Adventures in Cinema Studies: With Dr. Wiener and His Disrespectful Students
Season 1
The Seventh Seal vs One Crazy Summer
Black Narcissus vs Black Panther
Duck Soup vs White Chicks
by Sean Springer
Episode four of "Adventures in Cinema Studies with Dr. Dudley Weiner" is out! This week, we pry open The Seventh Seal, an Ingmar Bergman movie whose alternate title could plausibly be One Crazy Summer. That's because it takes place in the summer amidst an outbreak of a disease (the Bubonic Plague) that makes everyone go crazy. Funnily enough, there is a 1986 John Cusack movie called One Crazy Summer, which is also about a crazy summer, but that's where the parallels between the two films end. Unfortunately, fourth-year honours student Darren Arciszewski insisted we compare them. Fortunately, he didn't have much to say about One Crazy Summer. Regarding The Seventh Seal, auditing student Xavier III ("Tre") admitted that he's partial to Jöns the squire whereas Darren had sympathy for Antonius the knight. If you haven't seen the movie, don't let that deter you from listening in. Neither Darren nor Tre seemed to have paid much attention to the film, but thanks to summarizing skills of Dr. Weiner, the students grew to understand that the film has nothing to do with semi-aquatic mammals. Prayers up.
Welcome to class three! First the bad news: Auditing student Tre did not drop the course. Then the worse news: Enrolled student Darren asked us to compare Black Narcissus to Black Panther Followed by a brief bit of good news: We wound up barely talking about Black Panther. Before returning to bad news: The students couldn't stop talking about Black Narcissus because they couldn't stop talking about the nuns’ sex appeal. And finally ending on some actual good news: The students managed to focus on, if only for a minute here and a couple minutes there, the assigned readings. They told me why a movie about five nuns, a sexy man, and his little pony continues to captivate audiences, Darren and Tre included.
Welcome to class two! Some housekeeping notes: Auditing student Jefferson Pinkerton has dropped the course! His departure makes the course MUCH better. Unfortunately, this episode is MUCH worse than the last one. That's because Jeff's departure coincides with the arrival of a new auditing student, Xavier Dupree III, AKA "Tre." Professor and students soldier on by attempting to discuss the 1933 Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup, #211 on the Sight and Sound list of the best films of all time. Making things difficult is Darren's insistence on comparing Duck Soup to the 2004 film White Chicks starring Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans. Professor Wiener does his best to stimulate a discussion about readings by Plato, Bakhtin, Rabelais, Musgrave, and Gehring. This discussion makes up about one percent of the episode's runtime.
In this complete joke of a university seminar, Dr. Wiener, Darren, and Jefferson explore A Man Escaped, the 1956 classic directed by Robert Bresson. Dr. Wiener reviews readings by Susan Sontag, Paul Schrader, Leo Murray, and Bresson himself. (Neither Darren nor Jefferson read any.) Note 1: Darren makes intrusive comparisons to the 1990 Jim Varney vehicle Ernest Goes to Jail while Jefferson insists upon repeatedly referencing the half-decent The Great Escape. Note 2: You can see A Man Escaped with a subscription to The Criterion Channel. It's also available for rent from Apple TV. The trailer is available at YouTube.