EVENT DETAILS

Free Summer Film Series: That Touch of Mink

That Touch of Mink
Directed by Delbert Mann
(1962, USA, 99 minutes, Unrated)

That Touch of Mink is arguably one of the more zany midcentury sex comedies, a short-lived romantic comedy cycle that fashioned marriage and sex (always in that order) from the vexing struggles between dapper, free-loving playboys and sexually reserved career women, who were afforded little currency in the postwar courtship economy besides their virtue, or at least a carefully guarded semblance thereof. In this film Cary Grant and Doris Day take on the above roles and attempt to reconcile their drastically different value systems and lifestyles over a short series of extravagant dates. Audrey Meadows also stars as Day’s protective, spinster roommate, and Gig Young plays Grant’s neurotic second banana who adds some surprisingly queer thrills to the mix.

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.