Alan Cumming’s Adventures in Moviegoing
14 Episodes
Tony-winning actor, director, activist, and bon vivant Alan Cumming is known for both his chameleonic performances (this is a man, after all, who has played every role in “Macbeth”) and charmingly irreverent wit. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, the stage and screen star sits down with Criterion president Peter Becker to discuss everything from Scottish-cinema rarities to the reasons why he’s decidedly antiauteurist to the films he loves dearly. The selections he’s chosen—including Orson Welles’s trickster metadocumentary F FOR FAKE, Charlie Chaplin’s audacious political satire THE GREAT DICTATOR, and Volker Schlöndorff’s surreal antiwar statement THE TIN DRUM—display the same slyly subversive spirit he brings to his own work.
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20:09Episode 1
Alan Cumming in Conversation
Episode 1
Scottish Renaissance man Alan Cumming discusses the differences between actors and movie stars, the Scottish films he loves, and more.
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03:22Episode 2
Alan Cumming on THE GREAT DICTATOR
Episode 2
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2:05:33Episode 3
The Great Dictator
Episode 3
Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1940 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Jack Oakie, Paulette GoddardIn his controversial masterpiece THE GREAT DICTATOR, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure ...
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03:30Episode 4
Alan Cumming on BRIEF ENCOUNTER
Episode 4
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1:27:00Episode 5
Brief Encounter
Episode 5
Directed by David Lean • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor HowardAfter a chance meeting on a train platform, a married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) begin a muted but passionate, and ultimately doomed, love affair. With its evocatively fog-en...
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03:32Episode 6
Alan Cumming on I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!
Episode 6
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1:31:53Episode 7
I Know Where I’m Going!
Episode 7
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Wendy Hiller, Roger LiveseyIn Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s stunningly photographed comedy, romance flourishes in an unlikely place—the bleak and moody Scottish Hebrides. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstr...
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02:19Episode 8
Alan Cumming on F FOR FAKE
Episode 8
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1:28:43Episode 9
F for Fake
Episode 9
Directed by Orson Welles • 1975 • France, Iran, Germany
Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In F FOR FAKE, a free-form sort-of documentary by Orson Welles, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous lines between illu...
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03:06Episode 10
Alan Cumming on THE TIN DRUM
Episode 10
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2:43:30Episode 11
The Tin Drum
Episode 11
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • 1979 • Germany
Starring David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela WinklerOskar is born in Germany in 1924 with an advanced intellect. Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, he refuses to grow older after his third birthday. While the c...
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Alan Cumming on THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE
Episode 12
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1:56:45Episode 13
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Episode 13
Directed by Jack Clayton • 1987 • United Kingdom
Starring Maggie Smith, Bob Hoskins, Wendy HillerMaggie Smith delivers a tremendously moving performance as a woman grappling with loneliness, love, and faith in this sensitive character study adapted from the novel by Brian Moore. Middle-aged spi...
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Alan Cumming’s Adventures in Moviegoing Teaser
Episode 14