Nitrate Picture Show This 80-minute program of short nitrate films includes Movietone’s Feminine World / Behind the Footlights (Vyvyan Donner, US 1946), Rainbow Dance (Len Lye, UK 1936) & Musical Poster No. 1 (Len Lye, UK 1940), trailers for five Technicolor features (US 1937–43), and Gone With the Wind screen tests.

Nitrate Picture Show It is unlikely we will be screening any of Douglas Sirk’s signature Technicolor melodramas at the Nitrate Picture Show, as all of them were made during the safety film era. But we are lucky to have a projectable nitrate print of not just an early film by Sirk (credited under his birth name, Detlef Sierck) but one that was seminal in the career of this highly acclaimed director.

Nitrate Picture Show Mikio Naruse’s Repast and Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer swept Japan’s film competitions in 1951, splitting awards for best film, director, actress, and supporting actress. Although Naruse is less familiar outside Japan, he is also highly regarded as a major director of contemporary drama films.

Nitrate Picture Show In 1947, finally free from producer David O. Selznick’s interference, Alfred Hitchcock was determined that his next picture be produced by his own Transatlantic Pictures Corp. The company’s inaugural production, Rope, would be an adaptation of a 1929 stage play inspired by infamous thrill-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

Nitrate Picture Show A landmark in the history of German cinema, The Joyless Street marked a turning point from Expressionism to New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). The film also marked the beginning of Greta Garbo’s international career, and being her only work in Germany, partnered her for the first and last time with such legendary performers as Asta Nielsen, Werner Krauss, and Valeska Gert.

Nitrate Picture Show Cluny Brown turned out to be Ernst Lubitsch’s last completed film. It was received warmly and considered delightful entertainment, yet the critics didn’t exactly know where to place it. The more time passes, the more it is regarded as one of Lubitsch’s most sophisticated works, a social metaphor, perhaps even an autobiographical statement.

Nitrate Picture Show Filming Western Approaches with the huge three-strip Technicolor camera on board a flimsy lifeboat out in the Atlantic swell must have seemed a reckless enterprise, but director Pat Jackson wanted the audience to experience an authentic depiction of those risking their lives to bring vital supplies across the ocean during the Second World War. In pursuit of this ideal, he employed a cast entirely of serving officers and seamen, many of them veterans of Atlantic convoys, and for the most part he kept well away from the film studio.

Nitrate Picture Show Here is one of the oddest movie mashups you’ll ever see: a 1950 re-release of Trail of the Hawk (1935), a B western that was Edward Dmytryk’s first directorial effort. This 1950 version cut in new scenes and musical performances starring Ramblin’ Tommy Scott, a country-western singer-songwriter/ventriloquist, and his traveling medicine show band that included his wife and daughter.

Nitrate Picture Show “Lon Chaney talks!” declared Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s press release. The chance for audiences to hear one of the studio’s biggest stars speak was reason enough to remake one of Chaney's biggest silents, Tod Browning’s 1925 wild carny crime thriller, The Unholy Three.

Nitrate Picture Show With Le Jour se lève, director Marcel Carné lowered the curtain on the golden age of French cinema. Released three months before the Nazi invasion of Poland, and one year before the fall of France, this tightly wound, suspenseful tragedy mirrored the encroaching dread of an entire nation.

Nitrate Picture Show In Nitrate Picture Show tradition, this title will not be revealed until the screening begins. Full program notes will be distributed after the screening.

The New Classics The Coen brothers’ mainstream breakthrough captivated audiences and marked their first major box-office success. Ranking highly on several critics’ Best Of lists for the 1990s, Fargo is pure Coen—dark, violent, irreverent, funny, and meticulously crafted.

4th of July Released on the Fourth of July nearly sixty years ago, The Great Escape is one of the most thrilling films ever made, based on the true story of a mass escape from a German prison camp during World War II.

It's a Disaster Harry Carey was one of the best known and most loved (by the public and by his co-workers) actors in Hollywood. From his earliest silent films for D. W. Griffith at Biograph, to his star status in Hollywood as a western hero and then B series star, Carey brought warmth, humanity, and a natural ease to film acting.