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HUM 240: History of Theatre - Clearwood

Streaming Videos

Full length and segment videos from:


Hedda Gabler (1993) 

Ibsen's classic story of a woman who sets out to destroy her husband and his smug, middle-class attitudes, but instead finds herself having to make a grave decision. Hedda Gabler is the television debut of the highly acclaimed theatre director, Deborah Warner.


Everyman (1991)

Produced in conjunction with medieval literature scholar Howard Schless of Columbia University, this program presents a production of the morality play Everyman staged in period costume. The DVD highlights the aspects of the medieval drama that appealed to 15th- and 16th-century audiences.


Tartuffe (1926)

The most gifted visual storyteller of the German silent era, F. W. Murnau crafted works of great subtlety and emotional complexity through his absolute command of the cinematic medium. Known for such dazzling films as Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926), and Sunrise (1927), Murnau was also drawn to more intimate dramas exploring the dark corners of the human mind.

In Tartuffe, he revisits Moliere's fable of religious hypocrisy, in which a faithful wife (Lil Dagover) tries to convince her husband (Werner Krauss) that their morally superior guest, Tartuffe (Emil Jannings), is in fact a lecherous hypocrite with a taste for the grape. To endow the story with contemporary relevance, Murnau frames Moliere's tale with a modern-day plot concerning a housekeeper's stealthy efforts to poison her elderly master and take control of his estate.

Kino Lorber presents the 1925 American release version with its original titles and tinting, from a 35mm nitrate print preserved by the Library of Congress and restored in 2002 by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv Berlin/Koblenz and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung of Wiesbaden.


Rhinoceros (1973)

The film version of Eugene Ionesco's absurdist play tells of a French city where the citizens begin to turn mysteriously into rhinoceroses. Zero Mostel recreates his Tony-winning Broadway role. Includes the marvelous Karen Black.