My undergraduate alma mater, the University of Michigan, holds an annual summer event up here in northern Michigan, generally highlighting an achievement of somebody affiliated with the university. This year it was an interview with Hendrik Meijer, the CEO of the Meijer super-grocery store chain, but also something of a scholar, who just published a biography of Senator Arthur Vandenberg. (Michael Barr, long-time Michigan law professor and recently appointed dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, ably conducted the interview.)
But I digress slightly. Absolutely my favorite course at Michigan was the fall 1973 edition of “Introduction to Film,” taught by Professor Frank Beaver (left), only three years out from having received his Ph.D. I remember that course chapter and verse, from conceptual montage to the shocking “gun” scene