Chemeketa Community College Present The Wednesday Evening Film Series Fall 2010 The Historic Elsinore Theatre, in partnership with the Chemeketa Community College Humanities Department and Film Studies Program, presents a program of classic and silent movies. Our Classic program of seven acclaimed sound-era films begins September 15th with Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. Our Silent program of four movie evenings–– celebrating the visual storytelling art of pioneering directors and stars––begins September 22nd with Harold Lloyd’s famous thrill-comedy, Safety Last.  The films are digitally restored from archival prints and presented with live accompaniment by Rick Parks at 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 6:00 pm, movies start at 7:00 pm.  Classic Series Coordinator:  Robert Bibler. Silent Series Coordinator: Rick Parks. Technical Sponsor: Allied Video Productions     Series Sponsor:  Reed Opera House September 15 7:00 pm  North By Northwest  (Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1959) Cary Grant plays the not-entirely-innocent victim of intrigue, accused of being someone he is not, and threatened by political thugs from all sides, including the CIA.  A Cold War nightmare crafted as a delightful comedy-thriller, the film offers a fantastic two-hour chase, ultimately across the very face of America.  One of Hitchcock’s finest moral fables and a film that is the personal favorite of many Hitchcock fans.  With Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.  Newly restored in high definition color and widescreen.  136 minutes. “HHHH.  Quintessential Hitchcock comedy-thriller.  One memorable scene after another…, one of the all-time great entertainments.”  ––Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide September 22 7:00 pm  Safety Last  (Fred C. Newmeyer, USA, 1923) P 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.  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.  92 minutes. “Crackerjack silent comedy… [Lloyd’s] justly famous building-climbing sequence [is] still hair-raising after all these years.”  ––Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide September 29 7:00 pm  A Streetcar Named Desire  (Elia Kazan, USA, 1951) Fragile and refined Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to stay with her sister (Kim Hunter) and her brutish lover Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) in their confined New Orleans apartment, and the sparks fly, in Tennessee William’s screen adaptation of his play.  Elia Kazan’s famous film production was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won four.  122 minutes. “HHHH.  Stunning production of Tennessee William’s play… Oscars went to Leigh, Hunter, and Malden for their flawless performances, as well as [an Oscar] for the art direction…but it’s Brando who left an indelible mark on audiences.”  ––Leonard Maltin “Two of the greatest performances ever put on film [Leigh and Brando]… Some of the finest dialogue ever written by an American.”  ––Pauline Kael October 6 7:00 pm  The Train  (John Frankenheimer, USA, 1964) When a Nazi Colonel (Paul Scofield) in occupied Paris packs a Berlin-bound train with crates of looted Impressionist art treasures from the famed Jeu de Paume museum, French railway inspector Labiche (Burt Lancaster) and the Resistance risk their lives to sabotage its progress.  Director John Frankenheimer insisted on using documentary-like set-ups, real locomotives, actual French rail yards, and lots of real dynamite––no models or special effects (with Lancaster performing his own stunts and locomotive work).  The result was harrowing train wrecks, hair-raising action, seven smashed cameras, and a remarkably authentic-looking WWII thriller that is a masterfully directed, landmark movie.  Based on accounts of an actual Nazi train loaded with priceless, looted art that departed Paris August 1, 1944, which was stopped by the French Resistance and the heroic efforts of Jeu de Paume curator Rose Valland.  Wth Jeanne Moreau and Michel Simon.  133 minutes. “HHHH.  Gripping.  High-powered excitement all the way.”  ––Leonard Maltin “A rattling good thriller… In Frankenheimer’s hands, the whole paraphernalia of trains, tracks, and shunting yards acquires an almost hypnotic fascination as the screen becomes a giant chessboard…”  ––Time Out [The Train is shown in conjunction with the Hallie Ford Museum of Art’s presentation on the Willamette University campus of an award-winning documentary about the massive Nazi theft of art treasures, The Rape of Europa, on September 28th and author Robert Edsel’s lecture on October 12th, “Is Art Worth a Life,” on the Allied effort to protect, secure, and recover Europe’s art monuments and treasures in the midst of a ferocious war.] October 13 7:00 pm  Work  (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1915) P The Cure   (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1917) Ask Father  (Hal Roach, USA, 1919) An Eastern Westerner  (Hal Roach, USA, 1920) Charlie Chaplin plays a wallpaper hanger, in Work, who causes plenty of trouble in a home that has enough problems to begin with.  In The Cure, Chaplin plays a wealthy drunk with a trunk full of alcohol supposedly drying out in a health spa.  One of the most memorable scenes is Charlie’s slippery avoidance of the determined grasp of the massage therapist, (Henry Bergman).  Harold Lloyd plays a young man determined to marry his girl, in Ask Father, but her father is unwilling to consent.  In An Eastern Westerner, Lloyd plays a spoiled party boy sent away to stay at his uncle’s ranch out West.  Harold becomes sidetracked in the frontier town of Piute Pass where he meets a girl and some bandits.  93 minutes. October 20  7:00 pm  Charade  (Stanley Donen, USA, 1963) Regina Lampert’s (Audrey Hepburn) serene Parisian lifestyle is shattered when she is menaced by thugs (James Coburn, George Kennedy) demanding a mysterious WWII treasure supposedly acquired by her late husband.  Suddenly, shifting identities abound, and reality becomes unreliable.  Can she trust the charming stranger, Peter Joshua (Cary Grant), who mysteriously comes to her aid?  Memorably witty and sophisticated script by Peter Stone, superb direction by Stanley Donen (Singin’ In the Rain), Paris locations, gowns by Givenchy, and a score by Henry Mancini make Charade a classic.  With Walter Matthau.  Technicolor.  114 minutes. “Suave comedy-mystery in Hitchcock vein.  Excellent screenplay.”  ––Leonard Maltin “Ingeniously scripted…, [Charade] is a mammoth audience teaser.”  Time Out “A debonair macabre thriller––romantic, scary, satisfying.”––Pauline Kael, The New Yorker October 27 7:00 pm  The Haunted House  (Buster Keaton & Edward Cline, USA, 1921) P The Cat and the Canary  (Paul Leni, USA, 1927) Buster Keaton plays a bank teller, in The Haunted House, who has difficulty with the handling of currency and a gluepot at the same time.  Accused of a robbery, Buster hides in the local haunted house, which turns out to be a hideout for a gang of counterfeiters and also a refuge for a company of actors fleeing an angry mob displeased with their production of Faust.  21 minutes.  In The Cat and the Canary, Annabelle West (Laura LaPlante) learns that she will become the heiress of a large estate, provided she stay the night at the creepy old mansion of the deceased and can prove her sanity in the morning!  Based on the American stage play by John Willard, and directed by German Expressionist master Paul Leni.  Restored, with original color tinting.  80 minutes. “Delightful silent classic, the forerunner of all ‘old dark house’ movies, with nice touch of humor throughout.”  ––Leonard Maltin “[Director] Leni wisely plays it mainly for laughs, but his prowling Murnau-like camera-work generates a frisson or two along the way.  It is, in fact, hugely entertaining.”  ––Time Out November 3 7:00 pm  Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, USA, 1944)  118 m Before leaving on his honeymoon with his new bride (Priscilla Lane), drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) discovers that his two dear, addled aunts have been secretly poisoning elderly men and then burying them in their Brooklyn basement.  That’s only the beginning of the madness and criminality that turns up under the placid, old lace surface of things.  Based on the wildly successful Broadway black comedy.  Directed by Frank Capra (It Happened One Night).  With Peter Lorry, Raymond Massey, Edward Everett Horton, Jack Carson.  118 minutes. “One of the best madcap comedies of all time––a must-see.”  ––Videohound Movie Guide “Hilarious adaptation of Joseph Kesselring’s hit play.  Frantic cast is excellent, especially Lorre and Massey as unsuspecting murderers holed up in Brooklyn household.”  ––Leonard Maltin November 10 7:00 pm  Sunrise  (F.W. Murnau, USA, 1927) P A young married farmer (George O’ Brien) begins an affair with an attractive, sensual woman visiting from the city.  She suggests that the man’s wife (Janet Gaynor) might “accidentally” drown, and a murder plan is set in motion.  F. W. Murnau’s (Nosferatu) direction features spectacular moving camera shots through beautiful, elaborate set constructions––including city streets, lakes, a village, and pastoral settings––that have an unforgettable mood of poetic realism about them.  Nominated for a Best Art Direction Academy Award and winning Oscars for Best Actress (Janet Gaynor), Cinematography, and Picture (as a “Most Unique and Artistic Production’), Sunrise is today recognized as one of the best silent movies ever made.  95 minutes. “Exquisite silent film is just as powerful today as when it was made…[A] triumph of direction, camerawork, art direction, and performances, all hauntingly beautiful.”  ––Leonard Maltin “Simple and intense images of unequalled beauty.”  ––Time Out November 17 A Matter of Life and Death  (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1946) Under a universe of random stars and nebulae, RAF pilot Peter Carter’s (David Niven) WWII plane is shot to pieces as an American WAC (Kim Hunter) maintains radio contact, trying to locate him.  Carter bails out of his burning bomber, without a parachute, into the black void over the English Channel.  His life or death becomes a matter of heavenly accounting––or miscalculation––when his continued existence is put on celestial trial in this fantastical, philosophical movie.  Shown in cut versions as Stairway To Heaven, this is the restored, complete original, in glorious color.  104 minutes. “One of Powell and Pressburger’s finest films…, an outrageous fantasy full of wit, beautiful sets and Technicolor, and perfectly judged performances.  The whole thing works like a dream, with many hilarious swipes at national stereotypes, and a love story as moving as it is absurd.  Masterly.”  ––Time Out “HHHH.   …An absolute original––and a gem too.  Powell and Pressburger manage to straddle reality and fantasy in a most disarming manner…”  ––Leonard Maltin December 1 7:00 pm  Top Hat  (Mark Sandrich, USA, 1935) Top Hat is the third Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie, and it’s a polished jewel.  The plot is a wonderful comedy of mistaken identity, as Jerry (Astaire) becomes infatuated with Dale (Rogers), a beautiful socialite.  Jerry pursues her, in a zany complex courtship, from a London hotel encounter to a hallucinatory Venice.  If the delightful story, amazing dances, Irving Berlin songs, and the memorable supporting comedy by Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore are not enough, you can feast your eyes on the spectacular, stylized Art Deco set designs by Van Nest Polglase.  101 min. “HHHH.  What can we say?  Merely a knock-out of a musical with Astaire and Rogers at their brightest…”  ––Leonard Maltin “HHHH.  Marvelous Astaire-Rogers musical…with show-stopping numbers.”  ––Halliwell’s’s Film Guide  P denotes silent film with live organ accompaniment The Film Studies Program at Chemeketa Community College offers courses in film appreciation—The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock this winter. See the College catalog or 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. Wednesday Film Series Sponsor: