TCM Classic Film Festival: A STAR IS BORN, METROPOLIS, BREATHLESS, 2001

Judy Garland in A Star Is Born (top); Brigitte Helm in Metropolis (middle); Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg in Breathless (bottom)

Turner Classic Movies‘ first-ever TCM Classic Film Festival, which will be held on April 22-25, 2010, in Hollywood, will feature the world premiere of a newly restored edition of George Cukor’s A Star is Born (1954), starring Judy Garland and James Mason; the North American premiere of the restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927); and a 50th anniversary screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
The TCM Classic Film Festival will also feature a special presentation of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, including a discussion with Oscar-winning visual-effects artist [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial

Four-time Academy Award winner screenwriter-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz will be saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special 50th anniversary screening of a recently restored print of Suddenly, Last Summer, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor (above, and right, with Mankiewicz), and Montgomery Clift. The screening will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will also celebrate the recent gift of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz Papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Turner Classic Movies host and The Young Turks co-creator Ben Mankiewicz, Joseph L.’s great nephew and grandson of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will host [...]

Great Directors Series on Turner Classic Movies

Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre, Oskar Werner in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim

In June, Turner Classic Movies‘ month-long series "Great Directors" will be celebrating the efforts of 52 films directors, from past and present, from Hollywood and overseas (though, as to be expected, mostly Hollywood).
Among TCM’s "greats" are, inevitably, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg, and John Ford, but also Jacques Tourneur, Mervyn LeRoy, and Budd Boetticher.
Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Carol Reed, and Ingmar Bergman are four of the non-Hollywood filmmakers who have been included in the series.
Each weekday of the "Great Directors" series will feature two directors — one during the day; the other at night.  The daytime lineup includes Victor Fleming (June [...]

Festival of Preservation 2009: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, William Powell, Fay Wray, William Desmond Taylor

Tonight at 7:30 pm at UCLA’s Festival of Preservation you’ll be able to catch a screening of Fritz Lang’s unfairly neglected Secret Beyond the Door (above), a 1947 noirish psychological melodrama starring Joan Bennett as woman married to Michael Redgrave, whom she suspects is out to kill her (possibly for her money).
Unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941) and George Cukor’s similarly themed Gaslight (1944), Secret Beyond the Door boasts a highly stylized Gothic feel that makes the viewer feel just as off-kilter as both the heroine and the hero. Stanley Cortez, who also shot Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons, was the cinematographer.
Tomorrow, Sunday, April 5, at 7pm, the Festival of Preservation will feature two rarities from the 1910s: Lena Rivers, a [...]

Best Films – 1936

Sacha Guitry in The Story of a Cheat
FILM
Follow the Fleet
d: Mark Sandrich; scr: Dwight Taylor
Fury
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Bartlett Cormack, Fritz Lang
Libeled Lady
d: Jack Conway; scr: Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, George Oppenheimer
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
My Man Godfrey
d: Gregory La Cava; scr: Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch
Le Roman d’un tricheur / The Story of a Cheat
d, scr: Sacha Guitry
Show Boat
d: James Whale; scr: Oscar Hammerstein II
Theodora Goes Wild
d: Richard Boleslawsky; scr: Sidney Buchman
These Three
d: William Wyler; scr: Lillian Hellman
 

Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton in Dodsworth
CHECK THESE OUT
César
d, scr: Marcel Pagnol
Club de femmes
d, scr: Jacques Deval
Desire
d: Frank Borzage; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer, Waldemar Young, Samuel Hoffenstein
Dodsworth
d: William [...]

Best Films – 1948

Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan in Letter from an Unknown Woman
FILM
Anna Karenina
d: Julien Duvivier; scr: Jean Anouilh, Guy Morgan, Julien Duvivier
Cry of the City
d: Robert Siodmak; scr: Richard Murphy
Johnny Belinda
d: Jean Negulesco; scr: Irmgard von Cube, Allen Vincent
Key Largo
d: John Huston; scr: Richard Brooks, John Huston
Ladri di biciclette / The Bicycle Thief
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Oreste Biancoli, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Vittorio De Sica, Adolfo Franci, Gherardo Gherardi, Gerardo Guerrieri, Cesare Zavattini
Letter from an Unknown Woman
d: Max Ophüls; scr: Howard Koch
Portrait of Jennie
d: William Dieterle; scr: Peter Berneis, Paul Osborn, Leonard Berrovici
State of the Union
d: Frank Capra; scr: Anthony Veiller, Myles Connolly
The Winslow Boy
d: Anthony Asquith; scr: Terence Rattigan, Anatole de Grunwald
 

Joan [...]

Best Films – 1946

Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford in Gilda
FILM
Anna and the King of Siam
d: John Cromwell; scr: Talbot Jennings, Sally Benson
The Best Years of Our Lives
d: William Wyler; scr: Robert E. Sherwood
Cloak and Dagger
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr.
From This Day Forward
d: John Berry; scr: Hugo Butler, Garson Kanin
Gilda
d: Charles Vidor; scr: Marion Parsonnet
Margie
d: Henry King; scr: F. Hugh Herbert
A Night in Casablanca
d: Archie Mayo; scr: Joseph Fields, Roland Kibbee, Frank Tashlin
Le Père tranquille / Mr. Orchid
d: René Clément; scr: Noël-Noël
Sciuscià / Shoeshine
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Cesare Zavattini, Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, Cesare Giulio Viola
The Spiral Staircase
d: Robert Siodmak; scr: Mel Dinelli
 
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My Darling Clementine
d: John Ford; scr: [...]