14S103F Films About Personal Quests
Location: Lebanon College
Room: Room 117
Mar 21-May 9, 2014
Meets 9:30 AM-12:00 PM
on Fri
Tuition: $55.00
Level: New
Status: This program is completed
We are told that life is “a journey” – a reference to journeys of self-discovery, soul-searching, moving-on, of finding oneself, of having an adventure.
These films of personal quests, some archetypal, some not, involve four “foreign” films and four Hollywood ones. The first four engage us with stories or themes about an itinerant mute child-woman, a perilous voyage to return a borrowed object, a medieval knight’s return during a plague and a Japanese son’s adventure in Iceland as he honors his dead geologist grand-parents.
The final four, with well-known directors, take place respectively in the West just after the Civil War ends, in the modern day Southwest, in the South during the depression, and on a train between New York City and Chicago, and on to Mount Rushmore.
FILMS TO BE SCREENED:
La Strada, Fellini, 1954
Wind Journeys, Guerra, 2009
The Seventh Seal, Bergman, 1956
Cold Fever, Fridriksson, 1994
The Searchers, Ford, 1956
Sullivan’s Travels, Sturges, 1941
Thelma and Louise, Scott, 1991
North by Northwest, Hitchcock, 1959
Film Clips Handouts Discussions Travel
There are no required textbooks for this course.
Instructor -- Don Watson
discovered the French fascination with American Westerns while a student at the Universite de Poitiers. He also learned to appreciate the New Wave Cinema of Truffaut, Godard and Chabrol. He retired from teaching French and Latin at Hanover High School in 2001. Don started the Sister City Exchange between Hanover, NH and Joigny, France in 1991. He has an MA from the University of Chicago and an MLS from SUNY, Albany. He is Library Director at Lebanon College.