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Home , Mauvaise Graine, The Major and the Minor

Melbourne Cinémathèque The Big Carnival: The Films of 2021

19 APRIL – 5 MAY MONDAY 19 APRIL & MONDAY 26 APRIL & MONDAY 3 MAY & WEDNESDAY 21 APRIL WEDNESDAY 28 APRIL WEDNESDAY 5 MAY

In a monumental career spanning seven decades, Billy Wilder (1906– 2002) started out as a central-Euro- pean émigré who spoke no English and rose to become one of the most widely celebrated writer-directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The young Wilder developed an obsession with American films while working as a 7:00PM 7:00PM 7:00PM freelance tabloid crime reporter in ACE IN THE HOLE 1920s Berlin. Following Hitler’s rise Billy Wilder and Billy Wilder (1951) Billy Wilder (1942) to power in 1933, he found himself Alexandre Esway (1934) 111 mins : PG 101 mins : G exiled in Paris where he directed his 77 mins : Unclassified 15+ first film, Mauvaise graine, and from Wilder’s acerbic, lacerating wit comes Coming after an incredibly success- there he moved to Hollywood, where Collaborating in Paris with a group to the fore in this masterful social ful screenwriting career, Wilder’s he brought an outsider’s perspective of exiles, including composer Franz satire about the practices of journal- first American feature as director and a journalist’s eye for detail to the Waxman and screenwriters H.G. ism, the perils of newsworthiness and includes many of his most beloved dark – and darkly comic – aspects Lustig and Max Kolpé, Wilder made the morality of the masses gathering hallmarks. This audacious comedy of of American life. Over a wildly suc- his directorial debut with a playful at the scenes of tragic accidents (sexual) manners features an array of cessful career, Wilder became one action-comedy about a rich playboy (hence the film’s alternate title, The iconic Golden-era Hollywood faces of the most versatile filmmakers in who falls in with a ragtag gang of car Big Carnival). In one of his greatest including and, as the Hollywood, switching freely from thieves. Wilder explored naturalistic and most intense performances, Kirk street-smart city girl Susan Applegate, gritty potboilers and realist noirs to on-the-fly filmmaking, including Douglas plays a cynical newspaper . Rogers’ brilliantly romantic melodramas and comic shooting on the streets of Paris with hack who, for the sake of making manufactured comedic performance musicals, all defined by a sophis- a camera mounted on a moving car, front-page national news and res- is crucial to maintaining the daring ticated wit and crisp, clever dia- and his formal techniques, self-con- urrecting his career dragooned on charade at the narrative’s core that logue. Themes of investigation and scious criminals and sight gags fore- a small-town paper, gambles with a alternates between her impersonation deception abound in his work, but shadow the nouvelle vague as well man’s life by forestalling his rescue of a 12-year-old girl and a grown-up he rejected genre clichés in favour as his distinctive Hollywood style. from a collapsed mineshaft. woman. Co-scripted by Charles of morally complicated characters Starring Danielle Darrieux. Brackett. and stories that deeply probed the ironies and contradictions of modern life. A lifelong reporter at heart, his restrained directorial style always reflected the primacy of storytelling and the written word to his work. “If the viewer notices direction”, he once remarked, “you have failed”. This season spans the length and breadth of Wilder’s formidable 8:30PM 9:05PM 8:50PM directorial career featuring key but THE PRIVATE LIFE OF KISS ME, STUPID rarely screened works including SHERLOCK HOLMES Billy Wilder (1964) Billy Wilder (1953) the delightful farce The Major and Billy Wilder (1970) 126 mins : PG 120 mins : G the Minor, the bracingly cynical 125 mins : PG Ace in the Hole, and the irreverent Dean Martin limns a comic self- Based on a successful Broadway and autumnal personal project The Originally intended to run over three portrait as a lecherous singer whose play written by ex-inmates of Stalag Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. hours, Wilder’s melancholy, deeply car “breaks down” in the small town 17B, Wilder’s exquisitely detailed and affectionate and subtly queer take of Climax, Nevada. Enter Kim Novak sardonic adaptation provides a fas- on the “private life” and unpublished in full bombshell mode, closely fol- cinating insight into the camaraderie, stories of the great detective was a lowed by two amateur songwriters treachery, comedy and tragedy of passion project he had been working who hope Dino will make them rich. prison life. Set during the intense towards for over ten years. Brilliantly Raunchy, vulgar and outrageously 1944 Allied bombing campaign, it designed by Alexandre Trauner and funny, this is Wilder’s harshest view focuses on a group of American utilising huge sets constructed at of the American landscape since Ace airmen and their attempts to uncover Pinewood Studios, this is Wilder’s last in the Hole but its “rancid atmosphere a spy within their midsts. A huge great film and a significant influence conceals the virtues of the movie’s influence on films such as The Great on latter-day adaptations such as classical structure… and deft comic Escape, it turns on the Oscar-winning TV’s Sherlock. Featuring one of Miklós timing” (J. Hoberman). Scripted by performance by William Holden as Rózsa’s most richly enigmatic scores Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, it was a self-interested, widely distrusted it stars Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely inevitably condemned by the Catholic recent arrival who must prove his and Christopher Lee. Legion of Decency! innocence. With Otto Preminger. Melbourne Cinémathèque 2021 Screenings Presented with Supported by

Presented by the Melbourne FRIENDS OF CINÉMATHÈQUE MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE AT Cinémathèque and The Australian Admission for 12 months from ACMI Tickets and Information Desk Centre For The Moving Image. date of purchase: (03 8663 2583) Curated by the Melbourne Full $295 / Concession $265 Online at www.acmi.net.au (booking Cinémathèque. (GST inclusive) fees apply for online transactions) Supported by Film Victoria and Follow us on Facebook and Twitter The Friends of Cinémathèque Please note, membership does not for all Cinémathèque information. the City of Melbourne Arts Grants membership is a way for you to ensure admission: members will only Program. support the vitality and continued be admitted to cinema capacity. Website: operation of the Melbourne www.melbournecinematheque.org ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP Cinémathèque. We are a FILM CLASSIFICATIONS: Email: melbournecinematheque@ Admission for 12 months from membership-based, not-for-profit * Where a film is labelled westnet.com.au date of purchase: film society run independently by “Unclassified 15+” viewers are Full $173 / Concession $153 volunteers – the extra financial required to be 15 years or older, Join our newsletter: send a (GST inclusive) contribution Friends make helps unless accompanied by an adult. SUBSCRIBE email to our address to keep us viable and strong. listed above. † Where a film is labelled MINI MEMBERSHIP In addition to annual membership, “Unclassified 18+” viewers are Admission to 3 consecutive nights Friends receive 3 x single passes required to be 18 years or older. from date of purchase: to bring a guest to a Cinémathèque screening any time. Articles on many films in the Full $32 / Concession $27 program can be found in ‘CTEQ (GST inclusive) Annotations on Film’, online at www. sensesofcinema.com

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Presented with Supported by Curated by: Michael Koller, Adrian Danks, Calendar Design: Jessie Liu Eloise Ross and Cerise Howard for the Typeset in Manifont Grotesk and Inter Melbourne Cinémathèque Calendar Project Management: Dylan Rainforth Calendar Editor: Adrian Danks and Warren Taylor (MADA)