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45th Anniversary Screenings of Louis Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART on Wednesday, August 16th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, Louis Malle’s irreverent and often uproarious comedy, MURMUR OF THE HEART, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay of 1972.

During the course of his career, Malle proved himself one of the most astonishingly versatile of all international directors. His movies ran the gamut from the influential French noir, Elevator to the Gallows to the sexually daring drama, The Lovers, which was charged with obscenity and eventually cleared by the United States Supreme Court; the dark screwball comedy, Zazie dans le Metro; two piercing World War II dramas, Lacombe Lucien and Au Revoir Les Enfants; and the documentary Calcutta.

In America, Malle made the controversial Pretty Baby, which introduced Brooke Shields; the scintillating two-character talkathon, My Dinner with Andre; and the bittersweet comedy classic, Atlantic City, which earned five Oscar nominations, including one for best picture and another for Malle as best director.

Murmur of the Heart was an autobiographical memoir from Malle, a coming-of-age story told with candor and exuberant wit. Set in 1954, the year that France lost control of its colonies in Indochina, the film focuses on a chaotic bourgeois family headed by a wild, taboo-breaking mother, played to perfection by Italian actress Lea Massari.

The cast also includes Benoit Ferreux as her 14-year-old son, Daniel Gelin as her gynecologist husband, and Michel Lonsdale as a somewhat hypocritical priest.

Pauline Kael called the film an “exhilarating high comedy about French bourgeois life,” and she added, “Massari is superb as Clara, the carelessly sensual mother.”

Leonard Maltin praised the picture as a “fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale” that builds to “a thoroughly delightful resolution.”

MURMUR OF THE HEART screens at 7pm on August 16th at the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse in Pasadena. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

25th Anniversary Screenings of INDOCHINE on Wednesday, July 19th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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For this month’s screening in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 25th anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning French film, INDOCHINE.

This sweeping epic about France’s troubled history in Southeast Asia was named best foreign language film of 1992, and Catherine Deneuve received an Oscar nomination (her only one) for her portrayal of a wealthy landowner who adopts a Vietnamese orphan.

TIME Magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “INDOCHINE sprawls and enthralls. It has the breadth and intelligence of the David Lean epics,” and he added, “In Catherine Deneuve, INDOCHINE has a star of epic glamour and gravity.”

The film spans 30 years from 1930 through the war of independence in the 1950s. Director Regis Wargnier brought impressive visual flair to the evocation of this society in transition.

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film “awesomely gorgeous, both in its landscapes and in its period-perfect settings and costumes.”

Wargnier filmed on location in Vietnam and Malaysia. The cast includes Vincent Perez, Jean Yanne, Dominique Blanc, and newcomer Linh Dan Pham.

INDOCHINE screens at 7pm on July 19th at the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse in Pasadena. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

This screening is the latest installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented the third Wednesday of each month. Louis Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART is coming up on August 16th.

55th Anniversary Screenings of DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE May 17th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and Anniversary Classics Abroad present a 55th anniversary screening of Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style on Wednesday, May 17 at 7:00PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse 7. Click here for tickets.

The acclaimed satiric comedy and Oscar winner (Best Original Screenplay) stars Marcello Mastroianni as an impoverished, bored Sicilian aristocrat who hatches an elaborate scheme to murder his wife after inveigling her into an adulterous affair.

According to Italian custom, he would be justified in killing her, by defending his “honor,” (divorce being forbidden in Italy). Conveniently he would be then free to marry his young, beautiful cousin, who seems to return his affections, right up to the film’s final, wicked shot.

Director Germi, who co-wrote the slyly clever script with Ennio De Concini and Alfredo Gianetti, had a background in neorealist Italian dramas, and that would serve him well in his sendup of the Catholic country’s cultural habits and social mores.

Mastroianni’s voiceover narration offers wry commentary on those traditions, effectively skewered by Germi. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called it “a dandy, satiric farce” and Time lauded Germi for “something wildly, wickedly, wonderfully funny. He has applied a cunning hotfoot to the world’s biggest boot.”

And director Martin Scorsese, who is of Sicilian ancestry, said, “Every detail in Divorce Italian Style is so truthful and right that all Germi had to do was to heighten everything a bit to make it funny.”

The film was a box office smash, breaking out of the art houses into general release, and garnered three Academy Award nominations: Best Director (Germi), Best Actor (Mastroianni) and Best Original Screenplay. It was the first time in Academy history that a foreign-language film was recognized in those top three categories, and the first-ever Oscar awarded to a foreign-language feature for writing. The film also helped elevate Mastroianni to international stardom, cementing his reputation as one of the era’s finest actors.

This screening is the latest installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented the third Wednesday of each month. Our subsequent attraction will be Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night on June 21.