Film Series | Art on Screen

A special series of curated film screenings, presented in collaboration with the Princeton Garden Theatre, expands the investigation of the meanings of landscape in the exhibition Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills: The British Passion for Landscape. Museum members receive special Garden Theatre member admission prices.

Wednesday, March 9, 7:30 p.m.
Mr. Turner (2014)
Introduced by James Steward, Princeton University Art Museum, Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director
Director: Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson
2h 30 min, R

Mr. Turner explores the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, and loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito. Throughout these years, Turner travels, paints, stays with country aristocracy, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm—and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and royalty. In director Mike Leigh’s hands, the film—praised by the New York Times as possessing "exquisite, painterly cinematography"—brings to life the work of one of the greatest landscape painters in European history.

Tuesday, March 29, 7:30 p.m.
Days of Heaven (1978)
Introduced by James Steward, Princeton University Art Museum, Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard
1h 34 min, PG

Bill and Abby—a young couple, even as they pass to the outside world as brother and sister—are living and working in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. Looking to escape the poverty and hard labor of the city, they travel south with his sister Linda (who narrates the film) and find employment on a rural Texas farm. When the harvest is over, a rich and handsome farmer invites them to stay because he has fallen in love with Abby—thus setting in motion a complex domestic world of lies and jealousy. The film can best be understood as a remarkable homage to the wide landscapes and skies of Texas, and it emerges as one of the most beautiful films in American cinema.

Sunday, April 3, 12:30 p.m.
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Introduced by Caroline Harris, Princeton University Art Museum, Associate Director of Education
Director: John Ford
Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee
1h 58min, NR

Life is difficult in a Welsh mining town, and no less so for the Morgan family. Through the eyes of the family's youngest, Huw, we learn of their trials and tribulations. Family patriarch Gwilym and his older sons work in the dangerous and unhealthy mines, while Gwilym harbors greater hopes for his youngest son. But Huw has his own ideas of how to honor his father. This classic from 1941, made just as the old way of life was dying out, brings context to the Welsh origins of much of the art on display in Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills. Winner of Best Picture at the 1942 Oscars.