By Popular Demand | We Knew Jack | Orson Welles’s Birthday! “I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I couldn’t stop watching. I submit that that’s one definition of an essential film.” Jack Garner would often cite Citizen Kane as his favorite film—he taught it in classes and brought it up in conversation.
By Popular Demand/We Knew Jack Hitchcock was one of Jack Garner’s favorite directors, but when it came time to include an article about the director in his book From My Seat on the Aisle, there was only one title to choose: “Rear Window . . . [is] pretty special in the theater."
Member Movie Night | IFC Comedies Writer-director Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, Veep) casts bumbling Brits (Michael Palin, Jason Isaacs) and awkward Americans (Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor) as Krushchev and company in this darkly comic film about the banality of evil and its violent consequences. GEM members admitted for free. Only members may attend this screening.
Preservation Legacy: Ed Stratmann Mentored by the museum’s first film curator James Card, Ed Stratmann knew that he needed to get preserved and restored films in front of an audience for the process of preservation and restoration to truly be complete. So, when asked to curate programs, he did so with enthusiasm. Stratmann created this program as a look into the moving image treasures that exist within the museum’s vaults.
IFC Comedies Writer-director Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, Veep) casts bumbling Brits (Michael Palin, Jason Isaacs) and awkward Americans (Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor) as Krushchev and company in this darkly comic film about the banality of evil and its violent consequences.
The Other Mank Mankiewicz’s peak came in the late 1940s and early 1950s as he received Academy Awards in back-to-back years for both writing and directing—a feat that has so far never been matched. The first of these films was A Letter to Three Wives, based on a Cosmopolitan short story by John Klempner that was expanded by the author into the novel A Letter to Five Wives before Fox purchased the rights for adaptation.
The Other Mank Mankiewicz finally emerged from his brother Herman’s shadow with All About Eve, which swept the Academy Award nominations (fourteen in all—still a record) and captured six, including Best Picture and two for Mankiewicz as writer and director.
When Ed Stratmann gave the James Card Memorial Lecture in 2009, he curated as part of his presentation this selection of films from Rochester’s past.
The Other Mank Mankiewicz’s last film under his Fox contract is this dramatization of real-life events in World War II. A valet at the British embassy in neutral Turkey (James Mason) has ambitions to move beyond his station and becomes a spy for the German government, photographing sensitive military documents and selling them.
Judy, Judy, Judy (Garland) Judy Garland and Gene Kelly shared a special friendship, formed when Garland took Kelly under her wing in his first film For Me and My Gal in 1942. Kelly would later repay this kindness as Garland was dealing with illness and drug addiction during the making of their last film together, Summer Stock (1950).
The Big Sleep The second collaboration between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall was this adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective novel with Bogie as Philip Marlowe.
The Other Mank After Mankiewicz left MGM, he formed his own production company, Figaro, and started work on The Barefoot Contessa, which he had originally conceived of as a novel. This is Mankiewicz’s first color film, and he made the most of the beauty shooting on location in Italy.
Stacey Steers Acclaimed German director F. W. Murnau’s (Nosferatu, The Last Laugh) first Hollywood film elicited extraordinary praise from the critics.
Judy, Judy, Judy (Garland) The Shop Around the Corner gets a musical update with Judy Garland and Van Johnson. In the Good 'Ol Summertime is filled with music from the first decade of the century (“Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland,” “I Don’t Care”) and Buster Keaton adds his brand of elevated slapstick to a supporting role as the owner’s nephew.
Noir '46 Few classics are as sexy or provocative as this showstopping combination of hard-boiled film noir and over-the-top melodrama. A story of betrayal set against the casino world of Buenos Aires, Gilda assured Rita Hayworth’s place as the screen’s reigning sex goddess and provided Glenn Ford with one of his most intriguing roles.
The Other Mank Mankiewicz’s first film back at MGM was also the first Shakespeare adaptation out of Hollywood in nearly twenty years. The film was produced by John Houseman, who had also produced Orson Welles’s stage adaptation in 1937, but Mankiewicz opted for a more traditional approach, eschewing the modern-dress interpretation of the theatre production.
The Other Mank Tennessee Williams’s gothic play (adapted by Gore Vidal) is given the big-screen treatment with a typical Mankiewicz touch. Patrician southern widow Mrs. Venable (Katharine Hepburn) summons newly arrived neurologist Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) to her home to talk about her niece, Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor), who appears to have gone mad after the death of Venable’s son.
