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THE NATURAL 35th Anniversary Screening and Q&A with Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel & Screenwriter Roger Towne.

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At the climax of baseball season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a screening of the film regarded as one of the greatest of all baseball movies, Barry Levinson’s THE NATURAL.

Adapted from the acclaimed 1952 novel by Bernard Malamud, the film earned four Academy Award nominations in 1984: Best Supporting Actress Glenn Close, Best Cinematography Caleb Deschanel, Best Musical Score Randy Newman and Best Art Direction.

The beautiful, impeccably designed recreation of an earlier era in American sports history also scored at the box office. Robert Redford plays the title character, and the all-star cast also includes Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Richard Farnsworth, and Joe Don Baker.

Malamud’s story, adapted for the screen by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry, tells the story of a young baseball prodigy named Roy Hobbs (Redford) who travels from his bucolic Midwestern home to try out for the Chicago Cubs. On his journey he is assaulted by a mysterious woman, and disappears for some 15 years. When he reappears and tries out for a New York team, the owners and manager are skeptical that a middle-aged man can ever succeed in the majors. But Roy’s skills as a slugger silence the skeptics and encourage the owners to give him a shot. His rise to the top is complicated by his romance with a rather shady woman (Basinger) and by the reappearance of his childhood sweetheart (Close), who has a surprise revelation that disorients Roy.

In addition to the rousing baseball scenes and the poignant personal story, the film captivates as a lush evocation of a more innocent American past. Cinematographer Deschanel, who had made his mark with his work on Carroll Ballard’s ‘The Black Stallion’ and Philip Kaufman’s ‘The Right Stuff,’ made a major contribution in bringing the era to life. Levinson also made an unconventional choice in selecting new composer Randy Newman to create the rousing symphonic score.

Although the filmmakers altered the dark ending of Malamud’s novel, they retained his piercing insights into some of the contradictions of the American character. The film earned mixed reviews at the time, but its reputation has grown. James Berardinelli of ReelViews called THE NATURAL “arguably the best baseball movie ever made,” and ESPN also called it one of the best sports movies of all time. On its original release Gene Siskel declared, “Redford scores in an uplifting celebration of the individual.”

Deschanel has earned six Oscar nominations over the course of his career. In addition to nominations for THE NATURAL and ‘The Right Stuff,’ he was cited for his work on Mel Gibson’s blockbuster, ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ and for ‘The Patriot,’ ‘Fly Away Home,’ and last year’s Oscar nominee for best foreign language film, ‘Never Look Away.’ This year Deschanel shot Disney’s smash-hit live-action version of ‘The Lion King.’

Our 35th anniversary presentation of THE NATURAL (1984) and Q&A with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and screenwriter Roger Towne screens Thursday, October 24, at 7PM at the Royal in West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

On the Passing of Robert Forster.

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Laemmle Theatres Owner-President Greg Laemmle on the passing of actor Robert Forster:

“From the moment I saw JACKIE BROWN, Robert Forster seemed like someone I wanted to meet. I admired how effortlessly his portrayal of bail bondsman Max Cherry commanded our attention. With a quiet, naturalistic performance, he managed to play off the other actors, allowing them to go a little further afield in creating their characters. Cherry was the quiet center of it all. Here was someone who was honest, decent, and comfortable in his skin and it felt like Forster was bringing those personal qualities to the man he was portraying on screen.

Robert Foster in JACKIE BROWN. Photo courtesy of Miramax/Photofest.

“It wasn’t till 2018 that I actually had the opportunity to meet Robert. My wife and I were at an Academy screening of WHAT THEY HAD. He was part of the post-screening Q&A and the reception that followed. I tend to be shy about introducing myself to people, but my wife is not quite as shy, and knowing how much I have admired his work, she made a point of introducing herself.

“The next thing I knew, Robert was making a beeline to my seat and expressed his thanks for all the films he had seen over the years at Laemmle Theatres. He remembered meeting my grandfather, Max Laemmle, at our Los Feliz Theater when he first came to Hollywood and went on to talk about many other films that had struck a chord with him over the years. Robert Forster never stopped working, but even more than that, he never stopped being a lover of film.

Nancy Laemmle and Robert Forster. Photo courtesy of Nancy Laemmle.

“It was only a few months after this first meeting that I ran into him again. He had come to the Fine Arts on Christmas Eve to enjoy our annual FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Sing-Along and once again with his comments I saw that he was both a professional, appreciating the work of the actors in the film, but also a movie lover, simply enjoying the experience of being in a theater with an audience. And I sensed it again, his clear honesty, decency, and comfort in his own skin.

“I last saw him in March at our 50th anniversary screening of his landmark 1969 film MEDIUM COOL. He came straight to the theater from the airport, and was a little under the weather, but still engaged in a terrific discussion with host Stephen Farber and the audience. His shared stories about his first roles on stage, and then getting a huge break with a role opposite Marlon Brando in John Huston’s REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. Naturally, he also talked about working with Haskell Wexler on the groundbreaking MEDIUM COOL, which famously shot in and around the actual events of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. He did not shy away from discussing the next 28 years, when he worked mostly on TV or in mostly forgettable films. Those years did not seem to be any more or less valuable than the 20+ years after he returned to a greater degree of prominence following his role in JACKIE BROWN. The films may have gotten better and the paychecks may have gotten a little bigger but Robert was the same person through it all. Honest, decent, and comfortable in his skin.

From left to right: Greg Laemmle, Nancy Laemmle, Robert Forster and Robert’s longtime partner Denise Grayson. Photograph by Paige Craig.

“Thank you, Robert Forster. The world of cinema is richer for your contribution, and the world in general is a better place for you having been a part of it.”

Greg’s wife Nancy highlights the conclusion of the Hollywood Reporter obituary:

Forster said that when his career was at its lowest ebb, he had what he called an “epiphany.”

“It was the simple one,” he said, “when you realize, ‘You know what? You’re not dead yet, Bob. You can win it in the late innings. You’ve still got the late innings, but you can’t quit. Never quit.'”

Forty-Fifth Anniversary Screenings of Louis Malle’s LACOMBE LUCIEN on October 16th

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our Anniversary Classics Abroad program for October: Louis Malle’s LACOMBE LUCIEN, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1974.

The film was one of the movies, following Marcel Ophuls’ monumental documentary ‘The Sorrow and the Pity,’ that scrutinized French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.

Malle’s movie tells a fictional but provocative story, written by the director and novelist Patrick Modiano, about a teenage boy who savors the power he accrues when he joins the Gestapo during the final months of the war.

LACOMBE LUCIEN takes place in 1944, after the Allies have landed in Normandy but the Nazis are still fighting to retain their hold on the country. Lucien Lacombe is an uneducated peasant boy who first tries to escape his humdrum life by volunteering for the Resistance.

When they reject him for being too young, he stumbles into an opportunity working for the Gestapo in his town and discovers a taste and talent for brutality. His loyalties are complicated, however, when he falls in love with a beautiful Jewish girl who is in hiding with her father and grandmother.

Malle found a brand new actor, Pierre Blaise, to play the part of Lucien. He was working as a woodcutter when Malle discovered him. Although his debut performance was highly acclaimed, Blaise’s career was cut tragically short when he died in a car crash just a year after the release of the film. But Aurore Clement, cast as the young Jewish girl, went on to have a long and rewarding career in French cinema, even appearing in some American movies like ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Paris, Texas.’

Distinguished European actors Therese Giehse and Holger Lowenadler filled out the cast. Lowenadler, who played Clement’s cultivated father, was voted best supporting actor of the year by both the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review.

Critics praised the film for its dispassionate insight into how perfectly ordinary people could be seduced by a taste of power and violence. Pauline Kael wrote, “Malle’s film is a long, close look at the banality of evil; it is—not incidentally—one of the least banal movies ever made.”

The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “’Lacombe Lucien’ is easily Mr. Malle’s most ambitious, most provocative film.” Leonard Maltin called it a “subtle, complex tale of guilt, innocence, and the amorality of power; masterfully directed.”

Although it is a vivid historical recreation, the film remains startlingly timely in its examination of the deadly lure of fascism.

LACOMBE LUCIEN screens Wednesday, October 16, at 7PM in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Director of Photography Fan Chao in Person for a Tribute Screening of the Chinese Masterpiece AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL.

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On Sunday, October 27 at the Ahrya Fine Arts, we’ll screen one of the finest films of the year, AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL, in honor of its late creator. Set under the gloomy skies of a small town in northern China, the movie follows different protagonists whose lives are intertwined in a furious tale of nihilistic rage. Written, directed and edited by Hu Bo, it’s the novelist-turned-director’s first and only feature. On October 12, 2017, at the age of 29, he killed himself soon after completing the film. Based on a story with the same title from his 2017 novel Huge Crack, it premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Best First Feature (Special Mention) and FIPRESCI prizes, nominations for Best First Feature and the C.I.C.A.E. awards and acclaim from other established directors such as Bela Tarr, Wang Bing, Ang Lee and Gus Van Sant. It went on to screen at prestigious festivals and cinemas around the world.

From AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL. Courtesy of KimStim.

As a fellow Beijing Film Academy graduate and close friend of Hu Bo, cinematographer Fan Chao was one of his chief collaborators for much of Hu’s too-brief career. Fan worked on several of Hu’s short films and served as DP to AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL, for which Fan received a Best Cinematography nomination at the Golden Horse Awards (the Chinese language Oscars). Fan will be present for a post-screening Q&A.

Filmmaker Bo Hu. Courtesy of KimStim.

One of the most talked about films this year, AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL is an intense epic drama sure to be remembered as a masterpiece and a landmark in Chinese cinema.

From AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL. Courtesy of KimStim.

“Powerfully absorbing…an act of solemn, disciplined and passionate protest.” —A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Should become an enduring classic…one of the greatest recent films.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

From AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL. Courtesy of KimStim.

“This is a film of extraordinary beauty, invention, and grace.” —Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

Fan Chao’s travel is made possible through the generous support of the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation.

Celebrate 40 years of George Harrison’s HandMade Films at THE OTHER HANDMADE’S TALE FILM FESTIVAL

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HandMade Films was the boutique movie company created by George Harrison to finance MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN. Started by a Beatle to help some Pythons, the company went on to revitalize the British film industry with movies such as TIME BANDITS, WITHNAIL & I, MONA LISA, and many others.

Celebrate 40 years of HandMade Films with the first-ever U.S. retrospective of the films made by the studio. THE OTHER HANDMADE’S TALE runs Thursday, October 10th through Sunday, October 20th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. presented by The Mods & Rockers Film Festival in association with Laemmle Theatres.

Opening night on Thursday, October 10th will feature the U.S. Premiere of the brand-new documentary about HandMade Films, AN ACCIDENTAL STUDIO, with unreleased archive interviews and footage with Harrison, new and exclusive interviews with Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Richard E. Grant and Neil Jordan plus previously-unseen interview footage with Bob Hoskins.

A few additional highlights from the festival include:

  • A Bob Hoskins double feature of MONA LISA (1986) and THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1981).
  • MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979) with producer John Goldstone and musical director John Altman in person!
  • A Richard E. Grant double feature of HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING (1989) and WITHNAIL AND I (1987).
  • TIME BANDITS (1981).
  • NUNS ON THE RUN (1990) in 35mm.
  • And much, much more!

Click here for full details and schedule of films!

New Restoration of Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN Starring Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau Opens October 11 at the Playhouse, Royal & Town Center.

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Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN (1976), a long-unseen masterwork from the director of The Servant and Accident and writer Franco Solinas (The Battle of Algiers), starring Alain Delon, with a special appearance by Jeanne Moreau, opens Friday, October 11 at Laemmle’s Playhouse/Pasadena, Royal/West L.A. and Town Center/Encino.

MR. KLEIN was blacklisted American director Losey’s first film in French, with a screenplay by Solinas and assistant director Fernando Morandi, and an uncredited Costa-Gavras (Z), who was originally to direct. In a full-length article in a recent issue of the New Yorker, critic Anthony Lane calls Rialto Picture’s reissue of MR. KLEIN “an event” and adds that “all good films come to those who wait.” Lane compares MR. KLEIN to another film about the Occupation, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, which Rialto released in the U.S. for the first time in 2006.

Alain Delon in Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN (1976). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal

An indictment of French complicity on the eve of the infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup, with Claude Levy (one of the chief interviewees in Marcel Ophüls’ The Sorrow and the Pity) as historical consultant, MR. KLEIN was received coldly by French audiences, who objected to its depiction of wartime collaboration. Yet it still went on to represent France for the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or and would win three Césars (French Oscars) for Best Film, Director, and Production Design by the legendary Alexandre Trauner, whose remarkable credits include everything from Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise and Jules Dassin’s Rififi to Orson Welles’ Othello and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment.

Occupied Paris, 1942. Alain Delon’s Catholic Robert Klein seems to be sitting pretty, with attractive mistress Juliet Berto (Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating), and an apartment crammed full of expensive paintings, sculpture, tapestries — and mirrors — most of which he’s bought at fire sale prices from Jews eager to emigrate/flee. But then he finds a Jewish newspaper delivered to his doorstep, and the protests and desperate search for his Aryan heritage begins, so desperate that his attempts to establish his identity start to come second to a frenzied search for his doppelgänger, a search that comes to an unforeseen, but perhaps inevitable end.

“For hunters of rarities and students of wartime oppression, the emergence of MR. KLEIN will be an event to match that of another fierce appraisal of Occupied France, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows, which finally arrived on American screens in 2006, thirty-seven years after it was made. All good films come to those who wait.”
— Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“MR. KLEIN remains as strong and thought-provoking a film as it was over 40 years ago.” — Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents

“Long unseen and worth revisiting…a historical reconstruction with a modernist tone, evoking both Kafka and Borges.” — J. Hoberman

“Played off Losey’s acquired paranoia from the McCarthy days…it has insidious things to say about the bonhomie of collaboration…Delon’s KLEIN, numb but deeply intelligent, cut off from society by some masquerade but then through the discovery of alienation itself, is extraordinary…It is a film of frozen, listless faces, the perfect currency of occupation.” — David Thomson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvEzNeiQLI&feature=youtu.be

Paulo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo Conjure Berlusconi in LORO, Opening September 27 at the Royal and October 4 at the Playhouse, Claremont & Town Center.

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Sex, drugs, power, and vice: welcome to the mid-2000s Italy of Silvio Berlusconi, the egomaniac billionaire Prime Minister who presides over an empire of scandal and corruption. Sergio (Riccardo Scamarcio) is an ambitious young hustler managing an escort service catering to the rich and powerful. Determined to move up in the world, Sergio sets his sights on the biggest client of all: Berlusconi (Toni Servillo), the disgraced, psychotically charming businessman and ex-PM currently plotting his political comeback. As Berlusconi attempts to bribe his way back to power, Sergio devises his own equally audacious scheme to win the mogul’s attention. Exploding with eye-popping, extravagantly surreal set-pieces, the dazzling, daring new film from Academy Award-winning director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) is both a wickedly subversive satire and a furious elegy for a country crumbling while its leaders enrich themselves.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

Loro, a film in two parts, is a fictional story, a sort of costume drama, which narrates probable or invented facts that took place in Italy, between 2006 and 2010.

Using a variety of characters, Loro seeks to sketch, through glances or intuitions, a moment of history – now definitively closed – which, in a very synthetic vision of events, might be defined as amoral and decadent, but also extraordinarily vital.

And Them [Loro] also seeks to describe certain Italians, simultaneously new and old. Souls in an imaginary, modern purgatory who decide, on the basis of heterogeneous impulses such as ambition, admiration, love, self-interest, personal advantage, to try to revolve around a sort of paradise in flesh and blood: a man by the name of Silvio Berlusconi.

Toni Servillo e Elena Sofia Ricci. Foto di Gianni Fiorito.

These Italians, to my eyes, contain a contradiction: they are predictable but indecipherable. A contradiction which is a mystery. An Italian mystery which the film tries to deal with, but without being judgmental. Inspired only by a desire to understand, and adopting a tone which today, rightly, is considered revolutionary: a tone of tenderness.

But here comes another Italian. Silvio Berlusconi. The way I imagined him.

The story of the man, above all, and only in a marginal way of the politician.

Someone might object that we know plenty not only about the politician, but also about the man.

I doubt that.

Nella foto Toni Servillo. Foto di Gianni Fiorito.

A man, as far as I am concerned, is the result of his feelings more than a biographical total of facts. Therefore, within this story, the choice of facts to be recounted does not follow a principle of relevance dictated by the news agenda of those days, but only tries to dig, groping in the dark, in the man’s conscience.

What, then, are the feelings that stimulated Silvio Berlusconi’s days in this period? What are the emotions, the fears, the delusions of this man in dealing with events that appear to loom like mountains? This, for me, is another mystery the film deals with.

Men of power in the generations before that of Berlusconi were other mysteries, because they were unapproachable. Remember there was a time when we spoke of the disembodiment of power.

Toni Servillo. Photo by Gianni-Fiorito.

Silvio Berlusconi, instead, is probably the first man of power to be an approachable mystery. He has always been a tireless narrator of himself: think, for example, of the picture story Una storia italiana that he had sent to everyone in Italy in 2001, and for this reason too he inevitably became a symbol. And symbols, unlike mere mortals, are public property. And therefore, in this sense, he also represents a part of all Italians.

But, naturally, Silvio Berlusconi is much more. And it is not easy to provide a synthesis. For this reason I have to appeal to a much better man than me: Hemingway.

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway writes: “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.” Paraphrasing things, perhaps the most concise image we can have of Silvio Berlusconi is that of a bullfighter. ~ Paolo Sorrentino

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SC9H6LnZxc

FIlm Noir Double Feature: 75th Anniversary Screenings of DOUBLE INDEMNITY and LAURA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a double dose of classic film noir in the popular Twofer program (two features for the price of one) with 75th anniversary screenings of DOUBLE INDEMNITY and LAURA, two of the most lauded films of 1944 and the entire noir canon.

The double feature will screen at two Laemmle locations: Pasadena Playhouse on September 26 and Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills on September 28.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY is writer – director Billy Wilder’s film adaptation (with co-scripter Raymond Chandler) of a crime novella by James M. Cain, a tawdry tale of an insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) and duplicitous dame (Barbara Stanwyck), who scheme to murder Stanwyck’s businessman husband for the insurance proceeds. After pulling off the seeming “perfect crime,” the lethal lovers come under the scrutiny of MacMurray’s claims adjuster colleague (Edward G. Robinson), who smells something rotten in the film’s setting, the Hollywood hills.

LAURA is producer-director Otto Preminger’s film version of Vera Caspary’s novel (adapted for the screen Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Betty Reinhardt, Ring Lardner Jr. and Jerry Cady, the latter two uncredited) about the murder of a beautiful socialite (Gene Tierney) and the spell she cast over three suitors: cynical columnist (Clifton Webb), playboy gigolo (Vincent Price), and necrophiliac detective (Dana Andrews).

The title character’s wealthy aunt (Judith Anderson), who yearns for Price, is also among the suspects. When Tierney, who is more a fascinating female than an archetypical femme fatale, turns up very much alive, the mystery deepens. Set among the sophisticates of Manhattan, Laura is a cosmopolitan counterpart to the middle class denizens and atmosphere of Double Indemnity.

Both films share key film noir elements, including sharp edged black-and-white cinematography (John Seitz, Double Indemnity; Joseph LaShelle, Laura), taut structure, well-crafted dialogue (Raymond Chandler’s main contribution to Double Indemnity), and low motives matched with high style. The two films also showcase masterful music (Miklos Rosza’s Oscar-nominated Double Indemnity score and David Raskin’s memorably haunting Laura).

Among the acting highlights, Clifton Webb’s acid-tongued turn in Laura was described wryly as “sophistry personified” by the New York Times, which also praised Dana Andrews as closely matching Webb’s incisive performance. Double Indemnity features Barbara Stanwyck’s expert take on the noir wicked woman, described by Pauline Kael as “the best acted and the most fixating of all the slutty, cold-blooded femme fatales of the film noir genre.” Kael also singled out Edward G. Robinson’s “easy mastery” in his sympathetic role.

Double Indemnity reaped seven Academy Award nominations, including best picture, director, actress, and screenplay. Laura scored five nods, including director, supporting actor (Webb), and screenplay, winning for LaShelle’s black-and white cinematography. Both films were added to the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress.

Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics twofer program of Double Indemnity and Laura will screen on separate dates and venues: Thursday, September 26 at the Pasadena Playhouse, and Saturday, September 28 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

On Thursday, September 26th in Pasadena, LAURA screens at 5:15pm and 9:15pm. DOUBLE INDEMNITY screens at 7pm. Click here for tickets to the 5:15pm LAURA with the 7pm DOUBLE INDEMNITY included. Or, click here for tickets to the 7pm DOUBLE INDEMNITY with the 9:15pm LAURA included.

On Saturday, September 28th in Beverly Hills, DOUBLE INDEMNITY screens at 7:15pm with the 9:15pm LAURA with included. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP.