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Home , 13 Rue Madeleine, George Pal, Henry Hathaway, Irving Pichel, Jean Negulesco, Judge Priest

from the booth BOOTH FROM THE Program byMichael King(MK) andMichael W. Phillips, Jr. (MP) and littletramps.Andthey’realmostallin35mm. writers, Karloff, unkillable an angst-ridden crises, housing for cowboys, singing gangsters, room dancing reserved regimented—we too But not Nazis. the we’re by caused damage collateral the to devoted is December and November, in invade British the dead, the from back comes October September, rules Crawford Joan 1930s, the train, in Ford a John on at looks in August rides July mini-themes. into up season the splitting we’re instead of having one overarching theme (or, more often, no theme at all), counter and up in the booth. Third, we’re the changing things up a bit on the schedule: behind faces new the Hall, Becca and Westphal Kyle to hello say so job, new for a us leaving is King Michael projecting, and programming of years five after Second, offer. to the finest films classic has showing to dedicated we’re still and recipe, the changed packaging is different, we haven’t the Although Cinema. America is obvious: we’re now the Bank of we embark on our 36th year. First There’s a lot of change afoot as is nosacrificetoogreatforachanceatimmortality.” (MK) number,”my have who people to “There “Not and A: anymore?” talk to “Don’tlike Q: you exploded in exploded the kind of film you could quote all day, and its conflicted takes on domesticity (a subject Ray performance, electric erratic, Bogart’s and script crackling the noir,to as part small no in thanks murder suspect and Grahame his alibi. Often pigeonholed a as Bogart with history screen in meet-cute cynical most Grahame as the love interest, which might account for the the pathosisRay’s castingofhissoon to beex-wifeGloria more vitriol than a dozen viewings of his fourth film as a director—the first scene alone contains Ray poured an ocean of rage at the Hollywood system into Despite only having recently become a part of it, Nicholas screenplays. his read to yearns one that caustic effortlessly yet constructed eloquently so quips in exclusively speaks who screenwriter disgruntled a Steele, Dixon visage: his Bogart, for once playing a character with a name worthy of “I make it a point never to see the pictures I write.” Humphrey embrace themission heinitiallybelittles.(MP) to comes lover, art no Lancaster, as culture, a or nation a as intangible as something for oneself sacrificing of idea the with wrestle to manages screen) title the on right so says (it Frankenheimer’sfilm action, on is emphasis the Although girl. the is Moreau Jeanne and nemesis, Nazi his is Scofield Paul above.) see remember; trains, (Real together. lot crashing trains and a explosions of of consists “prevention” This artworks. of priceless trainload a stealing from Nazis the preventing with railroad charged who’s French Resistance the of a member and inspector is Lancaster actioner, based-on- a-true-story this In demolition. in than conversation in lasted exactly one who day of Penn, shooting because Arthur he was director more interested original already steamrolled had Lancaster, Burt producer-star, his because realism much so on insisted Cezanne) and Gough Van of peer a as credits opening the in (listed Frankenheimer he wasn’t making a movie about nuclear war. Maybe John There is no substitute for that kind of reality.” Good thing this film. When trains crash together, they are real trains. in tricks no are There possible. realism the all wanted “I Director: NicholasRay IN ALONELY PLACE|1950 Director: John Frankenheimer THE TRAIN|1965 ) and Hollywood are illustrated in a couple of early exchanges: exchanges: early of couple a in illustrated are Hollywood and Life) Than Bigger Short: “Porky’sPreview”(1941), (PorkyPig) Short: We’re intheHoney” (1948),Seymour Kneitel The Player. Adding to is is Place Lonely a In United Artists 133min. 35mmTechnicolor

Columbia 94min.35mm

trains july 5, 2008 5, july july 12, 2008 12, july trains july 26, 2008 trains july 19, 2008 out ofHeflinand Ford,echoedbyGeorgeDuning’s lilting score.(MK) performances patient coaxing clip, contemplative a at this pitches Daves Leonard’swriting, since showdown protracted most vigilante, as he saddles up to engage the most cordial outlaw in the west (Glenn Ford) in the to zero from Evans send to enough That’s good pie.” lemon on death to choked then years, which hadbeeninterruptedbyWorld War II.(MP) Festival Film Cannes the fest,inaugural 1939 the from d’Or Palm the DeMille gave and time 2002, across back reached In Washington. in button a pushing by remotely off Short: “The Great Train Robbery” (1903), Edwin S.Porter Columbia 92min.35mm Cartoon: “Smile,Darn Ya, Smile!”(1931),Rudolph Ising Paramount 133min16mm wife. My own grandmother fought the Indians for sixty sixty for Indians the fought grandmother own My wife. his at looking from dead dropped who man a know I safe? what’sknows Who “Safe. of: cry rallying the with posse the up rounds that every not moving—it’s quietly so Daves’s Delmer oater makes elegiac what precisely is givens generic such of absence the and tried, always Wayne John heroism that Evans’s resignation comes as a shock. After all, cinematic rote to accustomed so were audiences of westerns, years solid fifty after but same, the act would spectator movie-house (Van any Virtually Samaritan. Evans Good no Dan is Heflin) robbers, the with compliant holdup, a actually plot during by idly the standing seen First sentiment? a such on turn does often how But scream. woman’s a or reverberating you”s love “I alike, tender as much movies as Hollywood throughout war and weepies in uttered “I s’pose I could try.” One of the most stock lines of dialogue, itorder,kicked maintain Roosevelt Delano Franklin and to in called be to had battalions Guard National eight up, showed people 250,000 that huge so was premiere Omaha world in three-day the film, DeMille B. Cecil a of out something Like boss. mule Mexican the Fiesta, is TamiroffAkim and side, wrong the on is Preston Robert boss, Donlevy’sthe Brian interest, love tomboy Irish the guys Stanwyck’s good Barbara time, on the railroad the preventing finishing from from to guys hired bad the troubleshooter prevent railroad a plays McCrea Joel itself.” railroad the slightly of building only the labor than Herculean “a less film the called Times the York that mistake New no it’s and it, doing to around get to 1939 until him took it that is surprise real the Railroad; the Transcontinental of building the about film epic an It’s no surprise that epic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille made . Certainly the best film to ever come of Elmore Elmore of come ever to film best the Certainly Noon. High UNION PACIFIC |1939 3:10 TOYUMA|1957 Director: CecilB.DeMille Director: DelmerDaves them forhispartialremake,1953’s TheSunShinesBright . (MP) resurrected Ford print. final the from cut studio his that scenes anti-lynching two shoot did Ford and them,” to something said that brothers, like WillRogers and me saw “When people later, said handyman, Rogers’s as appears who Fetchit, Stepin characters, black its of film’s stereotyping the regrettable Despite reaction. Ford’s with do to something had 1934 in draw box-office top the was Rogers that fact the Perhaps picture.” this in “Better consult Mr. Rogers. He does most of the directing costar, a tell to director frustrated his prompted ad- libbing for love Rogers’s him. drama, around on on going observations everything courtroom wry patented Rogers’s pasts, course, of and, buried intrigue, romantic involving plot a is here clock” alarm “famous The life. daily rhythms of the to observe time, content running its of much through meanders film the show, radio popular Rogers’slike Much own. his character beloved the made Kentucky, he Ford, John director with film first his in but 1890s in judge no-nonsense whisky-loving, small-town, Irvin author the Priest, Pittman William bestselling Judge of Cobb’sdescriptions fit have not may Rogers Will chose torecognize hisotherfeatof1939,alittle picturecalledStagecoach.(MK) for not Director,but and Picture Best for nominations year’sfollowing the in impersonation lookalike demonstration of the perils of caricature, one need look no further than Raymond Massey’s Fonda Henry imitative biopics, instead gives a thoughtful interpretation standard of an icon—for the a plague that Rejecting trappings Mizoguchi. to critical comparisons earning works, ethereal and poetic most his of one iscounterintuitively and lawyer, trial Springfield a as years early pre-presidential resurrected Lincoln’s on focuses most take cinema’s Ford’s of James. Jesse with there one up right idols, Americana be to proven has Emancipator Great the Neeson), Liam starring Lincoln, in-the-works (the Spielberg Steven to Huston) Walter starring Lincoln, (Abraham Griffith D.W. from ranging seven directors of big-time for first fodder their Cinematic in collaborations. here seen Fonda, Henry muse: mild-mannered more another,decidedly to catered often Ford 1940s the throughout but memory, film popular in linked inextricably become have Wayne and Ford Johns Director: |1934 Director: John Ford YOUNG MR.LINCOLN|1939 Short: “The Bridge” (1931), Charles Vidor (aka“An OccurrenceAt Owl CreekBridge”) Short: “Scram!”(1932),Ray Mccarey(Laurel &Hardy) . Ford nabbed Oscar nabbed Ford Illinois. in Lincoln Abe 20th Century Fox100 min.35mm

20th CenturyFox80min.35mm

—the Academy YoungMr.Lincoln—the

john ford john ford john august 9, 2008 9, august 2008 2, august august 23, 2008 john ford august 16, 2008 those chestnuts. (MK) Funny “My immortal Valentine”the and “The Lady Is a Tramp.”including Hard to imagine Brando crooning his way through added, were more four but play, the from imported West,It’setc. songs Hart & Rogers ten were only Sinatra—not on landed he thing good a Mae Swanson, Gloria Brando, Marlon Grant, Cagney,Cary James lead), stage (the Kelly beloved comedian.(MP) production the of memory stop in minutes two for screens their darken to to houses movie of thousands and Hollywood prompted had that event an crash, airplane an in death the of captain the Newsreel: “NewsParade of1957” Columbia 111min.35mm color Cartoon: “Boat Builders”(1938),BenSharpsteen(MickeyMouse) 20th CenturyFox82min.35mm h. The film was released barely a month after Rogers’s after month a barely released was film The Paducah. of Pride oiie vruly vr sa o te ak f ae Gene fame: of walk the on star every virtually solicited he years premiered the over prior,and years it seventeen Broadway on since property this eyeing been had Cohn anyone. than better striptease PG a off pull still could she Hayworth’s Sadly, fill. career never recovered, but to a decade after Stars! Big! Three! the of required services canvas widescreen expanded the that rule Joey in Sinatra Frank of pursuit in them of two the putting replacement; her as Novak was Kim costar Cohn grooming Harry already head studio time, waste to one Never 1940s. the in afloat kept singlehandedly nearly power star marked her studio the Pictures, Columbia at tenure her of end the also Hayworth—it Rita for pinup movies from once-ubiquitous absence four-year a of end the marked with Along nemesis, Pearly’s plays Priest, William Judge of character the created who Cobb, S. Irvin novelist and sheriff, the the supreme sacrifice in order to win. Eugene Pallette plays make must Fetchit) Stepin and Francis brother big Ford’s John (including crew ragtag his and Rogers which in race steamboat epic the is centerpiece the action: on focused Unlike right. that read you Yep, hanging. a prevent to order in race steamboat a win and must open a floating wax museum, find a wayward prophet, murder,for arrested is McGuire) Rogers (John nephew his After first. at least oil—at snake peddle to fortress floating Rogers is Doc John Pearly, a riverboat captain who uses his a was released before it month (though appearance filmed last his In literalized the transition, and the met the unspoken the met the and transition, the literalized ti Boda transplant Broadway this Below, Down Fire aebc oein Will comedian acerbic Kentucky) Old In |1935 PAL JOEY|1957 Director: GeorgeSidney ti oe is one this Priest, Judge Director: John Ford Gilda she proved Pal reduced AlbertEinsteintotearsatthefilm’s galapremiere.(MK) and character-drivenheartfelt pictures, culminating in most a sensitively rendered Chaplin’s coda that is said to haveof one is follows What of Brown. fans Charlie, to famous familiar another be should that manner a in dialogue expository of superfluousness the mocks Trampdirector the Chaplin as appears, even hiccups. the of But the greatest moment of case simple a of heights comedic the reach could chatter of amount no that demonstrating better than anybody, writing the score for City Lights and potential its understand to seemed he fact, itself—in and of in sound synchronous of advent the value didn’t And dialogue. of line asingle not boasts which still debut, sound-era along, his play in Tramping to refusing stubbornly Chaplin by contrary, succeeded the on Lloyd; Harold Buster and of Keaton creativity the silence would that speech burden of the welcomed he the say to in not That’s improved era. sound arguably work whose but 50s), 1940s and the mention to (not 1930s the in masterpieces outrightto claim lay can who survivor sole the only not is Chaplin Charlie clowns, silent of trinity holy the Of Director: CharlesChaplin CITY LIGHTS|1931 City Lights comes before the o t sy Chaplin say to not that’s Short: “The Play House”(1921), BusterKeaton

United Artists87min.35mm august 30, 2008 30, august september 6, 2008 from thestar, whowasbornLucilleFay LeSueur. (MP) page a took she Maybe years. few another for Arden Eve to name her change didn’t who Stooges bore that moniker and the second film for both Nelson Eddy and Eunice Quedens, Short: “PlaneNuts”(1933),Jack Cummings(Ted HealyandHisStooges) MGM 92min.16mm Astaire’s screen debut, it was the first time the Three the time first the was it debut, screen Astaire’s being to addition In picture.” commercial “100% the for biggest money-maker of the year, becoming their yardstick and although critics panned it, panned critics although and hit, a needed she flops, of couple a her from reeling saved job: success day film’s this it fact, lucky In was job. she day her that wasn’t clear it’s good, look her make to , enlisted must was Astaire Fred Crawford newcomer screen although musical, and a is this because Now, and her current boyfriend Tone to play the feuding fellows. together) film fourth their (in for Gable sometimes-lover her pulled she when arrangement the to realism of bit a added Crawford Tone).course, (Franchot Of guy industry hard-working sweet, the and Gable) (Clark playboy rich the loves, who’stwo Crawford) between (Joan torn starlet Broadway budding the of story backstage age-old the It’s DANCING LADY|1933 Director: Robert Z.Leonard was MGM’s was Lady Dancing Crawford’s thirdandPalance’s first.(MP) including nominations, Oscar four snagged film the satisfying: been have must result end Gable), and Palance’s Method training led him to, ahem, overplay the love Clark scenes. But the wanted (she costar granite-jawed her with happy she hadscriptandcastingapproval, Crawfordstillwasn’t be after her money? (Hint: of course he could.) Although on the scene. But could the doting, attentive Lester help matters when Lester’s ex () her shows up Bennett, (Bruce from hubby lawyer Her hitched. get quickly two the romance, whirlwind usual the after and out, will love true play. But new her from him firing by greatness she’sBroadway because of probably hopes his dashed just , to train the on Palance) (Jack Blaine Lester Myra playwright Hudson (Crawford)isalittlenervousaboutrunninginto and Heiress potboiler. 1948 Sherry’s Bros., and she picked a doozy with this adaptation of Edna show at Warner contract her escaping to after film first her in eager off was Crawford Joan producer Executive Director: David Miller SUDDEN FEAR|1952 i ssiiu, n i doesn’t it and suspicious, is Pierce) Mildred Cartoon: “The Hypo-Chondri-Cat” (1950), ChuckJones really

RKO 110 min.35mm

joan crawford joan september 13, 2008 13, september HUMORESQUE | 1946 | 1946 october 4, 2008 Director: Jean Negulesco Director: Joan Crawford’s Oscar for Mildred Pierce paid immediate In the thick of a typically prolific period during which dividends, as her role in this film was dramatically expanded he authored a daily column for the New York Post, Orson to make her a co-lead. She repaid the favor by delivering Welles took his second straight-up acting gig (after one of her finest performances, looking exquisite under the Journey Into Fear) to pay the bills. No doubt enticed by lighting and camera of her favorite cinematographer, Ernest the opportunity to wear exaggerated makeup and whisper Haller. Paul Boray (John Garfield, with a real musician in a fake Austrian accent, Welles plays a disfigured WWI tucked under each arm) is an up-and-coming violinist veteran who pseudonymously returns home to wife who allows rich society lady Helen Wright (Crawford) after twenty years of reconstructive september 20, 2008 to fund his rise to the top, only to brush her off because surgery and accent-practice. Natasha Gurdin, freshly there’s only room for one true love in his life—Crawford’s imported (and renamed) by director , who obviously never thought much about the phrase “second remembered her as an extra from his earlier production fiddle.” When filmed Fannie Hurst’s story Happy Land, plays Welles’s adopted daughter in her back in 1920, Boray’s Jewish background was integral to credited debut as . The director’s casting back from the dead the plot, but it’s notably absent here. In fact, the story is wasn’t always so prescient—despite having one of the almost completely different, since Clifford Odets recycled world’s most famous on-air personalities on set, Pichel much of this one from an unused early script for the opted to voice the role of a radio commentator himself. George Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue. The real similarity is between Humoresque and Ripped from the pages of Ladies Home Journal (which printed Gwen Bristow’s source Garfield’s other 1947 triumph, the boxing movieBody and Soul. Only, you know, there’s less novel), this benign weepie had the unusual distinction of being banned in South punching in this one. (MP) Carolina after Welles repeatedly denounced a notorious police brutality incident on his weekly radio show—“the actual celluloid driven out of the city with a fiery sword.” Your move, Larry Clark. (MK) Warner Bros. 125 min. 16mm RKO 105 min. 35mm joan crawford Cartoon: “Tubby The Tuba” (1947), Short: “Mighty Like a Moose” (1926), Leo McCarey (Charley Chase)

THE GAY DESPERADO | 1936 THE GHOST october 11, 2008 Director: Rouben Mamoulian AND MRS. MUIR | 1947 Edward G. Robinson wasn’t the only one in Hollywood Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz poking fun at gangster pictures−no less than When true love calls, does it really matter that one of and former Paramount bigshot Jesse Lasky produced this the parties has been dead a hundred years? Not in Joseph south of the border romp, shot in the deserts of Arizona. L. Mankiewicz’s softhearted spookfest, in which Gene Inspired by the wave of gangster movies director Rouben Tierney, playing a recent widow, rents a seaside cottage Mamoulian helped invent with City Streets, small time that’s already occupied by Rex Harrison’s grumpy crook Braganza (Leo Carrillo) yearns to be no less than ghost. The pair decide they like each other enough to september 27, 2008 Public Enemy #1, with visions of transforming his ragtag collaborate on a book and share the master bedroom band of bandits into a sleek underworld syndicate. Then (in 1947? scandalous!), but trouble arrives in the form again, his idea of organized crime consists of starting a riot of a suitor with a pulse (“perfumed parlor snake” George in a movie theater (don’t get any ideas), pranking the radio Sanders). Let’s take a moment to thank whatever power

station, stealing a convertible, and repeatedly saying “give that brought Harrison’s ghost back that there’s no singing back from the dead ’em the works,” so he’s not exactly setting the bar too high. involved. Producer Darryl Zanuck had a different fantasy Also an aspiring patron of the arts, Braganza’s first puzzling version of R.A. Dick’s novel in mind: “Norma Shearer order of business is recruiting a tenor (Metropolitan Opera has one great picture left in her yet,” he wrote, “and she star Nino Martini); his second is kidnapping an heiress (), and I think we can would make the same comeback that Joan Crawford made last year [in Mildred Pierce]. She all guess what his third is. In all his eternal wisdom, Oscar never once noticed Mamoulian, is certainly no deader than Joan was.” Alas, Shearer stayed retired, got the who received his long overdue first directing prize for this film, courtesy of the New York job, and the rest is history. Or was it all a dream? Like a restless spirit that just can’t find Circle of Film Critics. (MK) peace, the story haunted American TV screens in the late sixties with and Edward Mulhare as the leads. (MP)

United Artists 86 min. 16mm 20th Century Fox 104 min. 35mm Short: “Sagebrush Tom” (1915), Tom Mix Short: “Haunted Spooks” (1920), () CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS | 1948 horrorhorror showshow november 1, 2008 Director: Terence Young Wealthy art lover Paul Mangin (Eric Portman) has a hallway lined with life-size dummies wearing period costumes, which is just weird. He’s convinced that his paramour (Edana HALLOWEEN Romney, who cowrote the script and produced the film) is the THE MUMMY | 1932 reincarnation of the woman in his favorite painting, but she’s Director: Karl Freund in love with someone else. Is she really back from the dead? Short: Cartoon: “Felix Woos Whoopee” (1928), Or, given her rejection and Mangin’s increasingly eccentric october 18, 2008 () behavior, is she heading there? First-time director Terence Churning out monster movies faster than they could read, Young is best known for his three early films, Universal Pictures introduced their first horror without a but this is light years from those techno-thrillers: in keeping literary pedigree: “Stranger than Dracula, More Fantastic with the main character’s obsession with art, the emphasis than Frankenstein, More Mysterious than The Invisible in this moody, atmospheric chiller is on baroque lighting Man,” The Mummy cashed in on the then-raging curse and gothic , with a finale in a more garish style, of King Tut’s tomb and the studio’s suddenly massive star the wax museum of Madame Tussaud. Relative newcomer (here billed as Karloff the Uncanny, a step up from the “?” Romney spent four years scraping together a cast and crew credit he received in Frankenstein). Backstory is beside the to make her dream project, which she eventually was able to point when you’re just recombining the same tried-and- film in France with British film chief J. Arthur Rank’s assistance. Alas, it was Romney’s first true ingredients: eight-hour makeup sessions (courtesy of Universal 73 min. 16mm and last production. Watch for Christopher Lee in his first film role, along with the first Miss innovative master Jack Pierce), spooky crypts, a vastly Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell. (MP) overqualified director (Karl Freund, cinematographer for F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang in their pre-Hollywood heyday), and the flimsiest of plots. Freund was a particularly inspired choice, bringing a healthy dose of the he Universal 108 min. 35mm helped to invent to his directorial debut. Unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, this incarnation back from the dead Cartoon: “Modeling” (1921), (Koko the Clown) of the Mummy didn’t inspire familial sequels, but Imhotep rose again throughout the 1940s in a series of remakes starring everymonster Lon Chaney, Jr., before finally being put out to STARS IN MY CROWN | 1950 pasture with Abbot and Costello. Director: Jacques Tourneur THE MAN THEY COULD A gun-slinging preacher man (Joel McCrea) brings fire and NOT HANG | 1939 brimstone to another of cinema’s endless supply of podunk Director: Nick Grinde hellholes, conducting his first mass stickup-style at a local Though he still haunted the cheap remakes thanks watering hole and forcing his parishioner/captives to pray at to their eager use of stock footage, by the time of gunpoint. What sounds like an ideal launching off point for Chaney, Jr.’s reign, the living, breathing Karloff was on Quentin Tarantino is in fact the setup for Jacques Tourneur’s to oddities like The Man They Could Not Hang. Eight october 25, 2008 elegiac survey of 19th-century Americana, complete with years after Frankenstein, Karloff made the switch from doe-eyed orphans (Dean Stockwell, previously seen as Nick guinea pig to mad scientist, here coming up with a and Nora’s son in the final Thin Man, and later, indelibly, formula for resurrecting the dead that actually (well, in Blue Velvet), down-home wisdom, and the healing power loosely) anticipates artificial hearts. At least one eager of prayer. That isn’t to say that the film ignores other, less test subject sees the potential, consoling his fiancée with celebrated American traditions such as land grabs, typhoid, the reassuring “he won’t miss! Why, inside of two hours and the Klu Klux Klan—indeed, Tourneur’s bold stance we’ll be eating chop suey and fighting about where we’ll against racism was unfortunately radical for both his 19th- be going on our honeymoon!” Shortsighted fools shut century characters and the real-life 1950 audiences his film opened to. All in all, it’s still down his mad operation and sentence Karloff to death, pretty rosy stuff for the of Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and Out of the Past; critic somehow overlooking the big fat ace up his sleeve (and Chris Fujiwara has noted that the can-do spirit doesn’t quite gel with the rest of Tourneur’s the title of the movie). Time to start bumping them off, allusive ouevre, calling Stars in My Crown a “seemingly anomalous work that, by its optimism, preferably with methods so convoluted they’d make Dr. constitutes an enigma of its own within a career based on enigma.” (MK) Phibes blush. Director Nick Grinde was pretty hung up on hangings—the next year he put Karloff through the MGM 89 min. 16mm mad doctor paces twice more in Before I Hang and The Short: “Broncho Billy’s Sentence” (1915), Broncho Billy Columbia 64 min. 35mm Man with Nine Lives. (MK) EXPRESSO BONGO | 1959 SITTING PRETTY | 1948 november 15, 2008 Director: Director: Walter Lang “It is strictly-from-jiveville entertainment, with the build- When Harry and Tacey King ( and up of a bongo singer the most important business at hand.” Maureen O’Hara) advertise for a live-in babysitter for likely intended to sound dismissive in their rotten kids and their Great Dane, they’re surprised his New York Times pan of Val Guest’s hipster epic, but he when Lynn Belvedere turns out to be a sharp-tongued, did manage to nail the ambience and the plot in a single effete, superior, haughty, British man () sentence. Hammer Films vet Val Guest brings us on a lurid who informs them, “I happen to dislike all children tour of the espresso bars, dance clubs, and urban decay of intensely. But I can assure you that I can readily attend november 8, 2008 november swingin’ Soho. plays a sleazeball promoter to their necessary though unpleasant wants.” They’re looking for a big score, which he locates in the person of even more surprised when it turns out that he’s a miracle , who plays the bongo player he elevates with kids, a dispenser of sage advice, a scholar, and a to stardom—until someone () even less writer of tell-all biographies—and the one he’s working principled than Harvey gets her hooks into the impressionable on now happens to be about the nosey neighbors who youth. and Julian More’s stage musical think he’s having a fling with O’Hara. Clifton Webb skewered the music industry, its naïve fans, its lower-than- snagged his third and final Oscar nomination as Mr. dirt promoters, and its lowest-common-denominator view Belvedere, a part that he became so identified with british invasion of music; I’m not sure if Richard, a real-life rock star in that he appeared in two sequels and as similar characters in a handful of other films. his native Britain (who, like his character, changed his name), was colossally oblivious or But this was quite a change for him: he had been pretty much typecast as a high-society willing to poke fun at his own stardom, but he sure knows how to pound the skins. (MP) murderer by his turns in Laura and . (MP)

Continental 111 min. 35mm 20th Century Fox 84 min. 35mm Cartoon: “Symphony In Slang” (1951), Tex Avery “The First 100 Years” (1924), Harry Sweet (Harry Langdon)

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN | 1946 november 22, 2008 Directors: Michael Powell And Emeric Pressburger “This is the story of two worlds: the one we know and another which exists only in the mind.” If it’s a choice between the humdrum and the collective mind of cinema’s most imaginative duo, sign me up for the latter. Powell and Pressburger were at the height of their powers immediately after WWII, and they never conjured a better story for their unmistakable blend of quirky sentimentality, formal gamesmanship, and grand vision than this typically understated epic (Powell himself named it his favorite of their films). They were also never ones to miss a chance for morbid humor— stars as a fighter pilot who sweet-talks an American radio operator (Kim Hunter, recommended for the role by ) even as his plane is going down. Lo and behold, he survives the crash and british invasion romances the girl, much to the chagrin of the heavenly court (Raymond Massey) who want him to remain in the afterlife. The fantasy elements are elaborately rendered in methods both physical (the lavish escalator to heaven weighed in at 85 tons) and chemical (Earth appears in , heaven in black and white), making this a characteristically one-of-a-kind experience. Released in Britain under the more apropos title A Matter of Life and Death. (MK) Eagle-Lion 104 min. 35mm british invasion Cartoon: “The Mail Pilot” (1933), David Hand (Mickey Mouse) THE MORTAL STORM | 1940 Director: Frank Borzage “How soon will man find wisdom in his heart, and build a lasting shelter against his ignorant fears?” One of the first Hollywood films to take a stand against , Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm examines how Hitler’s ascent to power tears apart the residents of a small German town. plays a Jewish professor with two “Aryan” stepsons who join the Nazi Youth; his daughter (Margaret

november 29, 2008 november Sullavan) is engaged to another Nazi (Robert Young), but she slowly becomes attracted to the moral courage of a pacifist (, Pennsylvania accent intact) who dares to speak out against . Borzage’s trademark soft-focus romanticism might seem an odd fit for a film about the Nazi menace, but his foregrounding of how the Nazis’ campaign of dehumanization and violence destroys personal relationships is perhaps more powerful than most outright “war movies.” The German government was so upset at the film’s stance that Goebbels shut down MGM’s Berlin offices and banned the import of any other MGM films. But he couldn’t stop the flood of anti-Nazi films that grew into a torrent as the United States geared up for war. (MP)

MGM 100 min. 16mm

collateral damage Cartoon: “Education for Death” (1943),

13 RUE MADELEINE | 1947 Director: Henry Hathaway followed up his popular semi- documentary spy thriller with this similar tale of double-agent skullduggery in pre-D- Day WW2. We showed this one because > . Cagney is Robert Sharkey, the multi- lingual scholar (all of them delivered in a Lower East Side december 6, 2008 accent, natch) chosen to run a top-secret program that trains Allies (including Annabella) to go undercover behind German lines. His efforts to stymie a German (, of all people) backfire when the spy escapes with information about the members of the program, and Cagney has to sneak into after him. Don’t worry—there’s a narrated prologue to explain all of this in case you want to take notes. Cagney wasn’t wild about the project—he only took the job to finance the eventual flopThe Time of Your Life—but imagine the movie we’d have gotten had Darryl Zanuck got one of his alternate choices, and Rex Harrison. Watch for two uncredited corporals ( and Red Buttons) in the training scenes. (MP)

20th Century Fox 95 min. 35mm

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