ALL IN THE FAMILY

2005 Theme

All in the Family

Welcome to another season of outdoor movies in Marin and San Francisco! The Theme has become an annual tradition, but being an untraditional festival, you can count on us to choose a unique theme or person to salute. This year’s theme may seem straightforward until you take a look at the movie selection. You’ll soon realize the theme is as diverse and unique as most families.

Let’s start with our opening night movie, SOME LIKE IT HOT. “How does that fit into a family theme?”  Kenn Rabin starts a wonderful piece on the movie (Click Here) with, “Some Like It Hot is one of the all-time great screen comedies, relying as it does on one simple premise: two male musicians hiding out, dressed as women, in an all-girl band.” Why are they hiding out? And what have they got themselves into?

They left the world they knew, or their old family of Chicago musicians. By pretending to be women and joining an all-girl band, they are taken into a new family, where the women look out for each other. They are in effect, two orphans that have been adopted by  this new family.  Notice how they do and don’t adopt the new family’s values and take on some of their characteristics.

THE WIZARD OF OZ is a film for the whole family, but is it about a family? Sure it is. The movie is a metaphor for how we choose our family. Each character is based on a person from Dorothy’s real life, her family. Joseph Campbell talked about how all great stories involve a hero’s quest. The yellow brick road represents the journey Dorothy is on, and her adopted family – the scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion – the mirror of her real family – represent the qualities she must have or acquire as she grows up, so that the journey of her life will be successful.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI is a great example of how your friends become your family, PIECES OF APRIL looks at the black sheep in the family and John Wayne in THE SEARCHERS personifies the loner in the family.

THE 400 BLOWS is a story of an unwanted child, and how the boy idolizes a father that has more important things in his life. It’s about seeking out a new family, in this case the new family is a group of peers, trouble-making kids. It’s about what happens when your family doesn’t give you the emotional support you need and you look around for nourishment elsewhere.

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER points out that children’s instincts can be better than their parents. Shelly Winters sees nothing wrong with the preacher that mysteriously arrives in town shortly after her husband’s death. Her children, however sense something is not right, and spend most of the movie attempting to get out of harm’s way.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT was Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite film (and it was filmed in Santa Rosa). It is the story of two Charlies – Charlie, the bad uncle and Charlie the innocent niece, twins or mirror images, one good, one evil. Hitchcock loved the idea of evil coming into a seemingly typical American Norman Rockwell-type family. He even hired Thornton Wilder, the writer of the greatest American family play, OUR TOWN, to work on it.

YELLOW SUBMARINE is more than just a good animated film for the family, it stars THE BEATLES, four cute boys that many of us sons and daughters, in the 60s took into our families as if they were orphans we wanted to adopt. Like it or not, John, Paul, Ringo and George moved into our homes for a decade, and there was nothing mom and dad could do about it.

GRAPES OF WRATH is about family endurance, how we stick together when the going is tough, while SHREK II is about acceptance into a new family.

When REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE was first released 50 years ago, it touched on an already-developing restlessness among America’s teenagers in the cold war era, the era of suburbia. It focused on the huge rift between parents and a generation of kids that were searching for meaning and self-identification. James Dean was both a sex symbol for girls, and he appealed to boys for whom he became a powerful role model. It was new for kids to feel that they couldn’t rely on their parents for moral guidance, that they needed to figure out how to define themselves in the world. In many ways it was the precursor to the 1960’s counter-culture.

There are many more great films this summer that fit into the theme one way or another. We hope you enjoy them with your family, whatever you define your family to be -- whether that means mom and pop, brother and sister, friends, or neighbors.

By Tom Boss & Kenn Rabin