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Fifty-fifth Anniversary Screenings of Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD on December 5th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of acclaimed director Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous masterpiece, THE LEOPARD (Il Gattopardo). The film will close out the year for the popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program of showcasing vintage foreign-language cinema.

The Leopard is based on the historical novel by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, an international best seller upon publication in 1958. The story is set in the 1860s during the turbulent period of the “Risorgimento,” the struggle for the unification of Italy.

All this is reflected in the fate of one Sicilian aristocratic family, headed by Prince Fabrizio de Salina (Burt Lancaster). The Prince (the Leopard) at first resists all the political and social changes, but comes to accept them after their embrace by his pragmatic nephew (Alain Delon), who joins Garibaldi’s Red Shirts and marries the daughter (Claudia Cardinale) of an ambitious small-town merchant mayor to secure the family’s place in the new Italy.

Visconti was drawn to the material about fading aristocracy from his own heritage, as he was born to nobility in Milan. He had previously explored his country’s past with another historical adaptation, Senso, in 1954, and that film is also considered a masterwork.

The Leopard won the Palme D’or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and has been reissued on several occasions. The film is notable for its rich production design by Mario Garbuglia, cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno, and Oscar-nominated costume design by Piero Tosi, who won an Honorary Oscar in 2014.

The original release reaped praise from The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, “a stunning visualization of a mood of melancholy and nostalgia at the passing of an age.” Admiration has grown through the decades, with The London Observer calling it “That rare thing—a great film from a great book.” J. Hoberman in the Village Voice exclaimed, “The greatest film of its kind since World War II.”

Martin Scorsese is one of the film’s champions, placing it on his own personal list of the 12 greatest films ever made, extolling “the deeply measured tone…its use of vast spaces, and also the richness of every detail.” As a lament for a lost world, the film is considered Italy’s Gone With the Wind.

Also starring Terrence Hill (Mario Girotti), Paola Stoppa et al. Music by Nino Rota (La Strada, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather). Visconti co-wrote the screenplay with Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, and Massimo Franciosca.

The Leopard screens on December 5 at 7:00 PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Pasadena Playhouse.

Joanna Lancaster, daughter of Burt Lancaster, will participate in a pre-screening Q&A moderated by film critic Stephen Farber at the Laemmle Royal in West LA.

Click here for tickets.

Running time: 187 minutes
Italian with English subtitles
Format: Blu-ray

Eightieth Anniversary Screenings of Jean Renoir’s GRAND ILLUSION on November 14 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Jean Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece, GRAND ILLUSION. We present this program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on November 11, 1918. Renoir’s film is generally regarded as the finest set during the First World War, and it endures as a memorable lament for the loss of an entire generation.

Part of the originality and impact of ‘Grand Illusion’ comes from the fact that it has no battle scenes. Much of it is set in a German prison camp where several French soldiers are under the command of an aristocratic German officer, played by silent film director Erich von Stroheim. The prisoners are portrayed by rising French actors Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and Marcel Dalio. Their struggle to escape the camp provides the suspense in the film’s second half.

Throughout the picture, Renoir sees the humanity in both captives and captors, and the film is especially notable in its portrayal of Dalio’s character, a wealthy French Jew. Filmed on the eve of the Second World War, Renoir deliberately chose to include a prominent Jewish character at a time when virulent anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called ‘Grand Illusion’ “Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1.”

Elsewhere, the film received nothing but acclaim. In 1937 it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival for Best Artistic Ensemble. When the film opened in the United States in 1938, it became the first foreign language film ever to be nominated by the Academy for Best Picture. (This would not happen again for 30 years, when ‘Z’ received a Best Picture nod in 1969.) Over the years the film was acclaimed by critics and also by other filmmakers. Orson Welles named ‘Grand Illusion’ as one of two films he would take with him to a desert island.

When the film was reissued years later, the New York Times’ Janet Maslin called it “one of the most haunting of all war films… an oasis of subtlety, moral intelligence and deep emotion on the cinematic landscape.” Pauline Kael praised the film as “a triumph of clarity and lucidity; every detail fits simply, easily, and intelligibly.” And Leonard Maltin acclaimed “Renoir’s classic treatise on war, focusing on French prisoners during WWI and their cultured German commandant. Beautiful performances enhance an eloquent script.”

GRAND ILLUSION screens at 7pm on Wednesday, November 14th at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, Royal Theatre in West LA, and Town Center 5 in Encino.

Click here to purchase tickets.

Format: DCP

Jacques Tati’s MON ONCLE 60th Anniversary Screenings October 17 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest installment in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program, 60th anniversary screenings of the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film of 1958, Jacques Tati’s MON ONCLE.

Tati made only six feature films over the course of his career (including Jour de Fete, Playtime, and Traffic), and this comedy—his first film in color—is considered one of the highlights.

Tati had introduced the character of Mr. Hulot in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, his highly praised film from 1953. He once again plays the character of Hulot in this more ambitious satire of modern technology and its dehumanizing effect on family life. Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie play a married couple in thrall to a sterile, workaday world. Alain Becourt plays their young son who finds liberation with his playful uncle.

As in many of Tati’s films, Mon Oncle pays homage to the masters of silent comedy. There is very little dialogue in the film; instead the humor is visual, where the slightly futuristic settings are as important as the human characters. The ingenious sets were designed by Jacques Lagrange at the Victorine Studios outside Nice.

Variety wrote, “Jacques Tati’s film has inventiveness, gags, warmth and a ‘poetic’ approach to satire.” Leonard Maltin declared, “Tati’s first color film is a masterpiece… Continuous flow of sight gags (including the funniest fountain you’ll ever see) makes this easygoing, nearly dialogue-less comedy a total delight.”

The film has also had an enduring impact on many other directors. At the AFI Festival in 2010, David Lynch presented a screening of Mon Oncle and announced that it was one of the films that had the greatest influence on him.

MON ONCLE screens Wednesday, October 17, at 7pm at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.

35th Anniversary Screenings of THE MAKIOKA SISTERS on Wednesday, August 22 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Kon Ichikawa’s poignant family drama, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS.

One of the great Japanese masters, Ichikawa is perhaps less widely celebrated than his countrymen Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. He began directing features in the 1940s, and his films The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, Tokyo Olympiad, and others found passionate critical defenders.

One of his later films, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS, is adapted from a popular Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki and follows the fortunes of four sisters from a wealthy family in Osaka. Set in the 1930s on the eve of World War II, the film stars Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, and Yuko Kotegawa as the orphaned sisters, heirs in a wealthy manufacturing family. Their marriages and romantic relationships are a source of tension and jealousy.

The sumptuous art direction and costume design help to create the lush atmosphere of the film. Reviewing the film at the time of its American release, the Los Angeles Times’s Kevin Thomas called it “exquisitely, subtly sensual.”

John Powers of the L.A. Weekly agreed that “this is an uncommonly vibrant and beautiful film.”

And the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael called it “the most pleasurable movie I’ve seen in several months…the rich colors, the darkness, the low-key lighting—they’re intoxicating.”

THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983) screens on Wednesday, August 22, at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 20th Anniversary Screenings on Wednesday, July 18 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series: 20th anniversary screenings of the Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Language Film of 1998, Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

The film was nominated for seven Oscars in all, including Best Picture of the year, an unusually strong showing for a foreign language film. It also won an Oscar for Benigni as Best Actor, the first time in the Academy’s 70-year history that a male actor had won the top prize for a foreign language performance.

Nicola Piovani also won for his lyrical musical score. In addition to its awards, the film scored an enormous success at the box office. It became the highest grossing foreign language film at the U.S. box office up to that point, and its success reverberated all over the world. With well over $200 million earned worldwide, it remains one of the most financially successful of all foreign language titles.

Benigni was primarily known as a comic actor and filmmaker when he decided to shift gears and tackle the dark realities of the Holocaust in this daring tragicomic fable. The first half of the film plays as a romantic comedy, with Benigni cast as a Jewish Italian bookshop owner who is determined to woo a spirited teacher (played by Benigni’s real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi) despite formidable obstacles. After they marry and have a young son, the tragic realities of the Second World War intrude on their lives, as they are all sent to a Nazi concentration camp. In a desperate desire to save his son, Benigni’s Guido devises an elaborate game to keep the boy distracted from the horrors around him.

Benigni, who directed and wrote the screenplay with Vincenzo Cerami, said that he was inspired by the memoirs of a Jewish Auschwitz survivor named Rubino Romeo Salmoni, whose book, In the End, I Beat Hitler, told how a sense of dark humor helped him to transcend his enslavement. The cast of the film also includes Giorgio Cantarini as the couple’s young son, Giustino Durano as Guido’s beloved uncle, and veteran German actor Horst Buchholz as a German doctor who befriends Guido and his son in the camp.

Although there were a few critics who were discomfited by the film’s whimsical approach to a historical tragedy, most endorsed the film enthusiastically. The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan called the film “sad, funny and haunting.” Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “its sentiment is inescapable, but genuine poignancy and pathos are also present, and an overarching sincerity is visible too.” Leonard Maltin hailed “a unique and beguiling fable that celebrates the human spirit.”

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL screens Wednesday, July 18, at 7pm at the Royal Theatre, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

Milos Forman’s THE FIREMEN’S BALL Screens Tuesday, June 26 in Encino, Pasadena, and West L.A.! Q&A with Co-Screenwriter Ivan Passer at the Royal.

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In conjunction with an American Cinematheque tribute to the late Oscar-winning director Milos Forman, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of Forman’s final Czech film, THE FIREMEN’S BALL. The picture, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1968, is part of our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad series. THE FIREMEN’S BALL co-screenwriter Ivan Passer will participate in a Q&A after the screening at the Royal. Laemmle Theatres president Greg Laemmle will moderate. Passer also worked with Forman on LOVES OF A BLONDE and is perhaps best known for directing the 1965 film INTIMATE LIGHTING and the 1981 film CUTTER’S WAY.

Forman was part the Czech New Wave, a group of talented filmmakers (also including Jan Kadar, Jiri Menzel, and Ivan Passer) who emerged during the 1960s. Forman’s 1966 film, Love of a Blonde, was also an Oscar nominee and put him on the map as a director to watch. His wry sensibility received even fuller expression in The Firemen’s Ball, a dark but raucous satire of the chaos that ensues when a group of local firemen try to mount a celebration for their retiring chief. Forman got the idea for the film when he was in a small Bohemian village working on another script, and he happened to attend a real firemen’s ball. The script was co-written by Forman, Ivan Passer, and Jaroslav Papousek. The cast consisted mainly of nonprofessional actors, including Jan Vostrcil, Josef Sebanek, Josef Valnoha, and Vaclav Stockel.

The film, which was widely interpreted as a sly critique of the Eastern European Communist system, was made during a brief period of artistic freedom that came to be known as the Prague Spring. But when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968, The Firemen’s Ball was banned, and Forman and other leading Czech directors fled the country. As TV Guide later wrote of the film, “This ingratiating farce is perhaps the last noteworthy film of the Czech renaissance before the political crackdown forced most filmmakers into exile.” After arriving in America, Forman went on to achieve many Hollywood successes, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ragtime, and Amadeus.

Among the stellar reviews for THE FIREMEN’S BALL, Time magazine acclaimed “a delicious parody-fable of Slavic bureaucracy,” and Variety paid tribute to “a lively, brimming comedy on human conduct and small-town life.” In his four-star review, Roger Ebert added, “This is a very warm, funny movie.”

This Just In: Co-screenwriter Ivan Passer will participate in a Q&A after the June 26 screening at the Royal. Laemmle Theatres president Greg Laemmle will moderate. Passer also worked with Forman on LOVES OF A BLONDE and is perhaps best known for directing the 1965 film INTIMATE LIGHTING and the 1981 film CUTTER’S WAY.

Milos Forman’s THE FIREMEN’S BALL (1968) screens Tuesday, June 26, at 7:00pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West L.A. Click here for tickets.

Ingmar Bergman’s AUTUMN SONATA on Tuesday, May 15 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad series presents the 40th anniversary of AUTUMN SONATA (1978), as part of the centennial retrospective of the birth of Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish auteur who has entered the cinematic pantheon. Autumn Sonata represents the last theatrical film for Bergman, whose subsequent work was made for television, and then re-tailored for theatrical release.

For the occasion, Bergman enticed his namesake, legendary actress Ingrid Bergman, to return to her native language and star as a self-centered concert pianist who had favored her career over her children. In the drama of “fraught interpersonal relationships,” (a trademark of the director, as recently noted by Kenneth Turan), Ingrid Bergman’s character of Charlotte is invited by her daughter, Eva (Liv Ullmann) to visit her and her parson husband in their country home. When Eva also brings her handicapped sister, Helena (Lena Nyman) into the reunion, the past erupts on the present with repressed familial furor.

Bergman’s memorable movies of the 1950s and 1960s had been photographed in luminous black and white. In the 1970s he was working in color, and, as noted by Leonard Maltin, the cinematography by long-time Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist is “peerless,” giving the film visual warmth and intensity.

As to the only collaboration of the two Bergmans, Gary Arnold of the Washington Post said, “Bergman’s casting coup lives up to expectations. Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann invest their roles with undeniable emotional impact.” It was also Ingrid Bergman’s last film role. The three-time Academy Award winner (Gaslight, Anastasia, Murder on the Orient Express) delivers a searing performance that brought her a best actress nomination in 1978, her seventh and final nod overall. Ingmar Bergman’s original screenplay was also nominated, one of his nine career total as writer, producer, and director. Additionally, the movie was named best foreign film by the Hollywood Foreign Press that year.

Autumn Sonata is a story of intense mother-daughter relations, and as part of the Anniversary Abroad series will play two days after Mother’s Day on Tuesday, May 15 at 7:00 PM at three Laemmle locations: Royal, West Los Angeles; Town Center, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena. Format: DCP. Click here for tickets.

Part of the city-wide, two month retrospective, “Ingmar Berman’s Cinema,” at various locations.

For the Anniversary Classics Abroad next attraction, we present another master filmmaker enjoying a retrospective, Milos Forman, with a 50th anniversary screening June 20 of his 1968 Academy Award nominee, The Fireman’s Ball.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS 50th Anniversary Screening on Wednesday, April 18 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, a 50th anniversary screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s memorable and still timely political drama, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS.

The film was an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film of 1966, but it was not released in the United States until 1968, when it received additional nominations for best director and for best original screenplay by Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas. The film was considered so inflammatory that it was not shown in France until 1971.

The picture, filmed in black-and-white to approximate the look of a newsreel, dramatizes Algeria’s war of independence against France. It focuses on the years from 1954 to 1957, when the National Liberation Front began to organize in the Casbah of Algiers to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians as well as the French army. This led to a fierce and brutal counter-insurgency by the French, which meant the battles dragged on for years.

To insure authenticity, Pontecorvo cast the film mainly with non-professional actors recruited in Algeria. The film’s one professional actor, Jean Martin, gave a vivid performance as the complex, intelligent French officer who understands the grievances of the Algerians even as he fights ruthlessly to defeat them. The film’s urgency was heightened by the score of Ennio Morricone.

The film’s influence extended well beyond the cinema. It became a sort of handbook of revolutionary techniques that was studied by many radical groups over the years. Yet in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon also screened the movie in order to better understand the civil war unleashed in that country.

Many prominent filmmakers–including Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone–all testified to influence of Pontecorvo’s movie on their own work. Critic David Elliott of the San Diego Union Tribune called The Battle of Algiers “perhaps the finest political film of the 1960s.” The LA Weekly’s Ella Taylor agreed that it was “a classic of politically engaged filmmaking.”

Our 50th anniversary screening of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1968) screens Wednesday, April 18 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP