Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

WHO: Edith Head designed the costumes for this film.

WHAT: The last film Preston Sturges wrote and directed while at Paramount is one of my favorites. It starts in a San Francisco saloon called the Dog Watch, where a group of six busted marines just back from Guadalcanal make the acquaintance of a legacy Marine (born the day his father died at Belleau Wood) named Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith. Truesmith (played by Eddie Bracken) has just spent a year pretending to be overseas after a medical discharge (hayfever) cut short his military career after just one month. Soon all seven men are heading to his hometown of Oakhurst, California, where he'll finally reunite with his mother (Georgia Caine) and former sweetheart (Ella Raines) while the other six eagerly perpetuate the fiction that he was a hero among their company- especially since it gives them an opportunity for free food and lodging during their five-day leave. Things only get more and more out of hand from there, and somehow Sturges is able to walk a tightrope between portraying portraying military men as noble and patriotism as a form of insanity.

WHERE/WHEN: 3:30 and 7:30 today and tomorrow at the Stanford Theatre.

WHY: Although I mention Edith Head above, this is probably not one of the top ten or twenty or fifty or maybe even one hundred films that fans of classic Hollywood would point to as one of her most significant career milestones. But Sturges stuffs his frames with huge numbers of bodies, each character and extra representing perfectly an aspect of American society, and each of them needing just the right outfit to quickly express that aspect. Bracken's own costuming (in uniform or out) is a crucial element of the plot, and the attractive dresses Head is best known for are certainly on display on the Dog Watch's tap dancer and chanteuse, and on the lovely Raines.

Head's several hundred credits as costumer could make a fine introduction to Hollywood "A-pictures" from the 1930s to 1970s. The prolific Head worked in just about every genre and every studio, and with many of the classic era's top stars and directors. A complete Edith Head retrospective sounds like the punchline to a film programming in-joke, but it really would be a thing to behold, even if it took a year or more to unfold. Since it'd never happen, I'll just point out the films with her credit that are screening in the coming weeks. After Hail the Conquering Hero, the next film bearing her imprint to screen locally will be Breakfast At Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn, at the Castro on New Year's Day. The following week on January 9th the New Parkway screens King Creole to celebrate its star Elvis Presley's birthday the day before. And just last night the Paramount Theatre in Oakland announced its next three 35mm classic film screenings, and two out of three of them are among Head's most famous among her thrity-five Academy Award-nominated films. January 17 the venue will show To Catch A Thief with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, and February 28 it will screen Roman Holiday, another film starring Hepburn, that won Head her fifth of eight Oscars. The odd film out on the Paramount schedule is Dirty Harry which screens January 31st; its costumes were picked out by Clint Eastwood's regular wardrobe man until 1992, Glenn Wright.

HOW: Hail the Conquering Hero screens on a 35mm double-bill with the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races.

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

WHO: Robert Dudley has a very memorable supporting role in this.

WHAT: John Pym writes quite a bit about Dudley's character The Wienie King, a processed-meat tycoon who encounters a low-on-cash Gerry (played by Claudette Colbert) early in the film. A sample:

Why does the Wienie King give Gerry the rent money? Partly to best his wife, to be sure, but partly because he simply has a mind to. He likes the look of Gerry in her pink wrap. He likes birds, and there just happens to be a bird embroidered on the wrap. He knows what it is like to be poor. He just does it. It's in his nature.

WHERE/WHEN: 4:10 and 7:30 today at the Stanford Theatre, and 7:00 on January 29, 2014 at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: I knew I had to post about Robert Dudley this weekend after seeing him for a split second on the Castro Theatre screen last Wednesday during the 4th annual Noir City Xmas screening that has become the traditional way to announce the next ten-day Noir City festival in January (2014's is taking a bold new approach, making it my most-anticipated program yet! But more on that in a future post.) He plays a small role in the 1947 film Christmas Eve a.k.a. Sinner's Holiday which gave a belly-of-Hollywood finish to a double-bill that began with the bleak, New York underground cinema standout Blast of Silence, which somehow feels like the midway point between an Anthony Mann and a John Cassavetes movie.

Christmas Eve, a story of an eccentric spinster trying to reunite with her long-lost wards (George Brent, George Raft and Randolph Scott) is one of those Hollywood oddities that doesn't quite conform to any genre conventions, but rather combines and stirs together elements from several seemingly disparate genres: screball comedy, political thriller, Western. I can't help but think that Robert Altman's involvement, very early in his film career, is in part responsible for this stew. It's an unexpectedly effective mix, especially as the middle segment of the film involving Raft and a Nazi-in-hiding unfolds coldly and powerfully. This is perhaps the only truly noir-ish element of Christmas Eve, and justification enough for it to be programmed at Noir City Xmas, especially one that announces a Noir City line-up that will be kicked off January 25th with a double-bill of Journey Into Fear and the Third Man. 

 The Stanford shows The Palm Beach Story as the penultimate of its selection of Preston Sturges-directed films to wind down its 2013 programming. Already the venue has begun announcing its 2014 line-up, starting with a quickly-organized four-film tribute to Joan Fontaine, the 96-year-old star who died a week ago. All three of Fontaine's Oscar-nominated performances will be highlighted: Rebecca and Suspicion (for which she won) on a Hitchcock/Fontaine double-bill January 2-5, and The Constant Nymph, paired with her turn for the great Max Ophüls Letter From An Unknown Woman January 9-12.

Then, the PFA will show The Palm Beach Story as part of a series called Funny Ha-Ha: American Comedy, 1930–1959 that kicks off with My Man Godfrey the night that venue reopens after the Winter break, January 16th, and speeds through some of the humorous highlights of Hollywood from Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Frank Tashlin, and more. It's called "part one of a three-part series" in the now-online program but it's a little unclear what parts two and three will be: more comedies from the same period? (Either more American ones, or else focuses on other countries' comedies?) More comedies from later periods? Perhaps a set apiece devoted to American Drama and American Romance? Or American Tragedy and American Histories? Stay tuned.

Whatever this large-scale series precisely is, it's not alone. 2014 will evidently see at least two other retrospectives that last more than just a couple of months at the PFA. A Satyajit Ray series begins with the Bengali master's first film Pather Panchali January 17, and will continue through August, expecting to include nearly all of his films. From what we've seen of the PFA's schedule for its year-long Jean-Luc Godard retrospective, it appears that it may be even more complete. Every feature film the master made up through 1967's Weekend will screen in chronological order this Spring, starting with 35mm prints of Breathless and Le Petit Soldat January 31st (unfortunately in the midst of Noir City). Programs of early short films and anthology contributions threaten to make this a complete accounting of Godard's pre-1968 work. A Fall series is promised to cover his post-1968 career.

These three big PFA presentations will still be accompanied by smaller series in 2014; the January-February calendar brings us Anthony Mann crime films, the annual African Film Festival, an in-person appearance by Pennsylvania documentarian Tony Buba, and more.

HOW: The Palm Beach Story screens via a 35mm print at both venues; on a double-bill with A Night At the Opera only at the Stanford.

Duck Soup (1933)

WHO: This is the last film starring the "Four Marx Brothers": Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo; it's also the only Marx Bros. film directed by a truly world-class auteur, in this case Leo McCarey.

WHAT: This film contains what must be the Marx's most brilliant single-scene contribution to the history of screen comedy: the "mirror" scene in which Groucho and Harpo (dressed as a doppelganger of his brother) encounter each other on opposite sides of a frame. So much has been said about this scene, and so much more can be, but there's nothing like watching it in the midst of fellow appreciators of Marxian comedy. Here's one article on the scene. Here's another.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens today & tomorrow at the Stanford Theatre at 6:10 & 9:20, at the Castro Theatre December 30th (at 2:20, 5:30 & 8:45), and at 3:00 on January 18th, 2014 at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: Whether you've been attending the weekly Marx Brothers/Preston Sturges double-bills at the Stanford this season, or just following along at home, I highly recommend you read an article published on the theatre website by local critic Richard von Busack on both. He focuses a bit more attention on Sturges, who left a signature on the Paramount Studio of the early 1940s as deep as that the Marx team did on that studio in the early 1930s, but has not stayed quite as present in popular culture for various reasons. But the article has some excellent insight into Groucho and his kin as well.

HOW: All of these screenings are on 35mm. The Stanford shows are double-bills with The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and the Castro shows are double-bills with A Night At The Opera.

Sullivan's Travels (1941)

WHO: Preston Sturges wrote and directed this.

WHAT: Can an artist who has only known privilege make art that speaks to the experiences of people without privilege? This is the question at the heart of Sullivan's Travels, a laugh-out-loud comedy made in the early 1940s, when the Great Depression had officially ended but poverty continued. A pompous but good-hearted movie director, tired of making studio fluff, determines to experience the "real" America by going out on the road, and ends up farther from his Hollywood mansion than he'd ever expected. Filled with the romance, adventure, witty dialogue, and wonderful character actors that typify classic-era movie-making at its best, this film is frequently cited as one of the best comedies ever. Has the Hollywood myth machine ever been subject to more hilariously honest satire?

WHERE/WHEN: Only at the Stanford Theatre tonight through Sunday at 7:30, with additional matinee screenings tomorrow and Sunday at 4:10.

WHY: It's a pretty weak weekend for 35mm film screenings in Frisco Bay, believe it or not. The Castro is given over to the all-digital Good Vibrations Erotic Short Film Competition tonight and digitally-projected Sing-A-Long Sound Of Music the rest of the weekend. The Pacific Film Archive is screening its own 35mm print of the Hong Kong New Wave landmark The Arch Sunday and an imported print of Fassbinder's Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? tonight, but the latter is surely the same moderately scratched, extremely color-faded print I saw at Yerba Buena Center For The Arts last month. Otherwise it's showing Fassbinder's Despair on Blu-Ray and turning over the rest of the weekend to 2K & 4K digital presentations of classic films known for their great photochemical-era cinematography. At least Sony archivist Grover Crisp will be on hand to defend DCP as a format for the Saturday showings of Louis Malle's Alamo Bay and Scorsese's Taxi Driver. I hope he's asked some pointed questions.

But there are bright spots for 35mm-goers besides The Arch: YBCA is showing Querelle on 35mm Sunday (quality of print unknown), the 4-Star is giving the brand-new, shot-on-film 12 Years a Slave what I believe to be it's first local 35mm showings, and there's always the Stanford, which is wonderfully old-fashioned enough not to have the capability of screening anything digitally. Nor does it have the capability of selling advance tickets online or by phone, so if you want to ensure a seat at its annual, always-sold-out Christmas Eve screening of It's A Wonderful Life, you'll have to make your way to the theatre box office sometime shortly after tickets go on sale tomorrow. While you're there, why not catch a great film or two? Preston Sturges's closest-to-canonized classic Sullivan's Travels screening with my personal favorite Marx Brothers picture Horse Feathers? You can't go wrong.

HOW: Both films on the double-bill screen in 35mm as always at this venue.

Monkey Business (1931)

WHO: Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx star in this.

WHAT: When people talk about the pre-code gangster films Hollywood brewed out of the early-1930s confluence of Prohibtion, the Depression, and the sudden celebrity status of the likes of Al Capone and John Dillinger, they always seem to leave out this film. The first Marx Brothers movie conceived of for the silver screen (as the prior The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers has been based on stage shows) is perhaps more often thought of as "the one on a ship" than "the one with gangsters" but the latter form a key part of the film's completely unimportant plot. Just because it's an absurd comedy doesn't mean it shouldn't go down with other 1931 films like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy as important films made before the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping turned Hollywood away from  on-screen gangster depictions for a while. It' not for nothing that the illustrious Dave Kehr once decribed the comic aspects of Howard Hawks's Scarface by invoking the image of "Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun."

WHERE/WHEN: Today through Sunday at the Stanford Theatre at 6:00 & 9:15.

WHY: Happy Thanksgiving and Hannukah. You've probably already heard about how an unusually late-in-month Thanksgiving and an unusually early-in-Gregorian-year Hannukah have converged today for the first time since the nineteenth century, making for a once-in-lifetime double holiday. Being a goy myself, I'm not one to proscribe holiday traditions, but if a rabbi says watching Marx Brothers movies is a good way to celebrate Hannukah, I'm happy to pass it along.

Thanksgiving being a big moviegoing day to begin with, there's few classic comedy masterpieces that seem as well-suited to the holiday as The Lady Eve, with its uproariously funny banquet set piece. The pairing of Monkey Business on a double-bill with an equally ship-board and crook-filled comedy  seems so perfect that I almost wonder if the Stanford noticed the Thanksgiving/Hannukah collision on the calendar and decided to build its current Preston Sturges/Marx Brothers series inspired by it.

HOW: 35mm as always at the Stanford.

Christmas In July (1940)

WHO: Preston Sturges wrote and directed this.

WHAT: For my money, Christmas In July has as much as a claim on the title of "Sturges's greatest film" as any of his others. Perhaps it doesn't usually get such respect because it's at just over an hour long the shortest of the director's films, or perhaps simply because it was only his second film after his promotion from screenwriter into the director's chair. But at least one major critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, seems to agree it's among his best, and has called the film "a riotous satire of capitalism that bites so deep it hurts" and placed it on his 100-film deep counter-canon to the 1997 AFI 100 list which included no Preston Sturges films at all. (The 2007 update saw Sullivan's Travels added to the list.)

WHERE/WHEN: Today and tomorrow at 4:20 and 7:30 at the Stanford Theatre

WHY: Relax. I know it's still not even Thanksgiving (or Hanukkah- or indeed Thanksgivukkah), so it's arguably too early to watch Christmas movies. But this is not a Christmas movie despite having the word in the title; it's set in the middle of a New York summer (hence the "July" part of the title), and the "Christmas" moniker refers only to the bounty associated with the season.

But though it may still be to early in the year to see Christmas movies, it's not too early to make plans to see them. The Stanford will start selling tickets to its annual December 24th 35mm screening of It's A Wonderful Life on December 7th, only at the theatre box office (nice extra incentive to see a terrific double bill of Sullivan's Travels and Horse Feathers that day or the next.) Tickets always sell out in advance for this event.

The Castro will be showing It's A Wonderful Life in December too this year, though it's not yet been announced whether this will be in 35mm or not. At any rate that happens December 22nd. Other X-mas-related films to play that theatre next month include Gremlins and Lethal Weapon on the 19th and Love Actually on the 20th courtesy of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS (billed with the Thanksgiving-themed Home for the Holidays and an unnanounced Roxie midnight show)

HOW: Christmas in July screens on a 35mm double-bill with the Four Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers.

The Great McGinty (1940)

WHO: Preston Sturges wrote and directed this.

WHAT: Almost ten years ago I dove into a project of watching almost every Preston Sturges-credited film I could get my hands on, in order to write a short piece on this film of Senses Of Cinema. I still like most of what I wrote, but a more recent revisitation of the film made me wonder why I left out certain key aspects of the film that make it more complex than my 1200 words (including footnotes) got across. The framing story involving Louis Jean Heydt and Steffi Duna, for instance, got completely overlooked, for instance, when in fact it's one of Sturges's most fascinating disruptions to the Hollywood formula.

Though I wouldn't call The Great McGinty one of Sturges's very best films, it's too-frequently dismissed as a substantially inferior first stab at directing, when in fact it's really just about as well-constructed and at least as thematically rich as any of his other films. Its humor is perhaps not as pushed to the center as in a more canonized film like The Palm Beach Story, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. It's certainly one of my sentimental favorites of Sturges's films, and a fine introduction to the filmmaker for anyone who hasn't experienced his work before.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight through Sunday at the Stanford Theatre at 7:30, with additional Saturday and Sunday afternoon matinees at 4:10.

WHY: Tonight's screening of The Great McGinty is on a double-bill with the very first Marx Brothers feature (and the one from their first ten years in Hollywood that I've seen least recently) The Cocoanuts. The Stanford's new series screens each of the first seven feature Marx Brothers films along with the first seven films Sturges directed each weekend through the rest of 2013, nearly in chronological order. The only modification to this scheme is the swapping of the 1942 Palm Beach Story with the 1944 Miracle of Morgan's Creek, presumably so that the World War II-themed latter film can be paired with the Marx Brothers' takedown of war Duck Soup.

HOW: All films in this Stanford series screen on 35mm.

The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

WHO: Orson Welles wrote, directed and starred in this (that's him racing along a Portsmouth Square path as Rita Hayworth looks on in the above screen capture).

WHAT: Whether or not you consider this one of the great films of the classic film noir era (and I certainly do; I consider it an unjustly overlooked but key element to the towering Welles filmography) you have to admit that it's second half includes some of the best glimpses of of late-1940's San Francisco ever captured by a major Hollywood studio camera. I could name all of the great locations in which Welles and cinematographer Charles Lawton, Jr. (later a specialist in shooting Westerns in the Alabama Hills and other desert locales) set up terrific shots, but it's more convenient just to link the pages devoted to The Lady From Shanghai on Brian Hollins's great Reel SF site of classic San Francisco-location films; he completed an online tour of the film in 2012, and is currently working his way through The Man Who Cheated Himself, Born To Kill and Los Angeles film The Exiles.

WHERE/WHEN: Final screenings today at 5:50 and 9:25 at the Stanford Theatre

WHY: The Stanford's current series pairing Humphrey Bogart vehicles with film noir classics (often but not always making for a double-dose of noir, naturally) has just a few more programs to go; and Orson Welles is featured both tonight and next weekend, when he appears on-screen and behind-the-camera in Touch of Evil (on a "power-mad official" double-bill with the Caine Mutiny). The good news is that the Stanford has already announced its final film series of 2013. The bad news is that the venue will continue to be closed three nights a week, only showing films Thursday through Sunday nights for the rest of the year, with the exception of the annual December 24 showing of It's A Wonderful Life (this year falling on a Tuesday.) 

But the weekends will be pretty wonderful; each one from November 14th through December 29th will  feature one of the seven films made with the Marx Brothers during their years at Paramount (1929-1933) or under producer Irving Thalberg at MGM (1935-1937), in chronological order, as well as one of the seven great comedies directed by Preston Sturges at Paramount between 1940 and 1944, in nearly-chronological order.

Segueing from Welles to Sturges seems appropriate because it was only after the sealing of the unprecedented (in the talkie era) agreement to allow Welles to write and direct his own films at RKO, that a writer even of Sturges's stature was able to make the leap to directing his own scripts. That he saw three of them (The Great McGinty, Christmas in July and The Lady Eve produced and released before Citizen Kane hit the screen must have been both gratifying and infuriating to Sturges.

HOW: 35mm on a double-bill with Key Largo.