CUSHING — The artist Alan Magee will speak about the genius and lasting influence of European film directors who fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood. The talk will be held Thursday, Aug. 8, at 7 p.m., at the Cushing Town Office, 39 Cross Road. The lecture series is organized by the Cushing Historical Society; admission is free.

The German film artists who came of age in Weimar-era Berlin brought a wealth of talent, wit, and political sophistication to the Hollywood studios — making films that were visually striking, psychologically nuanced, often bitingly critical, and invariably entertaining. 
 
Magee's presentation will highlight the work of W. H. Murnau, Carl Freund, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder. Lang and Wilder, with Hitler's rise to power fresh in their memories, looked into the shadowy recesses of American society with European eyes.
 
Magee cites the Universal Studios' horror films of the 1930s, broadcast on late-night television when he was ten years old, as his first exposure to expressionism — a visual style and attitude refined in Berlin during the Weimar years and transported to Hollywood by the European exiles.