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James Mason also appears in HATTER'S CASTLE (August 23/24)

"Watching this film is like entering a strange and wonderful dream. Everything about it, from the magnificent performances,
to the gorgeous locations and Jack Cardiff's stunning photography, is infused with this ethereal, other-worldly quality."
– Martin Scorsese

AUGUST 17 MON (2 FILMS FOR 1 ADMISSION)

I MET A MURDERER

(1939, Roy Kellino) On the run after killing his wife (well, she did shoot his dog), James Mason accepts a lift from travelling novelist Pamela Kellino (later Mrs. Mason) and a bond develops — but is he just material for her next novel? All outdoors location-shot indie production — then a rarity — put together by the three principals as a personal showcase.
7:50 ONLY

“Graceful, gallant, resourceful and in every way satisfying.
Better and more enjoyable than most studio pictures.”
– James Agee

“One of Britain's earliest bona-fide film noirs (despite almost exclusively sunny exteriors),
I Met a Murderer was also a rare example of Cassavetes-style independent filmmaking in Britain.”
– William K. Everson

THE SEVENTH VEIL

(1945, Compton Bennett) So why can’t pianist Ann Todd play anymore? Psychiatrist Herbert Lom helps peel back the eponymous veils, flashbacking through a brutal headmistress, amours with a painter and a bandleader, and her guardian and brooding, crippled svengali James Mason. Best Original Screenplay.
6:00, 9:30

“A rich, portentous mixture of Beethoven, Chopin, Kitsch, and Freud... Highly entertaining.
Maybe, with a few veils stripped away, all of us have a fantasist inside who gobbles up this sadomasochistic sundae.”
– Pauline Kael

“Mixes a heady stew of kitsch, culture and Freud. With Mason providing the catchpenny dream of (masochistic) romance -
lame, dark and sardonically brooding, he's the guardian who relentlessly drives her towards success”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)

“This dotty mixture of psychiatry, Grieg, Tchaicovksy and so on takes on a certain splendor.
Most quality results from James Mason’s performance.”
– David Shipman

“A splendid modern melodrama in the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca;
it set the seal of moviegoing approval on psychiatry, classical music, and James Mason, and it is the most utter tosh.”
– Leslie Halliwell

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AUGUST 24 MON (Separate Admission)

THE UPTURNED GLASS

(1947, Lawrence Huntington) Surgeon James Mason’s lecture concerns a “colleague’s” dilemma: after curing Rosamund John’s daughter from blindness, the unhappily-married-to-others couple find love. But when John is later reported dead from a fall from a window, Mason smells a rat. Mason’s wife Pamela Kellino co-wrote, as well as playing the nastiest character of all.
6:45 ONLY

“Has some interesting concepts and a twisty plot. Depends, wisely enough, on Mason’s strong personality.”
– David Shipman

“The psychology is genuine; so too is the tension; the camera plays some good quiet tricks.”
– William Whitebait

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AUGUST 31 MON (Separate Admission)

THE MAN BETWEEN

(1953, Carol Reed) In divided post-war Berlin, Claire Bloom pays a visit to her brother, whose wife Hildegarde Neff is having secret meetings with shady go-between and pre-war lawyer James Mason. But even as Bloom finds herself drawn to Mason, a kidnapping attempt, a bigamy revelation, and a kidnapping of the wrong person lead him to a desperate choice, and a classic Reed climax.
7:00, 9:00

“Reed knows all the tricks of suspense and how to use locations.”
– David Shipman

“Very much a return to the world of Harry Lime, with the ruins of edgy, divided Berlin standing in for the sewers of Vienna.
The drab, snow-clad city finds its human counterpart in Mason's sardonic, disreputable double agent..
Cold war dogmatism is refreshingly muted, with free world heroes and Stalinist heavies merely a backcloth to the complexly ambiguous relations centred on Mason.”
– Time Out (London)

“Displays Reed's love of photogenic corruption, his technical finesse, and his feeling for atmospheric intrigue.” – Pauline Kael

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SEPTEMBER 7 MON

THE RECKLESS MOMENT

(1949, Max Ophüls) Blackmailer James Mason turns golden-hearted after he puts the hit on Joan Bennett, who’s dumped the body of her daughter’s supposedly murdered older boyfriend — but partner Roy Roberts is still waiting for the cash.
6:00, 7:40, 9:20

“A Noir-melodrama masterpiece too often forgotten. As if Fritz Lang's bitter cologne lingered on Bennett and rubbed off on Ophüls, the film watches with wide eyes as the methodical hand of fate slowly closes.”
– Michael Atkinson, L Magazine

“As stylish and romantic as one might expect but also powered by two crackerjack performances.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“Recommended! A first-rate suspense flick.”– Time Out New York

“Usually overlooked in favor of the European masterpieces, but it's one of the director's most perverse stories of doomed love, with Joan Bennett as a bored middle-class housewife whose daughter accidentally kills her sleazy suitor, and James Mason as an engagingly exotic Irishman who attempts to blackmail the mother. Naturally, they feel a certain attraction. Ophuls spins a network of fine irony out of the lurid material; Bennett is surprisingly effective as a typical Ophuls heroine, discovering a long-suppressed streak of masochism.”
– Dave Kehr

"An underrated gem."—Phillip Lopate

“A marvelous, tantalizing thriller, it also features never-better performances from Mason and Bennett.
Ophüls' noir melodrama, can be seen as a subtle, subversive critique of American ambitions and class-structures.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

“One of the most radical critiques of the patriarchal family to be found in the American cinema.” – Robert Lang

“Holds up astonishingly well. Mason plays the screen’s most sympathetic blackmailer.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

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SEPTEMBER 14 MON

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

(1951, Albert Lewin) All the men in the little Spanish port of Esperanza are in love with Ava Gardner, but she loves only herself, until she swims to James Mason’s newly-arrived yacht to find him already painting her picture. But when he revives in perfect health from a stabbing and quotes a rare 300-year-old manuscript from memory — well, just who is he? Restored by George Eastman House in cooperation with Douris UK Ltd. and The Film Foundation.*
2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30
*Restored by George Eastman House in cooperation with The Douris Corporation. Funding provided by The Film Foundation, the Rome Film Festival, and the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the Directors Guild of America; Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique; the Motion Picture Association of America; and the Writers Guild of America, West.

“A dotty but deliriously beautiful romance.”
– David Thomson

“An extraordinary film. Lewin combines a script of exuberant literacy with a visual splendour often bordering on the surreal. Mason is his usual impeccable self, while Gardner is gloriously believable as a woman for whom any man would be prepared to suffer eternal damnation. Occasionally absurd, always bold, the film tells a lushly romantic story so skillfully that it possesses the inevitability of myth.”
– Time Out (London)

“Fruitty-nutty… Certifiably one of a kind. Lewin’s staging is so luxuriantly mad that it's easy to get fixated on what, if anything, he could have had in mind. Sally Bowles might have called it divinely incoherent.”
– Pauline Kael

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