Cinematheque screenings are open to members and their guests. Membership is available at the door.
Trial Membership (1 month/4 screenings/1 guest) $18/$15
Quarterly Membership (12 screenings/3 guests) $36/$32
Annual Membership (52 screenings/12 guests) $85/$75
Saturdays commence at 12 noon sharp.
Mondays commence at 6:30pm sharp.
Mailing list and Enquiries: brettgarten@iprimus.com.au
Sat. 22/12 Only FORCE OF EVIL
Force of Evil USA/1948/79mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS
Dir: Abraham Polonsky.
John Garfield stars in this poetic and gritty film noir about the corruption of a basically decent lawyer. The script, with dialogue and narration often written in street-wise blank verse, equates racketeering with capitalism. Edward Hopper's urban landscapes provided a conscious model for the images. Director Polonsky was later blacklisted for the film's political implications.
Plus Flash Gordon serial.
Mon. 24/12 NO SCREENING – MERRY XMAS
Sat. 29/12 & Mon. 31/12 NO SCREENING – HAPPY NEW YEAR
Sat. 5/1 & 7/1 NO SCREENING - XMAS HOLIDAY
Sat. 12/1 & Mon. 14/1 NIGHTMARE ALLEY
Nightmare Alley USA/1947/111mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Edmund Goulding.
Tyrone Powers, cast against type, stars as a small-time carnival operator who sets himself up as a spiritualist exploiting wealthy clients.“An unforgettable gallery of grotesques.” Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal
Excitingly tawdry… a backstage excursion through the showbiz lower depths.” J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Sat. 19/1 GRINDHOUSE CLASSICS: MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
Massacre at Central High USA/1976/87mins/Colour/16mm/HP Dir: Renee Daalder. An early forerunner to the teen slasher genre of the 1980s, this cult gem mixes high school bullying, revolutionary politics and revenge into a ham-fisted political allegory.
“Rises to some interesting levels of political metaphor” SF/Fantasy Film Review
Plus Flash Gordon serial.
Mon. 21/1 Only GRINDHOUSE CLASSICS: WOMAN FROM DEEP RIVER
Woman from Deep River Italy-Spain/1981/93mins/Colour/16mm/ HP Dir: Umberto Lenzi. A naïve anthropology student travels to the Amazon to research her thesis that cannibalism is an “invention of colonialism.” There she meets a psychotic cocaine smuggler who has enraged the native tribes of the region. The ensuing carnage proves her thesis horribly incorrect. Also known as Cannibal Ferox.
From the trailer: “The following feature is one of the most violent films ever made. There are at least two dozen scenes of barbaric torture and sadistic cruelty graphically shown. If the presentation of disgusting and repulsive subject matter upsets you, please do not view this film.”
“It's truly heinous, atrocious and cruel, and that's what makes it a gore classic.” Dan Taylor, Exploitation Retrospect.
Plus Flash Gordon serial.
Note: This is a New Zealand fanboy discussing his cannibal movie collection. Hilarious, but scary!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMr_GjjIsNI
Sat. 26/1 Only GRINDHOUSE CLASSICS: THE MUTATIONS
The Mutations UK/1974/85mins/Colour/16mm/AM Dir: Jack Cardiff. A freak show operator, played by a pre-Dr Who Tom Baker, teams up with a mad biology professor (Donald Pleasance) to produce plant/human hybrids for his carnival operation. Like its progenitor, Todd Browning’s 1932 Freaks, the film uses real carnival performers in supporting roles.
“A minestrone of madness.” www.imdb.com
Plus Flash Gordon serial
Mon. 28/1 Only GRINDHOUSE CLASSICS: INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN
Incredible Melting Man USA/1977/84mins/Colour/16mm/AM Dir: William Sachs. An astronaut is exposed to cosmic radiation on an ill-fated mission to Saturn and once back on earth begins to slowly melt away in this gory pastiche of 1950s science fiction films.
“A timeless drive-in classic.” www.imdb.com
“Surprisingly, the film is strongest when making moral comments.” Variety
Plus Flash Gordon serial.
Sat. 2/2 & Mon. 4/2 PORTRAIT OF JENNIE
Portrait of Jennie
USA/1948/82mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: William Dieterle. A struggling artist meets a strangely ethereal girl in Central Park and finds himself falling in love. But this is no ordinary relationship - it is a love that transcends time realised in a supreme example of studio-created atmosphere. For surrealists like Andre Breton and Luis Bunuel, Portrait of Jennie, along with Peter Ibbetson (screening 9/2 & 11/2), constitute commercial cinema's refusal of the idea that the world of dreams and the world of reality are quite separate. A major flop at the time of its release, this ahead-of-its-time David O. Selznick production, starring Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore, and Lillian Gish, has since become recognised as a landmark in classical Hollywood cinema.
“A haunting evocation of one man's pained artistic process.” Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
Plus Flash Gordon serial.
Sat. 9/2 & Mon. 11/2 PETER IBBETSON
Peter Ibbetson USA/1935/85mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Henry Hathaway. Childhood sweethearts meet again as adults, recognising each other from a dream both of them have had. Peter is imprisoned for life after killing Mary's husband in self defence but they continue to meet in their dreams. Praised by surrealists like Breton and Kyrou as 'a triumph of surrealist thought'. Stars Gary Cooper, Ann Harding and Ida Lupino.
“Hailed by André Breton as the cinematic embodiment of their magnificent obsession with l’amour fou - the love that transcends all known obstacles.” Time Out
“Even a steadfastly literal director like Hathaway can’t diffuse its air of occult weirdness.” Channel Four
Surrealism USA/1972/24 mins/Colour/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Egons Tomsons. Discusses the forerunners of the Surrealist movement and focuses on the works of Ernst, Klee, Miro, Tanguy, Magritte and Dali to explain the surrealist condition described in the 1920s as irrational and hysterical. Related painters of the fantastic and irrational who appeared later are also discussed.
Sat. 16/2 & Mon. 18/2 CLASSIC COMEDY
Would-be Juggler France/1908/6mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Max Linder. Before Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, French comedian Max Linder was the king of silent film comedy. In this film, a drunken theatregoer is ejected and attempts to emulate the juggler's art with disastrous results.
Pedicure France/1910/12mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Max Linder. In one of his best early shorts, Linder impersonates a chiropodist.
One Week USA/1921/20mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Buster Keaton. One of the first two reelers Keaton made after setting up his own production company, this film reveals the darker side of Keaton's comedy as a newly-wed couple court disaster when they build their own house.
Never Weaken USA/1921/19mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Fred Newmeyer. In Harold Lloyd's last short film, before he embarked on the production of features, Harold devises a scheme to help out an osteopath who is short of patients to save the job of the doctor's receptionist. When he overhears another man tell the receptionist that he will marry her, Harold decides to commit suicide, but ends up suspended on girders hundreds of feet above the street.
Big Business USA/1929/20mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: James W. Horne. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are Christmas tree salesmen in July. Their attempt to sell a tree results in escalating mayhem. It has claims to be the funniest two reels of film ever made.
You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man USA/1939/9mins/B&W/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: George Marshall. Two excerpts from this W.C. Fields comedy classic.
Road Hog USA/1932/9mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Ernst Lubitsch. A segment from the Paramount anthology film, If I Had a Million, starring W.C. Fields and Charles Laughton. A victim of road rage, Fields inherits a million dollars, attains a fleet of cars, and seeks revenge on rude motorists.
The Three Stooges: 3 Dumb Clucks USA/1937/20mins/B&W/ 16mm/NFVLS Dir: Del Lord. The Three Stooges at their best were skilled exponents of low comedy - slapstick and violence - firmly based in vaudeville routines. In this short the boys' father wants to leave the mother for a gold-digging blonde. Curly plays a dual role as father and himself.
Still from Never Weaken
Sat. 23/2 & Mon. 25/2 PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Possibly the greatest individual influence on the classical Hollywood film, William Cameron Menzies created the role of the Production Designer, and introduced the practice of storyboarding. Menzies dominated Gone with the Wind, Kings Row, Invaders from Mars and both versions of The Thief of Baghdad. On the hundred films he designed and the dozen he directed, Menzies worked with Douglas Fairbanks, Valentino, Gary Cooper, D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock and Mike Todd. Even so, his name is less remembered today than contemporaries like Alfred Newman, Gregg Toland or Slavko Vorkapich. Film historian and maker Barrie Pattison has made a lifetime's study of Menzies and will comment on his major works, drawings and screen an extensive selection of his forgotten short experimental films.
Sat. 1/3 & Mon. 3/3 KINGS ROW
Kings Row USA/1940/127mins/B&W/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Sam Wood. One of the most accomplished films of the “Golden Years of Hollywood," Kings Row is the peak achievement of William Cameron Menzies eight film collaboration with director Sam Wood and shows their skills impeccably integrated with cameraman James Wong Howe and musician Erich Wolfgang Korngold, in a production from the unit that went on to make Casablanca. The film's depiction of small town USA, rotten at it's core, was a shock in WW2 America. Ronald ("Where's the rest of me?") Reagan and Anne Sheridan head up a legendary cast that includes Judith Anderson, Claude Rains, Betty Field and Marie Ouspenskaya. Introduction by film historian Barrie Pattison will relate the film to the designer's ideas and outlook.
Sat. 8/3 & Mon. 10/3 ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES
Angels with Dirty Faces USA/1938/97mins/B&W/35mm/CD Dir: Michael Curtiz. Two boys from the New York slums go down different paths after attempting to break into a boxcar. Rocky (James Cagney), who is caught and sent to reform school, goes on to become a major local gangster, while Jerry (Pat O’Brien) goes on to become a priest involved in trying to prevent youngsters from becoming criminals. Upon his release from prison, Rocky returns to his old neighbourhood, where a gang of streetwise teenagers (The Dead End Kids) are torn between their admiration for Rocky and their respect for Jerry. Humphrey Bogart has a supporting role as a crooked lawyer who forces Rocky back into a life of crime.
“Cagney really struts his stuff in this one.” www.imdb.com
Sat. 15/3 & Mon. 17/3 TONIGHT, LET’S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON
Wholly Communion UK/1965/B&W/35mins/16mm Dir: Peter Whitehead. A modern poetry reading at the Royal Albert Hall, London degenerates into an anarchic mess. Includes Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Tonight, Let’s all Make Love in London UK/1967/69mins/Colour/ 16mm Dir: peter Whitehead. Whitehead's "pop concerto for film" features the music of Pink Floyd, and examines various aspects of London in the swinging sixties. Interviews include Vanessa Redgrave, Mick Jagger, Julie Christie, Michael Caine and painter David Hockney.
“Both the quintessential Swingin' London document and a dark vision of a city at war with itself.” Paul Cronin, Sight and Sound
The Chauvel Cinematheque gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the National Film and Video Lending Service, the National Film & Sound Archive, the Australian Film Commission, and Barrie Pattison in the creation of this program.
Print Sources: NFVLS – National film & Video Lending Service / HP – Hygienic Pictures / AM – Amalgamated Movies / CD – Chapel Distribution
