Dryden Roundtables For the first time ever, students of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation are curating a series at the Dryden! Based on an exercise in class, the students have been tasked with choosing a film based on the theme “Lose Yourself,” observe the steps to obtain a print and clear rights, write the text for the screening, provide an introduction for the film, and participate in a post-screening discussion afterwards.

2026 Nitrate Picture Show John M. Stahl searched far and wide in the fall of 1938 for a new starring vehicle for Irene Dunne, whom he had directed twice before in Back Street (1932) and Magnificent Obsession (1936), before settling on James M. Cain’s unpublished manuscript A Modern Cinderella, about a union-organizing waitress who marries a millionaire industrialist with a manipulative mother.

2026 Nitrate Picture Show Though best known for epics such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean was equally skilled at directing films on a far more intimate scale.

2026 Nitrate Picture Show “And just imagine how my father would have loved your film,” reportedly reads a letter from the daughter of Alexandre Dumas fils to Greta Garbo after she watched Camille, an adaptation of Dumas’s novel The Lady of the Camelias (1848).

2026 Nitrate Picture Show

2026 Nitrate Picture Show José Leitão de Barros (1896–1967) was one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of Portuguese cinema. A film critic and a publisher, Barros was well acquainted with international film trends when he directed the short documentary Nazaré, Praia de Pescadores (1929) and the feature-length docudrama Maria do Mar (1930).

2026 Nitrate Picture Show Gone with the Wind may be producer David O. Selznick’s most famous literary adaptation, but it is far from his only one. Selznick had a history of bringing classic books to the screen with such films as Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936). Given this consistent return to literary source material, it is not surprising that he chose to adapt a boyhood favorite, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

2026 Nitrate Picture Show Bellissima was only Visconti’s third film as director, yet already a noticeable cynicism had settled in, particularly in regard to the “new realism.” His first film, Ossessione (1943), a gritty tale of adultery and murder shot on location among the provincial poor, is often cited as the earliest feature in the Neorealist style. Visconti then took things several steps further with La terra trema (1948), which renounced professional actors and could pass for a documentary were it not for the dramatic plot and political rhetoric.

2026 Nitrate Picture Show

2026 Nitrate Picture Show

2026 Nitrate Picture Show Unter den Brücken..., a tale of two disenchanted coal-barge workers, who both fall in love with a young woman of “questionable virtue,” gracefully balances heavy naturalism and lyrical comedy. It was shot almost entirely on location on various rivers and canals in and around Berlin.

The 2026 Nitrate Picture Show By the time she appeared in Why Change Your Wife?, Gloria Swanson was one of the biggest stars in the world, thanks largely to the three films she and director Cecil B. DeMille previously made together: Don’t Change Your Husband; For Better, For Worse; and the jaw-dropping Male and Female.

2026 Nitrate Picture Show In Hollywood Director, David Chierichetti’s 1973 biography of Mitchell Leisen, the author posits that the filmmaker and his filmography have been nearly forgotten. Leisen had once been quite successful: after a brief stint as an actor, he designed costumes and sets for Cecil B. DeMille before moving on to direct more than forty films of his own.