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Repertory Central – Upcoming Classics include THE CONVERSATION, ARMY OF SHADOWS, PARIS, TEXAS and BASQUIAT.

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Wasn’t it fabulous getting to see Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI on the big screen?  Well, there’s more where that came from. Get fired up for Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, Jean-Pierre Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS, Wim Wenders’s PARIS, TEXAS, and Julian Schnabel’s BASQUIAT in the coming weeks, plus our one-night screening of LEGENDS OF THE FALL (with director Ed Zwick in person for a Q&A).  We’re planning even more for the fall. Add to these all the award-season films coming to Laemmle screens, that is a lot of rewarding moviegoing!
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THE CONVERSATION follows lonely wiretapping expert and devout Catholic Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who is hired to record a seemingly innocuous conversation in San Francisco’s Union Square between two lovers (Frederick Forsythe and Cindy Williams). Upon re-hearing the tapes, however, Caul believes he may put the couple in danger if he turns the material over to his client (Robert Duvall). But what one hears can ultimately turn out to be quite different from what was actually recorded. Opens this Friday at the Laemmle Royal, Town Center, and Glendale.
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ARMY OF SHADOWS opens August 16 at the Royal and Town Center: A gorgeous restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 epic of the French Resistance during World War II, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. Based on the novel by Joseph Kessel (perhaps best known for Belle de Jour), the film draws on the wartime experiences of Kessel and Melville himself, both active members of the Resistance and Free French Forces. This is the first time the film has been released in the U.S.
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PARIS, TEXAS opens August 30 at the Royal. New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. PARIS, TEXAS follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski).
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BASQUIAT, opening September 13 at the Laemmle NoHo, depicts the meteoric rise of the brilliant artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright in one of his first roles. Starting out as a street artist, living in Thompkins Square Park in a cardboard box, Jean-Michel is “discovered” by Andy Warhol’s art world and becomes a star. But success has a high price, and Basquiat pays with friendship, love, and, eventually, his life.

LEGENDS OF THE FALL 30th Anniversary Screening Director Ed Zwick in person August 15.

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LEGENDS OF THE FALL (1994)
30th Anniversary Screening
Director Ed Zwick in person, signing his book Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions
Thursday, August 15, at 7 PM, Royal Theatre

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of Ed Zwick’s ‘Legends of the Fall,’ his hit Western epic starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Henry Thomas, and Julia Ormond. The screening is presented in conjunction with the recent publication of Zwick’s best-selling memoir, ‘Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood.’ Zwick will participate in a post-screening Q&A along with the film’s award-winning editor Steven Rosenblum (Oscar-nominated for his work on Zwick’s ‘Glory’ and ‘Blood Diamond’), and he will be selling and signing copies of his book.

‘Legends of the Fall‘ was based on a highly praised novella by Jim Harrison and centers on a family in Montana during the early years of the 20th century. Susan Shilliday and William Wittliff wrote the screenplay. Hopkins plays the patriarch of the family, and his three sons are played by Pitt, Quinn, and Thomas. The film deals with the mistreatment of indigenous people during that period in history and also includes vivid scenes set during World War I, when all three brothers enlist to fight Germany. After the war, they become entangled with Irish bootleggers during the Prohibition era. Ormond is the Eastern woman loved by all three brothers. The cast also includes Karina Lombard, Tantoo Cardinal, and Gordon Tootoosis.

The film won an Oscar for John Toll’s stunning cinematography and also received nominations for art direction and sound. The following year, Toll won a second Oscar for shooting Mel Gibson’s ‘Braveheart.’ Steven Rosenblum, who edited many of Zwick’s movies, also worked on ‘Braveheart.’ The score for ‘Legends‘ was composed by another of Zwick’s frequent collaborators, James Horner (an Oscar winner for ‘Titanic’).

Made on a budget of $30 million, the film earned $160 million, making it a major hit and one of the most popular films during the 1994-1995 Oscar season. Although reviews were mixed, many critics praised the film. Variety wrote, “Zwick imbues the story with an easy, poetic quality…the actors, working as an ensemble, are near perfect in their service of the material.” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers singled out Brad Pitt, declaring that Pitt “proves himself a bona fide movie star, stealing every scene he’s in.” The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Wilmington wrote, “the landscapes, photographed by John Toll, majestically backdrop all the personal and cultural furies.” Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer concurred: “Check your cynicism at the door, and just revel in its enormity.”

Zwick’s book chronicles his career from his early days writing for television and includes piercingly candid reminiscences of his landmark shows ‘thirtysomething’ and ‘My So-Called Life,’ along with his features ‘About Last Night,’ ‘Glory,’ ‘Courage Under Fire,’ ‘The Last Samurai,’ ‘Blood Diamond,’ ‘Defiance,’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (for which he won an Oscar for Best Picture). The book recounts his conflicts with Matthew Broderick, Julia Roberts, and Pitt, as well as studio executives like the infamous Harvey Weinstein. But Zwick also includes praise for his closest collaborators and many incisive reflections on the essential tenets of moviemaking.

THE TERMINATOR 40th Anniversary Screening with Producer Gale Anne Hurd Thursday at the Laemmle NoHo!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 40th anniversary screening of one of the most popular sci-fi films of all time, THE TERMINATOR, the movie that spawned one of the screen’s most profitable film franchises. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his most iconic role, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. We’re screening it as part of Art House Theater Day on Thursday, July 25 at 7 PM at the NoHo and will host producer Gale Anne Hurd for a Q&A. You might ask, is this really an indie film? Spoiler alert…it is!

“Knowing that many people have never seen the film or missed out on seeing it on the silver screen, I couldn’t be more thrilled to celebrate THE TERMINATOR‘s 40th anniversary with its return to cinemas on Art House Theater Day,” said producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead, Armageddon). “People may wonder if THE TERMINATOR is truly an indie film. As the film’s producer, I can assure you it is. Jim Cameron and I made the film for $6.4 million, which included a completion bond and a 10% contingency. We had a variety of co-financiers, pre-sold rights and our distribution was through Orion Pictures rather than a major studio – the very definition of an indie film, both then and now. We hope you’ll enjoy the nostalgic experience of seeing it this summer!”

Writer-director Cameron and producer Hurd had both apprenticed at Roger Corman’s low-budget factory, New World Pictures, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when they joined forces to create THE TERMINATOR. Their original screenplay (with co-writer William Wisher, inspired by works of Harlan Ellison) chronicles the battle for the survival of the human race against Skynet, a synthetic intelligent machine network of the future. In 2029, an automaton killer, T-800 (Schwarzenegger) is dispatched through time to assassinate an unsuspecting waitress, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in 1984, who turns out to be the future mother of the twenty-first–century human resistance leader, John Connor. To protect her, Connor sends guerrilla fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). The ensuing chase, with the seemingly unstoppable Schwarzenegger, a laconic, leather-clad, and lumbering destruction machine pursuing Connor and Reese through the streets of Los Angeles, is a model of low-budget efficiency and resourcefulness.

Contemporary critics embraced the sci-fi suspense thriller, with Kirk Ellis of the Hollywood Reporter calling it “a genuine steel metal trap of a movie.” Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader characterized its “almost graceful violence…(has) the air of a demented ballet,” and Janet Maslin in The New York Times cited it as a “B-movie with flair.” The film was a genuine sleeper, and its success led to several sequels, a television series and video games. The latest incarnation of the series, Terminator: Dark Fate, with Cameron returning to a creative role, is set to open theatrically later this year. The film that started it all, THE TERMINATOR, was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2008.

Cameron, of course, became one of the most sought-after filmmakers in Hollywood, staying in the sci-fi world for several landmark films (Aliens, The Abyss, Avatar) and winning Oscars for a venture into the past, Titanic, the biggest box-office hit of the twentieth century. Schwarzenegger went on to movie superstardom and political success. His terse line reading in the film, “I’ll be back,” is ranked 37th of the American Film Institute’s all-time great movie quotes, and his character Terminator is ranked as the 22nd greatest movie villain. Our guest, Gale Anne Hurd emerged as one of the most successful female producers of the era, with Aliens, Alien Nation, and Armageddon among her hits.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964) 60th Anniversary Screenings.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classic Series present this month’s screening in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Michelangelo Antonioni’s vibrant masterpiece RED DESERT, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and collected rave reviews around the world on its release over the next several months. We will show the film at five of our theaters at 7 PM on Wednesday, July 31.

Antonioni had earned critical acclaim for the three movies in his “alienation trilogy”—’L’Avventura,’ ‘La Notte,’ and ‘Eclipse’ — made during the early 1960s. RED DESERT explored some of the same themes but introduced a new element to the director’s work. The three earlier movies were all shot in black-and-white, but with RED DESERT Antonioni decided to experiment with color cinematography for the first time, and critics heralded his achievement. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann declared, “With Michelangelo Antonioni’s RED DESERT, the art of the film advances…quite simply, it is the best use of color I have ever seen in a film, exquisite in itself.” Kauffmann added, “there is a buried history of modern painting in it, from the Impressionists through Mondrian to Hopper and Wyeth.”

Monica Vitti, who had starred in all three of Antonioni’s earlier movies, has the leading role of Giuliana, the wife of an industrialist in Ravenna. She is emotionally troubled and eventually begins an affair with an employee at her husband’s factory. Carlo Chionetti plays the husband, and Richard Harris — fresh from his Oscar-nominated performance in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘This Sporting Life’ — plays her lover. Antonioni wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Tonino Guerra.

In addition to its psychological themes, the film offers prescient critique of industrial pollution, with the color cinematography contributing to this political commentary. A key collaborator was director of photography Carlo Di Palma, who worked closely with Antonioni to paint the landscapes when necessary to create the desired mood of malaise. Antonioni and Di Palma collaborated again on the director’s most successful movie, the English-language ‘Blowup,’ an Oscar nominee in 1966. Other directors around the world — including Ettore Scola, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Sidney Lumet — worked with Di Palma. The cinematographer later established a fruitful collaboration with Woody Allen on such films as ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ ‘Radio Days,’ and ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’

Time magazine called RED DESERT “at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by Italy’s masterful Michelangelo Antonioni.” More recently, Geoff Andrew of Time Out hailed “perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni’s entire career.” Robbie Collin of London’s Daily Telegraph declared, “Almost half a century on, RED DESERT remains a film of rare beauty and brooding erotic intensity.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called the film Antonioni’s “most mysterious and awe-inspiring work.”

Screening one night only at the Royal in West Los Angeles, the Town Center in Encino, and Laemmle Theatres in Glendale, Claremont, and Newhall.

40th Anniversary Screening of SUBURBIA with Writer-Director Penelope Spheeris in Person Celebrating Art House Theater Day.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 40th anniversary of SUBURBIA (1984), the first narrative feature film of acclaimed writer-director Penelope Spheeris. Co-produced by Roger Corman, with Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in an ensemble cast of mostly non-actors, the film plays one night only: Wednesday, July 24 at 7:30 pm at the Laemmle NoHo as a preview of Art House Theater Day (AHTD, officially July 25). AHTD is a celebration of the contributions that art house theaters and independent films make to the cultural landscape.

SUBURBIA was a follow up to Spheeris’ debut film, the landmark documentary ‘The Decline of Western Civilization’ (1981), which focused on the emerging punk rock/hardcore scene in Southern California in the early 1980’s. While the documentary (and its two sequels) dealt with the bands, SUBURBIA looks at their audiences, displaced and disaffected children of the Baby Boomer generation who rejected the consumerism and conservatism of their parents. The movie follows a group of kids (ranging from ages 6 to 18) who squat in a condemned tract-housing development, forming a family unit of punks who call themselves The TRs (the rejected). Although the TRs commit petty crimes to survive, the ostensible villains of the movie are a pair of gun-toting working men who view them as responsible for every crime imaginable and eventually hunt them down.

Spheeris approached Roger Corman to complete financing for the film. He viewed it as a teen exploitation movie that fit into his wheelhouse of low-budget genre pictures, a formula that worked very well for him for decades. Spheeris, however, saw it as a social statement, and chose to use mostly non-actors along with a few musicians (e.g., Flea) for authenticity, pointing out, “It’s easier to teach punks to be actors than actors to be punks.” Flea now cites the film as “the punk rock bible.”

Perceptive critics of the day supported Spheeris’ vision. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it “a clear-eyed compassionate melodrama…far better than Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Outsiders’ and ‘Rumblefish.’” This view was echoed by Time Out, noting the movie “combines intelligent social comment with the conventions of the teen-in-revolt exploiter to gripping effect. A justifiably angry film, fast and full of violent action, though there’s plenty of humour too; and the lack of originality is amply compensated for by its manifest sincerity.” And Clayton Dillard in Slant said, “In the end, SUBURBIA‘s greatest strength lies in its assertion of youth as a political state of mind.”

Penelope Spheeris is a multitalented film director (SUBURBIA, ‘The Boys Next Door,’ ‘Wayne’s World,’ ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’) producer (‘Real Life’), documentarian (‘The Decline of Western Civilization’ trilogy, ‘We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n Roll’), actress, screenwriter, and videographer. She has enjoyed success in both the independent film and Hollywood studio arenas, collecting numerous honors and currently receiving well-earned lifetime achievement awards. She joins us to introduce SUBURBIA and discuss her five-decade career making cinematic art.

A SUMMER PLACE 65th Anniversary Screening July 11.

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A SUMMER PLACE 65th Anniversary Screening July 11 with special introduction by film music historian Steven C. Smith celebrating the career of composer Max Steiner.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 65th anniversary of the teen angst romance classic A SUMMER PLACE (1959) starring Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue on Thursday, July 11 at 7 PM at the historic Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. Written and directed by Delmer Daves, the lavish melodrama is now best remembered for introducing the phenomenally successful “Theme from A Summer Place,” the best-selling instrumental in pop music history.

Adapted from a popular novel by Sloan Wilson (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit), the film deals with two families intertwined through their teenage children while on summer holiday at a coastal resort in Maine. Bert and Sylvia Hunter (Arthur Kennedy and Dorothy McGuire) are the proprietors of a faded resort and the parents of a teenage son Johnny (Troy Donahue) who play host to a vacationing wealthy businessman, Ken Jorgensen (Richard Egan), his wife Helen (Constance Ford), and their daughter Molly (Sandra Dee). Johnny and Molly embark on a summer romance while Ken and Sylvia rekindle an illicit affair, reuniting twenty years after Ken worked at the resort. The rest of the film deals with the hot button topics (this was the 1950s after all) of infidelity, scandal, divorce, and teenage pregnancy, which raised the hackles of the watch-guard censors.

Warner Bros. hoped to emulate the box office smash Peyton Place, which had depicted similar subject matter just two years earlier, even casting one of its Oscar-nominated supporting actors (Arthur Kennedy). Lushly mounted, with Technicolor cinematography by veteran Harry Stradling, Sr. and a sumptuously romantic score by Max Steiner, the film also echoes the extravagant 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk. Sandra Dee, who had become a teen favorite in Gidget and Sirk’s Imitation of Life that same year, was elevated to a four-year run as a top ten box office star, while Troy Donahue, who had been in small parts in a few previous films (including Imitation of Life) had a star breakthrough.

The box office success of A SUMMER PLACE overrode contemporary critics’ concerns. Howard Thomson in The New York Times called it a “raucously sensual drama…and one of the most garishly sex-scented movies in years.” Variety also pointed out its obvious appeal, saying “it makes the most of Hollywood’s newly discovered freedom to display the voluminous vocabulary of sex,” while the Harvard Lampoon kiddingly named it one of the ten worst movies of the year. The dubious notices and controversial subject matter, combined with the repressive morality of the era, made the film ripe for “camp” evaluation. Seemingly innocent dialogue like Molly’s inquiry “Johnny, have you been…bad…with girls?” and Constance Ford’s overwrought performance as Molly’s shrewish mother unknowingly contributed to that camp reputation, with one wag citing Ford’s part as the “Wicked Witch of the West.”

Daves had been an accomplished director in different genres since the 1940s (Pride of the Marines, Dark Passage, Broken Arrow, 3:10 to Yuma, An Affair to Remember), but after the commercial success of A Summer Place he finished his career mostly helming similar but inferior melodramas like Parrish, Susan Slade, and Youngblood Hawke in the 1960s. Despite critical reservations, A SUMMER PLACE remains a consummate example of top-notch craftsmanship at the end of the studio era. It has also achieved extended notoriety by its inclusion in a memorable scene in Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982) and the use of its hit instrumental theme in a number of films over the past 60 years.

Max Steiner was one of the original founders of the Hollywood Sound in motion picture scoring, and “did more than any other composer to introduce and establish the language of film music.” Over the course of a four-decade film career he provided memorable scores to such classics as King Kong, Gone with the Wind, Now, Voyager, Casablanca, The Big Sleep, White Heat, and The Searchers, among many others, while winning three Academy Awards. “Theme from A Summer Place” was recorded by Percy Faith and had a then record-breaking nine week run at the top of the pop charts, winning the Grammy as Record of the Year, while Steiner collected a nod for Song of the Year and a bounty of royalties.

Our guest commentator Steven C. Smith is a four-time Emmy-nominated journalist and producer of more than 200 documentaries about music and cinema. He is the author of the definitive biography, “Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer,” which will be available for sale and signing.

A SUMMER PLACE and the celebration of Max Steiner shows one night only: Thursday, July 11 at 7:00 PM at the historic Royal Theatre, enjoying its centennial year as a continuously operating movie theatre since opening in 1924. Coming attractions for the Anniversary Classics Series include the 40th anniversary of Suburbia on July 24 at the NoHo with guest writer-director Penelope Spheeris as a preview of Art House Day.

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT 60th Anniversary Screening June 25 with pop music expert Domenic Priore.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 60th anniversary of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964). Starring the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, we’ll screen this rock ‘n’ roll movie classic on Tuesday, June 25, 7:30 PM at the historic Royal theatre in West Los Angeles. Directed by Richard Lester from an Oscar-nominated original screenplay by Alun Owen, the milestone film was also aptly nominated for musical scoring. (George Martin lost to Andre Previn for My Fair Lady.)

After the Beatles exploded onto the global stage by early 1964, the British pop group (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr) conquered the American pop music charts with record-breaking domination, and their appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” on American television in February that year cemented their phenomenal popularity. A movie starring the quartet was then put into production in England, planned for a summer release. The finished film, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, portrays 36 hours in the life of the group as they prepare for a televised variety show concert. Director Richard Lester utilizes several techniques in a semi-documentary style, reinforced by Gilbert Taylor’s black-and-white cinematography, all on dazzling display in the high energy musical comedy.

Lester’s approach was fully embraced by film critic Andrew Sarris, who wrote in the Village Voice, “A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (is)… the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals, the brilliant crystallization of such diverse cultural particles as pop music, rock ‘n’ roll, cinema-verite, the nouvelle vague, free cinema, and studied spontaneity.” Roger Ebert was equally impressed, citing it as “one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies.” Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, one of the powerful tastemakers of the era, also raved, calling it “a whale of a comedy…a wonderfully lively and altogether good-natured spoof of the juvenile madness called Beatlemania.” Comparing the Beatles’ clowning to the Marx Brothers, Crowther enthusiastically endorsed the movie as “rollicking, madcap fun.”

The film was highly influential, spawning numerous imitators including the pop group the Monkees‘ television series later in the decade, and the advent of music videos in the 1980s. Lester went onto a long career, helming the second Beatles’ film Help, The Knack, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Petulia, and The Three (and Four) Musketeers among others. The Beatles, of course, became the most influential and innovative pop musicians of the twentieth century, achieving that lofty status in a single decade, the 1960s, before going their separate ways. A HARD DAY’S NIGHT showcases their dynamic music early in their careers, and, as pointed out by TV Guide, “ the strength of their songcraft is stirring.”

Our guest Domenic Priore is an author, pop music historian, and pop culture commentator. He has contributed to several books and is the co-author of “Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood.”

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT plays one night only Tuesday, June 25, 7:30 PM at the historic Royal Theatre, celebrating its centennial year, operating continuously as a movie theatre since opening in 1924. Our next attractions include The Secret Garden with guest Agnieszka Holland on June 29, and A Summer Place with film music historian Steven C. Smith on July 11.

GREEN BORDER + THE SECRET GARDEN – get ready for a weekend with Agnieszka Holland.

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Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland will be in town later this month for her latest film, the powerful Green Border. She’ll participate in Q&As after the evening screenings at the Royal on Friday and Saturday, June 28 and 29 and for good measure join us for a Q&A after the June 29 screening of her 1993 family film The Secret Garden, which we’re screening as part of our Anniversary Classics series. One moviegoer might want to ask her how she manages such range, because the movies are quite different.

Thirty years after her Oscar-nominated film Europa Europa, Holland’s poignant and essential Green Border is set in the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so-called “green border” between Belarus and Poland. Here refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Finding themselves pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life; Jan, a young border guard; and a Syrian family intertwine.

“A heart-in-mouth thriller… Agnieszka Holland‘s bruisingly powerful new refugee drama ultimately comes from a place of optimism.” – Jessica Kiang, Variety

“A righteous, infuriating and woefully compelling watch.” – Laura Bobiak, Observer

“Profoundly moving, flawlessly executed… if cinema is an empathy machine, to paraphrase the late Roger Ebert, then Agnieszka Holland‘s new film is one precision-tooled specimen.” – Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

“A humanitarian masterpiece.” – Damon Wise, Deadline

The Secret Garden follows a young British girl born and reared in India who is returned to her uncle’s English castle after becoming an orphan. She begins exploring the estate and discovers a garden that has been locked and forgotten. Aided by one of the servants’ boys, she begins restoring the garden, and eventually discovers some other secrets of the manor. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin began her review of The Secret Garden this way: “A fawn, a bunny, a lamb: these are among the last things anyone might expect to see in a film directed by Agnieszka Holland, whose other work (including Europa, Europa and Olivier, Olivier) had not a trace of sugarplums in its makeup. Yet Ms. Holland’s film of The Secret Garden is elegantly expressive, a discreet and lovely rendering of the children’s classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett. That book is a paean to the restorative powers of the natural world, and Ms. Holland succeeds in conveying much of its delicate beauty.”