First, two highly anticipated films are coming in the next two weeks.
GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE opens this Friday, Nov. 19. Disney's animated film ENCANTO arrives the following Friday. We're also bringing back THE FRENCH DISPATCH, ETERNALS and SPENCER for another week. Tickets for all these films are available now. Click the film titles in this paragraph to see showtimes and purchase tickets.
Tickets for three series screenings this week are also on sale.
Watch for more info on all these films in Thursday's newsletter.
And now that lesson we promised ...
Social history and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Last week, we received a helpful email about TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD from a longtime friend of the cinema. She wrote:
"I was reading through the description of To Kill A Mockingbird on the CinemaSalem site. Even though there is still debate around this, I think the NY Times made a good case to capitalize the word Black in reference to race. Here is the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html. Likewise it might be good to add "white " in front of "lawyer" so that it is not assumed that all lawyers are white."
She went on to suggest a rewrite of the description. It's good, and we have edited our website accordingly. The original description came from the movie's distributor and may not have been revised since 1962.
Our main reason for programming TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in the first place was to talk about the music. But we can't ignore the film itself and the issues it raises. Whenever we watch a movie, we encounter the societal attitudes and assumptions that prevailed when it was made. Anyone who's seen one of our Noirvember films this month likely noticed that the attitudes toward women are, at best, out of date. Anachronistic attitudes are an unavoidable fact we must deal with, in our own minds at least, if we watch old movies. But when the primary issues in the film are racism and white supremacy — still so highly charged today — it's hard to skate past them without context and comment.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was released in 1962, based on the Harper Lee novel published in 1960. Jim Crow was very much alive, but racial attitudes were evolving rapidly. The Supreme Court had handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, effectively mandating school integration. The following year, Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Congressional action in the late 1950s had sought to address racial discrimination, but it was not until the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 that federal law had significant effect. Even afterwards, schools in some states remained segregated into the 1970s.
There's been a lot of "consciousness raising" in the last 60 years. In Aaron Sorkin's stage adaptation of Harper Lee's novel, which opened on Broadway in 2018, the story is changed in significant ways (Black characters have greater agency, for example) to make the play more resonant with our views on race as they have evolved since the 1960s. But a movie can't evolve. We will see this one as it first appeared in 1962, in a very different world. We believe it has much enduring worth, while acknowledging that some aspects may feel wrong today.
And our focus, after all, is on the score. Its composer, Elmer Bernstein, wrote some of the best known music in film history during his 54-year career. He scored everything from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (immortalized by the Marlboro man) to ANIMAL HOUSE. MOCKINGBIRD was a particular favorite of his.
Film composer James Newton Howard (THE FUGITIVE, THE VILLAGE, MICHAEL CLAYTON) said this at an ASCAP awards ceremony honoring Elmer Bernstein:
"He is one of the greatest film composers ever. What Elmer Bernstein has done is create a massive body of work, which includes many definitive examples of film compositional styles. It’s been like a how-to book for up-and-comers like me. ... Somehow, he has always been able to achieve gigantic effect with the most gentle and graceful gestures. Never has that been put to better use than in his incomparable score to ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.'”
Our friend and film-music guide Richard Guérin will have much more to say on the subject. He's also scheduled an interview this week with Peter Bernstein, the composer's son and collaborator, who has conducted his father's music all over the world. We'll get to see a recording of that conversation.
Please join us Sunday morning, November 21, at 11 a.m. (Buy tickets)
(Postscript: In a radical departure from this month's presentation, the next Cinema Sounds, on December 16, will look at the score for THE MATRIX -- which, incidentally, was partially composed using a matrix. Honest! Richard Guérin has several recording projects underway with MATRIX composer Don Davis, so we can look forward to especially informed insights.)
PLEASE NOTE: Cinema Salem requires masks in all areas of the cinema, unless you are eating or drinking in your theater seat. We will gladly give you a mask if you need one. Just ask at the counter.
PLEASE WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE VACCINATED
BEFORE YOU COME TO THE MOVIES.
