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Kurosawa, Varda, Bertolucci, Renoir, Fellini & Cuarón: Laemmle’s Anniversary Classics Abroad Series Returns.

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We’re pleased to announce the resumption of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series so moviegoers can again appreciate international cinematic masterpieces as they were meant to be seen, on the big screen. We’ll show the films all over L.A. County simultaneously at our Newhall, Pasadena, West L.A. and Glendale theaters starting July 28 with a 70th anniversary (going by its U.S. release) screenings of Akira Kurosawa’s timeless RASHOMON. Check out our trailer.
On August 25 we’ll screen Agnès Varda’s gorgeous drama about adultery in a Parisian suburb, LE BONHEUR to celebrate the 55th anniversary of its release.
We’ll follow that on September 29th with 50th anniversary screenings of Bernardo Bertolucci’s ravishing critique of  1930s Italian fascism, THE CONFORMIST.
On October 13 we’ll celebrate the 65th anniversary of Jean Renoir’s FRENCH CANCAN, a musical dramedy that chronicles the revival of Paris’ most notorious dance with the story of a theater producer (cinematic titan Jean Gabin) who turns a humble washerwoman into a Moulin Rouge star. Edith Piaf co-stars!
We’ll show Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA on November 17. It’s the 60th anniversary of Fellini’s sardonic epic about the decadence of modern Rome.

It’s the 20th anniversary of Alfonso Cuarón’s impossibly sexy, funny Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN, which we’ll screen on December 8.

“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.” CHARIOTS OF FIRE 40th Anniversary Screenings.

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To celebrate the 2021 Olympics, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present one of the best-loved sports movies of all time: the 1981 Oscar-winning drama, ‘Chariots of Fire.’ The picture retrieved a largely forgotten chapter of Olympic lore, the British triumphs at the 1924 games in Paris. In a neat parallel to the story told on screen, the film’s victory at the Academy Awards ceremony has to be considered one of the most surprising but gratifying upsets in Oscar history. We’ll screen the film July 20 at the Newhall, Playhouse and Royal at 7 PM.

The year 1981 was one of the most competitive years in recent memory. The other films nominated for Best Picture were Warren Beatty’s ‘Reds’ (with a total of 12 nominations), ‘On Golden Pond’ (10 nominations), ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (eight nominations), and Louis Malle’s ‘Atlantic City.’ ‘Chariots of Fire‘ came into the ceremony with a total of seven nominations, and unlike the other contenders, it had no major stars in the cast. Yet audience and industry love for the movie pushed it over the finish line. In addition to winning Best Picture, it also won Best Original Screenplay for Colin Welland, Best Costume Design, and Best Musical Score by Vangelis. The film also earned nominations for Hugh Hudson as Best Director, Ian Holm for Best Supporting Actor for his delightful portrayal of the track coach who guided the winning runners, and Best Film Editing.

The two leading roles in the film are portrayed by Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell and Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams. Both of them confronted daunting obstacles in their preparation for the 1924 Olympics. Liddell, the son of Scottish missionaries, came from a strict Christian upbringing, and he created complications for the British team when he refused to race on Sunday. Abrahams was Jewish and faced discrimination as a student at Cambridge and as an Olympic competitor. The excellent supporting cast includes Oscar winner John Gielgud and acclaimed director Lindsay Anderson as two stuffy, bigoted Cambridge dons, Alice Krige, Nigel Havers, Cheryl Campbell, and young American actors Dennis Christopher (‘Breaking Away’) and Brad Davis (‘Midnight Express’).

Producer David Puttnam (‘Midnight Express,’ ‘The Killing Fields,’ ‘Local Hero’) had conceived the film as a drama about faith and principle, in the tradition of such earlier award winners as ‘A Man for All Seasons.’ He assembled a first-rate team, including award-winning cinematographer David Watkin (‘Out of Africa,’ ‘Moonstruck,’ ‘Yentl’) and first-time feature director Hudson. Perhaps Puttnam’s boldest move was to hire Greek-born electronic composer Vangelis to provide an innovative musical score. Vangelis said that he was inspired by the fact that his father was a runner, and the score was intended as a kind of family tribute. His music has proved especially durable, serving as the theme for the 2012 Olympics held in London 30 years after the film’s release.

Reviews were largely celebratory. Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News praised “a movie that, with the help of Vangelis’s wonderfully stirring score, lifts the spirits to a new high.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel added, “Like every element in this picture, the actors look right; they seem to emerge from the past, instead of being pasted on to it.” Roger Ebert declared, “’Chariots of Fire’ is one of the best films of recent years.” Later evaluations echoed the praise. Writing in 2012, Kate Muir of the UK Times said “From the opening scene of pale young men racing barefoot along the beach, full of hope and elation, backed by Vangelis’s now famous anthem, the film is utterly compelling.”

Tragedies of Youth: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s War Trilogy Coming to Laemmle Virtual Cinema.

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In the last decade of his long and prolific career, Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) —best-known in the U.S. as the filmmaker behind the cult hit House (1977)—wrote and directed a trio of deeply personal and formally audacious films that confronted Japan’s wartime past.

Made in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 and informed by Obayashi’s firsthand experience as a child born on the eve of World War II in Hiroshima Prefecture, the staggering films in this trilogy—consisting of Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012), Seven Weeks (2014) and Hanagatami (2017)—collectively consider the loss of innocence for an entire generation of Japanese youth raised in the shadow of war and national disaster. (Japan Society)

We’ll start screening all three films beginning this Friday, July 9 on watch.laemmle.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs-SwNvOUZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi4zXYDrM9E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZyU9PkQ96Y

J. Hoberman on the Restoration of the 1949 Masterpiece DISTANT JOURNEY, Opening July 9.

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One of the first films to confront the horrors of the Holocaust remains one of the most powerful. Suffused with the visceral dread of a waking nightmare, Distant Journey draws from director and Holocaust survivor Alfréd Radok’s own experiences to tell the story of a Czechoslovak Jewish family—including a young doctor (Blanka Waleská) and her gentile husband (Otomar Krejča)—whose lives are torn apart by the terrors of the Nazi occupation, leading them inexorably to a grim fight for survival in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Blending expressionistic cinematography with archival documentary footage (some drawn from Triumph of the Will) to potent effect, this harrowing vision of human atrocity was banned in its home country for more than forty years, only to reemerge as urgent and impactful as ever.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

Tablet Magazine recently published J. Hoberman’s authoritative article about the film. Here are the opening paragraphs:

“Alfred Radok’s 1949 first feature, Distant Journey, was (and is) a landmark—a movie of its time that continues to speak to ours. Made in a no longer extant, once-communist state during the Cold War winter of 1948-1949, Radok’s remarkable debut is a masterpiece of Czech cinema. It was also one of the first and remains among the strongest, most original, and most influential movies to deal with the murder of European Jewry.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

“Distant Journey had its New York premiere in August 1950, not three months into the Korean War, at the Stanley, a shabby theater off Times Square that then served as the home of Yiddish movies, Israeli documentaries, and Soviet imports. The film was given the Yiddish title Geto Terezin, for the “transit camp” Theresienstadt, known in Czech as Terezin, where it was largely set and partially filmed; it was so enthusiastically received that it was held for over a month.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

“The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called Distant Journey “the most brilliant, the most powerful and horrifying film on the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews,” that he had ever seen, albeit cautioning “the faint of heart” to see the movie “at their own risk.” The Yiddish daily Morgn Frayhayt reported the amazed public response of at least one spectator who claimed to recognize her fictionalized self on the screen—as well she might. The first fiction films to represent the Holocaust, produced in Eastern Europe soon after the war were typically made by and/or with actual survivors. All had aspects of psychodrama, docudrama, and documentary.

Courtesy of Janus Films.

“Nothing if not personal, Distant Journey was written by Erik Kolár, an assimilated Czech Jewish lawyer who, married to a gentile, managed to stave off deportation to Terezin until 1945. Director Radok, the son of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, grew up in a Bohemian village and spent much of the war in hiding before being sent to a forced labor camp for mischlings in Poland. Both his father and grandfather died in Terezin. Based on his experiences, Kolár took a conciliatory attitude toward his gentile countrymen; based on his experience, Radok did not. In its attitude and attention to detail, Distant Journey was the most Jewish film made in Czechoslovakia up until that time and perhaps ever.”

Read the full article on Tablet’s website.

Laemmle Theatres will open Distant Journey July 9 at the Royal and Town Center and on watch.laemmle.com.

https://vimeo.com/542776321

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