Focus on Film Preservation
Preservation of our international film heritage continues in the spotlight through January 3 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with a wonderfully entertaining range of programs and three renowned lecturers actively involved in film preservation. The whole family will want to attend Pioneers of Animation on Sunday, December 16, when Jim Healy of Eastman House shows off a magical array of restored early work. Films range from the delicate silhouette animation of Lotte Reiniger to shorts featuring that ever-popular rascal Felix the Cat, all with live musical accompaniment by Dave Drazin.
A look at American film preservation work by the Library of Congress will be provided by Mike Mashon, the archivist key to making it happen, in the program Treasures from the Library of Congress on Saturday, December 8. Have no fears that our nation gives short shrift to comedy, for the program includes preserved films starring the Three Stooges and Charlie Chase along with, on the serious side, Stanley Kubrick’s first film THE DAY OF THE FIGHT.
The ethical debate over digital video vs. film restoration is a serious one in the film world, made all the more problematic when a restoration team is faced with celluloid original so imperfect or damaged that the image can only be saved through extensive reconstruction by means of specialized software. Producer Mark Rance, responsible for the brand new digital restoration of THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH (playing December 28-January 3) will discuss these issues and the work required to bring this legendary long-lost comedy back to life at the Friday, December 28, screening.
DIVORCE--ITALIAN STYLE and SEDUCED AND ABANDONED, two beloved Pietro Germi films from Italy’s golden age of comedy, screen in new 35mm prints throughout the week of December 7 through 13. Don’t pass up the opportunity to enjoy them once again (or for the first time) in these sparkling new prints.
Treasures from the Library of Congress
1928-1951, Various directors, USA, ca. 90 min.
Take a gander at some extraordinary gems from the treasury of our American cinema heritage preserved by the Library of Congress in a program curated and presented by Mike Mashon, Head of the Moving Image Section. The program includes: SHAW AND LEE: THE BEAU BRUMMELS (1928, Vitaphone, 10 min.); THE PIP FROM PITTSBURGH (1931, Hal Roach, 20 min. with Charlie Chase); HEALTHY, WEALTHY AND DUMB (1938, Columbia, 15 min., with the Three Stooges); RHAPSODY IN RIVETS (1941, Warner Bros., 7 min.); THE DAY OF THE FIGHT (1951, Stanley Kubrick, RKO, 15 min.); and more. Mashon will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the Library’s new preservation facilities and discuss exciting film restoration projects in progress. (BS)
Saturday, December 8, 8:00 pm
Focus on Film Preservation
Restored 35mm prints!
Jim Healy in person!
Pioneers of Animation
1914-29, Various directors, USA, ca. 120 min.
This fun-filled program for all audiences features some of the most inventive, entertaining, and influential cartoons from the silent era from the vaults of George Eastman House. Jim Healy, Assistant Curator from the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House, will guide the audience through this tour of early animation, explaining major developments such as assembly-line drawing processes and the use of cels. The program includes appearances from the first cartoon stars, like Colonel Heezaliar, Mutt and Jeff, Felix the Cat, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and some of the earliest works by major animators such as Paul Terry, Max and Dave Fleischer, Gregory LaCava, Otto Messmer, Friz Freleng, and Walt Disney. Each print shown has been preserved from original 35mm nitrate material or 28mm prints made for non-commercial exhibition. (Jim Healy)
Silent films with live piano accompaniment by David Drazin.
Sunday, December 16, 3:00 pm
Focus on Film Preservation
Sex Comedy--Germi Style
Newly restored prints of two classic sex comedies by one of the great social commentators of Italian cinema.
DIVORCE--ITALIAN STYLE
(DIVORZIO ALL’ITALIANA)
1961, Pietro Germi, Italy, 104 min.
With Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli
Germi’s most famous and successful film, DIVORCE became the first foreign-language film to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (it was also nominated for Best Actor and Best Director). Mastroianni gives one of his most brilliant performances as the smug and scheming Sicilian aristocrat who has to dispose of his noxious wife in order to get at his nubile young cousin. Divorce is frowned upon by Italian courts, but crimes of passion are winked at, so, if the inconvenient missus could be maneuvered into taking a lover. . . Longtime Germi admirer Martin Scorsese called this beautifully photographed black comedy “one of the greatest films about Sicily. . . a film that truly haunts me.” In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
December 7--13
Fri. at 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm;
Sun. at 5:15 pm;
Mon. and Thu. at 6:00 pm;
Tue. at 8:15 pm
New print!
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED
(SEDOTTA ET ABBANDONATA)
1963, Pietro Germi, Italy, 117 min.
With Stefania Sandrelli, Saro Urzì
Many critics consider this follow-up to DIVORCE--ITALIAN STYLE to be even better--blacker, funnier, and more sharply satirical in its skewering of macho attitudes. The trouble begins when fifteen-year-old Agnese is impregnated by her sister’s cloddish fiance. The comic spotlight shifts to the girl’s apoplectic father (a role for which portly Saro Urzì won the Best Actor award at Cannes), who resorts to a series of ever more desperate schemes in his attempts to restore the family’s honor. Re-seeing the film ten years after its release, Roger Ebert wrote, “At the time, I thought it was hilarious. . . My reaction the second time around is more complicated. SEDUCED AND ABANDONED has a lot of laughs in it, all right, but it’s not so much hilarious as painfully funny.” In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
December 8--13
Sat. at 5:00 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm;
Mon., Wed., and Thu. at 8:00 pm;
Tue. at 6:00 pm
Focus on Film Preservation
New digital restoration!
Mark Rance in person!
THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH
1979, Eagle Pennell, USA, 109 min.
With Lou Perryman, Sonny Carl Davis
“Creates characters that are such ornery, dreaming, hopeless and precious failures that you can’t help sort of loving them.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The Texas homestyle feature that inspired Robert Redford to found the Sundance Film Festival completely disappeared only four years after its famously hard-living director was hailed as a founding father of independent filmmaking. Now digitally restored by Watchmaker Films in London from one rediscovered 16mm copy, THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH brings this tale of the rowdy rambles of good-old-boy ne’er-do-wells Loyd (Perryman) and Frank (Davis) back to the screen in all its goofball glory. Failing miserably at get-rich-quick schemes that involve raising chinchillas and spraying epoxy, the blue-collar optimists pin their boozy hopes on the Kitchen Wizard, the latest invention from Loyd’s garage workshop. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Producer Mark Rance, a former Chicagoan, will be present on Friday to discuss his preservation work on THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH and to examine current issues surrounding digital vs. film restoration.