“EXCELLENT, RARELY SEEN FILMS!”
– Dave Kehr, The New York Times

“A SURPRISE GLUT OF 1930s FILMS! There are few better ways to pass a sultry NYC day
than relaxing in the cool darkness of Film Forum while a black and white movie plays in front of you.”
– Mark Peikert, New York Press. Click here to read full article

“It's often forgotten that major studios such as Paramount continued to make films in New York,
and that the movies they produced here absorbed the city's creative energy.”
– Kristin Jones, The Wall Street Journal
Click here to read about the series in The Wall Street Journal

JULY 13 TUE (2 FILMS FOR 1 ADMISSION)

CRIME WITHOUT PASSION

(1934, Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur) Pre-Noir Noir, as jealousy-driven criminal lawyer Claude Rains (in his first post-Invisible Man appearance) turns to murder. A uniquely auteurist contract with Paramount gave Astoria-based Hecht & MacArthur carte blanche. Approx. 72 minutes.
2:40, 6:00, 9:30

“Thirty years ago, when I first saw it, I thought it ten or fifteen years ahead of its time.
I was optimistic. Seeing it recently again I feel we still haven't caught up with it.”
– Herman G. Weinberg

“Probably the best of the off-beat films Hecht-MacArthur
made for Paramount and certainly the most bizarre.”
– William K. Everson

“A lurid gasp of independent filmmaking. Lee Garmes created the bravura Eisensteinian montages that provide the movie with a mythological underpinning. Rains is mesmerizing in putting bite into the shyster melodramatics. Endlessly fascinating for film buffs.”
– Andrew Sarris

“Opens with the most spectacular montage sequence, a two-minute avant-garde film intended to set the tone for the rest of the picture,
like the overture to an especially bloody Italian opera.”
– Richard Koszarski

THE SCOUNDREL

(1935, Hecht & MacArthur) Hecht and MacArthur’s second Astoria production stars Noel Coward as a stiletto-tongued New York publisher returning to earth after a fatal shipwreck, with various Algonquinites adding to the authentic literary atmosphere. Academy Award, Best Original Story. Plus short Hollywood on the Hudson (1942). Program Approx. 86 minutes.
1:00, 4:15, 7:35

“A wonderful exercise in the debonair, with a kind of crippled poetry about it.
I went to it when I was about 10 or 12 and have gone about mumbling lines from it ever since.
An experiment to see what will happen if you put together a lot of Hollywood stock
ingredients and then throw in Coward to wreck them... a violently suave fairy tale.”
– Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker

“Unsettlingly convincing.” – Kristin Jones, The Wall Street Journal

“Wholly independent in thought, personal in conception, and self-indulgent in execution. Quite wonderful in its own bizarre way. Distinctly unusual for its day.”
– William K. Everson

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JULY 20 TUE (2 FILMS FOR 1 ADMISSION)

VITAPHONE VARIETIES
OF 2010

Twelve early sound shorts, all filmed at Brooklyn’s Avenue M Studios, restored by UCLA, and unseen since 1929! Tonight’s stars include Birth of a Nation’s Henry B. Walthall; Preston Sturges perennial Jimmy Conlin; Brit comics Val & Ernie Stanton; tap-dancing harpist Carlena Diamond; Oklahoma Bob Albright and “His Rodeo-Do Flappers;” and much more! Introduced by Ron Hutchinson of The Vitaphone Project. Special thanks to Bob Gitt. Program Approx. 105 minutes.
1:00, 4:40, 8:30

Click here for the complete program notes

MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS

(1933, Karl Freund & Monte Brice) 42nd Street on a shoestring, shot in Astoria, as brash songwriter Roger Pryor battles producers; smalltown muse Mary Brian fends off gambling sleazeballs; and Lillian Miles booms “Dusty Shoes” in the big Depression finale. Co-director Freund was the DP of Metropolis! Approx. 84 minutes.
3:00, 6:40, 10:30

“EDITORS' PICK! This freewheeling musical... is worth seeing for the bursts of style and fine performances.”
– New York magazine

“TOTALLY NOURISHED BY SHEER NERVE! WHAT A MOVIE! Hard-boiled laughs, a supposed
insider view of show-biz magic, catchy tunes that made light of the Depression,
and '50 Famous Show Girls.' Of the musicals made after 1932, this one is the closest
to the first pioneering musicals in its enterprising try-anything-once spirit and intentions.”
– Richard Barrios

“The climax, a big social commentary Depression number about the army of the unemployed
getting back on its feet and Wall Street dancing for joy, is really fascinating.”
– Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

“A real curio! Has a bizarre charm.”
– William K. Everson

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JULY 27 TUE (2 FILMS FOR 1 ADMISSION)

ANIMAL CRACKERS

(1930, Victor Heerman) Hooray for Captain Spaulding, as Groucho, Harpo, and Chico (and Zeppo, too) rampage through a wildly-decorated Long Island mansion, while Lillian Roth pines, “Why am I so romantic?” Approx. 98 minutes.
1:20, 4:50, 8:20

“The summit of the evolution of comic cinema.”
–Salvador Dali

“One of the great Marx brothers films, full of extraordinary gags.”
– Georges Sadoul

“A thoroughgoing derangement of Love’s Labour’s Lost, played saltando by the Marx Brothers... It’s clear that Marxian comedy already dwells in the spirals of postmodernism.”
–Fernando F. Croce

SO’S YOUR OLD MAN

(1926, Gregory La Cava) W.C. Fields’ latest get-rich-quick scheme goes sour when cars get switched at the auto show just as he’s about to demonstrate his unbreakable glass windshield with a brick. Preserved by the Library of Congress. Plus Koko’s Earth Control (1928), animated at Fleischer Studios at 1600 Broadway. Program Approx. 77 minutes.
3:15, 6:45

“La Cava, who became an outstanding director of slapstick comedies later in the sound era, turned out a very funny silent picture with this one.”
– Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

“The character of Bisbee was tailor-made for Fields,
timid and self-important and yet achingly vulnerable.”
– James Curtis

“What is memorable is the sharply satirical picture of small-town life, much closer to Sinclair Lewis than Mack Sennett.”
– Richard Koszarski

The Official W.C. Fields website

Listen to Harriet Fields, granddaughter of the comedian, interviewed on The Lenny Lopate Show (WNYC)

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AUGUST 3 TUE (2 FILMS FOR 1 ADMISSION)

THE SMILING LIEUTENANT

(1931, Ernst Lubitsch) Roguish Maurice Chevalier loves violinist Claudette Colbert, but gets trapped into marrying princess Miriam Hopkins. But things look up when good sport Colbert musically advises frumpish Hopkins to “Jazz Up Your Lingerie.” Program Approx. 94 minutes.
1:00, 4:30, 8:00

“A sophisticated soufflé in Lubitsch’s best style, naughty but quite nice.”
– Leslie Halliwell

“Marvelously adult entertainment, at ease with human desire in ways that movies of our time either ignore or trivialize. A masterpiece that leaps out from the others
for its dark undertones and sharply painful emotions.”
– Dave Kehr, The New York Times

“A PRE-CODE CHARMER! Chevalier is caught between two sylph-like hotties in the Ruritanian quasi opera consummately put together by the great crass sophisticate of the movies, Ernst Lubitsch.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“Pre-Code, in the best sense. Quintessential Lubitsch in the way it suggests sexual dalliance
with the brightening or darkening of a gas lamp outside a bedroom”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

LAUGHTER

(1930, Harry D’Abbadie D’Arrast) Despite husband Frank Morgan’s bucks, ex-Follies girl Nancy Carroll finds “laughter” in High-Deco Manhattan with Paris returnee Fredric March. Donald Ogden Stewart’s screenplay shaped the decade of screwball comedy to come. Plus cartoon The Sunshine Makers (1935), made by Van Beuren Studios at 729 Seventh Avenue. Approx. 85 minutes.
2:45, 6:15, 9:45

“THE SERIES' GEM! Criminally underappreciated... Laughter is a giddy delight.”
– Mark Peikert, New York Press

“Perhaps the very first of the screwball comedies.” – Andrew Sarris

“Dazzling!” – Dave Kehr, The New York Times

“A lovely, sophisticated comedy, an ode to impracticality. Its attitude and spirit influenced the screwballs of the 30s. The Art Deco sets here are quite elegant, and the enchanting Nancy Carroll wears perhaps the best clothes ever seen on the screen. And there’s a simple scene with March at the piano and Carroll and another girl jazz dancing that is one of the loveliest, happiest moments in the movies of the period.”
– Pauline Kael

“D’Arrast was probably the greatest exponent of the ‘Lubitsch touch’ after Lubitsch himself. Echoes Holiday but is far darker than anything in Philip Barry’s world.”
– Richard Koszarski

“Brilliant! Wittily acute in its insight into Bright Young Thing nihilism, the film anticipates Cukor's marvelous Holiday in steering a precarious path between screwball comedy and darker abysses.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)

“One of the best talking pictures I have ever seen.” – James Agate

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AUGUST 10 TUE

THE EMPEROR JONES
& St. Louis Blues

(1933, Dudley Murphy) The great Paul Robeson’s Brutus Jones progresses from Pullman porter to Caribbean dictator, and, as the hallucinations begin, back to... Astoria-shot adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s play. Uncensored version courtesy Library of Congress. Plus Murphy’s short St. Louis Blues (1929), the only film starring Blues legend Bessie Smith. Program Approx. 96 minutes.
3:30, 7:50

Also playing August 10: GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES

“The first modern independent film.”
– Los Angeles Times

“Murphy's expressionist, musically rich cinematic version [of O'Neill's play]
intelligently frames Paul Robeson's stunning performance.”
– Kristin Jones, The Wall Street Journal

“Remains remarkable on many levels: its status as a truly independent production, decades before this kind of filmmaking was common; its ambitious integration of design, text, and music at a time when such stylization was almost never seen in commercial cinema; and the real power of Robeson’s performance.”
– Richard Koszarski. Click here to read full article at The Moving Image Source

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