. In this, the Brothers
get involved in the world of opera and create
the usual havoc. The straight musical scenes
(and the love interest) are provided by Carlisle
and Jones. This is the one with the contract scene
between Groucho and Chico ending up with the
mythical “sanity clause”.

(Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)

 
Screening start again in February 2009...