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This special event coincides with Art Deco Week in New York, when hundreds of Art Deco fans from around the world will be congregating to attend the 8th World Art Deco Congress and to celebrate the city’s enormous contribution to the popular 20th century design style that shaped the era between the wars. Film Forum salutes Hollywood's contribution to Art Deco design, on display in these two rarely-screened films.  

The illustrated slide lecture to be given by authors Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers, with nearly 100 stills showing the history of Art Deco in the movies of the 1920s and 1930s, is based on their book Screen Deco: A Celebration of High Style in Hollywood (Hennessey and Ingalls), newly published in paperback. Autographed copies of the book will be available for sale at Film Forum on the day of the screenings only.

TOP OF THE TOWN
& Screen Deco: An Illustrated Talk

(1937, RALPH MURPHY) Art vs. “hotcha” differences complicate Doris Nolan and George Murphy’s romance, but after her Russian salt mine number bombs, he brings on the hot stuff. John Harkrider’s incredible Moonbeam Room nightclub set was designed to outdo his own work on Swing Time. Preceded by a 45- minute talk, illustrated with stills and film clips, by Eric Myers and Howard Mandelbaum, authors of Screen Deco.
2:45, 7:00

BROADWAY THROUGH A KEYHOLE

(1933, Lowell Sherman) Ripped from Winchell's column, a scintillating expose of the night world of Prohibition-era Manhattan Among the gallery of gangsters’ showgirls, crooners, creeps and red hot mamas are Russ Columbo Blossom Seeley and legendary speakeasy hostess Texas Guinan.
1:00, 5:15, 9:30

Tickets for double features cannot be purchased on-line.
They must be purchased at the box office.
CLICK HERE for more information on when they are for sale.

Links:

• Art Deco Week

Available at Amazon:

SCREEN DECO
by Howard Mandlebaum and Eric Myers

(1933, ALFRED E. GREEN) “She had IT and made IT pay!”

Back by popular demand!

BABY FACE was one of the most notorious of all the films of the Pre-Code era-- the time during the early Depression when the Hollywood studios virtually ignored the censors and offered up one sex-filled film after another.  Public morals were so offended that the industry was forced to adopt an even stricter Production Code in 1934.  Advertised with the titillating warning, “Parents: do not bring your children,” BABY FACE stars Barbara Stanwyck as an abused daughter who turns tricks out of a speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania, then heads to Manhattan, where she sleeps her way up the corporate ladder (with a young John Wayne, among many others). A longer (by five minutes), even racier version was recently discovered by the Library of Congress and returns to Film Forum for a special encore presentation, following its sold-out screenings in January. After the film, we'll be showing scenes from the censored version for comparison.

Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s Director of Repertory Programming, says of the new footage, “BABY FACE has been a mainstay at Film Forum for more than 15 years, ever since it kicked off our very first Pre-Code series. So the discovery of the new footage at the Library of Congress is especially exciting for us.”

Says Library of Congress Motion Picture Division Curator Mike Mashon, “When the New York State Board of Censors rejected the first version of BABY FACE in April 1933, Warners cut the negative and released the shortened version nationally. We're thrilled to be able to show the film in its original, even more salacious form.” Courtesy Warner Bros. and Library of Congress.
2:00, 6:00, 9:20
See special ticket sales policy below for information about purchasing tickets

Click here to read Dave Kehr’s article on the uncut version of BABY FACE from The New York Times

THE SIN OF NORA MORAN

(1933, PHIL GOLDSTONE) Zita Johann’s (The Mummy) eponymous Nora descends into a downward spiral of degradation in this lightning-fast (65 min.) melodrama told in a complex series of “flashbacks, flash-forwards and flashbacks-within-flashbacks... assuming a free-form, dream-like quality” (UCLA notes). Restored by the UCLA Film And Television Archive.
3:40*, 7:40*
See special ticket sales policy below for information about purchasing tickets

SPECIAL TICKET SALES POLICY FOR THIS PROGRAM:

• Tickets for the 2pm and 6pm double feature of BABY FACE and THE SIN OF NORA MORAN will be available for purchase online at filmforum.org beginning Tuesday April 19, or at the box office on the day of show (April 26) only - beginning at 12:30pm.

• Tickets purchased for the 2pm BABY FACE include admission to THE SIN OF NORA MORAN at 3:40pm; those for the 6pm BABY FACE include admission to THE SIN OF NORA MORAN at 7:40pm. PLEASE NOTE that the 9:20 screening of BABY FACE is a SINGLE FEATURE.

• Ticket sales for the SINGLE FEATURE of THE SIN OF NORA MORAN (show times 3:40pm and 7:40pm) will be sold (subject to availability) at the Film Forum box office ONLY on day of show (April 26 only). Sales for the 3:40pm show of THE SIN OF NORA MORAN begin at 2:20pm; sales for the 7:40pm screening begin at 6:20pm. THESE TICKETS DO NOT INCLUDE ADMISSION TO BABY FACE.

• PLEASE NOTE: The theatre will be cleared after the 3:40pm and 7:40pm screenings of THE SIN OF NORA MORAN.

RETURN TO TOP.

(1926, VICTOR SJÖSTROM) MGM ad men leered, “It’s a real A picture!” But in this stunning adaptation (by Swedish great Sjöstrom) of Hawthorne’s tale of adultery in 17th century Boston, Lillian Gish’s Hester Prynne is “one of the most beautifully sustained performances in screen history” (Pauline Kael). Seen previously only in dupey, incomplete prints, this is a brand new restoration from the original camera negative. Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with Warner Bros., George Eastman House & The Packard Humanities Institute.
4:00, 7:20*
*LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER

(1929) Unseen apart from incomplete 16mm prints, this first screen adaptation of the Somerset Maugham play about adultery and murder on an Indonesian rubber plantation stars legendary Broadway actress Jeanne Eagels (in the role played by Bette Davis in 1940), with Herbert Marshall — husband in the later version — as her lover. Of three surviving Eagels films, it's the only one with sound; she died of a drug overdose the same year.
2:45, 6:00, 9:15

Tickets for double features cannot be purchased on-line.
They must be purchased at the box office.
CLICK HERE for more information on when they are for sale.

CHECK HERE FOR OTHER SPECIAL REPERTORY EVENTS!

RETURN TO TOP.

GORILLA AT LARGE
(1954, HARMON JONES) The hate-beast who lives to kill is loose! When a man’s found dead at the Garden of Evil carnival, the obvious suspect is simian star Goliath — or was it someone wearing Cameron Mitchell’s gorilla costume? Or mantrap aerialist Anne Bancroft? Or her jealous husband Raymond Burr? It’s up to Sergeant Lee J. Cobb to sort out the murder and the romantic entanglements, in this bona fide cult classic — presented in a stunning new double-system 3-D and color print! Approx. 84 min., plus an intermission.
2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30

HAROLD LLOYD’S 3-D NUDES
During the intermissions of Gorilla at Large, we will present a selection of 3-D nude slides shot in the 1950s by legendary comedian Harold Lloyd. A collection of these photos, Hollywood Nudes in 3-D, will be published in October by Black Dog & Leventhal.
Presented in association with The New York Stereoscopic Society.
SPECIAL THANKS TO SUZANNE LLOYD AND CHUCK JOHNSON OF THE HAROLD LLOYD TRUST, NY STEREOSCOPIC SOCIETY DIRECTOR GREG DINKINS, AND SCHAWN BELSTON OF 20TH CENTURY FOX.