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The Theatre is funded in part with a Facility Operating Grant from the City of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax Funds

 

The Historic Elsinore Theatre and Chemeketa Community College

The Wednesday Evening Film Series

Spring-Summer 2013

The Historic Elsinore Theatre, in partnership with the Chemeketa Community College Humanities Department & Film Studies Program, presents a program of classic movies.

Our spring–summer 2013 series of twelve movies begins April 10th with John Ford’s gorgeous Technicolor comedy The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.  It’s the first of seven films in our sound-era Classic Program, Treasures from the Archive:  Restored Oscar-Winners and Rediscovered Classics, devoted to wonderful movies ––some well-known masterpieces, others neglected gems –– recently reissued with faithfully restored color or in digitally cleaned, high-definition black-and-white.  The Silent Program will present five feature films beginning April 17th with Douglas Fairbanks’ thrilling The Three Musketeers.

Program notes offering commentary are provided at our sound-era movies screenings.  Silent film presentations feature digitally restored prints whenever possible and live musical accompaniment by Rick Parks on the “Mighty Wurlitzer Organ.”

Tickets are $5 each and can be purchased at the Historic Elsinore Theatre, and at all Tickets West locations.  Phone 503.375.3574 for information.  Box office and doors open at 6:15 pm, movies start at 7:00 pm. 

Series Coordinator:  Robert Bibler, Chemeketa CC Film Studies Program.
Silent Film Organist:  Rick Parks.
Sustaining Partner: 
Allied Video Productions   
Series Sponsors:  
Cubanisimo Vineyard, Vitae Springs Vineyard, Domaine Margelle Vineyard


May 22
7:00 pm  Black Narcissus  (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1947)

Deborah Kerr leads a group of English nuns up the soaring heights of India’s mountains to a former Sultan’s palace.  Perched on the edge of a high precipice, it is to become their convent.  The trek is formidable, but the palace ––as though alive with spirits–– challenges the nuns’ faith.  As with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, this is an adventure into unfamiliar territory where the task is ambitious, emotions run high, and temptation is ever-present.  This gorgeous Technicolor film won Oscars for both cinematography and art direction.  New restoration in high definition.  With David Farrar, Sabu, Jean Simmons.  101 minutes.

“ Visually sumptuous, dramatically charged movie.  One of the most breathtaking color films ever made.”  ––Leonard Maltin

“Color and emotion swirl through Michael Powell’s Black Narcissus, set at a convent school and hospital perched 8,000 feet up in the Himalayas.  An Indian general used to keep his women at this place…, and it still feels buffeted by strong currents of eros.  Even the walls, painted with lush nudes, whisper of sex.  What’s a nun to do?  […The] exaggerated atmosphere, an odd blend of mountain mysticism and tropical languor, is not to be found in nature but in cinema only.  See this great film as it was meant to be seen — on the big screen.”  ––Rachel Saltz, New York Times, Jan. 4, 2013


May 29
7:00 pm  Ministry of Fear  (Fritz Lang, USA, 1944)

Incarcerated for two years, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) is released from an English mental institution to an outside world that is oddly unreliable.  As he makes his way to London, events become increasingly menacing ––nightmarish and surreal–– in this film noir suspense thriller by Fritz Lang (Metropolis, The Big Heat, The Woman in the Window).  Based on the novel by Graham Greene.  Newly restored.  85 minutes.

“This is a wonderfully atmospheric, almost expressionistic thriller, packed with memorable moments…  And right from the opening shot of Milland waiting alone in a darkened room for the stroke of midnight ––the magic hour which will release him from one paranoiac nightmare… into another–– Lang sets his characteristic seal of fatality on the action.”  ––Time Out

“Suffused with dread and paranoia, [Ministry of Fear] …is a plunge into the eerie shadows of a world turned upside down by war… .  Lang was among the most illustrious of the European émigré filmmakers in Hollywood during WWII, and Ministry of Fear is one of his finest productions, an unpredictable thriller with style to spare.”  ––David Hare


June 12
7:00 pm  City Girl  (F.W. Murnau, USA, 1930)
*SILENT*

Minnesota farmer Lem (Charles Farrell) goes to the city to sell his family’s wheat.  He returns with a Chicago diner waitress (Mary Duncan) as his wife ––to his father’s fury.  As with director Murnau’s Sunrise and Nosferatu, we have the simplest material in the hands of a cinematic artist.  Shot partly on location in the wheat fields of Pendleton, Oregon.  90 minutes.

“Murnau is realism + poetry . . . You have never seen a city diner in American film, felt its heat, its hubbub, its routine, its turnover, its charm, its tedium and its spunk until you have seen City Girl and you see how Farrell casually meets and unconsciously courts Duncan at the diner counter.”  ––Daniel Kasman, theauteurs.com, 2008


June 19
7:00 pm  Shanghai Express  (Josef von Sternberg, USA, 1932)

Described as “Grand Hotel on a train,” this exotic, pre-Code tale of romantic and foreign intrigue stars Marlene Dietrich as “Shanghai Lily,” a notorious American woman taking the Express from Peking to Shanghai during the Chinese civil war.  It’s a risky journey, and among the various international passengers is a British officer (Clive Brook), her former lover.  In 1934, this daring film was classified as unfit for re-release by the Breen censorship office.  You’ll see why. Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture and Director, it won for Best Cinematography.  It’s gorgeous. Restored.  With Anna May Wong, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Eugene Pallette.  83 minutes.

“Irresistibly enjoyable.  In this glossy mixture of sex and intrigue, Shanghai Lily and her exquisitely stoic beloved (Clive Brook) fall into the hands of sinister Chinese revolutionaries led by Warner Oland.  This movie has style––a triumphant fusion of sin, glamour, shamelessness, art, and, perhaps, a furtive sense of humor.”   ––Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

“The plot concerns an evacuation from Peking to Shanghai, but it's in every sense a vehicle for something else:  a parade of deceptive appearances and identities, centering on the notion of a prostitute with more honor than those around her. Dietrich's Shanghai Lily hasn't aged a day…”   ––Time Out  


June 26
7:00 pm  Safety Last  (Fred C. Newmeyer, USA, 1923)
*SILENT*
One Week  (Buster Keaton, USA, 1920)
*SILENT*

In his most famous thrill-comedy, Harold Lloyd leaves his small-town home and his girlfriend (Mildred Davis) to seek his fortune in the big city.  Among Harold’s urban misadventures is a publicity stunt he concocts for a department store:  a professional climber will scale the face of their twelve-story building.  But, when the stunt climber fails to show, Harold must attempt the climb himself!  Lloyd’s famous comic acrobatics high above the street were performed without a stuntman.  In Keaton’s hilarious short One Week, Buster attempts to build a prefabricated house from a kit that has scrambled part numbers.  95 minutes.

“Crackerjack silent comedy… [Lloyd’s] justly famous building-climbing sequence [is] still hair-raising after all these years.”  ––Leonard Maltin


July 3
7:00 pm  The Four Feathers  (Zoltan Korda, UK, 1939)

Just prior to a 19thc. Sudan campaign to capture Khartoum for Britain, an alienated young British officer (John Clements) resigns his commission, returning to his fiancée (June Duprez).  Three white feathers are delivered, signaling that the three friends in uniform he left behind regard him as a coward.  A spectacular, big-screen, desert adventure ensues as he embarks on a daunting, heroic journey to redeem himself.  A landmark film and a Technicolor milestone, filmed partly on location in North Africa.  Newly restored from a British Film Institute 35mm negative.  With Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith.  115minutes.

“Grand adventure.”  ––Leonard Maltin.

“Directed with flair and imagination…, with a rousing score by Miklos Rosza, superb Technicolor camerawork…, and solid performances all round.  The fourth (and best) version of A.E.W. Mason’s ripping yarn.”  ––Time Out. 

“Perfectly cast and presented.”  ––Halliwell’s Film Guide


*SILENT* denotes silent film with live organ accompaniment 

The Film Studies Program at Chemeketa Community College offers courses in film appreciation.  See the College Catalog, the quarterly Schedule of Classes, or contact Steve Slemenda at 503.399.6237 for further information.

Historic Elsinore Theatre
170 High St SE, Salem OR 97301  
503.375.3574 
 

All films at the Historic Elsinore Theatre.  Box office and doors open at 6 pm, movies begin at 7 pm.

 Films subject to change.


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