Anniversary Classics Archives

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING 35th anniversary screening with guest Lena Olin April 12.

April 5, 2023 by Jordan Deglise Moore Leave a Comment

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our first movie of 2023: a 35th anniversary screening of Philip Kaufman’s erotic masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, adapted from the acclaimed novel by Czech author Milan Kundera. Kaufman wrote the screenplay with veteran French writer Jean-Claude Carriere (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Tin Drum, The Return of Martin Guerre), and they earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay of 1988. The film earned a second Oscar nod for the stunning cinematography by Sven Nykvist. The screening is Wednesday, April 12, at 7 PM at our Royal Theatre in West L.A. Film critic Stephen Farber will attend to moderate a Q&A with co-star Lena Olin, who will join via Zoom.

Set in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968 and the brutal Soviet invasion that followed, the film follows the romantic and political adventures of a lusty surgeon named Tomas. Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis had his first starring role in the picture, after earning attention for his strong supporting performances in A Room With a View and My Beautiful Laundrette two years earlier. One year after Unbearable, Day-Lewis earned his first Oscar for his performance in My Left Foot. The two important women in Tomas’s life are portrayed by Lena Olin as an artist and Juliette Binoche as an aspiring photographer. Eventually Tomas marries Binoche’s Tereza, but she remains troubled by his constant philandering.

Olin had first made her mark in several plays and films directed by Ingmar Bergman, and after Unbearable, she appeared in many important films all over the world. Binoche was a newer face in 1988, but she too went on to become a major international star. A decade later she won an Oscar in another acclaimed adaptation, The English Patient. The international supporting cast of Unbearable includes Derek de Lint, Erland Josephson, Stellan Skarsgård, and Donald Moffat. Award-winning editor Walter Murch cut the film and Saul Zaentz and Paul Zaentz produced.

The story begins as an erotic comedy but takes a darker turn during the Russian invasion. Kaufman took a unique approach in dramatizing this traumatic event, blending newsreel footage of the invasion with staged scenes that were actually filmed in Paris (since Czechoslovakia remained under Soviet rule when filming commenced in 1986). When Tomas refuses to denounce his own anti-Russian writing from before the invasion, he loses his job, and he and Tereza must struggle to survive.

Critical response to the film was overwhelmingly positive. Variety called Unbearable “a richly satisfying adaptation.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley agreed that Kaufman’s film was an “eloquent adaptation of Milan Kundera’s erotic novel” and added that the film “stirs the heart, the hormones and the head.” Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert declared, “What is remarkable… is not the sexual content itself, but the way Kaufman has been able to use it as an avenue for a complex story, one of nostalgia, loss, idealism and romance.”

Lena Olin will participate in a Q&A before the screening on April 12. To recall some of Olin’s many other credits, she earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Paul Mazursky’s Enemies: A Love Story and also co-starred in such films as Romeo is Bleeding, Havana, Night Falls on Manhattan, the Oscar-winning The Reader, and Chocolat and Casanova, both directed by her husband, Lasse Hallstrom. During our conversation Olin will also discuss her newest film with Hallstrom, the biographical drama Hilma, opening at the Royal and Town Center on April 14.

DR. NO 60th anniversary screening & Bond Trivia Contest December 28 at the Royal.

December 21, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series invite you to ring out the old and ring in the New Year with a 60th anniversary screening of the very first James Bond movie, Dr. No. The film opened in London in October 1962 and launched the most successful franchise in motion picture history, still going strong today. After its successful British run, it opened in the U.S. in the spring of 1963, allowing American audiences to enjoy one of the most memorable introductory lines in movie history: “Bond. James Bond.”

This adaptation of one of the spy novels penned by former British intelligence officer Ian Fleming was by no means a guaranteed hit. The star of the film, Sean Connery, was a relative newcomer, and the supporting cast members were not that well known either. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli purchased the rights to Fleming’s novels and hired director Terence Young (who went on to direct two more Bond pictures, From Russia with Love and Thunderball). Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather wrote the screenplay.

The plot centers on an archvillain based in Jamaica who is plotting to disrupt a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Bond, however, is on the case, determined to foil the sinister plot. He is aided by the first of the “Bond girls,” Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder, who makes a memorable entrance emerging from the sea in a yellow bikini with a large knife on her belt. The dastardly Dr. No is played by distinguished character actor Joseph Wiseman, who had made an impression in such films as Detective Story and Viva Zapata! as well as in many acclaimed plays in the New York theater. The supporting cast includes Bernard Lee as M and Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, both of whom returned in many of the subsequent Bond pictures.

Behind the camera, Maurice Binder’s main titles and Monty Norman’s musical theme also became fixtures in the Bond series. Editor Peter Hunt also continued to work on the franchise, eventually graduating to the director’s chair with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Oscar-winning production designer Ken Adam went on to design Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), and Moonraker. One of the wittiest touches that Adam included in Dr. No was his recreation of Goya’s famous painting of the Duke of Wellington, hanging on the wall of Dr. No’s lair. The painting had been stolen from the National Gallery in London the previous year and had not yet been recovered, so Adam’s decision to implicate Dr. No as the art thief was a sly inside joke.

The distributors had some concerns about whether the film would pass the censorship office. The opening sequence in Jamaica, set to a calypso rendition of “Three Blind Mice,” was unusually violent for a film made in 1962, and the sexual innuendoes were also bold for the era. Indeed the Vatican condemned the movie as immoral. But it received a seal of approval from the MPAA in the United States. It may have helped that President John Kennedy was a fan of the Fleming novels and even requested a private screening of Dr. No at the White House.

Critical response was generally favorable. Variety praised “an entertaining piece of tongue-in-cheek hokum.” Dilys Powell of the London Sunday Times wrote, “The first of the James Bond films…has the air of knowing exactly what it is up to, and that has not been common in British thrillers since the day when Hitchcock took himself off to America.” More recently, Kim Newman of Empire magazine declared, “With a debut like this, it’s no wonder that it spawned one of the biggest franchises ever.”

Join us to relive the birth of a legend. Before the screening, take part in a Bond trivia contest with some choice prizes! And a word of caution: Beware the deadly tarantula!

EXPERIMENT IN TERROR 60th Anniversary Screening with co-star Stefanie Powers in person December 7

November 16, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of director Blake Edwards’ neo-noir suspense thriller Experiment in Terror, one of the noteworthy films from the milestone movie year 1962. Stefanie Powers, who has a key supporting role, will appear for a Q&A after the film. The one-night-only screening will play at the Laemmle NoHo theater on Wednesday, December 7 at 7 PM.

The story deals with vicious criminal Red Garland (Ross Martin), who terrorizes San Francisco bank teller Kelly Sherwood (Lee Remick), forcing her to steal $100,000 for him. Although he threatens to kill her and her teenage sister Toby (Stefanie Powers) if she goes to the police, Remick contacts the local FBI office, where agent John Ripley (Glenn Ford) undertakes a manhunt for Garland. To ensure Kelly’s full cooperation, Garland kidnaps Toby and a race against the clock ensues. Filmed on location in San Francisco, the film notably climaxes in the Bay City’s mid-century landmark, Candlestick Park.

Blake Edwards, known primarily as a comedy specialist, followed the biggest hit of his early career, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with a complete change of pace in this taut suspenser adapted by the Gordons from their novel “Operation Terror.” He took advantage of the genre change by utilizing a full range of stylistic flourishes, superbly assisted in exploring the neo-noir format by cinematographer Philip Lathrop, filming appropriately in sharp-edged black and white, and composer Henry Mancini, contributing a striking, eclectic score. Edwards, Remick, Lathrop, and Mancini would all reunite later in the year for the memorable drama Days of Wine and Roses.

Critics of the day appreciated the investigative protocol, mystery elements, and the convincing, unsentimental acting and storytelling. Later reviewers embraced Edwards’ directing approach, with Time Out stating, “Edwards’ classical feel for pure cinema remains unalloyed.” Emmanuel Levy noted, “this stylish noir thriller is one of Edwards’ best films and one of the genre’s highlights.” The movie also greatly influenced filmmaker David Lynch, particularly his acclaimed Twin Peaks. Richard Brody, film critic of The New Yorker, wrote in 2015 that Experiment in Terror is “a movie about movies, a very early American reflection of the methods and moods of the French New Wave, realized as a mainstream Hollywood film…the exaltation of the ordinary into something extraordinary by means of the power of cinema itself.”

Our special guest Stefanie Powers is still actively enjoying her seventh decade in show business, starting as a teenager under contract for Columbia Pictures at the end of the studio era. In 1962 she co-starred in three popular movies, If a Man Answers, The Interns, and Experiment in Terror. Later in the decade she starred on television as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., followed by over 200 appearances on weekly TV series and miniseries, culminating in the hit show Hart to Hart (1979-84), in which she co-starred with longtime friend Robert Wagner. In 1982 she founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation in Kenya after the 1981 death of her life partner Holden. She remains involved in wildlife conservation and environmental activism in addition to her acting career.

Tribute to Angela Lansbury ~ THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE 60th Anniversary Screening.

November 2, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

As a tribute to the late Angela Lansbury, we present a 60th anniversary screening of the movie that she considered her greatest achievement, The Manchurian Candidate. When Lansbury joined us in person for a sold-out anniversary screening of Death on the Nile in 2018, she told the audience that The Manchurian Candidate was her favorite of all her film roles. She received her third and final Oscar nomination for her performance in this 1962 movie. The screening is Wednesday, November 16, 7 PM at the Royal Theater.

John Frankenheimer’s film was a hit in 1962 and remains one of the most highly acclaimed of all political thrillers. In 1994 it was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, an honor reserved for films of “historical, cultural, or aesthetic significance.” This story of a diabolical plot to engineer a Russian takeover of the White House was provocative in 1962 and seems frighteningly prescient today. As Frankenheimer said in remarkably prophetic comments a few years before his death, “I think our society is brainwashed by television commercials, by advertising, by politicians, by a censored press… More and more I think that our society is becoming manipulated and controlled.”

The Manchurian Candidate was adapted from Richard Condon’s novel by screenwriter George Axelrod, who also wrote such films as The Seven-Year Itch and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It tells the chilling story of a soldier in the Korean War, played by Laurence Harvey, who is captured and brainwashed by Russian and Chinese Communists into becoming an assassin in the employ of the Soviet regime. Frank Sinatra plays a fellow soldier trying to halt the assassination plot. Lansbury won awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press and the National Board of Review for her portrayal of Harvey’s manipulative mother, who plays a crucial role in the conspiracy.

In addition to its achievements as a political thriller, the film was one of the first to satirize the anti-Communist hysteria that had gripped the country and divided the Hollywood community during the 1950s. James Gregory plays Lansbury’s husband, a dimwitted U.S. Senator modeled on Joseph McCarthy. This mockery of fanatical politicians enraged right wing pundits at the time of the film’s release, but it received the best reviews of any movie released in 1962. Variety wrote, “Every once in a rare while a film comes along that works in all departments… Such is The Manchurian Candidate.”

Over the years, rave reviews continued to pour in. Roger Ebert called it “a work as alive and smart as when it was first released.” Pauline Kael said, “The picture plays some wonderful, crazy games about the Right and the Left; although it’s a thriller, it may be the most sophisticated political satire ever made in Hollywood.” Writing in Time magazine in 2007, Richard Corliss said, “Lansbury and Harvey are both sensational in a movie that remains pointed and current. It still touches you like a clammy hand in the dark.”

Lansbury’s portrayal of the malevolent Mrs. Iselin was ranked as one of the 25 greatest villains in film history by the American Film Institute. Unlike other female villains in film noir, who were motivated by sex or money, Lansbury’s character had much more grandiose ambitions; her aim was to become the most powerful person in the entire country, a concept that was way ahead of its time in 1962.

After the screening, Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan, co-authors of Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies (which includes a lengthy section on The Manchurian Candidate) will discuss the film with the audience. Other surprise guests may join the conversation.

Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA 55th Anniversary screenings December 13 at Laemmle Glendale, Newhall & Royal

October 26, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present the 55th anniversary of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1967) on December 13 at three Laemmle locations. The intense, provocative psychological drama was one of the keystone films of the late-period golden age of the art-house in the 1960s and energized the “Film Generation” that came of age in that seminal decade.

The story concerns an actress (Bergman newcomer Liv Ullmann) who stops speaking in the middle of a performance and refuses to communicate. She is placed in the care of a nurse (Bergman regular Bibi Andersson) and they retreat to the isolation of a beach house for her recovery. As their relationship progresses, it takes fascinating twists and turns. Some have compared their relationship to that of a psychiatrist and patient, with Ullmann paradoxically playing the role of the psychoanalyst whose silence prods the nurse into revealing some of her innermost secrets and deep-seated anxieties. Andersson’s confessions include one vivid memory of an uninhibited sexual encounter that critic Pauline Kael described as “one of the rare truly erotic sequences in movie history.”

Swedish auteur and all-time film titan Bergman was one of the directors at the center of the international film explosion that captivated moviegoers during that era. College students and engaged moviegoers debated long into the night, trying to decipher all the mysteries of this utterly compelling but sometimes puzzling film, not unlike the reaction to Alain Resnais’ enigmatic Last Year at Marienbad earlier in the decade. Andrew Sarris, the influential film critic of The Village Voice, noted that the film “seems to bewitch audiences even when it bewilders them.” Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune cited it as “one of the screen’s supreme works and perhaps Ingmar Bergman’s finest film.” Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian called it “sensually brilliant, an endlessly questioning and mysterious disquisition on identity. Persona is a film to make you shiver with fascination, or incomprehension, or desire.”

Persona plays one night only, Tuesday, December 13 at 7:00 PM at three Laemmle locations: the Royal (West Los Angeles), Glendale, and Newhall (Santa Clarita).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_Jvil6ToY

Persona | Trailer | Laemmle [Theatres] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu_Jvil6ToY)

Luis Buñuel’s THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL 60th Anniversary Screenings October 12 at Three Laemmle Locations

September 28, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Continuing the 60th anniversary celebration of the milestone film year 1962, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present Luis Buñuel’s scathing surreal satire, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL. The film plays one night only, Wednesday, October 12 at 7:00 PM at three Laemmle locations: The Royal in West Los Angeles, the Laemmle Glendale, and the Laemmle Newhall in Santa Clarita.

Buñuel, a Spanish-born iconoclast and provocateur, spent most of his career working outside his native country. In 1962, at the age of 62, Bunuel was enjoying international acclaim after being coaxed out of Mexican exile the year before to make ‘Viridiana,’ which was suffused with his characteristic caustic wit and anti-religious sentiment. The film’s notoriety revived his career and placed him at the center of international film culture for the remainder of his career. THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, made in Mexico, further cemented his credentials as a mordant satirist. The story, written by Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza, deals with a lavish dinner party at the home of wealthy opera patrons in which the upper-class guests find themselves unable to leave after the meal. After a few days a rescue party is organized but the would-be rescuers cannot enter the house, and chaos ensues. During the ordeal the guests find their veneer of civilization slowly stripped away.

Critics were struck by Buñuel’s unrepentant approach to skewering the ruling elites.Andrew Sarris, the esteemed film critic of The Village Voice, called Buñuel “The last of the classic surrealists of the screen,” and was impressed with his “stylistic serenity. Where he was once merely profane, he is now eminently profound.” Leonard Maltin called it a “wry assault on bourgeois manners,” while Roger Ebert more exuberantly cited it as “a macabre comedy, a mordant view of human nature that suggests we harbor savage instincts and unspeakable secrets.” Although a curmudgeonly Bosley Crowther of the New York Times gave it an unfavorable review upon its delayed U.S. release in 1967 after years of legal issues over distribution rights, the film’s stature and influence were fully recognized by its inclusion in The New York Times publication, “The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made” in 2004.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and was selected as the opening night entry of the first New York Film Festival the following year. Buñuel was propelled into the most successful phase of his long career, and he followed it with a number of memorable films, ‘Belle de Jour’ (1967), ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ (1972), and his final film, ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’ (1977) among them. Later, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL’s influence extended beyond the screen—in 2016 it was adapted as an opera of the same name by composer Thomas Ades.

Akira Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD 65th Anniversary Screenings September 21.

September 14, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series are proud to present this month’s installment in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Akira Kurosawa’s unique Shakespearean adaptation, Throne of Blood. The Japanese auteur was always an admirer of the Bard. His late film Ran offered a variation on King Lear. The power, majesty and craftsmanship of a film like Throne of Blood can only fully appreciated in a theatrical setting: with an audience, with a big screen, and sound you can feel. We’ll be showing a DCP.

For many years Kurosawa dreamed of adapting Macbeth, and he put the film together in 1957, with his favorite actor Toshiro Mifune starring as the ambitious, murderous leader. Isuzu Yamada co-stars as the Lady Macbeth character, with Takashi Shimura as the equivalent of Shakespeare’s Macduff. Kurosawa wrote the screenplay with Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Ryuzo Kikushima. They transposed the story from medieval Scotland to feudal Japan and Kurosawa came up with striking visual concepts to revitalize the classic story. The castle exteriors were filmed on the slopes of Mount Fuji and the memorable climax—with a massive array of arrows aimed at the deranged protagonist—remains one of the greatest images in any Kurosawa movie.

Writing of this climactic scene, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane declared,“No stage production could match Kurosawa’s Birnam Wood, and, in his final framing of the hero — a human hedgehog, stuck with arrows — he conjures a tragedy not laden with grandeur but pierced, like a dream, by the absurd.” British critic Derek Malcolm of the Guardian acclaimed Throne of Blood as “a landmark of visual strength… possibly the finest Shakespearean adaptation ever committed to the screen.”

On its original American release, Time magazine praised the film as “a visual descent into the hell of greed and superstition.” In his four-star review, Leonard Maltin called the film a “graphic, powerful adaptation of Macbeth in a samurai setting.” It was not simply film critics who endorsed the film. Renowned literary critic Harold Bloom said that Throne of Blood was “the most successful film version of Macbeth.”

Laemmle Theatres will screen Throne of Blood on September 21 at our Glendale, Newhall and Royal theaters on Wednesday, September 21 at 7 o’clock.

Vincent D’Onofrio in Person for FULL METAL JACKET 35th Anniversary Screening Sept. 13

September 7, 2022 by Jordan Deglise Moore

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of Stanley Kubrick’s savage anti-war drama Full Metal Jacket, which scored a box office success in 1987 and also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Kubrick, celebrated Vietnam author Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford adapted Hasford’s 1979 novel, The Short-Timers. The acclaimed cast includes Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood, and R. Lee Ermey. D’Onofrio will join for a Q&A after the 7 PM screening at the Royal on Tuesday, September 13.

Kubrick came late to the Vietnam war movie cycle, after such Oscar-winning films as Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and Platoon. But he added his own sardonic and biting slant to his dissection of the terrible war. One of Kubrick’s early celebrated movies was his 1957 drama Paths of Glory, set during World War I. And his 1964 Oscar nominee, Dr. Strangelove, took a unique black comic approach to the terrifying subject of nuclear annihilation. Some of the same dark humor freshens Full Metal Jacket, though it also contains deadly serious depictions of brutal basic training as well as the horrors of a misguided, doomed war.

The first section of the film dramatizes the basic training of a platoon of Marine recruits at Parris Island, South Carolina. Former real-life drill instructor R. Lee Ermey portrays the savage sergeant in charge of the soldiers’ training. Ermey improvised much of the scathing and scatological dialogue, based on his own personal experience as a sergeant during the Vietnam War. He bullies and brutalizes all of the recruits but takes special pleasure in tormenting the overweight soldier played by D’Onofrio, whom he nicknames Gomer Pyle. Modine tries to protect D’Onofrio, with little success.

When the action shifts to Vietnam during the Tet offensive, it retains its hard-edged, nihilistic spirit. The entire film was actually shot in England, but Kubrick and his technical crew did an extraordinary job of recreating an American military base and the cities and jungles of Southeast Asia without ever leaving the English countryside.

Critical reactions to the film were very strong. Gene Siskel called Full Metal Jacket “a great piece of filmmaking.” The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson wrote, “Aiming for minds as well as hearts, Kubrick hits his target squarely.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum raved, “This is the most tightly crafted Kubrick film since Dr. Strangelove, as well as the most horrific.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby called it “a film of immense and very rare imagination.” Canby’s Times colleague Janet Maslin added, “No one who sees Full Metal Jacket will easily put the film’s last glimpse of D’Onofrio, or a great many other things about Kubrick’s latest and most sobering vision, out of mind.”

After his breakthrough performance in Full Metal Jacket, D’Onofrio went on to co-star in such films as Mystic Pizza, JFK, The Player, Ed Wood, The Whole Wide World, Men in Black, Jurassic World, and Steal This Movie, in which he played Abbie Hoffman. He had a ten-year run in Law and Order: Criminal Intent. More recently he has appeared in the series Daredevil, Godfather of Harlem, and Ratched. Last year he had a major role as Jerry Falwell in the Oscar-winning The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

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