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The final piece of the 63rd New York Film Festival film lineup has been locked into place. Expanding the traditional canon, Revivals celebrates works that have been restored, preserved, or digitally remastered. Featuring rediscovered gems and influential rarities, this selection highlights 12 films that have been acclaimed for their artistic innovation and cultural significance or that were underappreciated in their time but offer fresh relevance for today’s audiences.

Featuring the recently completed director’s cut of Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay, Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest, Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg, Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly, Henry Jaglom’s Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, and much more, explore below.

Angel’s Egg / 天使のたまご

Mamoru Oshii, 1985, Japan, 73m

Japanese with English subtitles

New York Premiere of New 4K Restoration

Now recognized as a landmark work of animation, Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg is a cryptic,...

The Hollywood icon played a convent girl falling for a prince in this bizarre film directed by Erich von Stroheim. Decades after it was abandoned, Queen Kelly will now be shown at the Venice film festival

In the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly. This lavish silent melodrama starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim will screen as the pre-opening event at this year’s Venice film festival, with a new score by composer Eli Denson. The film is an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings – and so is the story of its production.

Queen Kelly is set in Europe before the first world war and tells the story of Patricia Kelly (Swanson), a convent girl who falls in love with a prince (British actor Walter Byron) who is engaged to a deranged queen. Patricia is sent away to Tanzania,...

There are Hollywood classics, and then there are Hollywood Classics. Undoubtedly 1950’s Sunset Boulevard, director/writer Billy Wilder’s ultimate Hollywood story is in that rarefied air. It is of course the tale of washed up aging silent screen queen Norma Desmond, played to the hilt by another actress known for her silents Gloria Swanson, whose delusional dreams of a comeback end – and begin – with the murder of screenwriter Joe Gillis, who lies face down in her pool at her decaying mansion as the film opens, and Gillis cheekily narrates his own demise. That would be William Holden doing the honors and both he and Swanson were nominated for Oscars, along with Nancy Olson as Betty Schaefer, a script reader who falls for Gillis, and the inimitable Erich von Stroheim who plays Max, Desmond’s ex-husband and loyal butler. They were all among the 11 Oscar nominations the film received, winning 3 for Art Direction,...

Easterseals Southern California is collaborating with IMDb and IMDbPro to highlight disability representation in honor of Disability Pride Month and the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July. The partnership will last until the end of August.

“To see the disability community featured so prominently on IMDb, our longtime partner, is incredibly impactful,” Nancy Weintraub, chief advancement officer of Essc, said. “It helps us truly reflect the spirit of disability pride, recognizing the influence, voice and achievements of people with disabilities across industries, especially media.”

According to the CDC, 25% of U.S. residents or more than 70 million people across the country reported having a disability in 2022. The longtime partnership between IMDb and IMDbPro for their annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge acknowledges professionals from the disability community who have also worked closely with IMDb. The collaboration features curated content in the IMDb Spotlight special section, including exclusive video interviews,...

The Venice Film Festival has set as its pre-opening event the launch of a freshly restored — and re-imagined — version of Erich von Stroheim’s controversial 1929 silent movie “Queen Kelly.”

The legendary unfinished film, starring Gloria Swanson (“Sunset Boulevard”) as an innocent convent girl who winds up running a brothel in Africa, will world premiere in a 4K reconstruction incorporating newly discovered materials and with a storyline based on Stroheim’s original script.

The new “Queen Kelly” will world premiere at the Lido’s Sala Darsena theatre on Aug. 26 during a gala event featuring a live performance of U.S. composer Eli Denson’s new orchestral score.

As Variety wrote in its original 1928 review, “Queen Kelly, which Erich von Stroheim originally wrote as ‘The Swamp,’ was the director’s eighth silent picture and was undertaken at the behest of Gloria Swanson.” The film “was in production less than three months, from 1 November 1928 to 21 January 1929, when Swanson,...

Nearly 75 years have passed since the release of arguably one of the greatest movies ever made, and a stone-cold classic of film noir — Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder, who would go on to helm other Oscar winners like Marilyn Monroe's Some Like it Hot and the Jack Lemmon rom-com The Apartment, the feature was a sensation from the moment of its release in 1950, earning 11 Academy Award nominations, three wins, and, eventually, was among the first films to be preserved in the National Film Registry. Yet, one thing the cinematic masterpiece has lacked is a proper restoration in 4K Ultra HD for modern viewers. That's about to change this summer with a new physical and digital release. Collider can exclusively share the official trailer made from restored footage of the Paramount classic.

Immediately, the trailer whisks viewers back to Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, which is looking crisper than ever.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

Triple Canopy Presents: In The Hole brings 35mm prints of Salò, Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole, and more.

Roxy Cinema

Martin Scorsese presents Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death on 35mm this Friday; Jerry Lewis’ Smorgasboard shows on 35mm Saturday; Dazed and Confused and Smiley-Face play on Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Essential Cinema brings Erich von Stroheim’s Greed and films by Dziga Vertov; Richard Beymer’s The Innerview plays in a new restoration.

Museum of Modern Art

Films by Howard Hawks, George Stevens, and more play in “The Lady at 100.”

Museum of the Moving Image

The Dead Zone plays throughout the weekend while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shows Saturday and Sunday.

Film Forum

Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman plays in a new restoration; Bride of Frankenstein screens this Sunday.

IFC Center

Barry Lyndon begins screening for its 50th anniversary; Salò,...

The placement of Erich von Stroheim’s name above Rupert Julian’s on the cover of Flicker Alley’s release of Merry-Go-Round is mostly a marketing strategy capitalizing on von Stroheim’s auteurist bona fides. The film was to be von Stroheim’s next project after Foolish Wives, but what little goodwill remained between him and studio heads after that production ran wildly over time and budget soon evaporated during the making of Merry-Go-Round. After six contentious weeks of delay-filled filming, Universal execs fired the director and replaced him with Julian, who remained mindful of the core themes of von Stroheim’s scenario but didn’t set out to channel the maestro’s trademark visual opulence.

Merry-Go-Round plays like a Cliff’s Notes version of a von Stroheim film. Set in pre-World War I Vienna, the story concerns Count Franz Maxmilian von Hohenegg (Norman Kerry), a member of Emperor Franz Joseph...

Writer-director Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower invites comparison to a haunting passage from Dazai Osamu’s No Longer Human. Dazai’s protagonist describes being miles away from home and vomiting blood, which forms “a big rising sun flag in the snow.” Then, as he weeps, the man hears from a distance a little girl saying, “Where does this little path go? Where does this little path go?” It’s one that may as well lead to Hadžihalilović’s film, which abounds in contrasts between blood and snow, among other sensualist pleasures.

Jeanne (Clara Pacini) seems to follow paths wherever they go, without wasting time to wonder where they will take her. She runs away from her foster home in a remote region of France, where her only solace was reading fairy tales to a younger child, Rose (Cassandre Louis Urbain). It’s the 1970s and Jeanne can easily hitchhike...

"Hooray for Hollywood," the old song says. Since the inception of movies, Hollywood has had an interesting habit of making movies about itself. Until the 1950s, those movies almost exclusively celebrated moviemaking as a kind of idyllic profession, all fun and joy for those lucky enough to work in it. That changed in 1950 when director Billy Wilder issued a blistering denouncement of Hollywood with his film Sunset Boulevard.

Today, Sunset Boulevard lands on just about every list of the Greatest Movies Ever, usually somewhere in the top ten. That says something. More than 70 years and one Broadway musical adaptation later, Sunset Boulevard feels as probing and scathing as ever. Told with unforgettable dialog, strange meta-commentary on those who made the film, and acted with some of the greatest performances to ever hit the screen, it deserves its spot as one of the 10 Best Movies Ever.

Sunset Boulevard Carpet Bombs the...

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” is the title of a new Jonathan Rosenbaum reader, culminating nearly six decades of never-before-compiled writing on film, jazz, and literature. The legendary Chicago-based film critic known for iconoclastic takes on the canon has been published everywhere from Cahiers du Cinéma to Film Comment, Sight and Sound, and, of course, the Chicago Reader, where he succeeded Dave Kehr as head critic starting in 1987. He retired from that post in 2008.

Rosenbaum, turning 82 this February, is in conversation this weekend at New York’s Metrograph with filmmaker (and friend) Michael Almereyda. They’ll discuss Serbian director Dušan Makavejev’s cult classic, erotically charged political comedy “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism” (1971), controversial for its montage throughline between sexual liberation and communist revolution, as well as the wild corporate satire “Giants and Toys” (1958) from Yasuzō Masumura. Rosenbaum has long championed the sociopolitically charged works of the Japanese director, who trained under Visconti,...

Christopher Nolan has been attracting the eyes of critics throughout his entire career. Although it was working with a minuscule budget of $6,000 and only played in a few theaters in the United States, his 1998 debut feature "Following" was praised for its tight storytelling and terse psychological underpinnings. Nolan then rose to international fame with his 2000 film "Memento," a neo-noir about a man unable to form new memories. Its backward-chronological-order plot was cleverly conceived and impeccably laid out, somehow coming to a traditional narrative climax even while running in reverse.

From there it was off to the races, so to speak. Nolan became a power player in Hollywood, directing gigantic movie stars like Al Pacino and Robin Williams in a remake of "Insomnia" and making a gigantic, zeitgeist-shifting hit with 2005's "Batman Begins." Nolan's three Batman movies are still spoken of with enthusiasm to this day. Their success also allowed him...

Actor and director Clint Eastwood is so often associated with Westerns that it might be a surprise to learn that his favorite movie is not a Western. Though Eastwood's first movie role was an uncredited appearance in the monster movie Revenge of the Creature, he had his career break in the Western TV series Rawhide. From then, Eastwood regularly starred in Western movies, including A Fistful Of Dollars and The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. However, Eastwood's directorial debut wasn't a Western either, but the acclaimed psychological thriller, Play Misty For Me, which he also starred in.

Eastwood directed and starred in many of his own movies, which have often been critically acclaimed, including Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby, and Unforgiven, which won him his first Academy Award at age 62. Now, Eastwood has remained working in the movie industry long after many actors and directors retire, and only...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

The controversial, remarkable The Spook Who Sat By the Door plays in a new restoration.

Roxy Cinema

Fidelio, our four-film program with Chapo Trap House’s Movie Mindset, has an encore with Eyes Wide Shut on a spectacular 35mm print this Saturday; Amalia Ulman has programmed prints of The Piano Teacher and The Holy Girl.

Film at Lincoln Center

An essential restoration of Shinji Somai’s Moving continues.

Museum of the Moving Image

Erich von Stroheim’s Greed plays on 35mm with live accompaniment this Sunday; Alice in the Cities, Insiang, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and The Muppet Movie have screenings.

Paris Theater

“Big & Loud!” returns with 70mm prints of Vertigo and Boogie Nights, along with The Abyss, Close Encounters, and Days of Heaven.

Film Forum

A new restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy begins playing; Army of Shadows continues.

It's no secret that Christopher Nolan is one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood, with blockbuster films like The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer under his belt. But what inspires him? In 2013, before the release of Interstellar, Nolan sat down with Criterion to discuss some of his favorite films, and among them was the 1924 silent film, Greed. The film is an early Hollywood psychological thriller about a woman whose life unravels after winning the lottery. Nolan describes the film as a work of genius by director, Erich von Stroheim. Greed, Nolan says, was an essential part of his research when developing a supervillain such as the Joker, but it doesn't just stop there. Nolan's films are also thematically similar to those explored by von Stroheim, specifically concerning experience, memory distortion, human morality, causality, and the construction of personal identity.

Three non-English language films make history with Best Picture nominations at the 2024 Oscars. Non-English language films nominated for Best Picture challenge bias against subtitles and cultural relevance. Best Picture nominees like "The Grand Illusion" and "Cries and Whispers" reflect the power of international cinema.

The Best Picture race at the Oscars is always exciting but 2024 is especially interesting as it contains a record-breaking three non-English language Best Picture nominees. As an American institution, the Academy Awards have long given preference to American films, while mostly leaving the acknowledgment of other countries' movies to the International Feature Film category (formerly known as the Best Foreign Language Film category). However, there are some exceptional international movies that have broken those barriers and reached Oscar voters on a bigger level.

International movies always struggle to reach American audiences in general with a bias against having to read subtitles or an unfounded idea that...

Le chinoise.Most serious writing about Jean-Luc Godard tends to be both high-flown and forbidding, rather like the films it’s discussing. Translations from French to English or vice versa can make things even dicier. But according to the literary scholar Fredric Jameson, who contributes an enthusiastic preface and afterword, Reading with Jean-Luc Godard—a compendium of 109 three-page essays by 50 writers from a dozen countries, announced as the first in a series—launches “a new form” and “a new genre.”The brevity of each entry tends to confirm Jameson’s claim. The book can be described as an audience-friendly volume designed to occupy the same space between academia and journalism staked out by Notebook while proposing routes into Godard’s work provided by his eclectic reading—a batch of writers ranged alphabetically and intellectually from Louis Aragon, Robert Ardrey, Hannah Arendt, and Honoré de Balzac to François Truffaut, Paul Valéry,...

The adventures of Indiana Jones made for one of the most iconic movie franchises in history. With Harrison Ford in the titular role and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas responsible for the stories, Raiders of the Lost Ark set a new benchmark for Hollywood adventure. After the conclusion of the then-trilogy of films, fans were treated to The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, a TV series that did exactly what its title promised. Starring Sean Patrick Flanery for most of the series, it delved into the boyhood adventures of cinema's greatest archaeologist.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones didn't have the budget or star power of the movies, but it earned the love of fans through its faithful and fun stories. Ranging from Indiana's journey into Africa to a classic treasure hunt, the series had no shortage of excitement for fans of the films. Seeing the growth of Indiana in...

The 26th San Francisco Silent Film Festival was another joyous gathering of silent cinema fans, historians, scholars, and all stripes of movie buffs. Launched in 1995, the festival has grown from a single-day event to—excluding two years of Covid shutdowns—an annual, five-day celebration. It’s about the movies, of course, and this year Sfsff presented 20 features and seven shorts. But it’s also about the silent movie experience. All shows were accompanied by live music, from solo piano to small combos to a 10-piece mini-orchestra for the closing-night event, playing both archival music and original scores, many composed for the screenings.

Allan Dwan’s The Iron Mask, from 1929, opened the festival with a bittersweet farewell to the silents. The film, the swashbuckling final silent feature to star Douglas Fairbanks, has added resonance for Sfsff audiences because of the legacy of the Castro Theatre, the festival’s home for its entire 26 years.

Abel Gance’s first sound film is among the most notorious what-ifs of cinema alongside The Magnificent Ambersons and much of Erich von Stroheim’s filmography. The version that was released in theaters back in 1931 and which survives today represents a tattered remnant of its maker’s original vision: a three-hour opus intended to spread a message of world unity and pacifism as Gance’s final word on the aftershocks and moral lessons of World War I. But producers immediately took out the pruning shears, reducing the film to half its intended length and, in the process, muddying its bold, operatic themes.

Compared to Gance’s towering silent epics, End of the World cannot help but feel like a curio. Still, it’s as if Gance knew the path that the film would take, as the first images of The End of the World consist of the director himself, as protagonist Jean Novalic,...

There are obscure treasures and there are holy grails. Of the latter, none is more mythic than the original 131-minute cut of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, believed by many to be lost somewhere in Brazil. All others arguably belong to Erich von Stroheim. Born in Vienna in 1885 into a Jewish household, von Stroheim is mostly remembered for playing evil Germans in films like Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion. Cinephiles, though, know him as the unluckiest auteur in the history of cinema.

Intended to run anywhere between six and 10 hours, many of von Stroheim’s films, from Greed to the Gloria Swanson vehicle Queen Kelly, were severely bastardized by studio heads upon their release. In this context, the iris shot that opens 1922’s Foolish Wives feels especially poignant. This is no ordinary “fade into” effect, but an entrancing reinforcement of the sinister, insular, and constrictive nature of the film’s milieu.

In every decade since the inception of cinema, Westerns have been a staple for moviegoers, consistently undergoing new evolutions and sometimes entire regenerations. With every decade has come a new genre-defining addition to the Western canon, which began with simple, short black-and-white pictures at the end of the 19th century, experienced revolutionary upheaval in the 1960s due to Italian innovation, and has seen recent remodelling with popular neo-Western films. Throughout these changes have been constant thematic, artistic, and narrative traits that define what it means to be a Western – timeless messages about violence and greed that transcend eras and ensure that the genre is relatable for all audiences.

Westerns have ascended many legendary filmmakers and actors to stardom, whilst also having a remarkable track record for excellent adaptations from the genre’s eclectic literary oeuvre. Though some decades have seen greater success for the category than others each has had its own admirable offering.

Over the years, the horror genre has built quite a reputation for itself by introducing fans to some spine-chilling movies. It's worth noting that even modern filmmakers are experimenting with the genre by bringing unique, terrifying stories to the big screen. But when horror films started using dolls to torment us, everyone's childhood was ruined. A creepy smile, terrifying eyes, a body filled with evil energy, and a gloomy environment were enough for any scary doll to trap its prey.

For many years, scary and creepy dolls have been the embodiment of horror and continue to be so. In 1929, the first eerie doll named "Otto'' was brought to life by directors James Cruze and Erich Von Stroheim in The Great Gabbo. Since then, several scary doll films have been released, ranging from Chucky to Anabelle.

However, one often gets bored after witnessing every doll morph into a supernatural being, a sinister puppet,...

Forget the Snyder Cut, we need the nine-hour Stroheim cut for his 1924 masterpiece, Greed! Erich von Stroheim is known as one of cinema's earliest great directors, mainly for this 1920s drama. It's a film that has been cited repeatedly as not only one of the best silent movies ever made but one of the best movies period. Stroheim's film feels epic, even by only clocking in at a solid two hours and 20 minutes. If you're feeling generous, there's a four-hour cut of the film out there! This one was constructed by putting recently discovered footage back in, stills from lost scenes, and excerpts from the book that the film is based on, McTeague, to get closer to Stroheim's vision. Unfortunately, the four-hour reconstruction still hardly scratches the surface. Stroheim originally shot 85 hours of footage, which were cut down to a breezy nine hours. MGM stepped in, cut it down to two hours,...

As a director, Ben Affleck has proven himself to be a versatile, compelling talent, moving seamlessly from the morally complex “Gone Baby Gone” to the stark crime drama “The Town” to the tense and thrilling best picture winner “Argo.” Even Affleck’s one directorial misstep, the critically panned box office bomb “Live by Night,” has an intriguing gloss and conviction.

That’s why it’s so difficult for many viewers to answer: “Which Affleck-directed joint is your favorite?” Well, that decision may get even harder with the arrival of “Air,” Affleck’s latest feature which premiered as the Closing Night film at the South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this month.

“Air” tells the story of Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a marketing executive for the athletic shoe and apparel supplier Nike, Inc., who seeks to strike a deal with rookie basketball player Michael Jordan during the 1980s. Anchored by Damon...

Billy Wilder's bitingly humorous noir classic Sunset Boulevard spoiled its own ending at the beginning of the film, but there is so much more to the movie's finale than meets the eye. Originally released in 1950, Sunset Boulevard captured the spirit and essence of Old Hollywood and had a lot to say about stardom and the fleeting nature of success. Met with universal acclaim upon its debut, the film went on to be nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and its legacy secured it a spot among the AFI's 100 greatest American films in 1998 and 2007.

While films like 1952's Singin' in the Rain showed Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films as a joyous occasion, Sunset Boulevard offered a glimpse at the other, more sinister side of the coin. Often ranked among the best films about the movie industry, Sunset Boulevard transcended its Hollywood roots and got to the soul of its...

John Huston is one of the most celebrated directors and screenwriters in Hollywood. Born on August 5, 1906, in Nevadaville, Colorado, he was the son of actor Walter Huston and Rhea Gore. He began his career as a journalist and later worked as an amateur boxer before entering movies.

Huston’s movies were often morally ambiguous, with elements of both comedy and tragedy. He rose to fame for movies such as “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), which starred Humphrey Bogart, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, and “The African Queen” (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. He also wrote many movies including “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) and directed iconic movies such as “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975).

Huston was highly acclaimed by critics for his skillful direction in movies that explored complex themes such as greed and morality. Many of his movies featured actors who had trained under revered director Erich von Stroheim.

I am by no means a film snob and like my movies in all shapes and sizes. I did my graduate research on Scorsese, and yet I host a B-movie podcast. The point is, every movie is different, and that's a good thing. Some carry important social messages, others are brimming with artistic merit, and sometimes movies are meant to be pure entertainment.

In 2019 Martin Scorsese took Marvel Studios to task in saying, "that's not cinema." His sentiment is nothing new. The art vs. spectacle debate has been happening since the silent era of film. Then, Erich von Stroheim made lengthy, plodding films that were layered in irony and rooted in realism. On the other end of the spectrum, Cecil B. DeMille produced fanciful movies that were more style than substance and made to grab larger audiences.

Not that I'd dare argue movies with Scorsese (so my humble apologies if...

What are we to make of “Babylon”? The signs are conflicting. Early word out of preview screenings for what filmmaker Damien Chazelle describes as an “insane early Hollywood vision” was mixed, from “hot mess,” to “sensational celebration of cinema.” (Both are true.) The newly constituted Golden Globes gave the movie five nominations including Best Drama, while the more Oscar predictive Critics Choice Awards went with nine, including Best Picture, Director Chazelle, and Actress Margot Robbie.

Having invested some 78 million (estimates rise to 100-110 million) in Chazelle’s opus, Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins doubled down on the ambitious three-hour-nine-minute epic ahead of its wide opening on December 23 (changed from the originally-planned limited release), announcing a first-look directing and producing deal with the filmmaker.

What are the comps? On the one hand, in 2011 Martin Scorsese’s lavish 180-million period fantasy “Hugo” wound up at 73 million domestic plus five craft Oscars. On the other,...

IFFKAs part of the International Film Festival of Kerala, films from across the world will be screened simultaneously on fourteen screens in Thiruvananthapuram from December 9 to 16.Don PalatharaA still from the Lav Diaz film 'When The Waves are Gone'The International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) is a mammoth event, not only in terms of the number of attendees, but also the number of films screened there each year. Films from across the world will be screened simultaneously on fourteen screens in Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram for six days, excluding the opening and closing days. The 27th edition of the festival, scheduled to be held from December 9 to 16, is special to me for several reasons. Even though I am attending the festival with a professional obligation, many of the films being screened this time are from filmmakers whose works I admire and look up to. By now, I have...

Director Don Siegel started his filmmaking career back in the 1940s, directing montages for high-profile studio pictures like "Now, Voyager" and "Casablanca." He eventually made a name for himself in the 1950s with hard-boiled crime dramas like "The Verdict" and "Riot in Cell Block 11" as well as the indelible sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Siegel would also become notable for the five feature films he made with Clint Eastwood — "Coogan's Bluff," "Two Mules for Sister Sara," "The Beguiled," "Escape from Alcatraz," and, most popular, the 1971 classic "Dirty Harry."

Film director Sergio Leone also began his career in the 1940s, working as an assistant director or a writer on dozens of features in his native Italy. He would begin directing in 1959 with "The Last Days of Pompeii," but his reputation as an auteur would be cemented with his famed five-film cycle of Spaghetti Westerns, so-called for their country of origin.

Mubi is exclusively streaming restored versions of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom I (1994) and The Kingdom II (1997), and will be premiering episodes of The Kingdom: Exodus (2022) beginning November 27, 2022.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Lars von Trier. Photo by Peter Hjorth.While many may proclaim the death of the author, and even more acknowledge that cinema is an art far more collaborative than the idea of a film's auteur suggests, there are nevertheless certain directors whose name on a film carries undeniable connotations. Among contemporary filmmakers, Danish provocateur Lars von Trier is one of the hardest to ignore. But this is not to say one knows exactly what one is getting with every von Trier picture. On the contrary, not only are his stylistic tendencies extensive and varied, but the stories he tells, even those ostensibly contained within thematic trilogies,...

Do you know when the first movie premiere in Hollywood history was held?

On Oct. 18. 1922 Sid Grauman opened his movie palace the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. with superstar Douglas Fairbank’s latest swashbuckler “Robin Hood.” The red carpet was rolled out for Fairbanks, his wife Mary Pickford and their good friend (and partner in United Artists) Charlie Chaplin. It cost 5 to attend the premiere. And the movie, which was the top box office draw, played there exclusively for several months. The Egyptian cost 800,000 to build and took 18 months to complete for Grauman and real estate developer Charles E. Toberman. It is currently being renovated by Netflix in cooperation with the American Cinematheque.

“Robin Hood,” directed by Allan Dwan, was one of the most expensive movies of the silent era, costing just under 1 million. The castle was the biggest set ever made for a silent movie. Some scenes feature over 1,200 extras.

About 43 minutes into the 1933 pre-code horror classic “King Kong,” aspiring actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) finds herself on a remote island struggling to free herself from the two stone pillars she’s tied to as an offering for the giant ape its inhabitants worship. The trees rustle, and then we see him. Kong. The camera quickly cuts to Wray, who instantly freezes, holding in her breath as if her life depended on it. The camera zooms in on the ape’s face, his eyes growing wide, then suddenly cuts back to Wray, who lets out the most iconic blood-curdling scream in cinema history.

And thus, the scream queen was born.

“I’d become Hollywood’s scream queen without even realizing it,” Wray told journalist James Bawden in a 1989 interview. After the film wrapped, Wray recorded what she called an “Aria of Agonies” — screams and moans for the editors to use as they pleased.

Actor / Filmmaker Alex Winter joins Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss movies featuring a cog in the machine – the individual struggling to exist within the system.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s Bill and Ted character power rankings

Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Bill And Ted Face The Music (2020)

The Game (1997)

Showbiz Kids (2020)

The Panama Papers (2018)

Zappa (2020)

200 Motels (1971)

Modern Times (1936)

Metropolis (1927) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Avatar (2009)

Things To Come (1936) – Jesus Trevino’s trailer commentary

M (1931)

M (1951)

The Last Laugh (1924) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Brazil (1985)

Gremlins (1984) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Tfh’s Mogwai Madness

City Lights (1931)

Goin’ Down The Road (1970)

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Young And The Damned (1950)

Shock Corridor (1963) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary

The Naked Kiss (1964)

Stroszek (1977)

Even Dwarves Started Small (1970)

Ikiru (1952) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer...

The tale of Greed is one of the most tragic in cinema. The passion project of director Erich von Stroheim, the film served as an adaptation of the novel "McTeague" by Frank Norris, a book that Greed’s poster proclaimed as the “Great American Novel." The film was incredibly faithful to its source material, with the script running upwards of 300 pages. Despite concerns about its length and dour subject matter, MGM gave the go-ahead to start filming, with a producer later stating that they “thought they could control him when the time comes." It’s a statement that haunted them when von Stroheim returned several months later with a nine-hour film that ended with the bleakest final scene of any film at that point in history. While von Stroheim was able to cut this in half while still retaining his creative freedom, MGM eventually took control of the film and...

I started my new essay film, It’s a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point, with an attractive if patently absurd proposition. I was convinced that one could seamlessly edit together Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point with Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Imagine situating Daria Halprin, Mark Frechette, and their “dirty hippie” friends in California desert landscapes next to Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, and the rest of that legendary cast.

One narrative universe, with just a little editing room hocus-pocus!

There are lots of highlights, but to whet your appetite: University radical Mark Frechette flies his stolen aircraft right past the one piloted by Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett as they spin out of control. Daria Halprin ignores a hitchhiking Jonathan Winters. Milton Berle leaps right into a cascade of amorous sand-covered bodies. Spencer Tracy and Daria Halprin in a torrid extramarital affair.

I’m going to start by setting a scene. The head of the Moving Image Section at the Library of Congress, Mike Mashon, takes the stage at the Castro Theater to introduce a screening of Erich Von Stroheim’s ambitious debut Blind Husbands (1919) at the 25th San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It’s a full house and that’s certainly not unusual for this event. “Recently, I was watching a conversation on the Criterion Channel,” Mashon tells the crowd. “Critic/curator Dave Kehr and historian Farran Smith Nehme were discussing Raoul Walsh and one of them said that Walsh was one of the least intellectual directors. He didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body; he was just a straight-ahead guy.” Mashon pauses, timing the silence for comic impact. “So… Erich Von Stroheim.” He need say nothing more. The entire audience erupts in laughter. Mashon smiles, saying, “You know,...

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh and Joe.

Show Notes:

Movies Referenced In This Episode

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Nightmare Alley (1947) – Stuart Gordon’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Drive My Car (2021)

Wicked Woman (1953) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

Modern Times (1936)

City Lights (1931)

The Great Dictator (1940)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review, Dennis Cozzalio’s Muriel Awards capsule review

Vertigo (1958) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary, Brian Trenchard-Smith’s review

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Young And The Damned (1950)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

The Golem (1920) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (1927)

Alucarda (1977)

Greed (1924) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Muriel Awards capsule review

Taxi Driver (1976) – Rod Lurie’s trailer commentary

District 9 (2009) – John Sayles...

Something wicked this way comes to theaters on Christmas Day: Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”. The latest interpretation of Shakespeare’s 1606 Scottish play stars Oscar-winners Denzel Washington as Macbeth, a brave general who hears a prophecy from a trio of witches that he will become king, and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, the general’s ambitious wife, who goads him into killing the King.

It’s the first film the Oscar-winning Coen has done without his brother Ethan. Coen directed his wife McDormand (they married in 1984) to the first of her three Oscars with 1996’s “Fargo.’ Could this film bag her a 4th?

Even though the play is considered “cursed” that hasn’t stopped directors and actors from tackling the powerful tragedy. The last screen version starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and directed by Justin Kurzel was released in 2015. Reviews were generally good; the box office wasn’t.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be taking a trip to Vienna for a six-week programming initiative including a symposium and film series with a distinct cinematic connection to that fabled Austrian city.

The museum announced today the series launch on December 10 and running through January 31. It is designed to explore what the museum describes as the “large community of predominately Jewish, Austrian-born film artists and professionals who helped shape the films and industry of classical era Hollywood.” Titled “Vienna in Hollywood: Emigres and Exiles in the Studio System,” the series is presented in collaboration with the USC Libraries and the USC Max Kade Institute. The Austrian Consulate General in L.A. also is offering support.

Bill Kramer, director and president of the Academy Museum, said: “During the classical Hollywood era, so many beloved films and so many components of the movie industry were developed and shaped by Austrian émigrés,...

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced Vienna in Hollywood, a new six-week program launching on Dec. 10 that explores the history of the predominantly Jewish, Austrian-born community of filmmakers and professionals who helped shape the classical era of Hollywood.

Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe including actor-director Erich von Stroheim and composer Max Steiner were major players in the early establishment of the American film industry in the 1920s. Due to Nazi persecution, a larger wave came in the ‘30s and ‘40s, bringing in talent such as the directors Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang; actors Hedy Lamarr and Peter Lorre; producers Eric Pleskow and Sam Spiegel; screenwriters Vicki Baum and Gina Kaus; and composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Ernest Gold. With a symposium and film series, Vienna in Hollywood will pay tribute to these artists and many more.

The two-day symposium is titled Vienna in Hollywood: The Influence and...

Swedish cult film streaming service Cultpix, which launched in April, continues to beef up its catalogue while expanding deals with distribution partners.

Company co-founders Rickard Gramfors and Patrick von Sychowski will be attending the Lumière Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mfic) in Lyon, France, where they will be on the lookout for new acquisitions.

“This is the first time that either of us are attending and we are already in discussions via email with other market participants,” von Sychowski said. “We are hugely impressed by the caliber of companies attending Mfic and the rights libraries that they represent and we are confidant about making several deals there.”

Cultpix has increased its offering from an initial 400 titles when it went online to some 600 films and TV shows, adding an average of five to six new titles a week, von Sychowski said.

Specializing in classic genre and vintage cult films and TV shows,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSFilmmaker Bertrand Mandico has illustrated the 70th anniversary cover of Cahier du Cinéma, entitled "Gloria, angel of the history of the cinema." The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center have announced the lineup for the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films. Screenings will take place from April 28-May 8 through the MoMA and Flc virtual cinemas, and in-person screenings at Flc through May 13. The lineup of 27 features and 11 shorts includes Theo Anthony's All Light, Everywhere, Andreas Fontana's Azor, Alice Diop's We (Nous), and Jane Schoenbrun's We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Recommended VIEWINGAnother Gaze's free streaming project, Another Screen, has announced two new programmes: Hands Tied, about hands, and Eating the Other, about gendered notions of eating. The first official trailer for Mamoru Hosoda's Belle, which...

There’s a good chance that “Mank,” David Fincher’s stylish black-and-white chronicle of veteran Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’ struggle to write the screenplay for Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece “Citizen Kane,” will dominate the Oscar nominations on March 15. Our Oscar experts are predicting the Netflix release could garner has many has 13 nominations including picture, director, screenplay for Fincher’s latest father Jack Fincher, actor for Gary Oldman and supporting actress for Amanda Seyfried.

Exactly 70 years ago Mank’s brother, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, dominated the Academy Awards. His “All About Eve,” a sophisticated and sharp drama starring Bette Davis as aging theater actress Margo Channing who mistakenly befriends and mentors an ambitious young actress Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), earned 14 Oscar nominations. “All About Eve” actually broke all records for Oscar nominations besting 1939’s “Gone with the Wind” lucky 13 bids.

The younger Mank’s masterpiece went on to win six...

By Raymond Benson

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“Billy Wilder Goes To War”

By Raymond Benson

In 1943, Hollywood churned out dozens of war films in support of the U.S. involvement in the global conflict raging at the time. Many were cheaply made rush jobs, others were good “B” pictures, and a select group were “A” level, excellent pieces of celluloid that are now classics. All were essentially propaganda pictures made to lift the spirits of the American people and the troops who were able to see them. Rah Rah, Let’s Go Get ‘Em!

Billy Wilder, an Austrian Jew who had fled Germany as the Nazis gained power, settled in Hollywood in 1933 after a brief stint in France. He immediately found work as a talented screenwriter, ultimately earning his first Oscar nomination for co-writing Ninotchka (1939). As war heated up in the 1940s, Wilder then became, after the likes of Preston Sturges,...

It’s smart, it’s funny, it has a touch of romance… it’s Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett’s entertaining espionage thriller set between the battle lines of the North Africa campaign. Franchot Tone must impersonate a double agent, when the command staff of General Rommel (Erich von Stroheim!) takes over a half-bombed hotel run by the forlorn Akim Tamiroff. Anne Baxter is the French maid desperate to make a deal, with whichever side will help her get what she wants. Even the title of this winner has a clever special meaning.

Five Graves to Cairo

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1943 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / Street Date September 29, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Erich von Stroheim, Peter van Eyck, Fortunio Bonanova.

Cinematography: John F. Seitz

Film Editor: Doane Harrison

Original Music: Miklos Rozsa

Written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett from a play by Lajos Biró...

Mubi's double bill Renoir, Beginnings and Endings is showing September 15 - October 15, 2020 in the United States.Above: NanaJean Renoir, one of the greatest French filmmakers, if not the greatest, was a passionate raconteur. Not only did he write his expansionist memoir, My Life and My Films (1974), and rendered some of his life in prose in his late novels, but, according to his biographer, Pascal Merigeau, he also had a prodigious talent for molding fact into myth.Renoir’s dramatic story begins with his second feature, Nana (1927). Renoir adapted the tale about a striving actress from Émile Zola’s novel, to launch the career of his wife, Catherine Hessling. Hessling dreamed of Hollywood, as eventually did Renoir. Some ten years later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived till his death, in 1979. The film’s Nana plays hussies but dreams of a tragic role. When a theater director humiliates her,...

A never ending mission to save the world featuring Ron Perlman, Peter Ramsey, James Adomian, Will Menaker, and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Karado: The Kung Fu Flash a.k.a. Karado: The Kung Fu Cat a.k.a. The Super Kung Fu Kid (1974)

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Nobody’s Fool (1994)

The Hustler (1961)

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Mean Dog Blues (1978)

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

Mona Lisa (1986)

The Crying Game (1992)

The Hairdresser’s Husband (1990)

Ridicule (1996)

Man on the Train (2002)

The Girl on the Bridge (1999)

Pale Flower (1964)

Out of the Past (1947)

The Lunchbox (2013)

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Raw Deal (1986)

Commando (1985)

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

The Last Man On Earth (1964)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers...

So the title of this new comedy refers to one of the “seven deadly sins” as labeled in most Christian teachings. In these times the word’s a bit more complicated. After all, fictional real estate mogul Gordon Geeko, in an Oscar-winning performance by Michael Douglas, proclaimed that it is “good” in one of the most quoted scenes from Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic Wall Street. Another take on that word now comes from two-thirds of the trio responsible for a delightful series of comedic travelogues that began ten years ago with The Trip. But they’re not going after Stone’s street, rather they’re taking aim at Great Britain’s avenue of haughty fashion retail shops, High Street. And as you might have guessed, this isn’t a remake of the Erich von Stroheim silent 1924 epic. The sin’s much the same, but this is a completely different take on Greed.