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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.

Format: DCP

Ang Lee’s EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN 25th Anniversary Screenings on July 24 in West LA, Pasadena, and Glendale.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Ang Lee’s delectable 1994 comedy, EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN. Lee had directed two previous films that earned acclaim, but this 1994 film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and propelled his career to a new level of esteem and success.

Made in Taipei, the film centers on a widowed master chef, Mr. Chu (played by Sihung Lung), who has weekly feasts for his three unmarried daughters (Kuei-Mei Yang, Chien-Lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang), during which he tries to oversee their personal lives along with their eating habits. An ensemble piece in the spirit of movies like Love, Actually and The Joy Luck Club, the film interweaves the personal and professional stories of the three daughters, along with the issues facing their father, who also embarks on a new romantic adventure during the course of the movie. Winston Chao (who starred in Lee’s earlier film, The Wedding Banquet) and Sylvia Chang co-star.

The script by Lee, James Schamus, and Hui-Ling Wang etches all the characters with wit and finesse. Equally important to the film’s success are the lovingly photographed scenes of an abundance of Chinese delicacies, which led the movie to be compared to other memorable movies about food, including the Oscar-winning Babette’s Feast, Tampopo, and Like Water for Chocolate. Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Like the cuisine it celebrates, this movie is tart, sweet, generous and subtle.” The New York Times’ Janet Maslin called the film “wonderfully seductive, and nicely knowing about all of its characters’ appetites.”

Variety’s Leonard Klady summed up the film’s achievement: “The overall result is a cinematic feast that will have audiences returning for Lee’s next movie meal.” Those words proved to be prophetic. Lee’s next film, Sense and Sensibility, released in 1995, was nominated for Best Picture, and over the next several years, he produced an extraordinary body of work, including the international blockbusters Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Life of Pi. Lee won two Oscars for Best Director — for Brokeback Mountain as well as Life of Pi — and is now universally regarded as one of the leading auteurs of our time. His remarkable journey was prefigured by his early achievement with Eat Drink Man Woman.

EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN screens Wednesday, July 24, at 7 PM in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray.

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES Anniversary Classics Screenings for Pride Month!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present screenings of the milestone Oscar-nominated French comedy, LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, as part of the Anniversary Classics Abroad program. The screenings mark the 40th anniversary of the American release in 1979, as well as noting LGBTQ Pride Month, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, based on a hit French stage farce by Jean Poiret, was adapted for the screen by Poiret, Francis Veber, Marcello Dano, and Edouard Molinaro, who also directed. The “birds of a feather” story concerns a gay couple in St. Tropez, Renato (played by the veteran Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi), the owner of a drag-performance nightclub, and his high-strung headliner partner Albin (French comic Michel Serrault). Their twenty-year relationship is turned upside down when Renato’s son, who had been raised jointly by Renato and Albin, announces he is about to marry the daughter of the ultra-conservative Minister of Moral Standards. Complications and hilarity ensue when Renato and his son attempt to mask the true nature of Renato and Albin’s partnership for the prospective in-laws.

The film received mixed reviews in the United States, ranging from Roger Ebert’s enthusiastic embrace (“the comic turns in the plot are achieved with such clockwork timing that sometimes we’re laughing at what’s funny and sometimes we’re just laughing at the movie’s sheer comic invention. This is a great time at the movies.”), to lesser notices from some critics who were out-of-sync with the film’s social satire, sight gags, one-liners, deadpan reactions, and “tawdry burlesque.” Director Molinaro deftly orchestrated the game cast in this range of comedic devices. The movie was named the year’s best foreign film by both the National Board of Review and the Hollywood Foreign Press (Golden Globe). The accolades were crowned by three Academy Award nominations, including Best Costume Design (Piero Tosi, Ambra Danon), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director.

The film’s roaring success at the box office (it played at one New York theater for over a year, and broke out of the art houses to success in regular commercial theaters) has been attributed to its positive depiction of the central gay characters, the protagonists of the story, a rarity in the era. Although comparatively old-fashioned in its portrayals to contemporary standards, its importance in LGBTQ entertainment history is undisputed. The film spawned two sequels, a hit Broadway musical, and Hollywood remake, ‘The Birdcage’ (1996), that was also a box-office smash. Notably, the success of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES paved the way for a number of high profile, gay-themed, and gender-bending Hollywood studio films in the early ’80s, including ‘Making Love,’ ‘Victor/Victoria’ and ‘Tootsie.’

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES screens Wednesday, June 19th at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Sixtieth Anniversary Screenings of Ingmar Bergman’s WILD STRAWBERRIES on May 15 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 revered of all foreign films, Ingmar Bergman’s WILD STRAWBERRIES. Indeed, Leonard Maltin hailed the film as “Still a staple of any serious filmgoer’s education,” and he added, “Superb use of flashbacks and brilliant performance by (Victor) Sjostrom make this Bergman classic an emotional powerhouse.” It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay of 1959 and also earned the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the Berlin Film Festival.

Sjostrom, a revered Swedish actor and also an acclaimed director who helmed memorable silent films with American stars Lon Chaney and Lillian Gish during the 1920s, capped his career with his moving performance as Professor Isak Borg, a distinguished physician who re-evaluates his life while driving from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary degree. On his journey he is haunted by memories and dreams that illuminate his inner life with trenchant insight. Indeed Wild Strawberries was one of the seminal films that changed cinematic grammar by introducing non-linear storytelling to discriminating audiences during the late 1950s.

The supporting cast includes many of Bergman’s favorite actors, including Bibi Andersson (in a dual role as a hitchhiker and as Isak’s first love), Gunnel Lindblom, Gunnar Bjornstrand, and Max von Sydow in a cameo role. Reviews of the film were enthusiastic at the time, and critics continued to exalt Bergman’s achievement in later years. Variety raved, “It’s a personal and profound work.” Tom Dawson of the BBC said, “This is one of the truly outstanding works of post-war European cinema.” And Pauline Kael commented, “Few movies give us such memorable, emotion-charged images.”

This film also had a strong influence on other directors. In a 1963 interview with Cinema magazine, Stanley Kubrick listed Wild Strawberries as his second favorite film of all time. Woody Allen paid homage in several of his movies, including Stardust Memories and Crimes and Misdemeanors.

WILD STRAWBERRIES screens at 7 PM on Wednesday, May 15 at Laemmle theaters in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

French Farce THE MAD ADVENTURES OF RABBI JACOB April 17th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present screenings of the raucous comedy, THE MAD ADVENTURES OF RABBI JACOB, on the 45th anniversary of its US release as part of the popular monthly Abroad program. The French farce, directed by Gerard Oury, will screen April 17 at three Laemmle venues: Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse.

This madcap movie draws upon time-honored comedy tropes of frantic disguises and mistaken identities. The story, written by Oury, Daniele Thomsom, Josy Eisenberg, and Roberto de Leonardis, involves the return of beloved Rabbi Jacob (Marcel Dalio) from the United States after thirty years to his hometown in France. He is waylaid at the Paris airport by a bigoted French businessman, Victor Pivert (Louis de Funes) and an Arab rebel leader fleeing the police and assassins. Pivert and the Arab then impersonate Rabbi Jacob and his companion in their escape. Other characters, including Pivert’s daughter (Miou-Miou), jealous wife , and Jewish driver, join the pursuit in a hodgepodge of plot twists and slapstick shenanigans culminating in a chaotic, fun climax.

The movie is a showcase for Louis de Funes, a popular French comic actor of the era, who topped French moviegoing polls several times in the 60s and 70s. With his high-energy acting style and wide range of facial expressions and tics, he was known in Europe as “the man with forty faces per minute,” but remains relatively unknown to American audiences. Filmmaker Gerard Oury, who had a long career in France, co-wrote a film there in 1958 that Barbra Streisand later adapted as the basis for her 1996 movie, The Mirror Has Two Faces.

Leonard Maltin found THE MAD ADVENTURES OF RABBI JACOB to be “Often quite funny, with echoes of silent-screen humor.” The National Board of Review proclaimed it, “The funniest picture of the year,” with kudos to Louis de Funes as “in a class with Woody Allen. The best slapstick in years.” The Hollywood Foreign Press endorsed the acclaim with a Golden Globe nomination that year for Best Foreign Film.

THE MAD ADVENTURES OF RABBI JACOB screens on Wednesday, April 17 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Francois Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS 60th Anniversary Screenings March 20th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad program. In keeping with the start of spring, we commemorate Francois Truffaut’s evergreen feature film debut, THE 400 BLOWS, which earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Original Screenplay of 1959.

Truffaut’s autobiographical picture, drawn from events in his own childhood, helped to introduce American audiences to the French New Wave. Truffaut had started as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema along with fellow aspiring directors Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. When he unveiled his first feature, he dedicated it to pioneering French critic Andre Bazin.

Critics around the world hailed the arrival of a major new talent. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther declared, “Not since the 1952 arrival of Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games…have we had from France a cinema that so brilliantly and strikingly reveals the explosion of a fresh creative talent in the directorial field.” Indeed Truffaut won the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959.

Jean-Pierre Leaud starred as the director’s alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and the character re-appeared in four more films over the course of Truffaut’s career. Albert Remy and Claire Maurier co-star. Another of Truffaut’s frequent collaborators, Henri Decae, provided the lustrous black-and-white cinematography.

The screenplay by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy follows the exploits of Antoine as he battles with his parents, teachers, police, and administrators of the reformatory where he is sent. The director employed an arsenal of fresh cinematic techniques to capture the hero’s irreverent spirit and journey toward liberation. The final freeze frame became one of the most imitated shots in cinema history.

Almost all critics endorsed the film. As Roger Ebert wrote, “The 400 Blows, with all its simplicity and feeling, is in a class by itself.” Directors around the world, including Akira Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel, and Jean Cocteau, also praised Truffaut’s audacious vision. Writing many years later, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane said, “time has fortified this sharp, slender account of a misbegotten boyhood into one of the unassailable monuments of French cinema.”

THE 400 BLOWS (1959) screens Wednesday, March 20 at 7PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

Sixtieth Anniversary Screenings of Marcel Camus’ Palme d’Or Winning BLACK ORPHEUS

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In celebration of Black History Month, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present 60th anniversary screenings of BLACK ORPHEUS on February 20. This retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story in Greek mythology is set in twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. Writer-director Marcel Camus’ film hit the double jackpot for foreign-language films, winning both the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Academy Award as the year’s best foreign film.

Based on the play “Orfeu da Conceicao” by Vinicius de Moraes with a screenplay by Camus and Jacques Viot, BLACK ORPHEUS takes place in the working class slums (favela) of Rio. Orfeu (Bruno Mello), a streetcar driver by day and musician at night, falls in love with Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn), new to the city, and courts her through the frantic festival. However, a skeleton-costumed character representing Death also pursues her, and the couple’s attempt to flee results in romantic tragedy. The two unknown leads—Mello, a Brazilian soccer player, and Dawn, an American dancer— help convey a sense of naturalism, but the film is most noteworthy for its irresistible score, composed by Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim, which propels the drama with a captivating samba beat. The success of the film and recordings of its main themes helped ignite the bossa nova phenomenon of the 1960s.

The film was an enormous art-house hit in its day. Frenchman Camus and the two leads remain best known for this movie, as noted by the Village Voice, “the greatest one-hit wonder import we’ve ever seen.” Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post summed up its appeal: “a riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color. Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus’s doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus’s love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic.”

No need to take a trip to Rio—come to Carnival via BLACK ORPHEUS at Laemmle’s Playhouse, Royal, and Town Center on Wednesday, February 20 at 7:00 PM. Click here for tickets.

Looking Forward to Looking Back: Repertory Cinema at Laemmle Theatres with Bergman, Truffaut and more.

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We are beginning the fifth year of our Anniversary Classics and Anniversary Classics Abroad series — our first three films back in 2015 were Exodus, Getting Straight and Where’s Poppa? — and got 2019 off to a strong start this week with Fellini’s Amarcord. Here’s what we have planning for the coming months:

We’ll screen Black Orpheus on February 20 at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Winner of both the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Canne, Marcel Camus’ film brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was an international cultural event, and it kicked off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning.

On February 26 at the Playhouse only we’ll screen The Wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah’s controversial revisionist Western takes place in Texas and Mexico in 1913. The titular outlaws, headed by ethical-in-his-fashion Pike (William Holden), stages violent bank robberies in their old, time-honored tradition. After a particularly brutal holdup in the town of San Rafael, the gang — or what’s left of it — heads for the hills of Mexico, pursued by a posse led by Thornton (Robert Ryan). Our Pasadena neighbor Vroman’s Bookstore will present a Q&A and book signing with THE WILD BUNCH: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film author W.K. Stratton in conversation with Stephen Farber after the screening.

François Truffaut’s 1959 The 400 Blows is the kind of film we at Laemmle Theatres cut our teeth on, so to speak, back in a very different time for film exhibition. With Jean-Pierre Léaud playing his stand-in for the film time, Truffaut brilliantly re-creates the trials of his own difficult childhood in the film that marked his emergence as one of Europe’s most brilliant auteurs and signaled the beginning of the French New Wave. We’re bringing it back for one night, March 20, at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.

This year is the 45th anniversary of the U.S. release of the French slapstick masterpiece The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob. In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assassins from Slimane’s country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who’s returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. We’ll show it April 17 at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.

On May 15 we’ll screen Wild Strawberries at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Ingmar Bergman’s elegiac story of elderly Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) facing his past is the film that catapulted the Swedish auteur to the forefront of world cinema. Released in 1957, this is the 60th anniversary of its release in the States.

On June 19 we’ll enjoy some laughs to celebrate the 40th anniversary of La Cage Aux Folles, the French comedy about a gay couple living in St. Tropez who have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces his impending marriage. Screening at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.

For our regular Anniversary Classics series we typically stick to domestic fare. To mark Valentine’s Day we’re planning a Twofer Tuesday double feature at the NoHo, Playhouse and Royal of two 1959 romantic comedy classics: Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s Pillow Talk and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. With these two films, no chance of ending up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop!