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Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.
Meet John Doe
U.S., 1941
Director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin’s 1941 political fantasy Meet John Doe feels more prophetic than ever. It’s got it all: a disconnected, alienated (largely white) American working class, a changing media landscape, fake news, an incipient fascist cabal and, of course, mobs.The parting shot of a disgruntled reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) — a manifesto in the form of a suicide note, written by a fictional everyman — inadvertently launches a nationwide political movement after her nervous newspaper finds a patsy to play the part (Gary Cooper). Outwardly well-intentioned, the populist movement urging goodwill and neighborliness is quickly co-opted by corrupt autocrats working from the shadows to seize power.
35mm, b&w, 129 min. Director: Frank Capra. Screenwriter: Robert Riskin. With: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold.
35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
The Mortal Storm
U.S., 1940
In the concluding chapter of his “Weimar Trilogy,” which began with Little Man, What Now? (1934) and Three Comrades (1938), director Frank Borzage depicts fascism’s ascendance in a small German college town following Hitler’s election to chancellor. The unleashed forces opposed to tolerance, community, reason and freedom of thought fall particularly hard on the family of a beloved professor whose Jewishness is suggested but never stated. The professor’s daughter (Margaret Sullavan) and a family friend (James Stewart) are star-crossed lovers whose resistance to fascism is framed by the film’s prologue as part of the age-old fight against “superstition” and “ignorant fears.”
35mm, b&w, 100 min. Director: Frank Borzage. Screenwriters: Claudine West, Hans Rameau, George Froeschel. With: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young.
35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding funding provided by the Juanita Scott Moss Estate
—Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm
