2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation III: SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR, POINT OF ORDER!
The Naked Eye by Louis Clyde Stoumen
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation Schedule I: A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation Schedule II: THE PROWLER
Photos: Courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archives
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
Schedule and synopses from the UCLA Film & Television Archives press release.
Thursday, March 26
7:30 p.m.
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation
THE NAKED EYE
(1957, Louis Clyde Stoumen)
Director Louis Clyde Stoumen’s evocative documentary on the art and history of photography begins with a quote from Ecclesiastes—“Truly the light is sweet…”—before a quick recounting of the medium’s 100-year technical development. From there, Stoumen sharpens focus with extended narrative sequences on key artists. Alfred Eisenstaedt and Weegee are each featured while the second half is largely devoted to Edward Weston. In addition to traditional live-action footage, Stoumen, who taught film production classes at UCLA, brought scores of stills to life using a technique he called "photographic animation," predating Ken Burns’ signature style by decades.
Camera Eye Pictures, Inc. PROD/SCR/CINE/ED: L. C. Stoumen. CAST: Raymond Massey, Weegee, Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Cole Weston.
35mm, 71 min.
Feature preceded by:
Preservation funded by The Stanford Theatre Foundation
THE BRIDGE: A TRUE STORY OF A TROUBLED CHILD
(1958, Louis Clyde Stoumen, Abram D. Murray)
Stoumen’s short dramatic film about an emotionally troubled boy.
Camera Eye Pictures, Inc. PROD: Bernice Block. SCR: Alan Marcus. CINE: Edward R.
Martin. ED: Harry Robin. Narrator: Robert Ryan. CAST: Hugh Corcoran, Biff Elliot,
Beverly Dvorett.
35mm, approx. 27 min.
Preservation funded by The Stanford Theatre Foundation
WEDLOCK
(1950, Louis Clyde Stoumen, Ed Spiegel)
An experimental short co-directed by Stoumen while he was a graduate student at USC.
35mm, 4 min.
*IN PERSON: Nancy Mysel, Film Preservationist, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Saturday, March 28
7:30 p.m.
Preservation funded by The Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation with additional support provided by the members of Outfest
PARTING GLANCES
(1986, Bill Sherwood)
In 1985, while the gay community seethed over the Reagan administration’s indifference to AIDS, writer-director Bill Sherwood filmed this charmingly quirky piece that gracefully placed a human face on the epidemic. Over the course of 24 hours, lovers Michael (Richard Ganoung) and Robert (John Bolger) emotionally joust as Robert prepares to leave for overseas. A quasi-autobiographical character, Michael confronts his separation anxiety with ironic fortitude as he faces Robert’s departure and the illness of his ex-lover and best friend, Nick, vividly played by Steve Buscemi. A meditation on the complexities in all relationships, Sherwood’s film is also an atmospheric valentine to New York City.
Rondo Pictures. PROD: Yoram Mandel, Arthur Silverman. SCR/ED: B. Sherwood. CINE: Jacek Laskus. CAST: Richard Ganoung, John Bolger, Steve Buscemi, Adam Nathan, Kathy Kinney.
35mm, 90 min.
Feature preceded by:
“CHRISTOPHER STREET WEST’S FIRST GAY PARADE”
(1970, Pat Rocco)
16mm, 13 min.
Sunday, March 29
7 p.m.
Preservation funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation, The Packard Humanities Institute and The Stanford Theatre Foundation
“SILENT AND EARLY SOUND FILMS FROM THE HEARST METROTONE NEWS COLLECTION (1919-30)”
The UCLA Film & Television Archive recently completed a project funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation. With this funding, some of the oldest and most endangered newsreels in the collection have been preserved and restored. The newsreels include both silent era and sound newsreels from the first year of sound production (1929-30). Highlights from the silent era will include an obituary for President Theodore Roosevelt and the newsreel story “Women Besiege Capitol To Urge Suffrage Bills.” Sound era selections will feature such titles as “Coolidge Reviews Bay State Fete” and “Edison Welcomes ‘Brightest’ Boys.” [above, Thomas Edison]
35mm, total running time of entire program: approx. 100 min.
*IN PERSON: Jeffrey Bickel, Newsreel Preservationist, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Co-presented with Sony Pictures and Research Video
Wednesday, April 1 / Free admission!
7:30 p.m.
Preservation funded by Sony Pictures Entertainment
“JOHNNY CASH PRESENTS THE EVERLY BROTHERS SHOW”
(ABC, 7/8/70 – 9/16/70) Directed by Marty Pasetta
The Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, had guested on many music and variety shows by the time they became TV headliners with this summer-replacement series in 1970. Though it lasted only three months, “Johnny Cash Presents The Everly Brothers Show” rides high on the Everly’s engaging personalities, gorgeous harmonies and rapport with fellow musicians. The Archive has compiled a selection of highlights from seven of the show’s 10 broadcasts, including musical numbers by Don and Phil, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Tina Turner and Stevie Wonder. This program also includes a compilation of the Everly Brothers pre-1970 TV appearances, featuring many of their early hits.
A Halcyon Productions Presentation. EX. PROD: Harold D. Cohen, Joe Byrne. PROD: Bernie Kukoff, Jeff Harris. WRITE: David Pollock, Elias Davis, Mike Settle, Jeff Harris, B. Kukoff. MUSIC: Jack Elliott, Allyn Ferguson. HOSTS: Don Everly, Phil Everly.
BetaSP, 90 min.
*IN PERSON: Dan Einstein, Television Archivist, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
*FREE Admission!
Friday, April 3
7:30 p.m.
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation
POINT OF ORDER!
(1963, Emile de Antonio)
Point of Order! is at once a landmark in political cinema and an incendiary aesthetic statement. Constructed entirely from CBS kinescopes of the controversial 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, the film famously eschewed both expert testimony and narration. Said a characteristically blunt Emile de Antonio, narration is "inherently fascist and condescending." But like the best of the concurrent direct cinema works, Point of Order!’s attitudes are constructed in its edit: a surface-level "objectivity" that is, in reality, brilliantly fabricated. The result is not just a searing indictment of McCarthyism, but an exposé of the fissures in American democracy as filtered through the new medium of television.
Point Films. PROD: E. de Antonio, Daniel Talbot. SCR: E. de Antonio. ED: Robert Duncan.
35mm, 97 min.
Feature preceded by:
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation
SUNDAY
(1961, Dan Drasin)
A stunning document of the police crackdown on a peaceful demonstration of folk singers in Washington Square Park in 1961.
35mm, 17 min.
*IN PERSON: Dan Drasin (director of Sunday), Robert Duncan (editor of Point of Order!) and Douglas Kellner (UCLA professor and author of “Media Spectacle“).
Saturday, April 4
7:30 p.m.
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation and the Franco American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the Directors Guild of America; Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de Musique; the Writers Guild of America, West; and the Motion Picture Association of America
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR
(1948, Fritz Lang)
Like many Hollywood woman’s melodramas, Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond The Door begins with a plot twist: a young woman marries a man she barely knows and soon suspects he’s trying to drive her insane. Gothic themes of madness, mixed with Freudian psychoanalysis were particularly en vogue in the late 1940s and the story here affords Lang the opportunity to indulge in expressionist shadowscapes as well as his long-standing interest in architecture and its metaphoric connotations. Ultimately, however, the film is less about psychoanalysis, than about Stanley Cortez’s beautifully photographed post-modern pastiche of gothic and expressionist imagery.
Diana Productions, Inc./Universal. PROD: F. Lang. SCR: Silvia Richards. Based on a novel by Rufus King. CINE: Stanley Cortez. ED: Arthur Hilton. CAST: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O’Neil, Natalie Schafer.
35mm, 99 min.
Feature preceded by:
Preservation funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
POPULAR SCIENCE, VOL. J7-5
(1948)
Subjects include the influence of airplane design on cars, the use of flying discs to illustrate aerodynamics and the completion of the "Big Eye" at Caltech’s Mt. Palomar observatory.
35mm, 10 min.
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation Schedule I: A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation Schedule II: THE PROWLER
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation Schedule IV: BEHIND THE SCENES IN HOLLYWOOD
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation Schedule V: RUTHLESS
UCLA Festival of Preservation 2009 – Recommendations
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The Secret Beyond the Door is a good movie, very much a psychological film noir. Joan Bennett was an underated actress who should be more respected today. She appeared in many film noirs at that time.
I remember The Macomber Affair, The Reckless Moment, The Woman on the Beach, The Woman in the Window, and Scarlet Street.
There were more.