Film Notes: CLASS PICTURES #5

CLASS PICTURES: STUDENT ARCHIVIST SCREENING NIGHT #5
7 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Humanities Quadrangle, Room L01 (320 York)
16mm rarities presentd by students in Film 6040: The Film Archive taught by Brian Meacham, with introductions and film notes by students in the class
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Phonies Beware! (Dir. Larry O’Reilly, 1956, 8 min)
This short film shows how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigates products that might be fraudulent. The voiceover narration, interpreted by Bob Hite, conveys this film’s pedagogical character. Phonies Beware! aims to, on the one hand, outline the social, legal, and bureaucratic function of the FDA; on the other hand, it aims to caution viewers about the consequences of fraudulent businesses. Directed by Larry O’Reilly, the film focuses on an ad for a “cure-all” remedy for illnesses like arthritis, diabetes, and rheumatism. Following a patient’s death, Inspector Kennedy (played by John Zaic) proves that the product advertised as Elixirex does not follow medical standards. This action is set in an industrial and suburban picture of the 1950s United States. RKO Pictures produced this docufiction as part of their “RKO-Pathé Screenliners” series, composed of several documentary films made in the 1940s-1950s. Often focused on industrial progress, good citizenship, and educational subjects, these films have a processual aesthetic, explaining social and technological breakthroughs in U.S. culture such as work automation, drug regulation, and technological innovation. Another notable film in the RKO Screenliners series is the 1951 Stanley Kubrick film Flying Padre, a documentary about Reverend Fred Stadtmueller, who would fly a Piper Cub aircraft to meet his parishioners.

Notes by Luis Prieto, second year Ph.D. student in Film & Media Studies and Spanish & Portuguese

Alaskan Summer (Dir. Phyllis Stanton, 1979, 15 min)
Gently cruise over the beautiful Alaskan landscape for fifteen minutes in this 1979 documentary, largely shot from the observational perspective of a trailblazing Canadian light aircraft pilot. The flight logs of this anonymous female forerunner in aviation frame Alaskan Summer, which is narrated with awe and splendor for the aestiva of Alaska by Virginia Gregg (1916–1986), known for her roles in films such as Operation Petticoat (1959), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), and for her uncredited role as the voice of Norma Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Gregg also had a long career in television, appearing in shows ranging from Bonanza (1959-1973), The Rockford Files (1974-1980), and The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). Her warm but measured delivery lends the documentary an intimacy that elevates it beyond a simple travelogue, grounding its sweeping visuals in a quietly personal register. Contributing to Alaskan Summer’s tranquil, expository tone with his script is James Bruner, a screenwriter who usually penned far more actionpacked titles, including Missing in Action (1984) and The Delta Force (1986). Directed by Phyllis Stanton and edited by Thomas Stanton, Alaskan Summer was produced by Stanton Films, a Los Angeles-based production company which almost exclusively produced short educational and didactic documentaries, to which Alaskan Summer is no exception with its touristic and informative mediation on “alyeska,” The Great Land. The film is also notable for its stunning and sweeping aerial photography and its gentle ethnographic focus on Alaska’s indigenous peoples and landscape.

Notes by Deniz Cinar, second year Ph.D. student in Film & Media Studies and Comparative Literature

The Stationmaster (Dir. J. Stein Kaplan, 1971, 28 min)
The Stationmaster is a student film made in 1971 at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Set in Ukraine in 1919 but shot primarily among the dry chaparral of MGM Studios’ backlots in Culver City, California, it centers on what appears to be an average day in the life of veteran stationmaster Daniel Danilovsky (Ritch Brinkley). Trains pass through Daniel’s station bearing soldiers and munitions to support the Soviet invasion into Ukraine, bringing with them a strict set of rules demanding complete support for the revolution. The film was written and directed as a senior thesis by J. Stein Kaplan, about whom there is scarce biographical information available. He went on to produce a number of beloved independent films like Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Dark Star (1974), which were directed and written by The Stationmaster’s composer, John Carpenter. This name will be familiar to fans of cult classics The Thing (1982), The Fog (1980), and the Halloween franchise, which have earned him a cult following of his own. Carpenter composed original music and played piano and guitar for this film. The film is missing from both Kaplan and Carpenter’s filmography, which provides an exciting chance to see a rare early work by two important collaborators in American horror and action cinema.

Notes by Camille Chang, a senior History of Art and East Asian Studies major in Silliman College

Booom (Dir. Bretislav Pojar, 1979, 11 min)
Booom is an animated short film by Czech animator and puppeteer Bretislav Pojar, produced by the United Nations. A reaction to the nuclear arms race, the film takes a humorous look at the origins of humankind and the incessant struggle for power that drives history forward. This 16mm print appears on polyester stock and is undated. Pojar began his work in puppet films, animating for Czech puppeteer, Jirí Trnka. Throughout his career, Pojar produced several animated and stopmotion films embedded with social criticisms of war, authoritarianism, and human nature. In the 1960s Pojar emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Canada and joined the National Film Board of Canada while still producing films, where his earlier films were produced, at Krátký Film Praha’s animation studio. Booom was co-released by Journal Films, a documentary, informational, and educational film distribution company. Journal Films often collaborated with the United Nations on a number of other educational films. Booom appeared in competition at the 1979 Festival de Cannes and was awarded the Jury Prize. Pojar’s 1973 film Balablok won him the Grand Prix at Cannes several years before. The film depicts the absurdity of war and conflict in the form of anthropomorphic shapes going to war against one another on the basis of their differences. The film is executive produced by Kamil Pixa and Peter Hollander and co-animated by Boris Masník. Jirí Kolafa is credited with the music and Vladimir Malík with photography.

Notes by Emma Fusco, a senior Cognitive Science major in Jonathan Edwards College

...On Seeing Film (USC, 1958, 16 min)
In July 1957, Columbia Pictures and producer Sam Spiegel announced plans to make a special 16mm educational short film for the large-scale promotional campaign of David Lean’s war epic The Bridge on the River Kwai. The educational film, intended for colleges and universities, was supposed to use extensive documentary footage from the set in Sri Lanka. In addition to the filmed materials, commentaries read by the lead actor, William Holden, were recorded. Later the same year, Sam Spiegel and USC’s Department of Cinema announced collaboration on editing the short, for which the school received a total of 15,820 feet of exposed film. This was reported as the first case of such cooperation between an educational institution and a big producer. ...On Seeing Film explores the process of adapting a literary text into film, as was the case with The Bridge on the River Kwai, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle. The film’s commentary on creating a realistic and truthful adaptation will hardly impress film scholars, yet this production offers valuable insight into the history of film education in the United States. Working on the film were the two graduate students, Dustin Rawlinson and Richard Sanderson, supervised by Professor Melvin Sloan, who oversaw the well-developed student film production at USC. Despite the seemingly limited creative involvement the students had in the film’s subject and narrative, its focus on educating film viewership aligned with their professional interests, which extended beyond filmmaking to academic teaching and studying of film.

Notes by Arina Ranneva, second year Ph.D. student in Film & Media Studies and Slavic Studies

The Trout Factory (Dir. Thomas Conlon, 1948, 10 min)
Welcome to The Trout Factory, a short that takes us through a tour of a trout hatchery in 1948. In gorgeous, unfaded Kodachrome, we see fish raised from egg to catch. The growing trout are hypnotically poured back and forth between progressively bigger containers, to the cheerful tune of drolly-narrated voiceover. Finally, the fish are released for recreational angling. Even for non-enthusiasts, it offers delectable bonbons of eye-candy: the sunset glow of fish eggs, the sapphire streams, and the dazzling white glare of sunlight on water. This visceral scopophilia is typical of what Salomé Skvirsky calls the process genre, media that represents the step-by-step process of production. They can induce a kind of bodily buzz: “a tingling in my toes and ears, a calm, a stillness, a lull.” How does a river get its fish? This is the hundred-billion-dollar question. An estimated 1 in 6 Americans participate in sportfishing each year, which has major environmental implications. Fish stocking in the US began in the late 19th century, and early stocking was haphazard, with little consideration of ecological balance. One 1915 study stocked a lake with less than 2,000 trout and reported that after a year, they had “virtually eliminat[ed] much of the invertebrate fauna.” But sportfishers’ environmental impact is more nuanced than might seem at first brush; anglers are sometimes staunch allies of conservation. After all, fishing is not a hobby that thrives in a totally devastated ecosystem. Trout Factory does not itself suggest we take a more critical view on extraction. Yet in its carefree glitter and surprising detail, we get a peek into the attitudes and practices surrounding a system still very much shaping our waterways (and dinner plates).

Notes by Michelle Chow, third year Ph.D. student in Film & Media Studies and English

Oddities in Farming (John Deere, Inc., 1950, 13 min)
Oddities in Farming is an American industrial film, one of many commissioned by John Deere throughout the midcentury to tour alongside their “John Deere Day” events. Oddities in Farming showcases (as the title suggests) eccentric home-built and modified farm equipment. Other John Deere Day attractions included the John Deere Singers and Dancers and John Deere equipment showcased in the theater lobby. John Deere, whose eponymous founder invented the steel plow in 1837, was approaching a pivotal moment in its company history as Oddities in Farming was being toured around the Midwest. Facing obsolescence and increased competition, they unveiled a series of new four- and six-cylinder tractors (as opposed to their classic two-cylinder model) in 1960 and quickly became the world’s leader in agricultural equipment sales. Through their series of promotional films, John Deere disseminated their vision of the corporation as integral to the family, whether it be as entertainment, education, or livelihood. Various installments of Oddities in Farming were produced by Minnesota-based Reid H. Ray Film Industries, Inc., which was at the time of its c. 1970 closure was the oldest operating commercial filmmaker in the United States. This edition traverses the continent from Washington State to southern Florida, offering rare footage of family farms throughout the nation, many of which are no longer in operation. Oddities in Farming, as a Colorado newspaper advertised in 1953, promises “to please and amuse all who see it.”

Notes by Claire SooHoo, a junior American Studies and Linguistics major in Jonathan Edwards College

Presented in Treasures from the Yale Film Archive, with support from Paul L. Joskow '70 M.Phil., '72 Ph.D. Printed Film Notes are distributed to the audience before each Treasures screening.