Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Melbourne Cinémathèque 2009

For those who are interested, Melbourne Cinémathèque's website is now live for the 2009 season and the full program is up. The full-size calendars are now available from ACMI and the season opens next Wednesday with Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than LifeSome and Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running.

Feb 11
7:00pm

Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1955) 95 mins
A terminally ill schoolteacher (James Mason) is prescribed a wonder drug, becomes hooked & descends into a paranoid nightmare. Based on then current scientific research, Ray’s expose of middle-class American values (the family, education, religion, individual freedom) is one of the great ‘50s melodramas, a profoundly disturbing portrayal of the madness & zealotry lurking just beneath the surface of ordinary suburban life. With Barbara Rush & Walter Matthau. 35mm print courtesy of the BFI.

8:45pm
Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1958) 136 mins
Sensitive & visually dynamic ‘scope adaptation of James Jones’ (The Thin Red Line, From Here to Eternity) novel about small Midwestern town life after WWII. The characters (the disillusioned writer & the floozy with a heart of gold) are archetypal “soap” figures but Minnelli’s stylistic flamboyance, inspired by the inside of a jukebox, fashions this material into his best romantic film, marked by an intensely anguished tour de force climax. Stars Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine & Dean Martin. Music by Elmer Bernstein. 35mm print courtesy of the BFI.

1 comment:

jw said...

if only we had a cinematheque in sydney... melbourne cinematheque and acmi is enough to get me to move down there. great pick with the nicholas ray film for opener!