“Johnny Belinda” Fifth CIFF Student Classic Film Series Show – April 30

Johnny Belinda is the fifth screening in the 2023 CIFF Student Classic Film Series, which runs through the end of May. This screening will take place on Sunday, April 30 from 1pm to 3:30pm in the Winn Room of the Coronado Public Library. It is free to middle and high schoolers, and parents/grandparents/guardians are welcome as long as they are attending with a student.*

Based on actual events and first dramatized on Broadway by playwright Elmer Blaney Harris, Johnny Belinda was nominated for an astonishing 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and a Best Director Oscar nomination for Jean Negulesco.

Johnny Belinda is historic in Hollywood history as the first motion picture made under the Production Code to courageously confront the issue of rape and show the reality of the victimization of people with disabilities. Negulesco gave his superb cast of veteran film actors the freedom to tell the story courageously, without fear. The result was acting Oscar nominations for Jane Wyman and Lew Ayers (in leading roles) and Charles Bickford and Agnes Moorehead (in supporting roles). Johnny Belinda masterfully portrays the raw emotions and handles the brutal realism necessary to tell such a story with a refined sense of restraint when needed, while never failing to confront disturbing truths.

The film showcases a tour-de-force, Best Actress Oscar winning performance by Jane Wyman as Belinda, while never speaking a single word. Her portrayal of a young deaf-mute woman who courageously soars above the temptation to claim victimhood and protects her child while demanding her right to raise him as her own, stunned both audiences and film critics. Belinda’s triumph, in the face of innuendo, lies and deeply rooted falsehoods about the ability and competence of people with disabilities will leave you shouting for joy at the power and scope of her maternal devotion to her beloved child. This 1948 Warner Brothers classic features an intensely compelling Oscar nominated score by perhaps the greatest composer of original music in motion picture history, Max Steiner.

* IMPORTANT: Screenings are rated GPA: Gee, should I invite a Parent or Adult? No one OVER 18 will be admitted unless accompanied by a student! No Exceptions! Screenings are free, but reservations are strongly recommended. For more information and reservations go to coronadofilmfest.com, select the “Year-Round” drop-down menu and “Student Classic Program.”

ABOUT THE STUDENT CLASSIC FILM SERIES

Entering the second season, the CIFF Student Classic Film Series is a cinematic cultural literacy program (how to watch, listen and understand) introducing Middle School and High School Students to the art of film as it first developed and was practiced by the masters of the film-making craft during the Golden Age of Hollywood. While cinephiles may argue, the Golden Age is generally recognized as studio produced, auteur director films made from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s. This era featured a unique mix of economic, cultural, and social conditions, aligned perfectly for making great movies by the score.

The best Golden Age films exemplify peak execution of the technical cinematic craft of storytelling, coupled with exceptional screenwriting by people who learned how to script memorable narrative story lines using a disciplined, tried and true, “Classic” movie-making model. The studio system brought such stories to life by placing them in hands of a small cadre of exceptional directors, to whom they gave access to their remarkable moving-making resources. Those “resources” included well-known “Classic” movie stars under studio contract; but, equally as important, a vast stable of talented, hard-working character actors. These screen actors mastered the techniques of telling stories visually, in ways that still have exceptional power to capture the imagination. All truly memorable films of the Golden Age show virtue in action.

The program began in 2022 with seed-grant funding provided by the City of Coronado Community Grant.