This month we begin a two films per month schedule -- the second and fourth Sundays. For January, here is what we will be looking at:
The next film, Now, Voyager will be shown at 4pm on January 10th in the Abbott Room of the Belfast Free Library.
In this 1942 film Bette Davis stars as Charlotte Vale, a dowdy, repressed woman who, overwhelmed by her domineering mother, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She finds help at a sanitarium from a kind psychiatrist (Claude Rains), who turns her into a beautiful, confident woman. As a new person, she takes a pleasure cruise, where she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid), an architect trapped in an unhappy marriage, saddled with a troubled daughter. The two fall in love, but, of course, the romance is doomed. Yet their paths cross on occasion, and, despite their feelings, Charlotte finds satisfaction in helping Jerry's depressed child.
In the 1940s and 50s, some severe mental problems were held to be the result of bad mothering. This view was so fervently held by some mental health professionals that, for them, the very existence of the disorder was proof of faulty parenting. Today, of course, we believe that severe mental problems result from a far more complex interaction of factors, including genetic influences as well as a variety of childhood and adolescent experiences and life events.
The series continues on January 24th with What Dreams May Come:
Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra star in this visually stunning metaphysical tale of life after death. Neurologist Chris and artist Annie had the perfect life until they lost their children in an auto accident; they're just starting to recover when Chris meets an untimely death himself. He's met by a messenger named Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and taken to his own personal afterlife--a freshly drawn world reminiscent of Annie's own artwork, still dripping and wet with paint. Meanwhile a depressed Annie takes her own life, compelling Chris to traverse heaven and hell to save Annie from an eternity of despair. The images of madness and depression shown in the film are quite compelling. If we view it as a metaphor for the deadening of life following a severe trauma, such as suffered by both Annie and Chris, then the film can be taken as illustrative of the psychological aftereffects and what must be done to come back.