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GOLDFINGER Starring Sean Connery: 55th Anniversary Screening on December 30th in West L.A.

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As a special moviegoing treat for the holiday season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the movie that is generally regarded as the best in the spectacularly successful 007 franchise, GOLDFINGER (1964).

When it opened in December 1964, the third James Bond film scored an instant success that insured the durability of the series. It is now the longest-running franchise in cinema history, with a new entry coming in the spring of 2020, almost 60 years after Bond made his first screen appearance. Even with a lot of spectacular followup films, GOLDFINGER remains—shall we say—the gold standard.

Roger Ebert called it his favorite Bond film, and in 2006 Entertainment Weekly also named it as the best of the Bonds. It remains the highest rated Bond movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 97 per cent positive.

This film includes all the elements that Bond fans adore—thrilling action sequences, drily witty dialogue, nefarious and memorable villains, a bevy of Bond girls headed by Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore, and a title song that may be the best loved of all Bond theme songs, written by John Barry, Anthony Newley, and Leslie Bricusse and sizzlingly performed by the inimitable Shirley Bassey.

Sean Connery exudes charisma, and the cast includes Gert Frobe as the greedy Goldfinger, Harold Sakata as his sadistic henchman Oddjob, Shirley Eaton as one of Bond’s paramours who meets a dire fate, and series regulars Bernard Lee as M, Desmond Llewelyn as Q, and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny. Guy Hamilton (who went on to direct three more Bond films) directed the screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, from the Ian Fleming novel.

The story centers around Goldfinger’s plot to rob Fort Knox, and since U.S. authorities would not allow anyone inside the national mint, even for research purposes, the brilliant production designer Ken Adam (who designed several of the Bond pictures and won two Oscars, including one for Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) used pure imagination to build the set at Pinewood Studios outside London.

The film was also the first Bond movie to introduce a series of elaborate gadgets, including an Aston Martin DB5, that helped Bond to foil his adversaries. Stunt coordinator Bob Simmons played a crucial role in orchestrating the spectacular fight scenes, and the movie was the first Bond film to win an Oscar—for sound effects editing.

The film’s budget was $3 million, which was the cost of the first two Bond movies (Dr. No and From Russia With Love) combined, and it made back its cost after just two weeks in release. Interest was so high in December 1964 that the DeMille Cinema in New York stayed open for 24 hours straight to accommodate the crowds.

Reviews were also enthusiastic. In London Derek Prouse of the Sunday Times called it “superbly engineered…most entertainingly preposterous,” and the Guardian hailed “the most exciting, the most extravagant of the Bond films.”

Donald Zec of the Daily Mirror added, “Ken Adam’s set designs are brilliant.”

In the United States, Boxoffice Magazine praised the film as “so cleverly directed at breakneck speed by Guy Hamilton that patrons scarcely have time to catch their breath.”

For this special screening, enjoy a Bond trivia contest and other fun extras. And you might want to have a martini before the show. “Shaken, not stirred,” of course.

Our 55th anniversary screening of GOLDFINGER begins at 7pm on Monday, December 30th at the Laemmle Royal in West L.A. Click here for tickets.

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Vittorio De Sica’s THE BICYCLE THIEF: 70th Anniversary Screenings on November 19.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: a landmark in the Italian neorealist movement and a special Academy Award winner in 1949, Vittorio De Sica’s THE BICYCLE THIEF.

De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, another of the key figures in this new wave of filmmaking, worked together several times over the course of their careers, on such films as Shoeshine, Umberto D, Miracle in Milan, Two Women, Boccaccio ’70, and the director’s final film, A Brief Vacation.

One of the hallmarks of the neorealist movement was to shoot on the streets of postwar Italy rather than in the studio and often to cast non-actors for increased verisimilitude. For THE BICYCLE THIEF, De Sica cast a newcomer and former factory worker, Lamberto Maggiaroni, in the title role.

The story, very loosely adapted from a novel by Luigi Bartolini, highlights the desperate circumstances of a working class family in Rome. The father finds a job as a courier, but when his bicycle is stolen, the family’s livelihood is threatened. He and his young son set out to find the thief and retrieve the bicycle, but there turn out to be no easy solutions for this family in crisis. Enzo Staiola plays the son, and Lianella Carell plays the hero’s wife.

In addition to its special Oscar (in the years before the Academy introduced a regular category for foreign-language films), THE BICYCLE THIEF earned a nomination for best screenplay.

Although some Italian critics disparaged the film for promoting a negative picture of postwar Italy, THE BICYCLE THIEF was embraced in most other parts of the world.

When it opened in America, the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther raved, “Again the Italians have sent us a brilliant and devastating film in Vittorio De Sica’s rueful drama of modern city life.”

In 1952 the British magazine Sight and Sound polled international critics to name the ten greatest movies in cinema history, and The Bicycle Thief topped the list.

Endorsements continued over the years. Pauline Kael wrote, “This neorealist classic, directed by Vittorio De Sica and written by Cesare Zavattini, is on just about everybody’s list of the greatest films.”

When a restored version was released in the United States many years later, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times observed, “This film manages to appeal to the better angels of our nature in a way that only deepens as we grow older along with the film.”

THE BICYCLE THIEF also inspired filmmakers in many other countries, including India’s Satyajit Ray and Britain’s Ken Loach.

Don’t miss our 70th anniversary screenings on Tuesday, November 19, at 7PM in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

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THE NATURAL 35th Anniversary Screening and Q&A with Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel & Screenwriter Roger Towne.

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At the climax of baseball season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a screening of the film regarded as one of the greatest of all baseball movies, Barry Levinson’s THE NATURAL.

Adapted from the acclaimed 1952 novel by Bernard Malamud, the film earned four Academy Award nominations in 1984: Best Supporting Actress Glenn Close, Best Cinematography Caleb Deschanel, Best Musical Score Randy Newman and Best Art Direction.

The beautiful, impeccably designed recreation of an earlier era in American sports history also scored at the box office. Robert Redford plays the title character, and the all-star cast also includes Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Richard Farnsworth, and Joe Don Baker.

Malamud’s story, adapted for the screen by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry, tells the story of a young baseball prodigy named Roy Hobbs (Redford) who travels from his bucolic Midwestern home to try out for the Chicago Cubs. On his journey he is assaulted by a mysterious woman, and disappears for some 15 years. When he reappears and tries out for a New York team, the owners and manager are skeptical that a middle-aged man can ever succeed in the majors. But Roy’s skills as a slugger silence the skeptics and encourage the owners to give him a shot. His rise to the top is complicated by his romance with a rather shady woman (Basinger) and by the reappearance of his childhood sweetheart (Close), who has a surprise revelation that disorients Roy.

In addition to the rousing baseball scenes and the poignant personal story, the film captivates as a lush evocation of a more innocent American past. Cinematographer Deschanel, who had made his mark with his work on Carroll Ballard’s ‘The Black Stallion’ and Philip Kaufman’s ‘The Right Stuff,’ made a major contribution in bringing the era to life. Levinson also made an unconventional choice in selecting new composer Randy Newman to create the rousing symphonic score.

Although the filmmakers altered the dark ending of Malamud’s novel, they retained his piercing insights into some of the contradictions of the American character. The film earned mixed reviews at the time, but its reputation has grown. James Berardinelli of ReelViews called THE NATURAL “arguably the best baseball movie ever made,” and ESPN also called it one of the best sports movies of all time. On its original release Gene Siskel declared, “Redford scores in an uplifting celebration of the individual.”

Deschanel has earned six Oscar nominations over the course of his career. In addition to nominations for THE NATURAL and ‘The Right Stuff,’ he was cited for his work on Mel Gibson’s blockbuster, ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ and for ‘The Patriot,’ ‘Fly Away Home,’ and last year’s Oscar nominee for best foreign language film, ‘Never Look Away.’ This year Deschanel shot Disney’s smash-hit live-action version of ‘The Lion King.’

Our 35th anniversary presentation of THE NATURAL (1984) and Q&A with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and screenwriter Roger Towne screens Thursday, October 24, at 7PM at the Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.

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Forty-Fifth Anniversary Screenings of Louis Malle’s LACOMBE LUCIEN on October 16th

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our Anniversary Classics Abroad program for October: Louis Malle’s LACOMBE LUCIEN, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1974.

The film was one of the movies, following Marcel Ophuls’ monumental documentary ‘The Sorrow and the Pity,’ that scrutinized French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.

Malle’s movie tells a fictional but provocative story, written by the director and novelist Patrick Modiano, about a teenage boy who savors the power he accrues when he joins the Gestapo during the final months of the war.

LACOMBE LUCIEN takes place in 1944, after the Allies have landed in Normandy but the Nazis are still fighting to retain their hold on the country. Lucien Lacombe is an uneducated peasant boy who first tries to escape his humdrum life by volunteering for the Resistance.

When they reject him for being too young, he stumbles into an opportunity working for the Gestapo in his town and discovers a taste and talent for brutality. His loyalties are complicated, however, when he falls in love with a beautiful Jewish girl who is in hiding with her father and grandmother.

Malle found a brand new actor, Pierre Blaise, to play the part of Lucien. He was working as a woodcutter when Malle discovered him. Although his debut performance was highly acclaimed, Blaise’s career was cut tragically short when he died in a car crash just a year after the release of the film. But Aurore Clement, cast as the young Jewish girl, went on to have a long and rewarding career in French cinema, even appearing in some American movies like ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Paris, Texas.’

Distinguished European actors Therese Giehse and Holger Lowenadler filled out the cast. Lowenadler, who played Clement’s cultivated father, was voted best supporting actor of the year by both the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review.

Critics praised the film for its dispassionate insight into how perfectly ordinary people could be seduced by a taste of power and violence. Pauline Kael wrote, “Malle’s film is a long, close look at the banality of evil; it is—not incidentally—one of the least banal movies ever made.”

The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “’Lacombe Lucien’ is easily Mr. Malle’s most ambitious, most provocative film.” Leonard Maltin called it a “subtle, complex tale of guilt, innocence, and the amorality of power; masterfully directed.”

Although it is a vivid historical recreation, the film remains startlingly timely in its examination of the deadly lure of fascism.

LACOMBE LUCIEN screens Wednesday, October 16, at 7PM in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

EASY RIDER 50th Anniversary Screening and Tribute to Peter Fonda

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to the late Peter Fonda with a screening of his landmark movie, EASY RIDER on Saturday, September 7th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

When the movie opened to huge grosses in the summer of 1969, it changed the course of Hollywood, setting the entire industry on a quest for films that would appeal to the same younger generation that had embraced the ultimate motorcycle movie made by Fonda and director Dennis Hopper. Easy Rider, produced and co-written by Fonda, was made for less than $400,000 and grossed $60 million, a feat that no other youth movie was ever able to match. It also earned two Academy Award nominations, for the original screenplay by Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern, and a best supporting actor nod for Jack Nicholson, an actor in B-movies who was propelled to the A-list as a result of Easy Rider.

Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson knew each other from the low-budget movies made by Roger Corman and American International Pictures in the late 1960s. Hopper co-starred with Fonda in Corman’s The Trip, a movie about an LSD trip which was written by Nicholson. Peter had the idea of taking the character of the motorcycle-driving outlaw that he had played in Corman’s The Wild Angels and inserting him into a major studio film. Nevertheless, Columbia Pictures was nervous about financing Easy Rider and only got fully behind the film after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and began to generate box office heat.

The picture is essentially a road trip movie, in which Hopper’s Billy and Fonda’s Wyatt (also known as Captain America) ride their motorcycles from California to New Orleans, where they hope to celebrate Mardi Gras. They finance the trip by selling cocaine, a detail that suggests the film was far from an idealized portrayal of rebellious American youth. On their travels they spend time on a Southwestern farm as well as a hippie commune. They meet a young lawyer played by Nicholson when they are all jailed in a Southern town. He agrees to join them on their motorcycle journey, which takes a darker turn as they encounter Southern bigots who disapprove of the young heroes’ freewheeling style.

The supporting cast includes Karen Black, Toni Basil, Luke Askew, and Robert Walker Jr. Up-and-coming cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs helped to create the vivid images of rural Americana, and the groundbreaking rock score incorporated songs by The Band, the Byrds, Steppenwolf, and Jimi Hendrix. Editor Donn Cambern had put together the rough cut of the film to many of those songs, and the filmmakers retained many of them in the final cut.

Although the film enshrines the young heroes, it is not uncritical. Their use of marijuana and LSD is honestly depicted, and when Fonda’s Wyatt sums up their journey near the end of the film, he offers a memorably hard-edged judgment: “We blew it.” Nevertheless, the darkest forces in the film are the rednecks who resent the freedom of these easy riders. Writing at the time, John Mahoney of The Hollywood Reporter said, “Easy Rider is very likely the clearest and most disturbing presentation of the angry estrangement of American youth to be brought to the screen.” Writing several decades later, Chuck Bowen of Slant drew a connection to the present: “This legendary tale of a motorcycle odyssey gone wrong remains timeless for its diagnosis of the early stages of a social ennui that has now fully bloomed.”

Most reviews in 1969 were enthusiastic. Life magazine’s Richard Schickel called the film “a loose, lovely-to-look-at, often laughing, often lyric epic.” Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times added, “Fonda and Hopper give immense performances.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1998.

Join us for our 50th anniversary screening and tribute to Peter Fonda at 7:30pm on Saturday, September 7th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Special guests to be announced. Tickets are available here.

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Philippe de Broca’s THAT MAN FROM RIO 55th Anniversary Screenings in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program: one of the most popular and entertaining foreign films of the 1960s, Philippe de Broca’s action romp, THAT MAN FROM RIO.

De Broca, the director of intimate, character-driven films like The Five-Day Lover, shifted gears with this bigger-budget comic thriller. Two top stars of French cinema, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac (the sister of Catherine Deneuve who died tragically in an auto accident just three years later), added to the film’s allure.

The action begins when Dorleac is kidnapped as part of a museum heist of a valuable statuette, and Belmondo follows her kidnappers to Brazil to save her life and find the treasure. There he battles international criminals, assassination attempts, and even a hungry crocodile on the Amazon.

The film was designed in part as a spoof of the James Bond movies that were catching fire all around the world. De Broca’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre, along with a series of spectacular action set-pieces, led to box office success wherever the film was shown. The film was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. De Broca wrote the script with Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Daniel Boulanger. Veteran actors Jean Servais and Adolfo Celi co-star.

Along with the wit of the script and the skill of the performers, the film benefited from lush cinematography (by Edmond Sechan) of Paris, Rio, Brasilia, and other South American locations. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther acknowledged the film’s homage to silent comedy: “Jean-Paul Belmondo is dandy as a fast, fearless modern-day Harold Lloyd.” He added that de Broca “uses the actual locations so vividly and artistically that they generate a kind of excitement that blends superbly with the dazzle of the plot.”

The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann also praised de Broca: “he has wit, tenderness, dexterity, a superb eye for composition and color, a prodigious sense of rhythm and movement, a perfect command of the medium.” Time magazine noted that the film was “shrewdly calculated to make the customer laugh out loud at all the lousy movies he has ever seen and at the same time have a wild and wonderful time watching them again.”

Join us for a perfect piece of lighthearted summertime entertainment with two of the most engaging international stars ever to grace the screen. Belmondo remained at the center of French film culture for decades, and de Broca went on to direct one of the most popular of all arthouse movies, King of Hearts.

Our 55th anniversary presentation of THAT MAN FROM RIO screens on Wednesday, August 21st at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

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Sixtieth Anniversary Screening of THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS with Actress Barbara Rush In Person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a rediscovery of a juicy melodrama from 1959: THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS, which boasted a vibrant cast headed by Paul Newman and our special guest, Barbara Rush. As Leonard Maltin wrote in his review, “Newman and Rush have memorable roles as poor lawyer who schemes to the top and society girl he hopes to win.”

Newman was rising to major stardom at the time he made this film. He was coming off acclaimed performances in Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Long Hot Summer and had just earned his first Oscar nomination for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. As the Motion Picture Herald observed in its review of The Young Philadelphians, “Newman demonstrates once again that he stands in the forefront of the crop of young players who have come to the screen in recent years.”

The film was adapted by James Gunn from the best-selling novel by Richard Powell that many compared to the enormously successful Peyton Place in exposing the sexual shenanigans and professional rivalries among a tight-knit community surrounding Philadelphia’s Main Line. Newman plays an ambitious young man with a shady past who is determined to rise to the top ranks of society. He becomes a lawyer who learns how to inveigle a number of wealthy clients but rediscovers his principles when he defends an old friend on a murder charge.

Robert Vaughn, in a breakthrough performance of his own, plays the murder suspect, and he earned an Oscar nomination for his compelling performance in the film. But the entire cast was strong. As Film Daily observed, “The story is given life and fire through an imposing array of performances.” Rush plays Newman’s love interest, though he also has a dalliance with a married socialite played by Alexis Smith. The supporting cast includes established actors Billie Burke, Otto Kruger, and John Williams, along with newer faces Brian Keith, Diane Brewster, and Adam West (later to play TV’s Batman) in his film debut.

Vincent Sherman (All Through the Night, Old Acquaintance, Mr. Skeffington, The Damned Don’t Cry) directed, and The Hollywood Reporter declared, “The direction by Vincent Sherman is the best in his long and able career.” The film received two additional Oscar nominations, for black-and-white cinematography by veteran Harry Stradling and black-and-white costume design by Howard Shoup.

Barbara Rush also co-starred with Newman in Hombre, and her many other film credits include Magnificent Obsession with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, Bigger Than Life with James Mason, Strangers When We Meet with Kirk Douglas, Come Blow Your Horn and Robin and the 7 Hoods with Frank Sinatra, along with two early sci-fi classics, When Worlds Collide and It Came From Outer Space. Rush had a co-starring role on the Peyton Place TV series of the 60s, and she later starred in the series Flamingo Road and 7th Heaven. Just in the last year, she was discovered by a whole new audience portraying a wealthy widow in a series of witty commercials for Wilshire Coin.

Our 60th anniversary presentation of THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS plus Q&A with Barbara Rush screens on Wednesday, August 7th at 7 PM at the Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DVD

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS 50th Anniversary Screening with Stars Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw and Director Larry Peerce In-Person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a screening of one of the landmark comedies of the 1960s and perhaps the best screen rendition of the work of Philip Roth: the adaptation of his National Book Award-winning novella, GOODBYE, COLUMBUS.

The movie launched the careers of its two stars, Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, who will both join us for this reunion screening, along with the film’s director, Larry Peerce.

Roth was a master chronicler of the Jewish-American experience, and this film version dealt forthrightly and sardonically with the author’s favorite milieu. In focusing on a doomed love affair between a young working-class man and a spoiled Jewish-American princess, the film caught many of the tensions in affluent American society during the postwar years. Its sexual candor also reflected changing mores of the late 60s.

Arnold Schulman was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay, and he also won the Writers Guild award for best adapted screenplay of the year. Stanley Jaffe (Kramer vs. Kramer, Fatal Attraction) produced the picture. The Association provided the musical score.

Benjamin plays Neil Klugman, who meets Brenda Patimkin when his cousin invites him to swim at her ritzy country club. Neil is immediately attracted to Brenda, and she finds him intriguing, especially as a way of goading her snobbish, nouveau riche parents, expertly played by Jack Klugman and Nan Martin. When Brenda invites Neil as a house guest, they begin an affair right in the family mansion.

The film includes a number of sharply defined characters, especially Brenda’s affable but dim jock brother, played by Michael Meyers, whom Peerce discovered at a wedding. It turned out to be the only screen performance by Meyers, who went on to have a successful career as a doctor and later wrote a book about his journey from Hollywood to hospitals.

The film climaxes with a scene of Meyers’ garish and gargantuan wedding reception, which was somewhat controversial because of the gusto with which it satirized Jewish conspicuous consumption. In this wedding sequence, director Peerce’s father—the noted tenor, Jan Peerce—makes a sly cameo appearance.

The film scored at the box office and received enthusiastic reviews. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby declared, “Goodbye, Columbus is so rich with understanding… that it is a thing of real and unusual pleasure.” Variety called the film “a joy in striking a boisterous mood” and added that Benjamin and MacGraw “offer fresh portrayals seasoned with rich humor.”

Indeed the film catapulted both actors to the top ranks in Hollywood. MacGraw earned an Oscar nomination the following year for the smash hit Love Story, and she starred in Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway with her husband-to-be, Steve McQueen. She also starred in Sidney Lumet’s satire, Just Tell Me What You Want, and in the enormously successful TV miniseries, The Winds of War. Benjamin played in such films as Diary of a Mad Housewife, Westworld, The Last of Sheila, The Sunshine Boys, as well as the adaptation of Roth’s most controversial novel, Portnoy’s Complaint. Later Benjamin became an acclaimed director of such films as My Favorite Year, Racing with the Moon, and Mermaids.

Peerce made his feature directorial debut with the groundbreaking 1964 film about an interracial romance, One Potato Two Potato, and followed up with a gritty urban thriller, The Incident. His other films include The Sporting Club, A Separate Peace, The Bell Jar, and the uplifting female sports movie, The Other Side of the Mountain.

Our 50th anniversary presentation of GOODBYE, COLUMBUS (1969) followed by a Q&A with stars Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw and director Larry Peerce screens Friday, August 2nd at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: DVD.