‘Cinema Summer’ Film Series To Focus On Scenes

Of Venice, Wednesdays In August

WATERBURY — Beat the heat in August at The Mattatuck Museum, enjoying scenes of Venice in the air-cooled comfort of the museum’s Performing Arts Center.

A new film series, “Cinema Summer,” has been developed in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibition “Reflections and Undercurrents: Ernest Roth and Printmaking in Venice, 1900-1940.” Three films will be presented on Wednesdays, August 8, 15 and 22, at 2 pm.

Tickets are $8 ($5 for museum and OLLI members) for each program, and registration is requested.

The series will kick off with the Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi classic Summertime. In this beloved film Jane Hudson (Hepburn), a middle-aged secretary from Akron, Ohio, has finally made it to Venice, Italy for her long-awaited dream vacation. Jane draws the attention of a handsome antiques-shop owner named Renato de Rossi (Brazzi) and unexpectedly finds romance in a 1955 film directed by David Lean.

On August 15, the feature will be the Anthony Minghella thriller The Talented Mr Ripley, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Cate Blanchette. Set in the 1950s, a lavatory attendant, Tom Ripley (Damon), borrows a Princeton jacket to play piano at a garden party. When the wealthy father of a recent Princeton graduate meets Tom, he pretends to know the man’s son, Dickie Greenleaf, and is offered $1,000 to go to Italy and convince him to return home. While in Italy, Tom finds Dickie (Law) and Marge (Paltrow), Dickie’s cultured fiancée, and goes to extreme lengths to make Greenleaf’s privileges his own in this 1999 release.

The series concludes on August 22 with the 2000 Italian comedy Bread and Tulips (Pane e tulipani). After being forgotten by her family at a highway café during a bus trip, Rosalba decides not to wait for her husband and sons to come back to pick her. Offended that she has been left behind, Rosalba finds her own way by hitch-hiking to Venice and while on her journey she meets strange but fascinating people. The film is in Italian with English subtitles.

“Reflections and Undercurrents: Ernest Roth and Printmaking in Venice, 1900-1940,” on display until August 26 in the Whittemore Gallery, offers 95 etchings, preliminary drawings, etching plates, sketchbooks and photographs focusing on the art of Ernest David Roth (1879-1964), one of the most significant etchers of the first half of the 20th Century. The exhibition, organized by Eric Denker, PhD, senior lecturer at the Smithsonian’s National Gallery, places the art and artist in the broader context of American and European etchers of the period.

Visit www.MattatuckMuseum.org or call 203-753-0381 for reservations or more information on all of the museum’s programs, events and exhibits. The Mattatuck Museum is a Blue Star Museum, which offers free admission to active duty personnel and their families through Labor Day.