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TCMFF Recap Day 4

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And so we bid a fond farewell to the TCM Classic Film Festival 2012. What an incredible experience it’s been, and it’s kind of a shame that we need to go home just when the weather starts getting nice! The final day was full of great films and one-in-a-lifetime experiences. The final day was definitely different from the rest – I was in a new venue for me, and finally met several people I’d been hoping to see all festival! We spent the entire day watching films at the Egyptian Theatre, which is just a few blocks down the street from Grauman’s Chinese and the Chinese Multiplex. In a way, it was nice to be able to leave the theatre, go outside and get back in line for the next showing. It was also kind of a nuisance to spend most of the day in lines, but that’s the joy of film festivals!

 

The day began with a lecture and series of short silent films called A Trip to the Moon: And Other Trips Through Time, Color and Space. It was led by the enthusiastic Serge Bromberg, a French film historian and preservationist who co-founded Lobster Films in France. He also played live piano accompaniment to all of the films, which varied in subject matter and origin. All of the films he showed were rare, many recently restored from near disrepair. His descriptions of the films were brief but informative, taking only a few minutes between each film to contextualize it. Some films were as short as a minute, others as long as 15 or 20.

Highlights for me included documentary footage of San Francisco in 1902, only a few days before the catastrophic earthquake. The camera was mounted on a

streetcar and filmed in real time, capturing pedestrians, drivers, and the atmosphere in this very recently industrialized city. Interestingly, Bromberg showed us footage filmed after the earthquake to juxtapose the before and after. He also showed a Méliès erotic film, a striptease from 1897 titled “After the Ball”. A woman stripped down to her underclothes and a handmaid pours a bucket of water on her. Of course, water on film would not photograph, so the handmaid poured some inconclusive black liquid on her. It was definitely amusing.

I also really enjoyed a film from 1905 about Japanese acrobats performing amazing stunts. This film was originally only available in a negative with some small portions which had been hand tinted. It was discovered again by Lobster Films and Bromberg enlisted the help of his sister to handtint the film as it would have been done originally. It took her years to complete, but the end result was very charming. (Spoiler alert: the acrobats aren’t Japanese, and they aren’t really acrobats…their amazing feats of strength are actually performed on the ground haha, but it’s a great optical illusion).

And of course, the pièce de résistance, was seeing the newly restored and handtinted version of Melies’ A Trip to the Moon, which was shown last year at the Cannes Film Festival. It had a new soundtrack by the band Air, who you may know from Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999). According to Bromberg, Melies originally hoped that as the film was exhibited in the future, it be accompanied by music of the moment “a la mode”. It’s pretty incredible to see the film today, as it is was made 110 years ago.

After this, we saw one of the films I was looking forward to the most: Charade (1963). I’ve only seen the film a few times before, but I absolutely adore it. I’ve written an Essentials on it, and you can read why there, but this screening was special because Stanley Donen was in attendance. This time, Robert Osbourne interviewed him after the screening about making the film, and he told us some secrets about its production. Apparently, Cary Grant almost wasn’t in the film. He had agreed to be in Charade, but then was approached my Howard Hawkes to be in one of his films.  One day, he acquired the script for Hawkes’ film, and the next day he called Donen to meet him for breakfast. He told him, “I just read the script for Hawkes’ film… is yours still available?” Haha, what a close call! And while they were waiting for Grant to sign on, Audrey Hepburn got pregnant which futher delayed production. Donen also said that Grant specifically requested the script be altered because he felt he was too old to be a girl chaser, so the author switched around the advances. That’s why Hepburn’s character is so forthcoming in the film! One of the most interesting things Donen said though, and this is after hearing him speak at the screening on Funny Face as well, was about the biggest differences between films in the studio era and films now. He believes that they make them now for a younger audience. Back in the Golden Age, films were made for people with more life experience, and the studio heads made films they thought would appeal to people their age – not teenagers with shallow interests. I thought that was really interesting, and very accurate. Such a pleasure to hear him speak, he just turned 88 and is still so incredibly articulate.

When this screening was over, we got in line for the next: The Women (1939). This movie was incredible! It’s definitely been added to my list of favorites, and you should expect an Essentials entry on it very very soon. It’s one of those films I couldn’t really believe I hadn’t seen before, but was so pleased I got the opportunity to see it for the first time on the big screen, no less. It’s an MGM film directed by George Cukor, and came out in probably the most prolific year for the studio (they also made The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind that year). The film was introduced by Cari Beauchamp, and Todd Oldham, a producer, fashion designer and general jack of all trades. They were both so giddy about seeing the film, I hadn’t heard such an enthusiastic intro over the course of the festival (except for maybe Debbie Reynolds for Singin’ in the Rain). This film was shown as part of the “Style in the Movies” program, as it is very much focused on appearance, fashion, and style. The film is in black and white, but there’s a Technicolor fashion show in the middle of the film which is almost non-diegetic in nature. The gowns were by designer Adrian, and they are stunning pieces of work! The film was adapted from a play of the same title, and had to be toned down a bit to adhere to standards of the Production Code. It’s dripping with innuendo. There are no men in the entire film, but it doesn’t pass the Bechdel test because all the women talk about is men. Oh, I just love it. And will need to elaborate more in an Essentials entry, so I apologize for the discombobulated synopsis. Never has two and a half hours gone by so quickly. Time flies when you’re having fun!

The very last screening of the festival was Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad (1924). Introduced by the elusive Ben Mankiewicz (I say cheekily, as this was the first time I saw him over the course of the festival), and Jeffery Banks, who recently wrote a book about Fairbanks. The film actually premiered at the Egyptian Theatre back in 1924, so it was very interesting to see a newly restored digital version, complete with tinted stock and live orchestral accompaniment by the Mont Alto Oschestra. It is a very long film, many people left at the intermission, but we stayed until the end and it was incredible. There was a real sense of movie magic in it, as it’s a fantasy film there are flying carpets, magic ropes, and monsters. Fairbanks seems like an athelete on screen. He was apparently a trained dancer, and interestingly enough, the character of George Valentin in The Artist (2011), which recently won Jean Dujardin an Oscar for Best Actor, was based on Fairbanks. I also noticed that Fairbanks most likely had an influence on performers like Gene Kelly, not only in the roles that he chose, but his execution of stunts and charisma on screen.

The closing night party at the Roosevelt was a blast – I finally met up with three fellow critics who I’ve known through Twitter for years, and made some new friends out by the pool. The festival was such a success, and I really hope to make it a tradition and come back next year.

 


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