Michael van den Bos hosts Screwball Express film studies course at VIFF Centre, March 18 to April 29

Film scholar introduces six Screwball Comedy films to audiences with talks about the genre and its most famous artists

SPONSORED POST BY VIFF

Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937).

This spring at the VIFF Centre, film scholar Michael van den Bos is taking audiences on a whirlwind tour of comedy classics from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Celebrate the genuine American art form of Screwball Comedy with VIFF’s new six-part film studies course, Screwball Express. Sessions will take place on Monday mornings at 10:30 am from March 18 to April 29, excluding April 1.

Screwball Comedy flourished in the latter half of the 1930s and early 40s, a bright and breezy counterpoint to the Great Depression and the war in Europe, and filmmakers’ subversive response to the puritanical strictures of the recently imposed Production Code.

Screwballs are sophisticated sex comedies marrying witty banter with farce and slapstick They are conducted at a breakneck pace, starring glamorous, self-possessed but often alarmingly ditzy dames like Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and Jean Arthur, opposite such heartthrobs as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Don Ameche.

Howard Hawks’s Twentieth Century (1934).

In VIFF’s new series, van den Bos explores different aspects of Screwball, unpacking the conventions of the genre and illuminating the contributions of key artists, including leading directors Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Preston Sturges. Among the films featured throughout the course are Hawks’s Twentieth Century (1934), Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937), and Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938). Talks will last 25 minutes, followed by a film screening and an audience talk-back.

Leading up to the course, audiences can catch a VIFF Centre presentation by van den Bos of Like Buttah: The Barbra Streisand Tribute Show on February 27 at 7 pm.

Few figures in today’s world of entertainment have earned the hallmark of “living legend”. However, one performer virtually owns that label: Barbra Steisand. The remarkable singer, actress, and film director’s award-winning career spans six decades of stage, screen, and recording work.

Van den Bos returns to the VIFF Centre with an all-Streisand spectacular showcasing the artist's buttery vocals and charismatic film-and-television performances, all projected on the big screen with sound as grandiose as her timeless talent.

Tickets to the Screwball Express course and Streisand presentation, along with more details, are at VIFF.

Post sponsored by VIFF.

Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938).

Please note that these films from nine decades ago sometimes reflect attitudes and assumptions that are considered offensive today, in particular in regards to their treatment of racial and ethnic difference, as well as towards sexuality and gender. VIFF invites audiences to view these films through a historical lens and with the critical distance that time provides for us.