Summary: This program, narrated by Ibsen biographer Michael Meyer, charts the development of Henrik Ibsen's style over four periods: his early years of failure; his epic dramas; his sociological plays, such as A Doll's House, Ghosts, and Rosmersholm; and his final plays, including Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf, in which he dealt with the dark interior of the human soul. Televised...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Read by noted actors Michael Gough, Edward Fox, and Eileen Atkins, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land powerfully expresses the disillusionment and disgust of the post-World War I era in Europe. In this program, Professor Frank Kermode, of Cambridge University; Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd; and poets Sir Stephen Spender and Craig Raine examine the complex nature of Eliot's influential poem, analyze...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1925 Luigi Pirandello brought his troupe to England as part of a worldwide tour. This program re-creates one day in London as "The Einstein of the Theater" watches his plays and, away from the footlights, confronts the paradoxical nature of his life. Portions of Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV; Right You Are, If You Think You Are; and The Rules of the Game are meticulously...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Considered the first modern novel, Crime and Punishment is both a compelling psychodrama and an unrelenting examination of modern humankind. This program skillfully interweaves riveting dramatizations of Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece with Notes from the Underground and the autobiographical Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Penetrating observations are provided by Professor John Jones, of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Banned in 1920 yet subsequently lionized for its compelling characterization, breadth of humor, and use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, James Joyce's Ulysses expanded the literary possibilities of the novel. This program presents an extraordinary dramatization of Joyce's well-known rendering of the Odysseus epic. The late writer and critic Anthony Burgess and Professor Clive Hart, of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Virginia Woolf pushed the boundaries of the novel as a tool for psychological inquiry through her experimentation with subjective and relativistic perceptions of time and events. This program intercuts scenes from a compelling dramatization of Mrs. Dalloway with a portrayal of Virginia Woolf-played by actress Eileen Atkins-who, based on entries from her diary, explicates the story. Literary...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: A suppressor of his own writings, Franz Kafka even requested that upon his death all his extant works be destroyed-yet those very works accurately prefigured the anxieties and alienation so commonly associated with the latter part of the 20th century. This program delves into Kafka's fictional world, primarily through a gripping dramatization of The Trial, a combination of simple tale and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: A novel of ideas at once serious and comic, The Magic Mountain offers a bird's-eye view of the political, philosophical, and social landscapes of pre-World War I Europe. This program uses provocative dramatizations of key scenes from Thomas Mann's grotesque bildungsroman and employs the character of Mann himself, in a re-creation of a 1939 lecture, as a guide to the story's heights and depths....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005