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Free Summer Film Series: The Awful Truth

The Awful Truth
Directed by Leo McCarey
(1937, USA, 91 minutes, Unrated)

Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for directing this classic screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as a soon to be divorced couple who rediscover their love and passion while sabotaging each other’s engagements. The Awful Truth is a prime example of what philosopher Stanley Cavell calls the “comedy of remarriage,” a romantic comedy cycle that emerged in response to the soaring divorce rates and the general sense of topsy-turviness that characterized relationships and everyday life during the Great Depression. Through its charismatic central couple, an assortment of delightful secondary characters, a decadent upperclass setting, and a farcical sensibility, The Awful Truth both questions the institution of marriage and mystifies those very concerns.

http://www.summer.uci.edu/calendar/filmseries_july.aspx

Free to UCI students, faculty, staff and visitors - No need to RSVP! Free snacks provided to enjoy during the film. Participate in a post-film group discussion with curator Jenna Weinman, a graduate student in Visual Studies.

Although romantic comedies are beloved, or at least well-known, for their delightfully predictable happy endings, this series focuses on the complaints and frustrations that inform the couples’ conflicts and compromises. How do romantic comedies work to recognize and absorb various tensions, anxieties, and desires circulating within a particular historical moment? In what ways are certain intimate expectations, struggles, and thrills recycled across different historical contexts? The films in this series use distinct figurations of the couple–ranging from upperclass, estranged spouses to two heterosexual buddies curiously determined to take their friendship to a physical level–to engage issues of gender and sexuality, singleness and commitment, immaturity and maturity, romance, class, and parenthood.