Hidden Gems 3: More Buried Treasures and Guilty Pleasures

In this course, we view and discuss seven films from across cinema history that, while largely overlooked by American audiences, deserve to be seen—especially by a live audience. Though these films range from lighthearted to serious, they all offer a compelling blend of insight and entertainment. The crime drama, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), contains arguably James Cagney's best performance. The Great Lie (1941) is probably the only film in which Bette Davis was completely upstaged by her co-star, Mary Astor.  The French film, 8 Women (2002), is a lively mash-up of several incompatible film genres and stars eight of France's most beautiful actresses, including Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert.  Pride (2014), which tells the true story of a group of gay activists who support the conservative National Union of Mineworkers in the U.K. during the summer of 1984, manages to be both touching and funny in delivering its message of acceptance of "the other."  The political drama, All the King's Men (1949), won the Oscar for Best Picture that year, yet few have seen it, and it has even more resonance in our political climate today.  Finally, we view two truly unforgettable epics: El Norte (1983) and Never Look Away (2018). While the former explores the human dimensions of undocumented immigration to the United States, the latter examines the tension between artistic expression and repressive regimes. Though set in Germany during the Cold War, its themes remain universal.