Matthew H. Bernstein's Farewell Favorites
Matthew H. Bernstein's Farewell Favorites
The Emory Cinematheque, a series of professional film screenings offered by the Department of Film and Media and Emory College of Arts and Sciences, is pleased to present “Matthew H. Bernstein: Farewell Favorites” on the occasion of Bernstein’s 2026 retirement from Emory after working in the Film and Media Department for 37 years.
For this series, Bernstein has chosen 14 films that he has researched, taught or has wanted to teach in recent years. Chronologically, titles range from Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 hilarious and newly restored, The Gold Rush to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning, The Lives of Others (2006), a compelling portrait of life in East Germany under the STASI, the state police.
“I have had a lifelong fascination with the power of film to create empathy with others, to move us, enlighten us and provoke us,” Bernstein says. “They compel us to see the world with fresh eyes. I have enjoyed discussing these with students for over three decades. I have also been a true believer in the ability of the Emory Cinematheque to bring together the campus and Atlanta communites.
“It was hard to choose just 14 titles,” he continued, “but I grouped these films around three distinct but overlapping themes and genres.
“First are stories of political and social resistance, such as Roberto Rossellini’s exhilarating and powerful Rome, Open City (1945); Don Siegel’s classic paranoid sci film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); Andrez Wajda’s 1959 anti-Soviet Ashes and Diamonds; and Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man (1964), a searing portrait of Black experience in the allegedly post-segregation South.
“The second group focuses on film noir, one of the most inventive vehicles for powerful portrayals of disillusionment, paranoia and cynicism—another kind of resistance. These include Alfred Hitchcock’s first major romantic espionage film Notorious (1946) and Carol Reed’s powerful portrait of postwar disillusionment The Third Man (1949). There’s also Kurosawa’s superb kidnapping police procedural High and Low (1963), which I considered one of the best, if not the best, of its type.
“The final set of our films are classic film comedies. Comedies are associated with spring and rebirth. We also celebrate them for their subversion of the social order even as they depict human striving and human folly. The inventiveness of comic filmmakers knows no bounds. We begin with The Gold Rush (1925); we continue with Preston Sturges’s outlandish screwball comedy, The Lady Eve (1941), and Ang Lee’s marvelous 1995 Jane Austen adaptation, Sense and Sensibility (1995). We conclude on April 22 with the film I still consider the greatest ever made, Jean Renoir’s 1939 social critique The Rules of the Game.”
All screenings are on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall, Room 208. The Cinematheque runs from January 14 until April 22 and is FREE and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted, all screenings will be 4k restorations on DCP. Bernstein will introduce each film and hold post-screening Q&As.
January Screenings
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January 14, 7:30 p.m.
They Won’t Forget
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
This low-budget anti-lynching film from Mervyn Leroy (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) may be the most powerful 1930s Hollywood film you’ve never seen. As Bernstein discusses in his Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television, the film is a thinly disguised fictional adaptation of Atlanta’s own notorious Leo Frank and Mary Phagan case. Featuring marvelous performances from Claude Rains as an ambitious prosecutor and a cast of relative but talented unknowns (including Lana Turner in her screen debut), They Won’t Forget is classic fast-paced Warner Bros. product, a film so potent that Atlanta’s city leaders ensured it was never shown here upon its release. Come and see why. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.
January 21, 7:30 p.m.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Directed by Don Siegel
Residents of a small California town become alarmed when friends and relatives become shells of their former selves. It’s up to Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and his old flame Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) to figure out what is going on and how to stop it. Producer Walter Wanger, the subject of Bernstein’s first book, produced this classic, ingeniously-shot, low-budget sci-fi horror film, directed by Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, The Shootist) from a noir-tinged script by Daniel Mainwaring (of Out of the Past fame). Its generalized portrayal of fighting the pressure to conform resulted in its being interpreted as both anti-Communist and anti-anti-Communist. Remade several times, this version arguably remains the best.
January 28, 7:30 p.m.
Rome, Open City
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Based on actual events that took place in the closing days of World War II, Roberto Rossellini’s fast-paced, thrilling landmark drama about the Catholic and Communist fight against Nazi rule in Rome was nothing short of revolutionary. A founding work of Italian Neorealism, the film rejected many Hollywood studio traditions and focused on ordinary people and their struggles to survive in the wake of World War II’s devastation. Intricately plotted and shot while the Nazis were still in Rome, the film established a new standard of cinematic realism. All in all, it is an inspiring, highly influential and deeply moving tribute to Italian resilience and the abiding power of love.
February Screenings
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February 4, 7:30 p.m.
Nothing but a Man
Directed by Michael Roeper
This underseen masterpiece of American independent cinema depicts working class Black experience in the South of the early 1960s with enormous sensitivity and intimacy, a far cry from the slicker Hollywood versions produced in the decade. When self-contained, confident railroad worker Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon, The Spook Who Sat By the Door, Hogan’s Heroes) comes to a southern town and falls in love with the preacher’s daughter Josie (jazz legend Abbey Lincoln), they struggle to fight all kinds of pressures from the Black and white communities which insist they accept the indignities of segregation and white supremacy. Recently restored, the film looks better than ever, with superb performances from the entire cast.
February 11, 7:30 p.m.
Ashes and Diamonds.
Directed by Andzrej Wajda
Andzrej Wajda’s third film on World War II Polish experience is still arguably his greatest. Its tight 24 hour time frame takes place in a small town on the pivotal day when the Nazis have retreated but the Soviet military are rolling in to assume authority--The long-time underground resistance fighter Maciek Chelmicki (the charismatic, dynamic Zbigniew Cybulski, called “the Polish James Dean”) has fought both enemies---and he weighs the moral and emotional dimensions of his latest assignment--to assassinate the new local Communist leader. Jerzy Wójcik’s absolutely stunning deep focus cinematography conveys this utterly compelling story of Poland complex and tragic history in luminous images.
February 18, 7:30 p.m.
The Lives of Others
Directed by Florian Hencken von Donnersmarck
Screening introduced by Dr. Caroline Schaumann, Professor of German Studies.
Florian Hencken von Donnersmarck burst onto the international scene with this Oscar-winning exploration of oppressed life and artistic censorship during the 1980s in repressive, authoritarian East Germany. When a die-hard STASI (secret police) agent begins surveilling a successful, government-approved playwright and his partner, a leading actress, he begins to question his work and his own beliefs. With an exquisitely complex script and superb performances from his cast, von Donnersmarck crafted one of the greatest films of the 21st century, a truly moving example of coming to terms with the past and the unquenchable desire for freedom.
February 25, 7:30 p.m.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Directed by John Ford
The western genre mythologized America’s frontier expansion, and John Ford’s last great film in this genre manages to sum up both his own work and the genre itself. Through the multiple confrontations among the murderous outlaw Liberty Valence (Lee Marvin), the quintessential western loner hero Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) and naïve eastern lawyer Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart), this ultimately elegiac film explores and dismantles the mythology of the settling of the west while dramatizing the process of establishing a western state—and at what cost. Suspenseful, funny and ultimately melancholy, Liberty Valence‘s dramatization of competing values of individualism and community and the place of gun violence in American history remain strikingly relevant today. The three leads give iconic performances.
March Screenings
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March 4, 7:30 p.m.
Notorious
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock’s best black and white Hollywood film, the recently restored Notorious shows the master of suspense in complete command of cinematic storytelling and simultaneously marked his new level of commitment to portraying romance. In this espionage thriller, Hitchcock vividly portrays the intense romantic triangle and swirl of sexual jealousy involving proto-CIA agent Devlin (Cary Grant), the amateur spy Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) and the man she is assigned to seduce in Brazil, the Nazi Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains). The three leads are at the top of their game, thanks in part to the brilliant, often cynical and morally complex script by Ben Hecht.
March 18, 7:30 p.m.
The Third Man
Directed by Carol Reed
Arguably no film better captured the sense of post-World War II disillusionment than Carol Reed’s realization of an original Graham Greene script about despicable crime and corruption in Vienna. Declared by at least one critic as “probably the greatest British thriller of the postwar era,” the film, featuring exteriors shot on location in Vienna, is largely a detective noir featuring an out of his depth American pulp fiction writer Holly Martens (Joseph Cotton), his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) and the woman they both love (Alida Valli). Reed elicited memorable performances from his cast (also including Trevor Howard). Cinematographer Robert Krasker furthered the film's unsettling atmopshere with his extensive use of canted angles. And Anton Karas’s zither “Third Man Theme” achieved top-charting status for nearly three months. You will have a hard time forgetting it or more to the point, the film.
March 25, 7:30 p.m.
High and Low
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa is best known for his innovative samurai films but he took special pride in his contemporary dramas like Ikiru / Living (1952) and this masterful kidnapping detective thriller, recently reconfigured by Spike Lee as Higher 2 Lowest (2025). Immediately after shoe company executive Kingo Gondo (frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune) mortgages everything to buy a controlling interest in his company, he faces a moral dilemma as to whether to pay a outrageous ransom for the kidnapping of his chauffeur’s son. Kurosawa, at this point fearless in his storytelling prowess, uses every cinematic technique at his disposal to produce a gripping, unpredictable, exhilarating film that is both intimate and epic in its scope.
April Screenings
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April 1, 7:30 p.m.
The Gold Rush
Directed by Charles Chaplin
1920s silent comedy was America’s gift to the world, and Charlie Chaplin’s film about the Tramp’s adventures in the frozen north remains the peak of his considerable 1920s achievements. He had solved the challenge of combining stand-alone comic episodes into a fully realized narrative and created a fully realized fictional world. Chaplin remains the greatest screen performer in cinema history, and this film—for which he wrote the script, the music and which he directed--showcases his trademark inventiveness via the imaginative transformation of objects, hilarious slapstick, as well as The Tramp’s enduring, endearing yearning for love and acceptance. We are screening the brand new restoration print celebrating the film’s 100th anniversary.
April 8, 7:30 p.m.
Sense and Sensibility
Directed by Ang Lee
Emma Thompson’s perceptive and witty Oscar-winning screenplay provided the foundation for this outstanding adaptation of Jane Austen’s first novel. We remain always at the side of the dispossessed Dashwood sisters, especially the practical Elinor (Thompson) and the passionate Marianne (Kate Winslet), as they debate how best to approach matters of the heart, over which they, like all of Austen’s heroines, have so little control. Boasting a fine cast of British actors--including the three romcom heartthrobs Hugh Grant, Greg Wise and Alan Rickman--the film perfectly marries Ang Lee’s penchant for long takes and stories of repressed emotion to late 18th century British society.
April 15, 7:30 p.m.
The Lady Eve
Directed by Preston Sturges
With The Lady Eve, the brilliant writer-director Preston Sturges created the Hollywood screwball comedy to top them all. It’s full of impossible situations, clever, double-entendre dialogue (necessary in the era of the Production Code) and plentiful pratfalls. When con artist Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces and then falls for an out-of-his-depth snake-studying heir Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) on an ocean liner, she gets more than she bargained for and resolves to set things right. Boasting a cast of Sturges comic regulars, as well as the always delightful Charles Coburn as Jean’s deceitful father “Colonel” Harrington, The Lady Eve was written expressly for Stanwyck and she goes to town in this “woman on top” romp. Meanwhile Fonda demonstrates his comic chops to the fullest. Who knew?
April 22, 7:30 p.m.
The Rules of the Game
Directed by Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir’s satire of the French bourgeoisie “dancing on the edge of a volcano” (e.g., the Fascist threats at its borders) is the crowning achievement of his golden decade of filmmaking in France (though a case can be made for his magnificent anti-war Grand Illusion). Classically structured, Rules transforms from an urbane comedy of manners among an amoral, adulterous group of mostly wealthy Parisians into a fast-paced, upstairs/downstairs slapstick farce when all hell breaks loose at a costume ball at a Loire chateau. Renoir here achieves the height of naturalism through his signature style--complex staging captured by his frequent use of a mobile camera and long takes. The film is imbued with Renoir’s generous affection for all his characters, no matter how badly they behave.