In the sidebar to the festival, I saw three wonderful revivals at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s marvelous, intimate Walter Reade Theater:
Underworld (1927) is a silent gangster film/love triangle from master director Josef von Sternberg. It was presented in a glisteningly beautiful new print, with a new accompanying musical score performed live by the sublime Alloy Orchestra, a trio who use percussion and electronics to bring new vivid intensity to every silent film they touch.
Martin Scorsese was on hand to personally introduce screenings of two restored Technicolor gems from 20th Century Fox:
Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) is an early color film from John Ford, set during the Revolutionary War. Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert star. The action sequences are first rate, the color production is gorgeous, and Edna May Oliver is priceless in a supporting role.
Leave Her to Heaven (1946) is nearly everyone’s favorite florid Hollywood melodrama (at least if you exclude the Douglas Sirk masterpieces from the 1950s that seem to be its first cousins). It’s a truly over-the-top story of a psychopathic beauty (Gene Tierney) and the lives she destroys. The color gives it the quality of a fever dream.
After eleven movies in ten days, I’m happily exhausted! Watch for these films to open during the coming fall and winter season around the country.
Article comments
1 - Tan The Man
That's a pretty diverse slate of films you saw. Was that how the festival as a whole set up? Mix of older and newer films?
2 - handyguy
The new movies [including some higher profile ones I chose to wait and see in theaters, like the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men and Todd Haynes's I'm Not There] get more play. They run twice each in a 1,000-plus-seat house, and opening and closing night films play in a 2,000-seat symphony hall. The revivals run once or twice in the 280-seat Walter Reade, one of the best places in the country to see a movie.