The only motion picture to feature the three heavyweights of French tough-guy cinema—Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Leno Ventura, 1969’s The Sicilian Clan (screening April 10 & 12) is one of the most criminally under-seen caper classics from an era when the genre flourished. Gabin stars as a Sicilian hood orchestrating an elaborate jewel heist while stalked two steps behind by his nemesis (Ventura). Between the two, Delon is a young, cop-killing grifter who escapes from jail and inadvertently places the fatalistic elements of thievery and illicit sex in play. Featuring one of Ennio Morricone’s best music scores, The Sicilian Clan will screen in a brand new 35mm print of its English language version. We’ve also looted our archives for four more fantastic heist films from the ’60s and early ’70s: the original Ocean’s Eleven (April 2); Jules Dassin’s marvelous Topkapi (April 9); Steve McQueen in the first version of The Thomas Crown Affair (April 16); and Walter Matthau as Charley Varrick (April 30).
Join us Thursdays in March for a quartet of German masterworks produced between the two World Wars: F.W. Murnau’s expressionist silent classic, The Last Laugh (March 5); Fritz Lang’s first sound film, M (March 12); an ultra-rare screening of Bertolt Brecht’s Kuhle Wampe (March 19); and the first screen version of Alfred Döblin’s novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz (March 26). Partial support for this series is provided by the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Rochester.
World-renowned filmmaker Youssef Chahine (1926–2008) was perhaps Egypt’s best-known director, and in April we feature five of his greatest films. On April 1 is a restored 35mm print of his most famous effort, the neorealist Cairo Station, with Chahine himself starring as a newspaper vendor and one-third of a love triangle. Chahine’s dedication to telling stories of the working class had its apotheosis in The Land (April 8), a powerful proletarian musical epic about greedy landowners and the farmhands who till their soil in the impoverished Nile Delta of the 1930s.
The rest of the retrospective is comprised of Chahine’s autobiographical trilogy that suggests a stylistic merging of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel cycle with the fantastical reveries of Fellini. We are first introduced to Chahine’s alter-ego Yehia (played by Moshen Mohiedine), a high school student who dreams of making movies in Hollywood, in Alexandria…Why? (April 15). Then, An Egyptian Story (April 22) finds Chahine placing Yehia (Nouri El-Sherif) on trial for crimes against his youthful idealism. Finally, Chahine himself takes on the role of Yehia, now a successful director, in Alexandria Again and Forever (April 29)
Originally released in 1951, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman is iconoclastic writer-producer-director Albert Lewin’s deliriously romantic and contemporary Technicolor™ visualization of the oft-told legend of the sea, starring two of Hollywood’s most popular performers. Ava Gardner, in a thinly veiled portrait of herself, is Pandora, who falls hard for James Mason as Hendrik, a 17th-century seaman eternally condemned to sail the oceans.
The quintessential Lewin film, Pandora was a production made independently of the Hollywood studios, and its original camera negative has been presumed lost for several decades, so working from a nitrate separation positive and other sources, George Eastman House has supervised a painstaking 35mm restoration of the film, bringing back the rich palette of deep, sensuous colors utilized by renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff. The Dryden Premiere of this new print will be on March 14.
Beginning his career as an MGM producer in the 1930s, Lewin became the complete auteur during the 1940s, and leading up to Pandora, he wrote and directed three other feature films that dealt with his usual obsessions: love and art. Also screening in the Dryden are three films starring the devilishly witty George Sanders: The Moon and Sixpence (March 3), The Picture of Dorian Gray (March 10), and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (March 17).
The Price of Sugar (screening March 21 as part of our Human Spirit series) provided the final screen credit for the man who was not only one of the finest movie actors, but also a great humanitarian, activist, and philanthropist: the great Paul Newman (1926–2008).
Throughout March, we’ll pay tribute to this Hollywood legend through screenings of three of his most iconic performances, and two rarities from Newman’s filmography. Newman received his second Oscar® nomination for his initial screen appearance as “Fast” Eddie Felson, pool hall junkie, in The Hustler (March 4), and his rendition of the 50-egg-eating title character in Cool Hand Luke (March 11) earned him another. Time has been kind to George Roy Hill’s Slap Shot (March 6). While it wasn’t a box office success when first released in 1977, the raucous hockey comedy has become a major cult favorite in the intervening years. Screening in a new 35mm print, Newman is in his hilarious, foulmouthed glory as Coach Reggie Dunlop.
WUSA (March 18) is a Nixon-era satire of right-wing radio that was Newman’s seventh on-screen pairing with wife Joanne Woodward, and his second of four pictures with director Stuart Rosenberg. Newman himself directed six feature films, and his third effort behind the camera, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (March 25), stars Woodward in one of her finest roles. Both films have never been released on home video in any format.
