A Child is Waiting (1963) is a seldom-discussed work in the celebrated career of director John Cassavetes. Only his second commercial feature, Cassavetes was brought to the project by producer Stanley Kramer and screenwriter Abby Mann, the team behind Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), to bring Mann’s drama of the enervating lives of teachers of mentally handicapped children to the screen. The script’s sensitive subject matter would ordinarily have been treated with an excess of sentimentality typical of the period, but Cassavetes brings a gritty realism to the film. A cast of forty special needs young actors holds their own with Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland and Gena Rowlands, who give energetic, taut performances. Kramer fired Cassavetes during the editing stage, leading the director to disavow the film later in his career, but Cassavetes’ style is visible in the tight tension-filled shots, histrionic pathos, and brilliant cuts of this strange, engrossing film. UCLA Film & Television Archive provides The Crank with a 35mm print that hasn’t been screened in 20 years, and this film is not on DVD – a chance to see A Child is Waiting under these high-quality conditions will not come again soon. Please join us for our final screening of the quarter!
DATE: Thursday, December 1
TIME: 5 PM
PLACE: The James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall
ALL CRANK SCREENINGS ARE FREE!
