Cockney Cary Wednesday 5 October, 6pm BST
Online: Crowdcast
THIS EVENT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. WATCH THE RECORDING NOW.
A conversation with James Naremore for the UK Book Launch of his recent book Some Versions of Cary Grant (OUP, 2022), with a Q&A with Andrew Kelly, followed by the announcement of this year’s Cary Come Home Festival Programme.
“Cary Grant famously said, ‘Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant’. His development of that star image required serious work, but he also played a variety of characters requiring special performing talents. He was equally skilled in the screwball farce The Awful Truth, the dark thriller Notorious, the romantic melodrama An Affair to Remember, the domestic comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and the social drama None But the Lonely Heart. In a lively style accompanied by many illustrations, James Naremore analyzes these and other of Grant’s best films, demonstrating that he had exceptional talent and greater range than usually recognized.” Cockney Cary is the focus of this illustrated talk, centring on films such as Sylvia Scarlett and None But The Lonely Heart in which Grant plays a working class character with a stage-Cockney accent – against type, but much closer to his own life experience, although he was a Bristolian, not a Londoner. This year’s Cary Comes Home Festival takes place 18-20 November 2022 and the full programme will be revealed by festival director, Charlotte Crofts, at this event.
James Naremore is Chancellors’ Professor Emeritus of Communication and Culture, English, and Comparative Literature at Indiana University. His research, which centers on classic Hollywood cinema and modernist literature, is concerned with questions of style, cultural politics, and ideology. A former Asa Mellon Bruce Fellow of the National Gallery of Art, he has lectured widely in the U.S. and Europe and taught as a guest at the University of Chicago, the School of the Chicago Art Institute, and the University of Hamburg. His books include The World without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel (1972), Filmguide to Psycho (1973), The Magic World of Orson Welles (1979, revised edition 1988), Acting in the Cinema (1987), The Films of Vincente Minnelli (1993), On Kubrick (2007), and Sweet Smell of Success (2010). One of his books, More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (1999, revised edition 2007), was awarded the international Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award and a commendation from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. Naremore’s writings have been translated into eight languages. He is currently the editor of the Contemporary Film Directors series (2003-present) and a writer-at-large for Film Quarterly.
Andrew Kelly was Director of Bristol Ideas from 1993 – 2022. His projects include At- Bristol (now We The Curious), Bristol Legible City, Brunel200, Bristol800 and the annual Bristol Great Reading Adventure. In 2014 he directed Bristol’s programme marking 100 years since the start of the First World War, the largest UK programme of its kind outside London. He is a visiting professor at the University of the West of England and has published 15 books on issues ranging from film and cinema history to Brunel and engineering, the future of cities and 100 years of Bristol aerospace. In his new part time role, Andrew will be focused on researching and programming future projects, including Festival of the Future City 2023; a multi-partner project celebrating the legacy of Colin Ward; an international programme marking James Baldwin’s centenary and many others.
Charlotte Crofts is Associate Professor of Filmmaking at the University of the West of England, Bristol and director of the Cary Comes Home Festival, a biennial festival established in 2014 which aims to celebrate Cary Grant’s Bristol roots, develops new audiences for his films and recreate the golden age of cinema-going with exciting expanding cinema screenings across Bristol and beyond. This event is supported by UWE Bristol’s Moving Image Research Centre and the Digital Cultures Research Centre.
If you enjoyed this event and want to support Cary Comes Home then please feel free to donate!
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| SYLVIA SCARLETT |
In Association with UWE Bristol Moving Image Research Group
Celebrating Bristol’s status as a UNESCO City of Film, in recognition of the city’s vibrant screen heritage, of which Cary Grant is one of our brightest stars.