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THE LADYKILLERS Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, and Herbert Lom Arrive at the Royal, Playhouse, and Town Center July 2.

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In the newly restored British comedy THE LADYKILLERS (1955), a crew of thieves led by Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness) pulls off a daring heist and tricks their elderly landlady, who believes them to be a string quintet, into sneaking the loot past the authorities. When things don’t go as planned, the crew must improvise to keep their treasure and to ensure the old woman’s silence. Widely considered one of the finest comedies ever filmed, we’re proud to screen it at the Royal, Playhouse and Town Center starting July 2.

Katie Johnson and Alec Guinness in Alexander Mackendrick’s THE THE LADYKILLERS (1955). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures/StudioCanal.

“A superbly elegant comedy. Even after 65 years, it still kills… Subversive, hilarious and as English as Elgar… A mixture of cynicism with guileless innocence.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“Extravagantly funny.” – Pauline Kael

Peter Sellers and Danny Green in Alexander Mackendrick’s THE LADYKILLERS (1955). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures/StudioCanal.

“Near flawless.” — Philip French

“The last, most enduring and best known of all the studio’s comedies, in which the sheer blackness of the central concept is barely disguised by the accomplished farce which surrounds it.” – Time Out

Rialto Pictures on the 2021 restoration:

As the last British film shot in three-strip Technicolor, THE LADYKILLERS is fortunate to have all thirty-three reels of its original Technicolor camera negative. So it was crucial and important that these elements be used for StudioCanal’s restoration, the best version of the film since its original release.

The restoration began with the 4K pin-registered scanning of the original 1950s Technicolor three-strip camera negative. With three-strip Technicolor (a process that was last used by Hollywood in the early 1970s), three color separations (r yellow, cyan and magenta) are combined to create the full Technicolor palette. Therefore, though the release prints of THE LADYKILLERS are 11 reels total, there are 33 reels of camera negative.

One of the biggest issues to overcome was the proper alignment of the separations. This was automated to a certain extent, but a huge amount of manual tweaking was required, involving tracking each one of the perforations. This is performed to avoid “fringing,” which causes colored outlines on edges of objects, faces etc.

Manual and automated digital restoration was then carried out over the aligned images. This was to remove particles of dirt, debris, hair, sparkle and then moving onto bigger issues such as stains, marks and scratches. The film suffered from a few extreme issues such as blue marks in the middle to right hand side of frame throughout the film that had to be removed. There was significant flicker that has been corrected as best as possible on a shot-by-shot basis. Many shots suffered from instability and some sections also suffered from scratching, the worst being four minutes of scratched film throughout an entire sequence.

In total, the film benefitted from over 1000 hours’ worth of 4K digital restoration. A 35mm Technicolor print was used as a reference for the color grade to ensure the new HDR Dolby Vision master stayed true to the film’s original 1950s “color by Technicolor” look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdJGho9p-wA

 

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Screenings June 7-10.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series invite you to celebrate the publication of Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan’s new book, Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies, with a return to the big screen of one of the cinematic crown jewels from 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird. The film will be shown as a series of one night-only screenings at 7 PM the week of June 7-10 at four Laemmle locations, the Royal, Playhouse, NoHo and Newhall. The authors will introduce all screenings and sign their book, which will be on sale at the events. Acclaimed filmmaker Cecilia Peck, daughter of Gregory Peck, will join the discussion at the Royal screening on June 7.

A box-office smash in its day, To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the most memorable films in Hollywood history. In 1995 it was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, reserved for films of “historical, cultural, or aesthetic significance.” The film was faithfully adapted by playwright Horton Foote from Harper Lee’s beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about childhood memories in the segregated South of the 1930s. The film version has become so intertwined with the book in the national consciousness that they have blended as “an inescapable part of our cultural DNA.”

Directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan Pakula, the film gave Gregory Peck the iconic role of a lifetime, that of Atticus Finch, the small-town lawyer who heroically defends a black man (Brock Peters as Tom Robinson) accused of raping a white woman, invoking the ire of the bigoted white community. Peck’s performance resonated so strongly that when the American Film Institute conducted a poll of all-time screen heroes, his portrayal of Finch was voted number one, ahead of such screen favorites as Han Solo and James Bond. Peck closely identified with the themes of parenting two young children, and those of social and racial justice at the height of the Civil Rights era. He was awarded a very popular Best Actor Oscar in one of the most competitive Oscar races of the twentieth century.

Among the film’s eight total nominations (including Best Picture and Director) is one for Supporting Actress, which went to screen newcomer Mary Badham as Scout, the impressionable six-year-old daughter of Atticus, and it is through her eyes the story unfolds. Her remarkable performance conveys all the wonderment and innocence of childhood imagination, and she is ably joined by Philip Alford as her brother Jem and John Megna as Dill (a surrogate for Lee’s friend Truman Capote). The rest of the stellar cast includes Colin Wilcox, Frank Overton, Rosemary Harris, Estelle Evans, James Anderson, and in the pivotal role of the mentally damaged “Boo” Radley, Robert Duvall in his screen debut.

The transformation of childhood memory into black-and-white screen reality was achieved by the superb craftsmanship of cinematographer Russell Harlan and Oscar winning production design of Alexander Golitzen, Henry Bumstead, and set decoration by Oliver Emert. Elmer Bernstein’s exquisite score also enhances the film’s rich atmosphere and mood. Harper Lee was involved in the film’s preparation and was “very proud and very grateful” for the fidelity of the finished film.

The film received widespread praise, ranging from such varied sources as the mainstream press, presidential adviser and journalist Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Walt Disney, and numerous pop culture publications. Often considered a role model, Atticus Finch is understandably not always seen as an uncomplicated hero. But such reassessments have not diminished the popularity and appeal of To Kill a Mockingbird, which has been elevated to the level of American folklore. Witness the recent PBS poll of millions of viewers who voted it America’s most beloved novel, and Aaron Sorkin’s revisionist stage version that was sold out for the entirety of its two-year, pandemic-shortened Broadway run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA86h4mdJ-A

Back to the Movies: Laemmle Glendale Reopens May 21.

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Next Friday, May 21 we’ll be welcoming moviegoers back to our Glendale theater. We’ll have showtimes and tickets on sale here starting Friday, May 14. The opening slate includes two restorations, the sexy 1969 noir LA PISCINE, starring Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, and the 1973 horror movie GEORGE A. ROMERO’S THE AMUSEMENT PARK; plus the intense Australian mystery THE DRY starring Eric Bana, and the utterly charming, “unabashed crowd-pleaser” DREAM HORSE, starring Toni Collette.
With the opening of Glendale, all eight of our locations have reopened. And with the expansion of our hours of operation, we are essentially fully open. The films that have been held back from release, both arthouse and Hollywood films, are coming out. We really need the public to respond. Vaccination rates in L.A. County are super high. Testing shows that the incidence of the virus is extremely low. We’ve got socially distanced seating. It is safe. It is enjoyable. And it is time to demonstrate support for moviegoing.

L.A. Times Culture Columnist & Critic Mary McNamara just published a terrific personal essay on returning to moviegoing headlined “Vaccinated and Back at the Movies, Together.” Here’s a highlight but the whole thing is worth reading:

“Then the lights went down and for two hours it was as if the pandemic did not exist, had never occurred. TOGETHER TOGETHER was sweet and smart and funny enough, but even if I had hated it, I was at the movies. A haven from heartbreak, anxiety and bad weather of all sorts, a place of necessary solitude, romantic anticipation, friendly bonding and familial celebration.

“After a year of crowded isolation, there were no interruptions from kids needing something; no ambient distraction courtesy of nearby leaf-blower or power tool; no hitting pause to check and see if the meatloaf was done yet. Having committed to it, the experience was literally out of my hands. I couldn’t use this time to also sort laundry or check my emails or do the dishes; couldn’t carry this screen from one room to another to see what the dogs were barking at this time or balance it on the counter while I did the dishes.

“I was at the movies and for two glorious hours all I could do was watch and listen and be.”

Moviegoing is unlike anything else and it’s worth preserving, especially moviegoing at locally owned and operated theaters. L.A. cinephiles, we humbly ask for your support.

EAST/WEST 20th Anniversary Screenings March 18 in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present this month’s film in our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program: Regis Wargnier’s compelling and increasingly timely thriller, East/West. Wargnier had won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his earlier historical epic, Indochine. The Oscar-nominated star of that movie, Catherine Deneuve, collaborated with him again in another fascinating historical drama with an exotic backdrop.

Inspired by true events, East/West tells a story of Russian émigrés living in Paris who were lured back to the Soviet Union after the end of World War II. Russian dictator Josef Stalin promised these refugees a complete pardon if they returned to their homeland. But when they actually returned, many of these refugees were executed or sent to labor camps or forced to live in squalor. The main characters in the story are a doctor (Oleg Menchikov) with a French wife (Sandrine Bonnaire). Deneuve has a vivid supporting role as a visiting French actress who ultimately plays a key role in helping the married couple.

At a time of increasing oppressiveness under the Putin regime in Russia, this reminder of harsh living conditions under the rule of an earlier dictator takes on renewed relevance. Wargnier wrote the screenplay for East/West with Louis Gardel and two Russian writers, Rustam Ibragimbekov and Sergei Bodrov. Bonnaire, the star of earlier French films Vagabond, La Ceremonie, and Monsieur Hire, confirmed her enormous appeal in this picture. Oscar-nominated composer Patrick Doyle (A Little Princess, Sense and Sensibility, Gosford Park), who had worked with Wargnier on Indochine, again contributed a vibrant score.

The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas declared, “East/West has the scale and rich period atmosphere of Indochine while gradually evolving into an acutely suspenseful thriller.” Writing in Movieline magazine, Stephen Farber paid tribute to the director: “Regis Wargnier has a gift for making sweeping popular entertainment,” and he added, “Sandrine Bonnaire gives a marvelously expressive performance.” The New York Times’ A.O. Scott called East/West a “sumptuous, moving new film,” and Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald hailed it as “a suspenseful and hugely engrossing drama.”

Our 20th anniversary presentation of EAST/WEST screens Wednesday, March 18, at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A. Click here for tickets.

Format: DVD

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) Special Screenings and Book Signings March 26 in Pasadena and April 1 in West L.A.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series invite you to celebrate the publication of Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan’s new book, Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies, with screenings of one of the most memorable movies from 1962, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate.

The film will be shown on March 26 at the Playhouse in Pasadena (co-sponsored by Vroman’s Bookstore) and on April 1 at the Royal in West L.A. The authors will introduce both screenings and will sell and sign their book before and after the screenings. Special guests may appear at these screenings.

The Manchurian Candidate was a hit in 1962 and remains one of the most highly acclaimed of all political thrillers. In 1994 it was selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, an honor reserved for films of “historical, cultural, or aesthetic significance.”

This story of a diabolical plot to engineer a Russian takeover of the White House was provocative in 1962 and seems frighteningly prescient and startlingly relevant in the aftermath of the 2016 election. As Frankenheimer said in a prophetic interview a few years before his death, “I think our society is brainwashed by television commercials, by advertising, by politicians, by a censored press… More and more I think that our society is becoming manipulated and controlled.”

The film was adapted from Richard Condon’s novel by screenwriter George Axelrod, who also wrote such films as The Seven-Year Itch and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It tells the chilling story of a soldier in the Korean War, played by Laurence Harvey, who is captured and brainwashed by Russian and Chinese Communists into becoming an assassin in the employ of the Soviet government. Frank Sinatra plays a fellow soldier trying to halt the assassination plot. Angela Lansbury was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Harvey’s manipulative mother, who plays a crucial role in the conspiracy.

In addition to its achievements as a political thriller, the film was one of the first to satirize the anti-Communist hysteria that had gripped the country and divided the Hollywood community during the 1950s. James Gregory plays Lansbury’s husband, a U.S. Senator modeled on Joseph McCarthy. As Frankenheimer told one reporter, “This country was just recovering from the McCarthy era and nothing had ever been filmed about it. I wanted to do a picture that showed how ludicrous the whole McCarthy Far Right syndrome was and how dangerous the Far Left syndrome is. It really dealt with the whole idea of fanaticism, the Far Right and the Far Left being exactly the same thing.”

As a result of these controversial themes, the film was attacked by both right-wing and left-wing pundits at the time of its release. But the reviews were mainly positive. As Variety wrote, “Every once in a rare while a film comes along that works in all departments…Such is The Manchurian Candidate.” The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther had high praise for John Frankenheimer’s direction, which he called “so exciting in the style of Orson Welles when he was making Citizen Kane.”

When the film was re-released in 1987, reviews were even more ecstatic, and it has continued to resonate. Roger Ebert called it “a work as alive and smart as when it was first released.” Pauline Kael said, “The picture plays some wonderful, crazy games about the Right and the Left; although it’s a thriller, it may be the most sophisticated political satire ever made in Hollywood.” Writing in TIME magazine in 2007, Richard Corliss said, “Lansbury and Harvey are both sensational in a movie that remains pointed and current. It still touches you like a clammy hand in the dark.” Lansbury’s portrayal of the malevolent Mrs. Iselin was ranked as one of the 25 greatest villains in film history by the American Film Institute. The supporting cast includes Janet Leigh, Henry Silva, Leslie Parrish, and Khigh Dhiegh. Ferris Webster earned an Oscar nomination for his superb editing of the movie’s suspense sequences.

Cinema ’62 provides fascinating anecdotes about this classic thriller and about many of the other masterpieces of this landmark year. Read all about them after you enjoy this innovative, frightening, wickedly funny, and ever-timely highlight from a year full of cinematic wonders.

Farber and McClellan are the co-producers of Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics series. Stephen Farber has written film criticism for many prominent newspapers and magazines and has published four previous books on film. Michael McClellan is the former Senior Vice President/Head Film Buyer for Landmark Theatres.

The Manchurian Candidate screens on March 26 at 7pm in Pasadena and on April 1 at 7pm at the Royal in West L.A. Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies will be available for purchase at the screenings. It is also available at retailers like Vroman’s Bookstore and Amazon.com.

Format: DCP

“Forever Looking for Love.” Kenneth Turan on the Newly Restored PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN in the L.A. Times.

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From Kenneth Turan’s February 14, 2020 Critics Choice column in the Times:

“Independent films were not an invention of Sundance, they existed in the golden age Hollywood as well, and one of the most unusual, and the most gorgeous, was 1951’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. It was directed by Albert Lewin and starred James Mason and, looking especially beautiful, Ava Gardner in a pleasantly surreal supernatural tale of a cursed sea captain and a heedless young woman who lives only for pleasure. Or so she thinks.

“Gardner looked as photogenic as she did because Pandora’s cinematographer was the great Jack Cardiff, famous for works like Black Narcissus, and because the film was shot in the knockout process known as three-strip Technicolor.

“Restoring Pandora to its original glory has taken more than a dozen years, with the Cohen Media Group ultimately funding a glorious 4K version, which included more than 700 hours of digital restoration lavished on 177,120 frames of the film. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

“Begins Feb. 21 at Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles.”

Cohen commissioned several terrific new posters for Pandora by New York-based key art designer, illustrator, and art director Mark McGillivray:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcnLjk-hyP8&feature=youtu.be

 

Ava Gardner and James Mason in a scene from “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.” (Cohen Media Group)

Q&A with Actress Angie Dickinson at Our RIO BRAVO Anniversary Screening on February 25th in West L.A.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present one of the best-loved westerns of all time, Howard Hawks’ 1959 action romp, RIO BRAVO. Actress Angie Dickinson will participate in a pre-show Q&A on February 25th at 7PM.

As many modern critics have observed, the film was a box office hit in its time but wasn’t really taken seriously. Leonard Maltin wrote, “Quintessential Hawks Western, patronized by reviewers at the time of its release, is now regarded as an American classic.”

John Wayne, the star of several Hawks films, led the cast, but the director put together an eclectic group of players. In addition to veterans Walter Brennan and Ward Bond, the director cast singer and comedian Dean Martin, young TV personality and pop singer Ricky Nelson, along with Angie Dickinson in a vivid, star-making turn.

The story by B.H. McCampbell (Hawks’s eldest daughter Barbara) presents a fairly simple tale. Wayne plays a sheriff in a small Texas town who is holding a murderer (Claude Akins) in the town jail until the marshal can move him to a nearby penitentiary. But the killer’s brother, a wealthy rancher with a large gang of confederates, intends to break the prisoner out of jail. Wayne’s character is vastly outnumbered, but he turns to an unlikely posse—a drunken deputy (Martin), a helpless cripple (Brennan), and a young greenhorn (Nelson), along with a visiting lady gambler (Dickinson).

The story is fleshed out by two superb screenwriters who worked frequently with Hawks—Jules Furthman (Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep) and Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep, Hatari!, El Dorado). Brackett was one of the pioneering female writers of an earlier era, and she went on to work on such classics as The Long Goodbye and The Empire Strikes Back.

Brackett surely contributed to the vitality of Angie Dickinson’s character, Feathers, a tough, sassy woman who more than holds her own in confrontations with Wayne. The Los Angeles Times took special note of Dickinson, saying, “starmaker Howard Hawks has worked some of the same kind of magic as he did with Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not.” Indeed, some of the memorable repartee between Bogart and Bacall in that film was recycled effectively in Rio Bravo.

In addition to sharp dialogue and fine performances, the film incorporates several suspenseful and exciting action sequences, masterfully orchestrated by Hawks, cinematographer Russell Harlan (Oscar-nominated for both To Kill a Mockingbird and Hawks’ Hatari! in 1962), and aided by the rousing score of Dimitri Tiomkin (High Noon, The High and the Mighty, Giant).

At the time of its release in 1959, Variety called Rio Bravo “a big, brawling western with enough action and marquee voltage to ensure hefty reception at the box office.” It did strong business and reviews in later years were even more glowing. Writing in The New York Times in 2012, Dave Kehr called it “one of the most purely pleasurable films ever made.” Roger Ebert raved, “To watch Rio Bravo is to see a master craftsman at work. The film is seamless. There is not a shot that is wrong.” The film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2014.

When we launched our Anniversary Classics series in 2013, Angie Dickinson was our very first guest, appearing at a 50th anniversary screening of Captain Newman, M.D. She joined us again for a 50th anniversary screening of John Boorman’s neo-noir classic, Point Blank, in 2017. Her other films include Ocean’s Eleven, Don Siegel’s The Killers, The Chase (opposite Marlon Brando), Big Bad Mama, and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. She also made history as the first female star of a TV action series, Police Woman, in the 1970s.

RIO BRAVO screens Tuesday, February 25, at 7PM at the Royal Theater in West L.A.

Click here for tickets.

141 minutes * USA * 1959 * DCP

Jean-Luc Godard’s ALPHAVILLE Screens February 19th in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present Jean-Luc Godard’s cult favorite from 1965, the sci-fi neo-noir satire, Alphaville.  This screening is part of our popular Anniversary Classics Abroad program; this is our first tribute to the controversial but always provocative French auteur, one of the founders of the French New Wave and still something of an enfant terrible at the age of 89.

Our screening is dedicated to the memory of the incandescent star of the film, Anna Karina, who was married to Godard during the 60s and starred in many of his most popular and influential movies, including A Woman Is A Woman, Band of Outsiders, and Pierrot le Fou.

American-born Eddie Constantine plays the character of Lemmy Caution, a hard-boiled detective who had been featured in a series of European B-movies.  Godard borrowed the actor and the character for his vaguely futuristic portrayal of a mechanized society in thrall to a giant computer.

Working with the great cinematographer Raoul Coutard (who photographed many films of Godard and Francois Truffaut), Godard evoked a future world utilizing modernist glass and concrete buildings that already existed in Paris in the 1960s.

The film was compared by many critics to George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984, with allusions to Orwell’s Big Brother and misinformation campaign, Newspeak.  The dictatorial computer, Alpha 60, prefigured the sinister HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Other dark-tinged sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and The Terminator also demonstrated a debt to Alphaville.

In addition to Constantine and Karina, the cast included Howard Vernon and Akim Tamiroff, with cameo appearances by Christa Lang and Jean-Pierre Leaud, a key figure in the French New Wave.

The film won the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the Berlin Film Festival.  Reviews were mixed at the time, with some critics bewildered and others praising the film’s style and originality.  Over the years it has been recognized as a prophetic work in its protest of the growing dehumanization of modern life.  As the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr wrote, “Alphaville moves closer to relevance with every passing year.”  The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called it “one of the great cinematic works of romanticism.”  Time Out’s Keith Uhlich added, “Karina proves to be the beating heart of the movie.”

Our 55th anniversary presentation of ALPHAVILLE screens Wednesday, February 19 at 7pm in Glendale, Pasadena, and West L.A. Click here for tickets.

99 minutes * NR * DCP * 1965