Film Series: Aaron Copland: Music for American Movies
***All film programs are held in the East Building Auditorium except where noted***
The Cummington Story
October 13 at 2:00 p.m.
The Cummington Story was produced by the U.S. Office of War Information. An instructional
short about World War II refugees adapting to life in a Massachusetts town, the film appealed to Copland's populist sensibilities.
He composed a simple score borrowing themes from Down a Country Lane and Sunday Afternoon Music, both solo piano works. (1945, 16mm, 15 mins.) Copland scholar Neil Lerner, associate professor of Music at Davidson College, introduces the program.
also
Of Mice and Men
Copland's first official Hollywood project was an adaptation of the famous John Steinbeck novella about migrant workers in Depression-era California. "Here was an American theme," said Copland, "by a great American writer, demanding appropriate music." According to historian Sally Bick, "The choice to use Copland was daring. An outsider to Hollywood...his reputation had been based upon his prestige...as a modernist." (Lewis Milestone, 1939, 35mm, 106 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Aaron Copland: Music for American Movies
The North Star
October 13 at 4:30 p.m.
With a Lillian Hellman Oscar-nominated script, The North Star was released in the mid-1940s as a rare wartime pro-Soviet propaganda
film from Hollywood. The stellar cast of Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Walter Brennan, and Erich von Stroheim—villagers in a Ukrainian collective—finds the strength to endure a Nazi invasion. James Wong Howe's cinematography
and Ira Gershwin's lyrics (Song of the Guerillas) support Copland's score, which increases in strength as it progresses. (Lewis Milestone, 1943, 35mm, 108 mins.)
Calendar of Events | Aaron Copland: Music for American Movies
Film Programs | Film Series | Art Films and Events | Children's Films