Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948)

WHO: Joan Fontaine, who died last month at the age of 96, stars in this.

WHAT: An exquisite masterpiece. Read Farran Nehme (a.k.a. the the Self-Styled Siren)'s wonderful article on it.

WHERE/WHEN: Today at the Stanford Theatre at 3:45 and 7:30.

WHY: Bless the Stanford for its flexibility; it was able to put together a four-film program of Fontaine films as a quick fill-in between the end of its last Preston Sturges/Marx Brothers program, and it's next program, and this is the final day to see her incredible face in close-up on their big screen.

The next Stanford series begins Friday, and is devoted to Frank Capra. For about seven weeks the theatre will run multiple-night stands of all of Capra's 1930s and 1940s features except for four (Rain Or Shine, Broadway Bill, and the recently-screened Lady For A Day and It's a Wonderful Life are the only no-shows from this period). The venue will also spend two nights apiece showing his top-notch Why We Fight documentaries from his World War II service (February 12-13) and his Bell Telephone Science films including Hemo the Magnificent and more (February 19-20). Best of all, the venue will hold six screenings of two of Capra's silent films, with live musical accompaniment by Dennis James on Wurlitzer organ. Both That Certain Thing (January 24-26) and The Power of the Press (January 29-30) are very rarely revived, and were not part of the last, silent-heavy, Capra retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive in 2010.

Dennis James will be returning to the South Bay March 14th to accompany Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac at the California Theatre in San Jose, as part of the Cinequest Film Festival.

HOW: Letter From An Unknown Woman screens on a double-bill with Fontaine's own favorite role in The Constant Nymph, both in 35mm.

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

WHO: Frank Capra directed, produced, and co-wrote the screenplay for this film.

WHAT: You'd have to be living under a lump of coal not to know about this film, by now probably the most widely-loved Hollywood movie made before 1950 with the possible exception of Casablanca. You may have heard that it was a flop on its initial release in 1946, which is not exactly true, as it was nominated for several Oscars including Best Picture, and sold enough tickets to place it in the top 30 box office draws of the year. Just not enough to turn a profit on its unusually high (for its time) production cost. 

You may also have heard that it was forgotten for decades until someone realized its copyright had not been renewed, thus making it a cheap buy for television stations which soon began broadcasting it frequently, turning it into a classic. I'm not sure how truly forgotten it was (as a former Best Picture nominee it must have been known to some people), but it apparently was unknown enough that a classroom of film students including my favorite classic film podcaster Frank Thompson had never heard of it when Capra himself came to screen it in Boston in the early 1970s.

But It's A Wonderful Life has never really let up its grip on our collective cultural memory loosen since those days. Now annual screenings in cinemas and on television stations are joined by annual internet articles about the film's history as a target of anti-Communist investigation, about its surviving cast, and more. My favorite new-for-2013 piece of It's A Wonderful Life effluvia is a newly re-cut trailer put together by the Cinefamily (formerly Silent Movie Theatre) in Los Angeles for its current week-long 35mm run of the film. Enjoy!

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at 2 & 7 today only at Century Theatres around Frisco Bay (and beyond). It also screens at 9PM at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, but this annual showing is, as always, sold out. I warned you!

WHY: Merry Christmas!

HOW: 35mm at the Stanford and digitally elsewhere.

Lady For A Day (1933)

WHO: Frank Capra directed this film starring May Robson and Warren William.

WHAT: The first film made at then-tiny Columbia Pictures to receive any Academy Award nominations, it was in the running at the 1934 Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Actress (for Robson as "Apple Annie", a an aged peddler who is remade into a high-society matron for the benefit of her visiting daughter). It won none of the above awards, although Capra thought he had won the directing award when host and presenter Will Rogers called from the stage, "Come and get it, Frank!" when announcing the award. He meant his fellow Fox Studio employee Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade, however, leaving Capra embarrassingly standing in front of the stage speechless as he realized on his way to the podium he'd made a (perfectly understandable) mistake. 

The next year Capra found redemption when his It Happened One Night swept the major awards, but I think Lady For A Day is in most respects a superior picture than the slightly-later classic. Joseph McBride describes its uniqueness in his biography Frank Capra: the Catastrophe of Success:

It was not so much that the story had a seventy-year-old heroine but that it was not a conventional star vehicle. It was a truly democratic story. Each character was equally important. Even the nominal lead role of Apple Annie was merely the centerpiece of a fragile fairy tale that to an unusual extent depended for its credibility on the interaction of an entire community of characters.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight only at 7:30 at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto.

WHY: The Stanford's Summer calendar is winding down now that it's September, with only four pictures to go, all starring Deanna Durbin, who was subject of a full retrospective last Winter and died at age 91 this past Spring. These four include Durbin's most uncharacteristic picture and one of her very best (along with His Butler's Sister and The Amazing Mrs. Holiday, in my opinion), the Robert Siodmak noir Christmas Holiday. It sounds like a charming film but goes to far darker places than even Capra's It's A Wonderful Life in its depiction of Durbin as a prostitute and Gene Kelly as a... but no, I won't give it away.

This film is something of a premonition of the next Stanford series, a dual focus on Humphrey Bogart and film noir running September 14 through November 10. Unfortunately, the theatre will go back to a four-day screening schedule after the initial nine-day run of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon (Sep. 14-22). But the good news is everything will be shown in 35mm prints, and that every Thursday-to-Sunday weekend will pair one of Bogie's most popular pictures with a top-quality crime picture from approximately the same era. The two bookending bills in this pattern are knockouts: Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not arrives with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past September 26-29, and my very favorite Bogart vehicle In A Lonely Place is paired with one of the all-time great noirs Gun Crazy November 7-10. In between are a number of other strong pictures (The Third Man, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Touch of Evil, etc.) as well as a few I've never gotten around to seeing (namely, The Blue Dahlia, Key Largo and The Caine Mutiny). I'll be tempted to go every week!

HOW: Lady For A Day screens in 35mm on a double-bill with another Warren William film called Emploees Entrance