Film & History News

child: her hopes for the child's future are as naive as they are impossible of realization, for her oppressor is not only the white man's city of Los Angeles, but the Indian males cast loose in it. They are as callous to her as the city is to them, so she is doubly damned. Red Groomes has created the ultimate film on the absurd and grotesque American city. Fat Feet is animated but uses real people too. The characters all walk around with great wooden shoes which make it difficult to get anywhere. But then, there is really nowhere to go, so it does not make much difference. The graphics are superb, partly black and white, partly color. It is typical of Groomes' work that he has not created a world as much as he has commented on one that already exists, recreating alienation, absurdity, and sheer nameless terror as feelings so often associated with life in great American cities. The last film is No Down Payment (1957): life in a Los Angeles suburb, $7500 a year class. The sun rises on Sunrise Hills, but not before a barbecue ("I'll just throw another steak on the grille"), rape and death grimly remind us of other versions of the American dream gone bad. The acting is excellent. Joanne Woodward plays a good-hearted half-literate housewife married to Cameron Mitchell, a World War II Veteran who wants to be the suburbs first police chief. Tony Randall as an alcoholic used-car salesman is Alger's Ragged Dick grown up a century later. This list of films varies from one semester to the next. Other programs have included Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Lavender Hill Mob, Nothing But A Man. Shadows, Pull Mv Daisy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Fat City, Sunrise, White Heat, The Connection, Tiger Shark, Fountainhead, and Anna Christie. Other lectures include The Audience and the Film; The Magnificent Welles; Griffith's Populism; The Image of the Immigrant, Crime and the City, 1900-1970; Suburban Vistas; Communal Arts; Film Directors and Architects Compared; and The City. Examinations and term papers make up the bulk ofthe students responsibility in the course. Topics like the changing image of the city, the role and development of women, social mobility, and generational relationships are some of the themes around which the students written work is organized. FILM & HISTORY NEWS LONDON CONFERENCE The imperial War Museum continues its valuable series ofconferences with "Film and the Second World War," scheduled for September 23 through 27 in London. This international conference will focus on the use of Second World War film, both actuality and feature film, in the study of the war period. A report by one of the American participants will appear in a later issue. COPYRIGHT CLEARED ON UNIVERSAL NEWSREEL ARCHIVES The new media section of the A.H.A. Newsletter reports that Universal Pictures have transferred the reserved rights to their newsreel collection (1929-67) to the United States government. This will make it much easier for documentary filmmakers to draw 30 upon this mine of historical material for their compilation films. Historians who in the past have set aside thoughts of film production because of the costly and troublesome copyright difficulties might now reconsider. The 30,000 reel Universal Collection is available for research and reproduction at the Audiovisual Division ofthe National Archives in Washington, D.C. OHIO HTSTORTANS MEDIA GROUP Ohio historians have been at work forming themselves into an "Ohio Historians' Media Group" which meets regularly to discuss the problems of film research and classroom teaching that Film & History Film & History focuses upon. The idea of such regional organizations enabling scholars to meet frequently and share their ideas and experiences is one that we hope will be followed elsewhere. Much of what the Historians Film Committee has been trying to do on a national basis will be complemented by such a developing network. Interested people may contact Ed Lentz at the Ohio Historical Society, Archives and Manuscripts Division, 1982 Velma Ave., Columbus, Ohio 43206. H.F.C. SCREENS DEATH IS CALLED ENGELCHEN On May 9 the Historians Film Committee sponsored a screening of this Jan Kadar...