Stuntman Mike: You’ve seen a movie where a car gets into some smashup there ain’t no way in hell anybody’s walking away from?
Pam: Yeah.
Stuntman Mike: Well, how do you think they accomplish that?
Pam: CGI?
Stuntman Mike: (laughs) Well, unfortunately Pam, nowadays more often than not, you’re right. But back in the all-or-nothing days, the Vanishing Point days, the Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry days, the White Line Fever days? Real cars smashing into real cars, and real dumb people driving them.
This exchange from Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino’s contribution to the homage-laden Grindhouse,, sums up the idea behind the collection of films in our featured summer series: a salute to the glory days of movie stunt driving in Hollywood features, before the era of computer generated imagery.
There’s something essentially cinematic about the chase sequence, and there’s nothing quite like the thrill of watching a well-shot and well-edited one. The more unusual the location and the more believably dangerous the action is, the more our pulses are likely to join in on the racing. Filmmakers since the silent era have understood this, but our series begins with the original moonshine running movie, Thunder Road (1958), a time when American automobiles had just gotten bigger, and the screens had become wide enough to accommodate them.
Some of the performers featured in these action classics are true movie icons: Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Peter Fonda. But the real stars are the spectacularly talented stunt drivers and, of course, the cars themselves: McQueen’s Ford Mustang in Bullitt; the Dodge Challenger R/T in Vanishing Point; and the countless number of Cook County, Illinois, police vehicles in The Blues Brothers.
And cars aren’t the only things on wheels you’ll see racing and crashing on the Dryden’s screen this summer. We’ve included a special “Truck Night” double feature of White Line Fever and Duel, the little movie that made cinephiles first aware of a young director named Steven Spielberg. David Carradine battles an army of “destructocycles” in Deathsport, and Fonda uses his vacation Winnebago to wage war against a score of satanists in Race With the Devil. (Although it’s not an American movie, you probably should also know about the spectacular moped and car chase through the Paris Métro in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva, screening August 22 & 24).
The series and our summer calendar end with a screening of the complete Grindhouse, featuring the sublime and witty Death Proof; evidence that there’s still a smart way to have real cars smashing into real cars. –Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department
Screenings:
Thursday, July 3
7 p.m. Trailers on Wheels! & at 8 p.m. THUNDER ROAD
(Arthur Ripley, US 1958, 92 min.)
Sunday, July 6 | 7 p.m.
THE BLUES BROTHERS (John Landis, US 1980, 130 min.)
Thursday, July 10 | 8 p.m.
BULLITT (Peter Hyams, US 1968, 113 min.) & bonus Steve McQueen
footage!
Thursday, July 17 | Double Feature
7 p.m. DEATH RACE 2000 (Paul Bartel, US 1975, 78 min.)
8:30 p.m. DEATHSPORT (Allan Arkush & Henry Suso, US 1978, 82 min.)
Thursday, July 24 | Double Feature
7 p.m. THE DRIVER (Walter Hill, US 1978, 90 min.)
8:45 p.m. VANISHING POINT (Richard Sarafian, US 1971, 107 min.)
Thursday, July 31 | 8 p.m.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION (William Friedkin, US 1971, 104 min.) &
chase sequence from The Seven-Ups (US 1973, 10 min.)
Thursday, August 7 | Truck Night! Double Feature
7 p.m. DUEL (Steven Spielberg, US 1971, 90 min., Digital Projection)
8:45 p.m. WHITE LINE FEVER (Jonathan Kaplan, US 1975, 92 min.)
Thursday, August 14 | Double Feature
7 p.m. THE LAST AMERICAN HERO (Lamont Johnson, US 1973, 100 min.)
9 p.m. A SMALL TOWN IN TEXAS (Jack Starrett, US 1976, 95 min.)
Thursday, August 21 | Double Feature
7 p.m. RACE WITH THE DEVIL (Jack Starrett, US 1975, 88 min.)
8:45 p.m. DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY (John Hough, US 1973, 93 min.)
Sunday, August 31 | 7 p.m.
GRINDHOUSE (Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, US 2007, 191 min.)
In addition to our summer retrospective series, we’re also screening seven new films making their local premieres in the Dryden Theatre.
One of the most critically lauded films of the year, Gus van Sant’s Paranoid Park makes its debut on July 5. This elegant and haunting work of art, the most recent feature from the director of Drugstore Cowboy, Good Will Hunting, and Elephant, is an enigmatic mystery and an observant look at Portland, Oregon’s outsider culture. J. Hoberman of the Village Voice called Van Sant’s latest “wonderfully lucid: It makes confusion something tangible and heartbreak the most natural thing in life.”
On July 18, catch Raoul Ruiz’s Klimt, with the always-inspired John Malkovich bringing to life the famed Austrian artist whose sexually aware and erotically inspired work came to symbolize the art nouveau movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Told in a series of visions from Klimt’s deathbed, the story veers back and forth between past and present, fantasy and reality, chronicling his battles for artistic freedom, passions for various women, and influential meeting with cinema pioneer Georges Méliès.
Stephen Chow, the zany comic auteur behind Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, is back with his latest, CJ7, screening on July 26 & 27, a hilarious sci-fi parody about a poor man who brings home a cute but destructive alien creature he finds at a dumpsite. The fantastic CGI effects and Chow’s comic sensibility combine to make a funny and frenetic live-action cartoon.
La France (August 2) is a film best experienced and not read about, but if you must know a little, suffice to say it’s about a strong-willed young woman (Sylvie Testud) who disguises herself as a young man during World War I and becomes an indispensable member of a fighting platoon. The audacious feature directorial debut of Serge Bozon assuredly moves from heartbreaking war scenes to sweet musical numbers. Don’t miss it.
The latest film from Russian master Aleksandr Sokurov is Alexandra (August 8 & 10). Russian opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya stars as an elderly woman visiting her grandson, an officer stationed among the bored, weary troops at a desolate military outpost. Sokurov, whose acclaimed Russian Ark will screen again on August 1, has made a powerful anti-war film in which not a shot is fired.
Giuseppe Tornatore, the man behind Cinema Paradiso, returns with a change of pace, the suspense thriller The Unknown Woman (August 16). A mysterious woman (Xenia Rappoport) uses desperate means in order to be hired as nanny to an upwardly mobile couple’s young daughter. As the story slowly reveals her motives, the woman’s disturbing past comes back to haunt her. Tornatore’s usual composer, Ennio Morricone, contributes another beautiful music score.
Finally, on August 23 & 24, we’ll present John Boorman’s The Tiger’s Tail. The director of Deliverance and Hope and Glory brings us an unusually gripping and witty doppelganger thriller set in contemporary Dublin. The cast is headlined by veteran character actor Brendan Gleeson as a wealthy venture capitalist who finds his world turned upside down when a seemingly malevolent identical lookalike plots to take his place at work and at home with his beautiful but neglected wife (Kim Cattrall). You can also catch Boorman’s masterful Arthurian epic Excalibur on August 17.
From Tuesday, August 26 through Saturday, August 30, George Eastman House will present five nights of FREE outdoor screenings at Rochester’s Highland Park Bowl. On a towering screen with booming stereo sound, we’ll screen some of Hollywood’s most cherished classics on 35mm film. Comedy, sci-fi, adventure, and horror: it’s all here under the stars. Showtime begins at sunset (approximately 7:30 p.m.). In case of bad weather conditions, screenings will move to the Dryden Theatre.
Live music will be performed before each screening from 6 to 7:30 p.m., followed by shorts, trailers, and animation from the Eastman House motion picture collection. To further offer the Dryden Theatre experience, each screening will be preceded by a live introduction from Jim Healy, Eastman House’s assistant curator of motion pictures.
The featured films of Cinema at Sunset
Tuesday, Aug. 26: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Wednesday, Aug. 27: Manhattan
Thursday, Aug. 28: North by Northwest (Music by Bobby Henrie & The Goners)
Friday, Aug. 29: American Graffiti (“Cruise Night” plus music by The Hi-Risers)
Saturday, Aug. 30: The Black Cat and The Bride of Frankenstein
(Music by Ancient Youth and Gordon Munding & Curtis Waterman)
The projection and sound elements will be provided by Boston Light & Sound, an internationally renowned company that has overseen recent and dramatic upgrades to the Dryden Theatre’s projection and sound.
Assemblymember Susan John obtained the funds necessary to present Cinema at Sunset from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. Additional sponsors for Cinema at Sunset are Brighton Securities, City Newspaper, Echo-Tone Music, Flower City Glass, Highland Hospital, Time Warner Cable, Sam Adams Brewery, 321 Productions, Pinnacle Printers, C.H. Morse Stamp Shop, HTB Custom Screen Printing, Clarion Riverside Hotel, and ImageOut Film Festival.
The epitome of big-screen class and feminine charm is back for the first three Wednesdays in August when we present the show-stopping Audrey Hepburn in a trio of her most beloved classics. First, she watches Gregory Peck stick his hand into La Bocca della Verità in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (screening August 6). Next up, Ms. Hepburn in her Oscar®-nominated turn in Fred Zinnemann’s spiritual epic, The Nun’s Story (August 13). Then, she’s opposite Fred Astaire and dancing to George Gershwin’s tunes in Stanley Donen’s Funny Face (August 20).
The production and creation of the Pink Panther series is a pretty good reflection of its most famously bumbling character, Inspector Clouseau. There are several competing stories as to who conceived the prideful and accident-prone French detective. Director Blake Edwards claims it was based on a French concierge he had met in a Parisian hotel. A friend of Peter Sellers claimed that Clouseau was based on one of Princess Margaret’s hairdressers. Sellers himself suggested his behavior was based on the uprightness of Capt. Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel. Webb also happened to have a rather ornamental mustache, which influenced the (very) fake mustache that adorns Clouseau’s face.
Interestingly, no one imagined that Inspector Clouseau would become a breakout character. In fact, The Pink Panther (screening July 2) was devised as a vehicle for David Niven. But almost by accident, Sellers (who filled in at the last minute for Peter Ustinov, originally cast as Clouseau) stole the spotlight—in a big way. Less than a year after The Pink Panther hit the screens, A Shot in the Dark (July 9), Edwards’ and Sellers’ second Clouseau comedy, was released. In the mid-’70s, the director and star teamed again for another trilogy of very funny and hugely successful “Panthers”: The Return of the Pink Panther (July 16), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (July 23), and Revenge of the Pink Panther (July 30).
The “Pink Panther” itself is actually a reference to a diamond in the first film, and not the main character, but it became such a popular phrase that it stuck with all subsequent films, regardless of whether a diamond showed up or not. With the help of the catchy Henry Mancini score, the animated panther who appears in the credit sequences for each of the films ultimately became the star of his own cartoon series, sold a million plush toys, and endorsed a line of fiberglass insulation.
Inspector Clouseau is an enduringly entertaining character that lights up just about any type of audience. Biographer and film historian Ed Sikov noted that Sellers’ comic value came from his “bedrock dignity in the face of his own buffoonishness,” while Sellers himself said that he had “a certain pathetic charm that the girls found seductive.” On Wednesdays in July, join us as we stumble through the best of the Pink Panther movies.
–Michael Neault, Associate Programmer, Motion Picture Department
