George Eastman House has canceled the Dryden Theatre screening of The Price of Sugar on Saturday, March 21, due to ongoing litigation involving the film and its distributor. The cancellation of The Price of Sugar is due to a legal action commenced by certain persons featured in the film against the filmmakers. Upon resolution of such claims, the George Eastman House will review the court’s decision and, if such resolution is favorable for screening the film, Eastman House will give consideration to rescheduling the film as part of its Human Spirit Series, with a full panel discussion following the screening. The Human Spirit series will return in April, with screenings of Examined Life at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 11 and 5 p.m. Sunday, April 12.
Film Posters List
A-G
Addison’s Wall
Alexandra
Animation Show
Animation Show—Hertzfeldt and Judge
Apartment
Becket
Brand Upon the Brain
Bridesmaid, The
Bubble
Changing Times
Chinoise, La
Cienaga, La
Classe Tous Risques
Coat of Snow, A
Comedy of Power
Death of Mr. Lazerescu
Duma
Edge of Heaven
Encounters at the End of the World
Eros
Exiles
Fanfan la Tulipe
Fifty (50) Years of Janus Films Version 1
Fifty (50) Years of Janus Films Version 2
Flight of the Red Balloon
Flow: For Love of Water
Guatemalan Handshake, The
H-N
Hearts and Minds
Host, The
Intimate Stories
Into Great Silence
Jesus Camp
Jesus of Montreal
Ju-on
Keane
Killer of Sheep
Lake of Fire
Land of the Dead
Lemming
Lights in the Dusk
Lost Embrace
Louise Bourgeois
Man With the Screaming Brain
Monsieur Verdoux
My Brother’s Wedding
My Country
Nine Queens
Note by Note—Steinway
O-S
Old Boy-DAMAGED
Old Joy
Page Turner, The
Paranoid Park
Passenger, The
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Piano Tuner of Earthquakes-Quay Bros.
O-S Continued
Pineapple Express
Producers, The—Mel Brooks
Promotion
Red Balloon and White Mane
Rules of the Game
Shotgun Stories
Snow Angels
Starship Troopers
Straight Story, The
Strike
T-Z
Taste of Cherry
Three (3) Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Tiger and the Snow, The
Time of the Wolf
Two of Us, The
U-Carmen
Umberto D.
Unknown Woman, The
Van Gogh–DAMAGED
White Countess, The
Witches, The
World, The
Zoo
All posters are $10 and can only be bought in person at the Dryden Theatre.
The Rochester International Film Festival, sponsored by Movies on a Shoestring, Inc., is the longest running short film festival in the world. Started in 1959, this is the 50th year. The festival includes animation, comedies, documentaries, and narratives from across the country and around the world. Each program will contain seven to 8 different films. For complete program listings and showtimes, visit www.rochesterfilmfest.org
(Albert Lewin, US 1951, 122 min.)
Written and directed by one of Hollywood’s most unusual and distinctive talents, this is Albert Lewin’s romantic visualization of the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The film pairs Ava Gardner as Pandora and James Mason as Hendrik, the 17th-century seaman eternally condemned to sail the seas. A brand new preservation print, supervised by George Eastman House, restores the rich palette of deep, sensuous colors utilized by renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff.
(PLEIN SOLEIL, René Clément, France/Italy 1960, 112 min., French/Italian/subtitles)
Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley was first adapted for this stylish European thriller starring the elegant Alain Delon as the sociopathic criminal Tom Ripley. Ripley assumes the identity of spoiled, wealthy playboy Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) after being hired by Greenleaf’s father to bring him home. Henri Decae’s color cinematography is dazzling, and the Italian and Mediterranean locations are sumptuous.
Program Notes
How could such a nice guy go so bad? The question begged to be answered is brought forth in director René Clément’s 1960 feature, Purple Noon; the story of two men, and one woman alone on a boat, and the peculiar triangle which evolves among them.
Released in France in 1960, as Plein Soleil, the film’s title was renamed Purple Noon for its American distribution, the following year. While “Purple Noon” alludes to the film’s lush color palette, the original French title is more accurately translated as “broad daylight,” a description which evokes the irony of the setting in which the story’s events take place. With its stunning color cinematography by Henri Decaë, and the evocative music score by Nino Rota, Clément’s film captures the audience’s attention with it’s memorable lead character and gorgeous location scenes in, and around the Amalfi Coast of Italy.
Clément was already a well-established filmmaker by the time he made Purple Noon, but he was not an especially well-known one, despite his impressive career. Though he began his early adult life as an architectural student, Clément ‘s passion was film, and he experimented with a variety of different styles, from animation to documentary short, before releasing his first feature film in 1946, at the age of 33. The film, La Bataille du Rail (Battle of the Rails), was a realistic depiction of the life of French railroad workers during wartime (the majority of the actors playing themselves). Appreciation for the film led director Jean Cocteau to hire Clément as technical director for his film La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast), and for Clément to go on to other successful projects, among them Au delà des grilles (The Walls of Malapaga), his first of several films (including Purple Noon) to be filmed in Italy, and Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games), 1952, which won him a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival as well as an honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Much of the praise Clément received for his films was often in regards to the realism and attention to details he displayed in his storytelling. Often using amateurs as his actors to heighten the authenticity, his films created great responses from his audience, on an emotional level. Purple Noon brought a departure of sorts to Clément’s repertoire, in that it was one of the few adaptations from a novel that he would film and for it, he selected moderately known actors, among them Alain Delon, in the starring role, who at the time was fresh from appearing in the Luchino Visconti film, Rocco and His Brothers.
Based on the 1955 book by Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Clément’s Purple Noon is the first feature film to be made about the title character of that novel. It was not, however, the first film to be adapted from a Highsmith story. In 1951, director Alfred Hitchcock took that honor, when he made the film Strangers on a Train, based on the Highsmith novel of the same title. Much like “Strangers,” Purple Noon uses some of the same thematic elements, among them a charming yet utterly deceitful anti-hero, wanting to carry out the “perfect crime.”
Highsmith frequently used homosexual overtones in her storytelling, and gained notoriety with the publication of her 1953 novel, The Price of Salt (credited under the name Claire Morgan); notable as one of the first fiction novels to offer a an optimistic ending for a gay/lesbian character. As with her male antagonist in Strangers on a Train, Highsmith’s character of Tom Ripley was written with a certain amount of sexual ambiguity, frequently suggested at, but ultimately left for the audience to ponder. While this element is downplayed in Purple Noon, it would be addressed more overtly in director Anthony Minghella’s 1999 remake The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon and Jude Law.
In addition to The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith wrote four additional novels with the Ripley character, among them, Ripley’s Game, which would also be filmed twice; first by Wim Wenders in 1977 (as The American Friend with Dennis Hopper in the Ripley role), and again in 2002 with John Malkovich playing the part. Despite the many screen versions of her famed character, Highsmith herself has said it is Alain Delon’s portrayal in Purple Noon that was her favorite.
~Stefano Boni, Student, The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation
For Further Reading
