june/july/august 2002 Summer Classics

JUNE 20 THUR 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
SILVER SCREEN CLUB MEMBERS PREMIERE
CINEMA PARADISO
ITALY 1988
DIRECTOR: GIUSEPPE TORNATORE One of the best loved Italian films of all time, Tornatore’s original European version was thirty minutes longer than the American, Oscar-winning release. This summer audiences will get the opportunity to see the original director’s cut—tonight if you are a Silver Screen Club member. Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin star in this heart-felt memory film about a successful director in his 40’s who goes back to the Sicilian village where he grew up and recalls how, as a boy, he fell in love with the movies . (155 mins.)
Print courtesy of Miramax Films. CINEMA PARADISO will open June 21 at the Fox Tower. Admission limited to Silver Screen Club members and their guests.

JUNE 27 28 THU 7 P.M., FRI 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
JOUR DE FETE
FRANCE 1948
DIRECTOR: JACQUES TATI Jacques Tati’s first film chronicles the adventures of a rural postman who, shamed by his fellow townspeople because of his archaic methods, attempts to introduce some modern means of mail delivery learned from watching a film about America. The poetic glimpses of tiny village life during a Bastille Day celebration remain cinema classics. With no reliance on dialogue, Tati showed in this early success how the mime techniques he acquired in the music hall could be adapted to film. First seen in the US in b&w, this print features the original color cinematography. (79 mins.)

WITH

MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY
FRANCE 1953
DIRECTOR: JACQUES TATI Tati’s gem of a comedy about a well meaning, but inept vacationer at a French seaside summer resort conveys more in pantomime than most comedies do with words. As in his other classic works, he draws on the classic traditions of Keaton and Chaplin to create comic vignettes on universal human foibles and frustrations. " As director, co-author, and star, Tati is sparse, eccentric and quick. It is not until afterward—with the sweet, nostalgic music lingering - that these misadventures take on a certain depth and poignancy." —Pauline Kael, THE NEW YORKER. (85 mins.)

JUNE 29 30 SAT 7 PM, SUN 7 P.M
GUILD THEATRE
MY UNCLE (MON UNCLE)
FRANCE 1956
DIRECTOR: JACQUES TATI Mr. Hulot (Tati) is plagued by the mysteries of improved technology. Our gentle hero, and his young nephew Gerard, are not ready for the mechanized, push-button age and whether in his sister’s precision-mad house, or at work, he is at a loss. More than being an attack on technology MON ONCLE is a satire about a middle class which embraces the fashions of modernism without really understanding the reason or impact. Academy Award and New York Film Critic’s Award for best Foreign Film. (116 mins.)

JULY 5 6 FRI 7 P.M., SAT 7 & 9 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
LOLA
FRANCE 1961
DIRECTOR: JACQUES DEMY Last year, filmmaker Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy’s widow, supervised the restoration of two of her husband’s most engaging films, LOLA and BAY OF ANGELS, thus insuring the survival of two, only sporadically seen, early treasures of the French New Wave. A sweet, comic valentine to Demy’s hometown of Nantes, American musicals and Max Ophuls’ bitter-sweet odes to love, LE PLAISIR and LE RONDE, LOLA (his debut) is an airy, poetic reverie about the agonies of lost romance. Anouk Aimee stars as Lola, an alluring cabaret artiste and single mother who dreams of finding true love. Dodging the affections of persistent local suitors, she waits only for the return of the sailor who left her pregnant seven years earlier. Aimee’s magical perfomance and Demy’s (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) masterful realization launched them both to international stardom and celebrated careers. “Charming, Graceful and Beautiful.”—Terrance Rafferty, THE NEW YORK TIMES. (90 mins.)


JULY 11 13 THU 7 & 8:45 P.M., SAT 7 & 8:45 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
BAY OF ANGELS
FRANCE 1963
DIRECTOR: JACQUES DEMY
After directing Anouck Aimee in LOLA, Demy’s second feature introduced another rising actress: Jeanne Moreau. Moreau (here a striking ash blond) is Jackie, an embittered high-stakes gambler working on the Riviera, who seduces a sad, handsome young man named Jean (Claude Mann). After falling for her, Jean deserts his dull, normal life for Jackie’s lavish ways, but soon finds that her heart is as elusive as her luck is at the roulette wheel. Set in the casino worlds of Nice and Monte Carlo, BAY OF ANGELS is shot in a dazzling black and white that delights in visual discovery and the patterns of life. “Moreau’s performance is magnificent, but it is really Jean Rabier’s camera which turns the whole film into an expression of sheer joy—not only in life and love, but everyday things.”—TIME OUT. (80 min.)

JULY 18 THU 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
INTOLERANCE
US 1916
DIRECTOR: D.W. GRIFFITH
One of the epic achievements of film history, INTOLERANCE incorporated practically every technique of cinematic storytelling known at the time and since utilized. Made one year after his controversial BIRTH OF A NATION, in part to answer that film’s moral critics, it was the spectacle of spectacles. While it proved to be too much for audiences in its day, the impact on other filmmakers throughout the world was singular. Griffith interweaves four separate stories of prejudice and injustice set in differing periods of history: the fall of Babylon, the death of Christ, the massacre of the Huguenots in Reformation France, and a modern day drama. Using cross-cutting and flashbacks to build tremendous energy, Griffith sweepingly denounces mankind’s eternal plague. (177 mins.)

JULY 20 21 SAT 7 P.M., SUN 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
THE GREAT MCGINTY
US 1940
DIRECTOR: PRESTON STURGES “If you don’t have graft you’d have a low type person in politics. Men with no ambition.” Sturges' barbed poke at politics and the American dream myth that anyone can be President earned him a screenplay Oscar and was the first of seven smash hits. Characterized by Raymond Durgnat as “Capra with the gloves off,” the story recounts the Big Boss’ (Akim Tamir) success in helping crooked bum Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) become an even more crooked governor in “the mythical city of Chicago in the mythical state of Illinois,” until honesty rears its ugly head. Sturges sold his comic script for $10 for the chance to direct his first film. (81 mins.)
FOLLOWED BY
THE LADY EVE
US 1941
DIRECTOR: PRESTON STURGES "On board an ocean liner society women cluster to see Charlie Pike (Henry Fonda), young brewery heir and snake-fancier, while card-shark Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) beats all comers to his attention by adventurously dropping an apple on his head. From then on, the film perfectly sustains a malicious and witty tone. The big scenes are brilliantly done. Stanwyck's full scale star performance, subtly sophisticated and hard-as-diamonds, is at its best in her impersonation of the Lady Eve ('I've been British before') complete with fake accent and ostrich feathers, telling a series of risque stories at the Pike cocktail bar to a group of socialites, shrieking with laughter at her own jokes while subjecting Charlie to a succession of indignities." —A.F.I. (97 mins.)