‘The Natural’ kicks off Churchill Arts Council Fall Film Series

“The Natural” is an American sports film based on Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel of the same name.

Barry Levinson directed this 1984 movie, and it stars Robert Redford, Glenn Close and Robert Duvall. Levinson’s film recounts the experiences of Roy Hobbs, a man with great natural baseball talent that spanned the decades of Roy’s career.

The Churchill Arts Council begins its 2019 Fall Film Series on Friday at Barkley Theatre, Oats Park Art Center. The box office, Art Bar and galleries open at 6 p.m. with the movie beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets are $7, members; $10 nonmembers. A movie special offers the three movies for $18 members and $27 for nonmembers. Tickets are available at the box office on the night of screening or call CAC at 775-423-1440.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress (Close), and it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress (Kim Basinger). Many of the baseball scenes were filmed in 1983 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, New York, which was built in 1937 and demolished 51 years later. All-High Stadium, also in Buffalo, stood in for Chicago’s Wrigley Field in a key scene. Additional filming took place at the New York and Lake Erie Railroad depot in South Dayton, New York.

Hobbs (Redford) learned to play baseball from his father in Nebraska in the early part of the 1900s. Move forward to 1923, and on the way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs, Hobbs is shot by the unstable Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey).

Sixteen years later in 1939, Hobbs is now 35 and is signed by a scout to the New York Knights, a struggling ball club sitting in last place. The team is managed by Pop Fisher (Brimley), who initially dislikes that Hobbs has joined the team, believing that at his age he would be more of a hindrance than a help.

Hobbs learns that if Pop loses the pennant, then his ownership share of the team will revert to the team’s majority owner, the Judge, and Pop will be out of the game for good. Later in the movie, Hobbs provides the heroics thus preventing Pop to lose his share of the team.

“Field of Dreams” will be shown Sept. 13 and concluding the Fall Film Series on Sept. 20 is “A League of Their Own.”