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Sixtieth Anniversary Screenings of Marcel Camus’ Palme d’Or Winning BLACK ORPHEUS

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In celebration of Black History Month, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Abroad Series present 60th anniversary screenings of BLACK ORPHEUS on February 20. This retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story in Greek mythology is set in twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. Writer-director Marcel Camus’ film hit the double jackpot for foreign-language films, winning both the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Academy Award as the year’s best foreign film.

Based on the play “Orfeu da Conceicao” by Vinicius de Moraes with a screenplay by Camus and Jacques Viot, BLACK ORPHEUS takes place in the working class slums (favela) of Rio. Orfeu (Bruno Mello), a streetcar driver by day and musician at night, falls in love with Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn), new to the city, and courts her through the frantic festival. However, a skeleton-costumed character representing Death also pursues her, and the couple’s attempt to flee results in romantic tragedy. The two unknown leads—Mello, a Brazilian soccer player, and Dawn, an American dancer— help convey a sense of naturalism, but the film is most noteworthy for its irresistible score, composed by Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim, which propels the drama with a captivating samba beat. The success of the film and recordings of its main themes helped ignite the bossa nova phenomenon of the 1960s.

The film was an enormous art-house hit in its day. Frenchman Camus and the two leads remain best known for this movie, as noted by the Village Voice, “the greatest one-hit wonder import we’ve ever seen.” Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post summed up its appeal: “a riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color. Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus’s doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus’s love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic.”

No need to take a trip to Rio—come to Carnival via BLACK ORPHEUS at Laemmle’s Playhouse, Royal, and Town Center on Wednesday, February 20 at 7:00 PM. Click here for tickets.

Valentine’s Day Double Feature: SOME LIKE IT HOT and PILLOW TALK

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Instead of the Valentine’s Day massacre depicted in SOME LIKE IT HOT, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present comedy and romance to mark the holiday. Two award-winning comedies from 1959 share the bill and you can enjoy both SOME LIKE IT HOT and PILLOW TALK for one admission price!

When the American Film Institute conducted a poll of critics and filmmakers to rank the greatest American comedies, Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT came in at #1. The hilarious film melds violence, cross-dressing, and music, and benefits from a superb cast headed by Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon (Oscar-nominated for his performance), Tony Curtis, Joe E. Brown, and George Raft. Wilder was nominated for his direction and for the screenplay he wrote with frequent collaborator I.A.L. Diamond. Orry-Kelly won the Oscar for best black-and-white costume design, especially for the stunning costumes he created for Monroe, including an almost see-through dress that she wears while performing.

The story follows two down-on-their-luck musicians who inadvertently witness the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago and are forced to go on the run. Their only option to escape the gangsters is to disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl band on a tour of Florida.

Reviews for the film were ecstatic. The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann wrote, “This new Marilyn Monroe-Jack Lemmon-Tony Curtis film is a lulu… With easy mastery, [Wilder] has captured much of the scuttling, broad, vaguely surrealist feeling of the best silent comedies.” Roger Ebert declared, “Wilder’s 1959 comedy is one of the enduring treasures of the movies.” When the Library of Congress established its National Film Registry to preserve important films, SOME LIKE IT HOT was one of the first 25 movies inducted. Joe E. Brown mused in the movie’s famous final line, “Nobody’s perfect.” Maybe not, but this film comes close.

PILLOW TALK marked the first teaming of superstars Doris Day and Rock Hudson and turned out to be a box office bonanza. Although she was not always appreciated at the time, Day was one of the few actresses to regularly play career women in the conservative 1950s. In PILLOW TALK she was cast as a successful interior decorator who shares a party line with a composer and womanizer played by Hudson. Forced to listen to his unending stream of sexual conquests, Day protests vociferously, and Hudson resolves to make her change her tune by seducing her. Both antagonists score a few pointed jabs before the inevitable final clinch.

The film won the Academy Award for best original screenplay, written by Russell Rouse, Clarence Greene, Stanley Shapiro, and Maurice Richlin. It received four other nominations, including Day’s only nod for best actress. Tony Randall and Thelma Ritter head the delectable supporting cast. Ross Hunter produced, and Michael Gordon directed.

Among the film’s many favorable reviews, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “one of the most lively and up-to-date comedy romances of the year.” Leonard Maltin hailed an “imaginative sex comedy… fast-moving; plush sets, gorgeous fashions.” The film’s enormous success led to two other Day-Hudson comedies, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. The picture was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2009.

Our Valentine’s Day Double Feature screens on Thursday, February 14th in Pasadena, NoHo, and West LA! Click here for tickets to the 5:10pm show of PILLOW TALK with the 7:20pm show of SOME LIKE IT HOT included. Click here for tickets to the 7:20pm SOME LIKE IT HOT, with the 9:45pm PILLOW TALK included.

A Joyful Noise: All Black Musicals in Honor of African American History Month.

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Next month, in honor of African American History Month, our Throwback Thursday theme is A Joyful Noise: Every Thursday at the NoHo 7 we’ll screen a classic Black musical. We’ll do it in chronological order: Stormy Weather (1943) on February 7, The Wiz (1978) on February 14, School Daze (1988) on February 21 and Dreamgirls (2006) on February 28.

Stormy Weather, February 7: The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a showcase for some of the most brilliant African American entertainers of the time. Come for Lena Horne’s performance of the iconic title song; stay for the “Jumpin’ Jive” dance sequence, which Fred Astaire called “the greatest dance number [he had] ever seen.” Directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra, Katherine Dunham and Her Troupe, Fats Waller and the Nicholas Brothers.

The Wiz, February 14: Loosely adapted from the 1974 Broadway musical of the same name, The Wiz is a musical adventure fantasy that reimagines L. Frank Baum’s classic 1900 children’s novel. It follows the adventures of Dorothy (Diana Ross), a shy Harlem schoolteacher who finds herself magically transported to the urban fantasy Land of Oz. Befriended by a Scarecrow (Michael Jackson), a Tin Man (Nipsey Russell) and a Cowardly Lion (Ted Ross), she travels through the city to seek an audience with the mysterious Wiz (Richard Pryor), who they say is the only one powerful enough to send her home. Directed by Sidney Lumet.

School Daze, February 21: Spike Lee’s second film is a musical comedy-drama based on his experiences while a student at historically black colleges like Morehouse and Spelman. Laurence Fishburne plays Dap, a politically conscious student enduring the school’s inept administration and the colorism and hair-texture bias of the fraternity-sorority system. Lee plays Half-Pint, a freshman who endures hazing in hopes of admission to a fraternity. Giancarlo Esposito and Tisha Campbell-Martin co-star.

Dreamgirls, February 28: The much-loved musical about a Supremes-like 1960’s girl group, as filmed by Bill Condon (Gods & Monsters, Kinsey) stars Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy and Danny Glover. “Fulfills the ecstatic promise inherent in all musicals — that life can be dissolved into song and dance — but it does so without relinquishing the toughest estimate of how money and power work in the real world that song and dance leave behind.” (New Yorker) Dreamgirls was an Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Murphy) and Supporting Actress (Hudson) and a winner of Golden Globes for Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) and Best Supporting Actress and Actor (Hudson and Murphy).

Looking Forward to Looking Back: Repertory Cinema at Laemmle Theatres with Bergman, Truffaut and more.

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We are beginning the fifth year of our Anniversary Classics and Anniversary Classics Abroad series — our first three films back in 2015 were Exodus, Getting Straight and Where’s Poppa? — and got 2019 off to a strong start this week with Fellini’s Amarcord. Here’s what we have planning for the coming months:

We’ll screen Black Orpheus on February 20 at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Winner of both the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and the Palme d’Or at Canne, Marcel Camus’ film brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was an international cultural event, and it kicked off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning.

On February 26 at the Playhouse only we’ll screen The Wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah’s controversial revisionist Western takes place in Texas and Mexico in 1913. The titular outlaws, headed by ethical-in-his-fashion Pike (William Holden), stages violent bank robberies in their old, time-honored tradition. After a particularly brutal holdup in the town of San Rafael, the gang — or what’s left of it — heads for the hills of Mexico, pursued by a posse led by Thornton (Robert Ryan). Our Pasadena neighbor Vroman’s Bookstore will present a Q&A and book signing with THE WILD BUNCH: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film author W.K. Stratton in conversation with Stephen Farber after the screening.

François Truffaut’s 1959 The 400 Blows is the kind of film we at Laemmle Theatres cut our teeth on, so to speak, back in a very different time for film exhibition. With Jean-Pierre Léaud playing his stand-in for the film time, Truffaut brilliantly re-creates the trials of his own difficult childhood in the film that marked his emergence as one of Europe’s most brilliant auteurs and signaled the beginning of the French New Wave. We’re bringing it back for one night, March 20, at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.

This year is the 45th anniversary of the U.S. release of the French slapstick masterpiece The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob. In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assassins from Slimane’s country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who’s returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. We’ll show it April 17 at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.

On May 15 we’ll screen Wild Strawberries at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center. Ingmar Bergman’s elegiac story of elderly Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) facing his past is the film that catapulted the Swedish auteur to the forefront of world cinema. Released in 1957, this is the 60th anniversary of its release in the States.

On June 19 we’ll enjoy some laughs to celebrate the 40th anniversary of La Cage Aux Folles, the French comedy about a gay couple living in St. Tropez who have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces his impending marriage. Screening at the Playhouse, Royal and Town Center.

For our regular Anniversary Classics series we typically stick to domestic fare. To mark Valentine’s Day we’re planning a Twofer Tuesday double feature at the NoHo, Playhouse and Royal of two 1959 romantic comedy classics: Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s Pillow Talk and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. With these two films, no chance of ending up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop!

45th Anniversary Screenings of Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD January 16th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series launch our Anniversary Classics Abroad program for 2019 with one of the most acclaimed foreign-language films of the 1970s, Federico Fellini’s boyhood-memory masterpiece, AMARCORD. Actor Michael Forest, who worked on the film, will share some memories of working with Fellini in a Q&A before the screening at the Royal Theater.

Fellini collected his fourth and final directing Oscar nomination for the film, which won the Academy Award as the year’s best foreign language film. It was also named the best film of the year by the New York Film Critics, and Fellini was their choice for Best Director.

AMARCORD (the vernacular for “I remember” in Romagna) is an evocation of a year in the life of an Italian coastal town in the 1930s. It is not a literal recreation but more of a dreamlike memoir of a time filtered through sentimental, political, and erotic reminiscences of a bygone era.

There is no central character, but an assortment of townspeople played by an ensemble cast. Among them are Titta (Bruno Zanin), a teenager who possibly could be the young Fellini; Titta’s father (Armando Brancia), a socialist construction foreman openly at odds with the fascist government; Gradisca (Magali Noel), the town hairdresser and femme fatale; Titta’s foul-mouthed grandfather (Guiseppe Lanigro); Titta’s crazy uncle (Ciccio Ingrassia); and The Lawyer (Luigi Rossi), the narrator and master-of-ceremonies.

Fellini co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay with Tonino Guerra (‘La Notte,’ ‘Blow-Up’) and employed frequent collaborator Nino Rota to compose the score, with color cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno.

Critics of the day received the film rapturously. Time Out New York called the film “A funhouse tour through Fellini’s mind…he has mined his youth before but never with such jocularity and emotional force… [with] some of the most lyrical imagery the maestro has ever concocted.”

Vincent Canby of the New York Times was equally impressed, writing, “it’s a film of exhilarating beauty…may possibly be Fellini’s most marvelous film.”

Roger Ebert called it Fellini’s “last great film,” raving, “if ever there was a movie made entirely out of nostalgia and joy, by a filmmaker at the heedless height of his powers, that movie is Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD.”

AMARCORD screens Wednesday, January 16 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

YENTL 35th Anniversary with Oscar-winning Songwriter Alan Bergman In Person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a musical holiday treat, the 35th anniversary screening of Barbra Streisand’s groundbreaking romantic drama, YENTL.

After starring in many acclaimed and popular films, Streisand made her directorial debut with this adaptation of a provocative Isaac Bashevis Singer story, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Original Song Score by Michel Legrand, Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Streisand also became the first woman to win a Golden Globe for directing.

Streisand first thought of making a straight dramatic film of Singer’s story — she pursued the rights in the late 1960s, after her successful film debut in Funny Girl — but it took 15 years to realize her dream. After many rejections, her friends Marilyn and Alan Bergman suggested bringing the story to life as a musical film, which enabled Streisand to win over skeptical (and chauvinistic) Hollywood executives by guaranteeing that she would once again sing on screen.

Singer’s story tells of a young woman living in a Polish village at the turn of the 20th century. She is determined to get an education, but the strict Orthodox Jewish customs of the time forbid women from entering religious schools. So she disguises herself as a boy and makes a strong impression in her classes. But her personal life gets complicated when a man she loves (Mandy Patinkin) persuades her to marry his own fiancée (Amy Irving), who then begins to develop romantic feelings for her new “husband.”

Way ahead of its time in examining complex transgender relationships, the film became a box office hit and earned Oscar nominations for Irving, the inventive production design, and two of the songs written by the Bergmans and Legrand, including a song that would become one of Streisand’s signature numbers, “Papa Can You Hear Me?”

Nehemiah Persoff, Steven Hill, Allan Corduner and Miriam Margolyes co-star. The elegant cinematography is by David Watkin (Out of Africa, Chariots of Fire, Moonstruck). Streisand wrote the screenplay with Jack Rosenthal. She went on to direct other films at a time when female filmmakers were still a rarity.

Pauline Kael wrote of Yentl, “It has a distinctive and surprising spirit. It’s funny, delicate, and intense—all at the same time.” Newsweek’s Jack Kroll called the film “a delight and at times an astonishment.”

Alan Bergman, our special guest speaker, co-wrote two Academy Award-winning songs, “The Windmills of Your Mind” from The Thomas Crown Affair and “The Way We Were.” He and his wife earned many other nominations, and in 1982, they had the distinction of being the only songwriters ever to write lyrics for three of the five songs nominated for best song, including the theme from the smash hit comedy, Tootsie.

Over the course of their careers, they collaborated with composers Michel Legrand, Marvin Hamlisch, Quincy Jones, Dave Grusin, John Williams, and many others. They have also written for the theater and television, and Alan Bergman still has an active career singing in nightclubs.

YENTL screens at 7:30pm on December 27th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Oscar-winning songwriter Alan Bergman and film critic Stephen Farber in person for a discussion and Q&A. Click here for tickets.

Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW 45th Anniversary Screening in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to director Nicolas Roeg with a screening of his eerie, atmospheric thriller, DON’T LOOK NOW, on Tuesday, December 18 at Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills.

Roeg, who began as a master cinematographer, had a distinctive visual style that received perhaps its most brilliant expression in this suspenseful film adapted from a story by Daphne Du Maurier, the author of ‘Rebecca.’ Screenwriters Allan Scott and Chris Bryant retained the basic premise of the story but embellished and expanded it under Roeg’s guidance.

Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play a married couple whose young daughter drowns in the movie’s opening scene. A few months later, they are in Venice, where Sutherland is working to restore an old church. But they are still grief-stricken and traumatized, and when they meet two elderly sisters who claim to be able to communicate with their dead daughter, the couple embark on a supernatural journey that takes them in unexpected directions. Christie finds comfort in the sisters’ message, while Sutherland is more skeptical, though it turns out he has clairvoyant gifts that he tries to suppress.

Set in the gray of winter, the film avoids the usual Venice tourist spots and instead creates an indelible vision of a labyrinthine city cloaked in shadows and sinister portents, as a murderer also haunts the canals and byways and threatens the lives of the two lead characters.

Roeg’s fractured editing style adds to the unsettling nature of the film, but this editing also contributes to one of the most famous interludes in the film, a lovemaking scene between Christie and Sutherland that has been called one of the most erotic and influential in cinema history.

Anthony Richmond was the film’s cinematographer, Graeme Clifford was the editor, and Pino Donaggio composed the evocative score.

Pauline Kael had high praise for the performances: “Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland team up wonderfully.”

Newsweek’s Paul D. Zimmerman called the film “a dark and frightening experience unlike anything ever filmed…Roeg, a masterly technician, builds up an atmosphere of dread you can taste in your throat.”

TIME magazine’s Jay Cocks agreed, writing “this is a film of deep terrors and troubling insights—one that works a spell of continual, mounting anxiety,” and he concluded, “Roeg’s is one of those rare talents that can effect a new way of seeing.”

Roeg oversaw some of the astonishing second unit photography in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ before graduating to cinematographer of such films as ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ ‘Far from the Madding Crowd,’ and ‘Petulia’ (all starring Christie). He made his directing debut (sharing credit with screenwriter Donald Cammell) on the Mick Jagger film ‘Performance.’ His other memorable films include ‘Walkabout,’ ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ with David Bowie, and ‘Bad Timing,’ which teamed Art Garfunkel with Theresa Russell, the actress who became Roeg’s wife and the star of many of his late films.

The director’s nonlinear storytelling and visual acuity had a tremendous influence on other directors, including Danny Boyle, Steven Soderbergh, and Martin McDonagh, who have all paid tribute to Roeg’s gifts.

DON’T LOOK NOW screens on Tuesday, December 18 at 7:30PM at Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray

GIGI 60th Anniversary Screening on December 8 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series celebrate the 60th anniversary of one of the most beloved and acclaimed musicals of all time, GIGI.

The film won nine Academy Awards in 1958, including Best Picture, Best Director Vincente Minnelli, Best Adapted Screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, and Best Scoring by Andre Previn of the original songs by Lerner and his frequent collaborator, Frederick Loewe. At the time, that was the most Oscars ever awarded to a single film, and GIGI also has the distinction of being one of only three films in cinema history to win every Oscar for which it was nominated.

GIGI was also perhaps the last great musical created for the screen. Produced by Arthur Freed for MGM, it follows in the tradition of other original musicals sponsored by the Freed unit, including ‘Meet Me in St. Louis,’ ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ ‘The Band Wagon,’ and an earlier best picture winner, ‘An American in Paris,’ which was also directed by Minnelli and written by Lerner. After GIGI, almost all the memorable Hollywood musicals were adapted from Broadway successes like ‘West Side Story,’ ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘The Sound of Music,’ ‘Oliver!,’ and ‘Cabaret.’

GIGI came about partly as a result of the phenomenal stage success of Lerner and Loewe’s ‘My Fair Lady,’ which conquered Broadway in 1956. The pair was looking for a follow-up, and that is how they happened to strike up a partnership with Freed and Minnelli, masters of the MGM musical. It was Leslie Caron, the star of ‘An American in Paris’ along with Lili (which earned her an Oscar nomination), who suggested the idea of adapting ‘Gigi’ into a musical.

Freed had a few qualms, since the source material was not exactly wholesome family entertainment (the bedrock of most MGM musicals). The 1944 novella by French author Colette told the story of a young woman groomed by her grandmother and great-aunt to be a courtesan in turn-of-the-century Paris. Censorship was just beginning to loosen in Hollywood, and Freed and Lerner felt they could mask the sordid subject sufficiently to get by with it. Adults would understand the racy underpinnings while family audiences could remain happily oblivious and enjoy the scenery and the songs.

Still, the daring subject matter undoubtedly helped to win the movie critical acclaim as well as Academy recognition. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther wrote, “it is not only a charming comprehension of the spicy confection of Colette, but it is also a lovely and lyrical enlargement upon that story’s favored mood and atmosphere.” Leonard Maltin concurred, calling the film “exquisitely filmed, perfectly cast, with memorable Lerner & Loewe score.” Variety hailed “a very fair lady indeed… Miss Caron is completely captivating and convincing in the title role.”

Co-starring with Caron were Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier (who earned an honorary Oscar that year), Hermione Gingold, Eva Gabor, and Isabel Jeans. The score includes the Oscar-winning title song, the lively “The Night They Invented Champagne,” and a memorable duet by Chevalier and Gingold, “I Remember It Well.” The film also won awards for cinematography, production design, and for the elegant costumes by the brilliant Cecil Beaton.

Our 60th Anniversary Screening of GIGI screens Saturday, December 8, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: Blu-ray