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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.

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

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.

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25th Anniversary Screenings of BELLE EPOQUE September 18 in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in their monthly Abroad program with 25th anniversary screenings of the American release (and Oscar winner) of the delightful Spanish comedy BELLE EPOQUE. The Academy Award winner for foreign-language film will play at three Laemmle locations: West Los Angeles, Glendale, and Pasadena on September 18.

Starring Penelope Cruz (Oscar winner for Vicky Christina Barcelona) in only her second film, the period pastorale is set in 1931 with the beginning of the disruptive Spanish Civil War, chronicling the amorous adventures of a young Army deserter, Fernando (Jorge Sanz), who seeks refuge in the country house of a reclusive old anarchist painter, Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez). After finding employment as the household cook, Sanz also finds his carnal appetites stimulated by Gomez’ four daughters, played by Maribel Verdu, Ariadna Gil, Miriam Diaz-Aroca, and Cruz. As the youngest of the siblings, Cruz impatiently awaits her turn as the amorous partner of Sanz. As the sexual games seemingly reach a climax, the return of the opera singer family matriarch from a world tour with her manager-lover brings the plot to a boil.

Writer-director Fernando Trueba (co-scripting with Rafael Azcona and Jose Luis Garcia Sanchez) concocts the right recipe of food and sex, with a soupçon of political commentary, and the result charmed the Academy, audiences, and critics of the day.

Roger Ebert noted how the film celebrated sensuality and the human body: “Here is a film so inviting you would love to sit in the sun with old Manolo and his friend the priest and talk about the great matters of life.”

Leonard Maltin found the film a “delightfully earthy, cheery comedy.”

The Washington Post enjoyed the “sun-soaked lyricism” and found the performances ingratiating, extolling the film as a “recipe for sensual self-expression.”

Upon receiving the Oscar, Trueba paid tribute to his inspiration in his acceptance speech, “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him, but I just believe in Billy Wilder, so …thank you, Mr. Wilder.”

Our 25th anniversary presentation of BELLE EPOQUE screens on Wednesday, September 18th at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

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EASY RIDER 50th Anniversary Screening and Tribute to Peter Fonda

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to the late Peter Fonda with a screening of his landmark movie, EASY RIDER on Saturday, September 7th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

When the movie opened to huge grosses in the summer of 1969, it changed the course of Hollywood, setting the entire industry on a quest for films that would appeal to the same younger generation that had embraced the ultimate motorcycle movie made by Fonda and director Dennis Hopper. Easy Rider, produced and co-written by Fonda, was made for less than $400,000 and grossed $60 million, a feat that no other youth movie was ever able to match. It also earned two Academy Award nominations, for the original screenplay by Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern, and a best supporting actor nod for Jack Nicholson, an actor in B-movies who was propelled to the A-list as a result of Easy Rider.

Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson knew each other from the low-budget movies made by Roger Corman and American International Pictures in the late 1960s. Hopper co-starred with Fonda in Corman’s The Trip, a movie about an LSD trip which was written by Nicholson. Peter had the idea of taking the character of the motorcycle-driving outlaw that he had played in Corman’s The Wild Angels and inserting him into a major studio film. Nevertheless, Columbia Pictures was nervous about financing Easy Rider and only got fully behind the film after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and began to generate box office heat.

The picture is essentially a road trip movie, in which Hopper’s Billy and Fonda’s Wyatt (also known as Captain America) ride their motorcycles from California to New Orleans, where they hope to celebrate Mardi Gras. They finance the trip by selling cocaine, a detail that suggests the film was far from an idealized portrayal of rebellious American youth. On their travels they spend time on a Southwestern farm as well as a hippie commune. They meet a young lawyer played by Nicholson when they are all jailed in a Southern town. He agrees to join them on their motorcycle journey, which takes a darker turn as they encounter Southern bigots who disapprove of the young heroes’ freewheeling style.

The supporting cast includes Karen Black, Toni Basil, Luke Askew, and Robert Walker Jr. Up-and-coming cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs helped to create the vivid images of rural Americana, and the groundbreaking rock score incorporated songs by The Band, the Byrds, Steppenwolf, and Jimi Hendrix. Editor Donn Cambern had put together the rough cut of the film to many of those songs, and the filmmakers retained many of them in the final cut.

Although the film enshrines the young heroes, it is not uncritical. Their use of marijuana and LSD is honestly depicted, and when Fonda’s Wyatt sums up their journey near the end of the film, he offers a memorably hard-edged judgment: “We blew it.” Nevertheless, the darkest forces in the film are the rednecks who resent the freedom of these easy riders. Writing at the time, John Mahoney of The Hollywood Reporter said, “Easy Rider is very likely the clearest and most disturbing presentation of the angry estrangement of American youth to be brought to the screen.” Writing several decades later, Chuck Bowen of Slant drew a connection to the present: “This legendary tale of a motorcycle odyssey gone wrong remains timeless for its diagnosis of the early stages of a social ennui that has now fully bloomed.”

Most reviews in 1969 were enthusiastic. Life magazine’s Richard Schickel called the film “a loose, lovely-to-look-at, often laughing, often lyric epic.” Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times added, “Fonda and Hopper give immense performances.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1998.

Join us for our 50th anniversary screening and tribute to Peter Fonda at 7:30pm on Saturday, September 7th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Special guests to be announced. Tickets are available here.

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Philippe de Broca’s THAT MAN FROM RIO 55th Anniversary Screenings in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program: one of the most popular and entertaining foreign films of the 1960s, Philippe de Broca’s action romp, THAT MAN FROM RIO.

De Broca, the director of intimate, character-driven films like The Five-Day Lover, shifted gears with this bigger-budget comic thriller. Two top stars of French cinema, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac (the sister of Catherine Deneuve who died tragically in an auto accident just three years later), added to the film’s allure.

The action begins when Dorleac is kidnapped as part of a museum heist of a valuable statuette, and Belmondo follows her kidnappers to Brazil to save her life and find the treasure. There he battles international criminals, assassination attempts, and even a hungry crocodile on the Amazon.

The film was designed in part as a spoof of the James Bond movies that were catching fire all around the world. De Broca’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre, along with a series of spectacular action set-pieces, led to box office success wherever the film was shown. The film was also nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. De Broca wrote the script with Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Daniel Boulanger. Veteran actors Jean Servais and Adolfo Celi co-star.

Along with the wit of the script and the skill of the performers, the film benefited from lush cinematography (by Edmond Sechan) of Paris, Rio, Brasilia, and other South American locations. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther acknowledged the film’s homage to silent comedy: “Jean-Paul Belmondo is dandy as a fast, fearless modern-day Harold Lloyd.” He added that de Broca “uses the actual locations so vividly and artistically that they generate a kind of excitement that blends superbly with the dazzle of the plot.”

The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann also praised de Broca: “he has wit, tenderness, dexterity, a superb eye for composition and color, a prodigious sense of rhythm and movement, a perfect command of the medium.” Time magazine noted that the film was “shrewdly calculated to make the customer laugh out loud at all the lousy movies he has ever seen and at the same time have a wild and wonderful time watching them again.”

Join us for a perfect piece of lighthearted summertime entertainment with two of the most engaging international stars ever to grace the screen. Belmondo remained at the center of French film culture for decades, and de Broca went on to direct one of the most popular of all arthouse movies, King of Hearts.

Our 55th anniversary presentation of THAT MAN FROM RIO screens on Wednesday, August 21st at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

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Pop Culture Humorist Charles Phoenix Presents the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Comedy Classic THE LONG, LONG TRAILER.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series, partnered with retro pop culture humorist Charles Phoenix, present a 65th anniversary screening of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz comedy classic THE LONG, LONG TRAILER, directed by Vincente Minnelli.

The Special Event evening features Phoenix with his retro slide show tribute to the film, its iconic stars, and the colorful history of travel trailers.

THE LONG, LONG TRAILER (1954) is a comedy showcasing the talents of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz at the height of their popularity. MGM studio executives questioned the box office viability of a movie with the married couple since they could be seen every week in the highest-rated show on television, I Love Lucy.

Veteran producer Pandro S. Berman enlisted director Minnelli (Meet Me in St. Louis, Father of the Bride, An American in Paris, Gigi) and screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (The Thin Man, It’s a Wonderful Life, Father of the Bride, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) to concoct a movie from the best-selling memoir-novel of Clinton Twiss about his trailer travels with his wife.

The filmmakers lightly satirized the mid-century American ethos, marriage, and conspicuous consumption, offering American audiences what they couldn’t get at home on their black-and-white TV sets – Lucy and Desi in glorious Technicolor in essentially a travelogue of California.

The film about newlyweds Nicky (Arnaz) and Tracy (Ball) on their honeymoon trip trailer-adventures utilizes reliable character actors Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, and Moroni Olsen along the way, and saturated color cinematography by multiple Oscar winner Robert Surtees. The film was a box office smash in its day, vindicating the commercial instincts of the filmmakers. Leonard Maltin calls it “an enduringly popular slapstick comedy…almost an I Love Lucy episode on wheels.”

Charles Phoenix, the “Ambassador of Americana,” is known for his live comedy retro slide show performances, JOYRIDE videos, field trip tours, “test kitchen” concoctions and colorful coffee table books (Addicted to Americana, Southern Californialand, Americana the Beautiful), all celebrating America’s classic and kitschy pop culture past and present.

This Special Event of the Anniversary Classics Series is presented on Saturday, August 17 at the vintage jewel box theater, the Ahrya Fine Arts, a perfect showcase for retro humorist Phoenix. Come join the celebration of this mid-twentieth century comedy, its iconic stars, and the history of travel trailers in Kodachrome. Festive attire is encouraged!

Click here for tickets.