Brenda Tremblay, Aeolian pipe organ
Between 3 and 4 p.m., Brenda Tremblay will play a selection of music on the Aeolian pipe organ, accompanied by violist Mona Seghatoleslami.
ONLINE—In Focus: Best Laid Plans
In Focus: In this virtual talk, Landscape Manager Dan Bellavia and Assistant Conservator Sarah Casto will discuss the original blue prints for George Eastman's estate and how the property has evolved over time.
Noir '46
It was after the end of World War II in Europe that American crime films, embargoed during the occupation, started flooding French cinemas. Films like The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), and Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) received their first screenings in France, prompting critics to sit up and take notice—and Nino Frank to coin the term “film noir.”
In the meantime, Hollywood was doubling down on production of this type of film. Thrillers like Leave Her to Heaven and Spellbound had been among the most popular films of 1945. Émigrés continued to bring their high-contrast palette to the big screen, and more Hollywood directors joined the movement. B pictures were moved to A status. and big studios were diversifying to include these films as part of their output. Established stars such as Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, and Orson Welles were getting their first taste of the genre, while new stars were born in the persons of Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Lauren Bacall.
What was produced in this time period was arguably the greatest year of film noir, feeding on postwar anxiety and turbulent prospects for the future. Duplicitous spies, wayward drifters, and inveterate gamblers ruled the roost. Murder was not out of the question, and everyone was looking for a leg up.
Stacey Steers
Night Reels, the exhibition on view in the Project Gallery and the Multipurpose Hall through June 6, features the work of Stacey Steers, a visual artist who incorporates elements from classic films into her 2D paper collage, animation, and sculptural works. Before the show closes, the Dryden will screen 35mm prints of two silent films Steers used in creating two of her works on display. Steers’s Night Hunter includes footage of Lillian Gish from her star turn in The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928); and her Edge of Alchemy uses footage of Janet Gaynor from her Academy Award–winning role in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F. W. Murnau, 1927). Great films on their own, seeing them in the context of Night Reels will expand your appreciation of both.
The Trip to Spain
IFC Comedies Michael Winterbottom, Steve Coogan, and Rob Brydon had seemingly concluded their Trip trilogy with this installment (though they’d return once again with The Trip to Greece in 2020). Here, we see the entertainers working their way through restaurants and destinations in Spain, mirroring a trip Coogan made when he was eighteen.
The Wind
Ed Stratmann/Stacey Steers One of the greatest of silent films, The Wind is suffused with an elegiac quality due to the advent of sound. In his last silent directorial effort, director Victor Sjöström elicits one of the silent screen’s greatest performances from Lillian Gish (also in her last silent role).
In the Loop
IFC Comedies Based on director Armando Iannucci’s British television series The Thick of It and haunting the corridors of power and political spin in London, Washington, DC, and New York City, In the Loop follows nefarious Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) as he tries to clean up after ineffectual politicians and ambitious power brokers. In the Loop features wonderful comedic performances and the type of satire we would come to expect from Iannucci in The Death of Stalin and Veep.
The Death of Stalin—Member Movie Night
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.
Museum Treasures
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.
Carol Cowan, Aeolian pipe organ
Between 3 and 4 p.m., Carol Cowan will play a selection of music on the Aeolian pipe organ.
The Death of Stalin
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.
A Letter to Three Wives
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.
All About Eve
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.
Preservation Legacy—Rochester On Film
Preservation Legacy 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.
Five Fingers
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.
The Pirate
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 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 Barefoot Contessa
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.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Stacey Steers Acclaimed German director F. W. Murnau’s (Nosferatu, The Last Laugh) first Hollywood film elicited extraordinary praise from the critics.
In the Good Old Summertime
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.
