| Valentine's Week - Amour Fou
and Offbeat Love Stories In The Cinema
Discuss this series with other film fans on:
http://www.myspace.com/americancinematheque
Some screenings in this series will also take
place at the Aero Theatre February 8 - 12!
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, we present seven
very different love stories with one thing in common – offbeat, delirious depictions
of unrequited amour, troubled relationships and/or doomed affairs, all done in a
most entertaining and gratifying fashion. From the unfulfilled desire and emotional
immolation of Max Ophuls’ gem, LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN and Jean
Negulesco’s HUMORESQUE (with Joan Crawford and John Garfield
at their best), to mental illness, May-December romance and Oedipal obsession in Robert
Aldrich’s AUTUMN LEAVES, to the adultery, class values and family dynamics
of Douglas Sirk’s WRITTEN ON THE WIND and THERE’S ALWAYS
TOMORROW, to the perverse, phantasmagorical fire of forbidden love in Sidney
Lumet/Tennessee Williams’ THE FUGITIVE KIND (with the combustible pairing of Marlon
Brando and Anna Magnani!) and David Lynch’s WILD AT HEART – these
romantic tragedies, surreal dreamlike reveries and soul-baring dramas are the
flipsides of the candy-coated marketing of romance on Valentine’s Day. And, much more
than the saccharine sentiments on greeting cards, these things are often what love is all
about.
Friday, February 17 - 7:30 PM
Doomed Lovers Double Feature:
New 35 mm print! LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, 1948,
Paramount, 86 min. Was there ever a more swooningly romantic film than genius French
director Max Ophuls’ American masterpiece? And a love story that
sidesteps all the sentimental Hollywood contrivances too often afflicting movie romances
of the era? Shy young girl, Lisa (Joan Fontaine) grows into womanhood while
nurturing a lifelong love-from-afar for debonair composer and worldly lothario, Stefan
Brand (Louis Jourdan) who lives upstairs in her building. Even after she enjoys a
brief tryst with Brand, Lisa’s dreams seem destined to evaporate into thin air.
Ophul’s device of Brand, finally learning of Lisa’s deep feelings from a letter
to him, as he readies for a duel-at-dawn, bookends the narrative with a tragic anguish
that is extremely moving.
HUMORESQUE, 1946, Warner Bros., 125
min. Jean Negulesco directs one of the most emotionally complex and psychologically
rich love stories of the 1940’s. Joan Crawford gives one of her greatest
performances as Helen Wright, a beautiful but lonely, tormented society matron who falls
for younger violin virtuoso, Paul Boray (John Garfield). Garfield’s Boray
returns her affections, but his prodigious talent and demanding career, his concerned
mother (Ruth Nelson) and adoring friend, Gina (Joan Chandler) slowly cause Helen to lose
her self-assurance. Believing herself unlovable and jaded by experience, Helen’s
personality gradually unravels in a noirish spiral of self-destruction. With one of the
most deliriously devastating climaxes you’ll ever undergo in a film.
Saturday, February 18 - 6:00 PM
AUTUMN LEAVES 1956, Columbia
(Sony), 108 min. "In the dark, when I feel his heart pounding against mine - is it
love? or frenzy? or terror?" Joan Crawford is a middle-aged typist, long
out-of-circulation after taking care of an invalid father. When young Cliff Robertson
comes along to sweep her off her feet, it seems too good to be true. And, after a
whirlwind courtship and Mexican wedding, Joan finds it is. Robertson is mentally unstable
and a pathological liar, tortured by his previous marriage to vixen Vera Miles and
creepy, unspoken things about his virile dad (Lorne Greene). Will Joan stick by her man as
he slips down the rabbithole of burgeoning schizophrenia? Director Robert Aldrich
(KISS ME DEADLY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?) looks at the deep, psychological scars
of both Crawford’s and Robertson’s characters, visually supplying subtle hints
of loneliness, Oedipal fixations and incest. An underrated gem ripe for rediscovery. NOT ON VIDEO!
Saturday, February 18 - 8:30 PM
Two Guys With Snakeskin Jackets:
THE FUGITIVE KIND 1959, UA (Sony
Repertory), 121 min. Director Sidney Lumet conjures a sensual fever dream from Tennessee
Williams’ southern gothic Orpheus Descending. Itinerant hustler Marlon
Brando is the ultimate snakeskin-clad loner who drifts into a redneck backwater town
and falls into a torrid affair with fellow outcast Anna Magnani, the middle-aged
immigrant wife of hate-crippled Victor Jory. Sparks fly from a pyrotechnic cast that also
includes Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton.
WILD AT HEART, 1990, Samuel
Goldwyn (Sony Repertory), 124 min. Blending elements of THE WIZARD OF OZ (!) with a
catalogue of film noir subplots, director David Lynch leads us on an intoxicating,
bizarrely perverse Southwestern odyssey with romantic ex-con and Elvis fan Sailor Ripley (Nicolas
Cage) and his teen girlfriend Lulu (Laura Dern) as they flee psycho matriarch
Diane Ladd (Dern’s real-life mom). With an unforgettable Willem Dafoe as
demonic slimeball Bobby Peru. Also starring Harry Dean Stanton, Isabella Rosselini.
Sunday, February 19 – 6:00 PM
Douglas Sirk Double Feature:
WRITTEN ON THE WIND, 1956,
Universal, 99 min. Commonly acknowledged as one of pantheon director Douglas
Sirk’s most sublime masterworks, this tale of two friends – rich, alcoholic Robert
Stack and poor, sensible Rock Hudson (who also works for him) runs the gamut of
emotions, examining the consequences of the pair’s mutual love for radiant Lauren
Bacall. But Sirk doesn’t stop there as he subtly explores, through back story and
character, the loneliness and spiritual degradation caused by unchecked materialism. He
also manages to skillfully sidestep soap opera cliches while still delivering glossy,
superior popular entertainment. Dorothy Malone won the Oscar for Best Supporting
Actress as Stack’s promiscuous sister with a long-unrequited yen for Hudson.
THERE’S ALWAYS
TOMORROW, 1956, Universal, 84 min. Hard-working toy manufacturer, Cliff (Fred
MacMurray) thinks he has a fairly idyllic family life until old flame, Norma (Barbara
Stanwyck) blows back into town, still carrying the torch. Cliff suddenly realizes his
wife (Joan Bennett) and teenage kids (William Reynolds, Gigi Perreau) alternate between
being insensitive, judgemental and oblivious to him, and that his own inner emotional life
is decidedly barren. Maestro Douglas Sirk brilliantly and compassionately looks at
a common mid-life crisis and draws a heartbreaking picture, showing just how painful inner
growth can be and what maturity is all about. NOT ON VIDEO! |
