On April 24 at 8 pm Eastern (US), film fans will once again gather for Saturday Night at the Movies employing the services of Amazon Prime’s Watch Party function. Our last Saturday Night at the Movies joined nine of us together for the exemplary Caged starring Academy Award nominee Eleanor Parker and a cast of superb women actors including Hope Emerson as the cruel matron of a women’s prison. After we watched the movie, using the chat function to comment in real time, we convened via Zoom for a richer, “in person” discussion that lasted for almost an hour.
On Saturday, February 27, your classmates held the second Saturday Night at the Movies using the Watch Party function of Amazon Prime. Ten of us, plus partners, attended. The film was The Set-Up (1949), starring Dartmouth heavyweight boxing champion Robert Ryan, Class of 1932. Attendees had such a good time that we are doing a third Saturday Night at the Movies on March 20 at 8 pm Eastern.
The Set-Up has been chosen for several reasons: it is a superb boxing movie with a compelling story line, beautifully directed, filmed and edited, and acted. Ryan provides a Dartmouth and boxing connection. It is also short: only 1 hour and 12 minutes. Further, it is one of the few movies to observe the unity of time. The movie opens on a street clock and ends on the same clock 72 minutes later. (Another movie that follows a strict unity of time and a strict unities of place and action is Hitchcock’s Rope which was filmed so as to appear to be a single continuous shot. High Noon with