Missing a film screened by UCLA’s film club The Crank
could mean missing your only chance to ever see it.
The Crank, which refers to both old hand-cranked cameras and
cranky film connoisseurs, is made up of 10 graduate students in the
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s critical
studies program. Since fall quarter, the club has screened films
from the UCLA Film and Television Archive that are not widely
available on video every Wednesday at the James Bridges
Theater.
Last Wednesday, a crowd of a few dozen showed up to watch
“Of Human Bondage,” a 1934 film about a club-footed
medical student obsessed with a despicable waitress, which launched
Bette Davis’ career.
Never heard of it? The club prepares program notes to accompany
each film with facts about the making of the movie, its box-office
success or failure and any resulting scandals. The researcher also
briefly introduces the film before it is shown.
“The program notes are very, very unusual. They’re
the most thought-out program notes you’ll find on
campus,” said Janet Bergstrom, chairwoman of the critical
studies concentration and faculty advisor for The Crank.
“They go to the academy, look up the censorship file. They
have to use at least three additional reference sources. I
don’t think I’ve seen any where there are less then
seven or so sources.”
On an average day, the crowd contains few students but is
instead filled with familiar film enthusiasts.
“We do seem to be able to pull these very same cine-philes
that are obsessed with cinema,” said Savitri Young, the
president of the club.
One of the recurring attendees is Ken Del Conte, a director who
frequents film screenings all over Los Angeles. In a jacket bearing
the logo of USC, his alma mater, he sat in the front row at the
screening of “Of Human Bondage,” which he said was his
third or fourth Crank film.
“I saw a lot of the same people there, the film
buffs,” Del Conte said. He first found out about The Crank
screenings by accident, arriving at Melnitz early for a 7:30 p.m.
movie and catching part of an earlier screening.
“I read about the 7:30 one and came early, saw the door
open and thought, “˜Let’s go in and read the paper, do
the crossword,'” he said.
He plans to see more screenings by The Crank and hopes they
increase in popularity.
“(These are) really good movies that’ll bring people
in,” Del Conte said. “Good movies, especially the old
ones ““ what we call artistic.”
The members of the club each get two units of credit for their
work and appreciate the opportunity to practice programming.
“To write something with more than an audience of one, not
just a professor ““ it’s an opportunity. You are
presenting a film, and that’s not a revolutionary idea, (yet)
that’s not something that people do in film schools,”
Young said.
“If anything, The Crank makes me more excited about all my
classes (and) about the school.”
Despite the selected films being widely unavailable on DVD
anyway, club members believe the films would lose something even if
they were transferred.
“These are all pretty much pre-video. These are all films
essentially that were made to be shown in a theater ““ to be
screened, not to end up popping into DVD players that you can rip
onto an iPod. They were made in a different way,” said
Bernardo Rondeau, vice president of The Crank. “Projected
film has grain in it. You have a sense of it moving; it feels like
much more of a living organism. When it’s that much bigger
you see a lot of detail. You hear a lot more. The film context
becomes a lot clearer.”
Members have to know which films they want five weeks before the
screening series starts. They pick movies that they either have
seen or that they have heard referenced but never had the
opportunity to view. The Crank’s connection with the archive
enables it to show rare prints; the screened print of “Of
Human Bondage” was a 35-mm nitrate print, a format that is
especially difficult to display.
“It’s highly flammable and (it will fade). The
nitrate films will all certainly die. They have to be transferred
to something else,” Bergstrom said. “We have a nitrate
booth. The fire department had to inspect it with very, very high
standards in case it lights on fire. There has to be two entrances
to the projections booth. It has to shut down and separate itself
from the rest of the theater.”
Yet the necessary hoops are worthwhile when the final product is
seen.
“To be able to project nitrate, you see the film
undoctored. When it transfers, you lose something. It has a higher
proportion of silver in it, so it sparkles more on screen,”
Bergstrom said. “Most people wouldn’t know this, but
the film students, they want to bring this to people’s
attention ““ that there’s something really special we
have.”
The Crank has become a selling point for the critical studies
concentration at UCLA. Prospective students are invited to tour the
campus on Wednesdays in order to catch a screening.
“They had an open house for people who were accepted
already. Not only could students meet faculty members and sit in on
campus, but they (could go) to The Crank. They happened to be
showing a really rare Andy Warhol movie called “˜Horse.’
You really can’t see it. They invited people from the art
history department to introduce the film,” said Bergstrom.
“They’ve generated a lot of excitement.”
The fact that Crank screenings are free makes the range of
pictures they can show wider than other theaters in the area.
“(Other theaters) have to limit the old movies they show
to ones that have cult followings. We don’t have to make any
money so we have that creative freedom all the time,” Young
said. “They are also doing a disservice by showing what is
already popular. There were hundreds and hundreds of films being
made in those years that no one is accessing or watching. The other
issue is that these more obscure relics of film history that have
fallen through the cracks have not become important parts of the
canon, but for no good reason.”