Professor Matthew Bernstein discusses ‘Young Frankenstein’ at City Lights Cinema’s screening at Plaza Theatre

A movie theater with the City Lights logo projected on screen.
City Lights Cinema's screening of "Young Frankenstein" occurred on Oct. 26. (Emily Richter/WABE)

Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s film, “Young Frankenstein,” is a masterpiece, and for our City Lights Cinema event at the Plaza Theater, the distinguished film scholar Professor Matthew Bernstein joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes on stage to discuss what made the movie extraordinary.

“We all know that Mel Brooks is the master of parody. It’s in his bones,” said Bernstein.

Teri Garr, who played Inga, the lab assistant to Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, died at 79 on Tuesday.

Bernstein is the Goodrich C. White Professor of Film and Media at Emory University.  He has written and edited six books on American film history, including a volume about depictions of the Leo Frank case on screen. Bernstein is also writing a history of segregated film culture in Atlanta. He has won research awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as a major national film and media teaching award. Over the years, Bernstein has extended Emory Film and Media to the greater Atlanta community with the ongoing Emory Cinematheque, a free film series curated by Emory scholars on a particular theme each semester, free and open to the public.