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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.”

THE LOVERS (LES AMANTS) 65th Anniversary Screenings June 19.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present 65th anniversary screenings of Louis Malle’s ‘The Lovers‘ (‘Les Amants’) starring Jeanne Moreau, on June 19 for one night only at 7:00 PM in West Los Angeles, Encino, Glendale, Claremont, and Santa Clarita. When first released in the United States in 1959, the film became an art house sensation with frank sexuality and nudity that inflamed the prudish American censors. Those censors, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and the repressive Hollywood Production Code wielded considerable influence at that time, preventing American films from exploring adult themes in a provocative manner.

 

The film tells the story of a bored and neglected French upper-middle-class wife and mother (Moreau) who falls for a young archaeologist (Jean-Marc Bory), commencing an affair just hours after their initial meeting. Their extended seminude lovemaking scene was the incendiary element that sparked conservative outrage and crackdowns on theaters showing the film. In one notorious case that was later resolved by the Supreme Court, a suburban Cleveland theater manager was arrested on obscenity charges. When other Ohio communities also banned the film, Variety reported, “It looked like Ohio, for a time, might declare war on France.”

Louis Malle made his feature directorial debut with the crime thriller ‘Elevator to the Gallows’ in 1958, also starring Moreau, so the sensual drama ‘The Lovers‘ as his second film “marked the stylistically conscious Malle apart from his tear-away Nouvelle Vague colleagues” according to Time Out. In ‘The Lovers,’ adapted by novelist Louise de Vilmorin from a 19th century short story, Malle presents a study of “bourgeois emptiness and sexual yearnings,” illuminated by the deft black-and-white cinematography of Henri Decae. Malle would go onto an esteemed career that included such notable films as ‘Murmur of the Heart,’ ‘Lacombe Lucien,’ ‘Atlantic City,’ and ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’ over the next three decades.

Although she had been acting in films for a decade, ‘The Lovers‘ established Moreau’s screen persona as a “commanding, willful, and sultry presence,” propelling her to international stardom. Her career highlights in the 1960s include memorable performances in ‘Jules and Jim,’ ‘La Notte,’ ‘Diary of a Chambermaid’ and ‘The Bride Wore Black.’ As a legacy, the commercial success of ‘The Lovers’ helped popularize foreign language films in the United States in that era, now regarded as the golden age of the art house.

“It is incredible to think that Malle was only 25 years old when he made ‘The Lovers,’ as it seems to hold the wisdom and erotic impulses of a much older man.” ~ Justine Smith, Vague Visages

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE 60th Anniversary Screening May 28 at the Royal.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the third in our popular series of James Bond revival screenings. Following the successful showings of the very first Bond picture, ‘Dr. No,’ and the popular third film, ‘Goldfinger,’ we present the second movie in the long-running series, ‘From Russia with Love.’ This screening takes place almost 60 years to the day when the movie enjoyed its wide U.S. release in May 1964.

‘Dr. No’ had been a big hit when it opened a year earlier, and producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman decided to bring Bond back. They chose Ian Fleming’s novel ‘From Russia with Love’ in part because President John F. Kennedy had listed that book as one of his ten all-time favorite books in an article that appeared in Life magazine. The producers doubled the budget from $1 million to $2 million for this second appearance of 007, which turned out to be a modest investment considering that the new movie ended up grossing close to $80 million, approximately $800 million in today’s dollars. Terence Young, who had helmed ‘Dr. No,’ returned to the director’s chair. The screenplay was penned by Richard Maibaum (a frequent Bond screenwriter) and Johanna Harwood.

Sean Connery returned for his second appearance as Bond, along with Bernard Lee as M and Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. There were some new additions to the cast—Mexican actor Pedro Armandariz, who died before the film was released, and Oscar nominees Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya as two of the villains. Daniela Banchi played the heroine, a Russian agent who defects to the West as a result of her romance with Bond.

A number of other elements that came to define the Bond series were introduced in ‘From Russia With Love.’ It was the first film to have a pre-title action sequence, and it was also the first picture to have a title song, written by Lionel Bart, the enormously successful composer of ‘Oliver!’ (British singer Matt Monro performed the song.) John Barry wrote his first Bond movie score, embellishing the theme music penned by Monty Norman for ‘Dr. No.’ In addition, this was the first picture in which Bond gets an arsenal of nifty weapons, though far more modest than what his team provided for him in later movies.

This picture also sent Bond to exotic locations—Istanbul and Venice, along with a perilous journey on the famed Orient Express. Other scenes were filmed at Pinewood Studios outside London. There were other novelties. Hollywood’s Production Code had been revised in 1961 to allow discreet treatment of homosexuality for the very first time, and the producers took advantage of this leniency to depict Lenya’s Rosa Klebb as a lesbian with fairly overt designs on the glamorous but naïve Banchi.

Robert Shaw (later to star in such enormous hits as ‘A Man For All Seasons,’ ‘The Sting,’ and ‘Jaws’), with his dyed-blond hair, also has a slightly androgynous quality as the fighter recruited by Klebb to assassinate Bond. The fight scene between Connery and Shaw aboard the Orient Express, regarded as one of the best fight scenes in cinema history, took three weeks to film.

Even though reviews were not crucial to the success of the Bond movies, ‘From Russia With Love’ had some of the best reviews of the entire franchise, currently listed at 97 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time, Penelope Gilliatt, writing for The Observer, noted, “The set-pieces are a stunning box of tricks.” Time magazine called the picture “fast, smart, shrewdly directed and capably performed.” Variety praised “a preposterous, skillful slab of hard-hitting, sexy hokum.”

The film continues to be fondly remembered. Sean Connery, later Bond actors Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig, as well as later Bond producer Barbara Broccoli have all named it as one of their favorite Bond movies.

Our guest Jon Burlingame is the nation’s leading writer on the the subject of music for film and television. He has taught film music history courses at the University of Southern California and has lectured on film and TV music over the past 30 years at locations around the world. Among his several books, he wrote the definitive history of 007 film music, THE MUSIC OF JAMES BOND, in addition to recently co-authoring MUSIC BY JOHN BARRY. He joins us to introduce ‘From Russia With Love‘ for a pre-screening Q & A at the historic Royal Theatre, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

¡Hasta la victoria siempre! THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES 20th Anniversary Screenings May 15.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the next entry in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, the biopic drama of the early years of Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries (2004). The Academy Award-winning film by director Walter Salles (Central Station) will play for one show only on Wednesday, May 15 at 7:00 pm at five Laemmle locations: Claremont, Encino, Glendale, Newhall, and West L.A. In addition to the Oscar for Best Song, “Al Otro Lado Del Rio,” the film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by playwright Jose Rivera, based on Guevara’s memoir.

  

The film recounts the 1952 road trip by 23-year-old medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his friend Alberto Granada (Roberto de la Serna) in a more than four-month, 8,700-mile journey across South America, initially by motorcycle. Originally intended as an adventure for fun and frolic, the two friends are exposed to indigenous peoples and cultural differences they had never experienced. These encounters plant the seeds of radicalization that would manifest as Guevara later emerged as a Marxist guerrilla leader and revolutionary, becoming a global countercultural symbol upon his murder at the age of thirty-nine.

The film is a notable combination of road movie travelogue and coming-of-age drama, beautifully captured by the lustrous cinematography of Eric Gautier as their odyssey traverses the South American continent. Critics of the day responded to this approach with due appreciation. Carla Meyer of the San Francisco Chronicle called it “a superb film about a physical and spiritual journey taken by a young Che Guevara, whose encounters with the unknown alter and affirm a life.” Peter Travers in Rolling Stone said, “in this wild ride of a movie that is part epic poem and part political provocation, it’s the man who holds the screen as a portent of history.”

“Quietly exhilarating, soulful and sincerely romantic.” ~ Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press

“It’s about the gradual awakening into awareness, the graduation from carefree youth to responsible adulthood.” ~ Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“An involving, lyrical, and visually beautiful cinematic bildungsroman.” ~ Glenn Kenny, Premiere Magazine

“Whether you want to see The Motorcycle Diaries as entirely a personal story or as social and political allegory, it captures a far different and far more vulnerable Ernesto Guevara than the one we think we know.” ~  Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

“What Bernal and this well-wrought movie convey so well is the charisma that would soon become a part of human history and, yes, T-shirts.” ~ Desson Thomson, Washington Post
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“You get so caught up in the beauty of the images, and lost in the weathered faces found along the way, you quite forget that you’re traveling with Che Guevara — which is, of course, exactly what the original experience would be.” ~ Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
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“Revisits Guevara’s 8,000-mile tour of South America — and the origins of his personal revolution — with humor, exquisite compassion and visual grace.” ~ Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle
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“It’s got poetry to it — the poetry of humanity.” ~ Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
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“Reaches back to the past to suggest that life is full of turning points, some of which we recognize and some we don’t, and that, in a dangerous world, youth and friendship are to be treasured because, like life, they can pass so quickly.” ~ Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
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“If I was moved despite my ingrained skepticism about Ché Guevara and Castro’s Cuba, you probably will be too.” ~ Andrew Sarris, Observer
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Coming attractions in the Anniversary Classics Series include Dead Poets Society (May 22), From Russia With Love (May 28), The Lovers, Red Desert, A Sunday in the Country, and the Three Colors trilogy: Red, White, and Blue, among others.

Anniversary screenings of Claire Denis’s debut, “a film of infinite delicacy,” CHOCOLAT.

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The next film in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series is Claire Denis’s intense 1988 debut feature, Chocolat, screening April 24 at our Claremont, Encino, Glendale, Newhall and West L.A. theaters. Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for her visually beautiful, multilayered, languorously absorbing movie. She explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds.

Roger Ebert was quick to identify Chocolat as a major accomplishment. His review is worth reading in full, but here’s its final paragraph:

“Chocolat is one of those rare films with an entirely mature, adult sensibility; it is made with the complexity and subtlety of a great short story, and it assumes an audience that can understand what a strong flow of sex can exist between two people who barely even touch each other. It is a deliberately beautiful film – many of the frames create breathtaking compositions – but it is not a travelogue and it is not a love story. It is about how racism can prevent two people from looking each other straight in the eyes, and how they punish each other for the pain that causes them. This is one of the best films of the year.”
Denis was nominated for several major prizes for Chocolat: the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the Best First Feature at the César Awards, and the Best Foreign Language Film prize by the New York Film Critics Circle. Some of her later career highlights include Beau Travail, High Life, White Material and 35 Shots of Rum.

Anniversary Classics in April ~ LA CÉRÉMONIE, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY & CHOCOLAT.

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Spring forward by looking back at some classic films next month. We’ve got two modern French classics, Claude Chabrol’s dark masterpiece La Cérémonie (April 2 at the Royal with actress Jacqueline Bisset in person for a Q&A, and Chocolat by Claire Denis (April 24 at multiple theaters). We’ll also be screening two quintessential films from the milestone movie year 1962: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Ride the High Country, to coincide with the publication of the paperback edition of Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies. The films will have separate screenings at two different Laemmle locations, with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? only at the NoHo 7 in North Hollywood on April 11, and Ride the High Country only at Newhall in Santa Clarita on April 16. Both films are notably among nine 1962 movies selected by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for “historical,  cultural, or aesthetic significance.”

Acclaimed French auteur Claude Chabrol was one of the masters of the French New Wave, along with Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer. His acclaimed films of the 1950s, Le Beau Serge and The Cousins, established Chabrol’s reputation as an astute observer of contemporary French society.

Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert in ‘La Cérémonie.’

He continued to demonstrate satirical gifts in his later films but added an interest in suspense and crime stories with such films as La Femme Infidele, This Man Must Die, Le Boucher, and Violette, starring Isabelle Huppert. His partnership with Huppert continued over several films, including a new adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Story of Women, a bold study of a woman executed for performing illegal abortions during World War II.

Chabrol re-teamed with Huppert, who joined rising actress Sandrine Bonnaire and veterans Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Cassel, for La Cérémonie, adapted from the novel by acclaimed mystery writer Ruth Rendell. Bonnaire plays a maid who is hired to work for a wealthy family living in an isolated mansion in Brittany. Eventually she strikes up a friendship with a savvy postal worker living in the nearby town, played by Huppert. The two young women devise a plan to take advantage of Bonnaire’s employers, played by Bisset and Cassel.

Huppert won the Cesar award, France’s equivalent of the Oscar, for her performance, and Bisset earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The Guardian named La Cérémonie as one of the 25 greatest crime films of all time. Craig Williams of the British Film Institute called it “perhaps Chabrol’s greatest achievement.” Both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics named it the Best Foreign Language Film of 1995.

The cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood, who were facing career fadeouts by 1962, the plight of aging actresses both then and now. Studio disinterest and the lack of appropriate roles forced them to seek unorthodox parts, and the screen adaptation of a Henry Farrell novel about the intense psychological rivalry between two reclusive sisters, former actresses holed up in Hollywood obscurity, seemed tailor-made. Producer-director Robert Aldrich hired Lukas Heller to write the screenplay, and the expert mix of black comedy and suspense, along with powerful acting by the cast, made the film a worldwide success. The movie scored a trifecta: a box-office bonanza, pop culture phenomenon, and show business sensation. It also revived the careers of both Davis and Crawford, restoring their places in the Hollywood pantheon, and spawned a genre of Grande Dame Guignol that gave veteran actresses roles for the next decade.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’

Part of the appeal of the film was the alleged off-screen rivalry between Davis and Crawford, and that rumored feud fostered high anticipation for both the press and fans of the day. “Feud,” a 2017 miniseries about the rivalry between Davis and Crawford while shooting the movie, sparked the most recent interest in the film. When the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Bette Davis among the Best Actress nominees, the feud was putatively exacerbated by the omission of Crawford. It won the Oscar for black-and-white costume design, and among its other nominations were Victor Buono (Best Supporting Actor) in his screen debut, and master cinematographer Ernest Haller (Oscar winner for Gone With the Wind), who had worked with both stars in their 1940s heyday. Among critical reception at the time, the Chicago Daily News saw “…the outlines of a modern Greek tragedy. Yet it is great fun too, because this is pure cinema drama set in a real house of horrors.”

Ride the High Country is now regarded as one of the all-time western classics and was only the second feature film by director Sam Peckinpah, who had honed his writing-directing skills on  television westerns. Peckinpah also had a hand in revising an original screenplay by writer N.B.  Stone, Jr. about two aging former lawmen tasked with a gold delivery from a mining camp at the turn of the twentieth century. Hollywood Golden Age actors Randolph Scott (in his final film) and Joel McCrea portray the venerable gunfighters, appropriate casting for the veteran actors who had extended their careers in post-war screen oaters. The film also features Mariette Hartley in her screen debut and character actors Warren Oates, L. Q. Jones, James Anderson, Edgar Buchanan, and R. G. Armstrong, with expert color cinematography by Lucien Ballard, another Golden Age veteran who became a frequent Peckinpah collaborator.

Randolph Scott & Joel McCrea in ‘Ride the High Country.’

Ride the High Country’s setting at the twilight of the Old West and its theme of men who have outlived their times but cling to their moral code (for the most part) would be revisited by Peckinpah later in his career, most notably at the end of the decade in The Wild Bunch and into the 1970s in The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Although The Wild Bunch would ensure his legacy, the underseen Ride the High Country is now considered a seminal film in the western canon and his first masterpiece.

MGM underwent a regime change after the film’s production wrapped and its new president thought so poorly of the film that it was relegated to the neighborhood theater circuits as the lower half of double bills, which effectively killed its U.S. box office. But critics worldwide rescued the film from obscurity and heralded the arrival of a major new talent in Peckinpah. Among the accolades were the Paris Council of Film Critics’ ranking as one of the best films of the year. Newsweek placed it atop their year-end ten best list, and upon its original release exclaimed, “In fact,  everything about this picture has the ring of truth, from the unglamorous settings to the flavorful dialogue and the natural acting, Ride the High Country is pure gold.”

Claire Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for Chocolat, her multilayered, languorously absorbing feature debut, which explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds. We’ll show Chocolat April 24 at the Claremont, Glendale, Newhall and Royal.

Mireille Perrier in ‘Chocolat.’