Before delving into some highlights for my upcoming calendar film program, which has everything from singing cannibals and Robby the Robot to sex addicts and Pam Grier (in-person!)… I’d like to back-track a little. In my last post I wrote that the venues where I screen films were akin to a leaky rowboat. While this statement remains essentially true, especially when we are compared to any state-of-the-art dedicated film theater, I would like to amend the metaphor a bit. In retrospect, I feel it would be more accurate to say that the film series I program is more like the Orca boat commandeered by Robert Shaw in Jaws. It’s big enough to chase large game, but you still can’t help wishing you had a bigger boat – especially when you get a clear glimpse of the challenge ahead. When I previously said that we do a lot with very little, the “we” in that statement referred to the small crew that has kept this particular boat from becoming an artificial coral reef on the ocean floor, and this despite staying afloat long past its expiration date.  READ MORE

Stuart Hagmann’s THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT (1970) is often dismissed today as a dated relic of the early ‘70s. During its initial release it was singled out for being exploitive and failing to be a straightforward adaptation of the book it was based on. Many critics claimed that Stuart Hagmann’s direction was erratic and too creative for its own good, which supposedly diminished the film’s political message. When I recently set aside some time to watch THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT I prepared myself for the worst. I expected to see a confusing, opportunistic, dated and laughable Hollywood film made to cash in on the political zeitgeist of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. But I came away from the movie with an entirely different opinion and immediately understood why it had been nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1970 and walked away with a Jury Prize. Not only is THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT a much better film than I had anticipated but it’s particularly poignant considering the current political climate. Student protest, police brutality, free speech and social activism are still hot button issues today. Not a lot has changed in 40 years. We’re still fighting the same battles and wrestling with the same complex issues that have been plaguing the country for decades. Like other controversial films from the same period such as MEDIUM COOL (1969), ZABRISKI POINT (1970) and PUNISHMENT PARK (1971), THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT asked some important questions that still haven’t been answered.

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In Hollywood during the 1930s, political movies dealt with corruption strictly on a small scale.  Whether it’s the corrupt politicians following the orders of their political bosses in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or a local joe, frustrated and angry with his luckless existence, signing up with a radical hate group in Black Legion,  Hollywood kept the corruption local, so to speak.  In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Senator Paine’s (Claude Rains) corrupt schemes affect the bank accounts of political bosses like Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) but don’t threaten or affect the world economy in any measurable way.  Likewise, in Black Legion,  Frank Taylor (Humphrey Bogart) joins a hate group whose activities affect the lives of those in a small town, although it’s implied their plans are much larger (here’s the real group the movie group was based on).  When it came to far-reaching conspiracies, it was always some international group, and some other country, doing the dirty work (Foreign Correspondent, for instance).  But then, slowly, the net widened and, seemingly out of nowhere,  in a one/two punch of extraordinary power, director John Frankenheimer blew the whole thing wide open.

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