Whether you're looking to revisit groundbreaking films from Classic Hollywood cinema that left an indelible mark on film history or you’re looking to watch new classics championing a modern and diverse American experience, the Academy Museum is screening something for every movie lover this January. Some of the films playing this month include masterpieces from Mexican film director Roberto Gavaldón, the only complete film Bruce Lee ever directed, and Wes Anderson's quirky and star-studded Fantastic Mr. Fox.
The Academy Museum is open from Sunday to Thursday: 10am–6pm, and Friday to Saturday: 10am–8pm. Advance reservations must be made online.
Screening now through Jan. 19
Directed by Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the much lauded script with crime fiction maestro Raymond Chandler, this twisted tale of love and murder set the bar for the beloved film noir genre. The classic Los Angeles film stars Fred MacMurray as a hardened insurance salesman who falls for a very married—and very blonde—woman (Barbara Stanwyck). The pair conspires to get Stanwyck’s character out of her marriage and both of them into a lot of cash, but to disastrous ends.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall
Running time: 106 minutes
Screening now through Jan. 31
Based on the real-life figure Crystal Lee Sutton, Norma Rae stars Sally Field as a union organizer who is galvanized to create a better life for her family. Struggling financially and romantically, Norma leads her factory to unionization in a film that still resonates with its message of the power found in collective bargaining. Field won the Best Actress Oscar for playing the cotton mill worker who fought back during one of the United States’ bleakest periods for labor rights.
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Sally Field, Ron Leibman, Beau Bridges, Pat Hingle
Running time: 114 minutes
Screening Jan. 6
After the international success of Macario, Gavaldón reteamed with star Ignacio López Tarso and playwright Emilio Carballido for another adaptation of a B. Traven story, though this time with political implications that resulted in the film being banned in Mexico until 1972. In the late 1930s, as the Cárdenas government was nationalizing the Mexican oil industry, a small landowner discovers petroleum reserves on his property; approached by American interests, he refuses to sell, leading to tragic results.
Prior to the screening, enjoy a music playlist of boleros and rancheras ranging from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema to contemporary sounds, curated by Doris Muñoz.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Ignacio López Tarso, Christiane Martel, Rita Macedo
Running time: 105 minutes
Screening now through Jan. 21
An adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel of the same title, Wes Anderson’s first animation work is meticulously crafted, utilizing traditional stop-motion techniques such as puppetry and practical effects. In this Oscar-nominated feature, Mr. Fox pulls off a series of daring heists on the neighboring human farmers. When a war is declared by the farmers, threatening the lives of his family and friends, Mr. Fox plans to outsmart the humans.
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray
Running time: 88 minutes
Screening Jan. 8
This heartwarming boy-and-his-dog story, from the novel by Eric Knight, marked the first appearance of the beloved canine character on the big screen, with the role played by a male collie named Pal, who would star in six more “Lassie” films for MGM. Roddy McDowall plays Lassie’s schoolboy companion, and the film stars 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor at the start of her MGM years. Leonard Smith supplied the Oscar-nominated Technicolor cinematography.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, Elizabeth Taylor
Running time: 90 minutes
Screening now through Jan. 8
Bruce Lee’s sole directorial credit, The Way of the Dragon showcases the incredible feats of athleticism and magnetic star power that went on to make him a screen legend. Set in Rome, Lee steps into the lead role of Tang, a young martial arts star who heads to Italy to help a restaurateur facing trouble with a mob boss. Reaching new heights of virtuosity, Lee unleashes an astonishing display of nunchuck-swinging, fly-kicking mayhem, all culminating in one of his most breathtaking fights―a gladiatorial death match with Chuck Norris in the Colosseum.
Director: Bruce Lee
Cast: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, Chuck Norris, Paul Wei Ping-ao
Running time: 98 minutes
Screening Jan. 8
Roberto Gavaldón collaborated with his favorite screenwriter, José Revueltas, to create this distinctly Mexican variant on the time-honored Evil Twin plot: this time, it’s the great Dolores del Rio, returning to Mexico from her Hollywood period, who plays the central dual role, as a meek, bespectacled manicurist and her mercenary, man-eating sister. But in this case, envy proves to be a greater sin than avarice. The film was based on an unproduced screenplay commissioned for Bette Davis, who eventually made her version in 1964—Dead Ringer, directed by Paul Henreid.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Dolores del Rio, Agustín Irusta, Víctor Junco
Running time: 98 minutes
LA DIOSA ARRODILLADA (THE KNEELING GODDESS)
Screening Jan. 8
The miraculous María Félix is the artist model who leads the ever-hapless Arturo de Córdova away from the arms of his innocent, blue-eyed wife and down, down, down into the ecstatic depths of degradation—which includes a stop at a memorably seedy Panamanian nightclub.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: María Félix, Arturo de Córdova, Rosario Granados
Running time: 107 minutes
Screening Jan. 9
The Garden of Allah was producer David O. Selznick’s first complete Technicolor saga. Set in the picturesque deserts of Northern Africa, the film tells the story of two wandering foreigners who find each other during a moment of personal crisis. Each cast against type—Marlene Dietrich is a wealthy, pious woman on a pilgrimage to the Sahara while Charles Boyer is a tortured Trappist monk escaped from his monastery—they embark on a romantic quest, albeit one marred by gibberish “Arabic” and a cast of supporting characters chiefly in brownface. Recipient of a Special Award for its color cinematography, this three-strip tour de force also features the unforgettable Hollywood debut of the Austrian-born ballerina-turned-actress Tilly Losch as a sensual café performer.
Director: Richard Boleslawski
Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, C. Aubrey Smith
Running time: 80 minutes
Screening Jan. 9
Alfred Hitchcock made his debut as a Hollywood director with this lavish adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s bestseller about an innocent young woman whose whirlwind romance with the handsome Maxim de Winter takes a dark turn when she’s forced to confront the legacy of his late wife Rebecca in the form of her sinister housekeeper. This Best Picture Oscar winner managed to satisfy fans of classic romance while proving as intense as any of the Master’s thrillers.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson
Running time: 130 minutes
Screening now through Jan. 28
A team of coral enthusiasts, camera technicians, and scientists come together to capture coral bleaching, a phenomenon in which coral reefs shed their vivid colors and turn a ghostly white due to rising sea temperatures. Utilizing astonishing underwater cinematography, the film not only documents the visual and scientific drama surrounding the death of coral reefs, but also presents an emotional roller coaster of a story about its human characters witnessing firsthand the cataclysmic results of climate change.
Director: Jeff Orlowski
Running Time: 93 minutes
EN LA PALMA DE TU MANO (IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND)
Screening Jan. 10
With the slightly frayed good looks of an aging matinee idol, Arturo de Córdova became Mexican noir’s perfect patsy, helplessly in thrall to his erotic obsessions. The film’s title cuts two ways: as the fraudulent fortune teller Professor Karin, Córdova uses the secrets of his female clientele to blackmail them, while at the same time, he is a pawn in the higher game being played by a treacherous widow (Leticia Palma). The memorable score is by Gavaldón’s regular collaborator Raúl Lavista.
Prior to the screening, enjoy a music playlist of boleros and rancheras ranging from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema to contemporary sounds, curated by Cesar Saez.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Arturo de Córdova, Leticia Palma, Ramón Gay
Running time: 113 minutes
Screening now through Jan. 18
The slogan “Sí Se Puede” (Spanish for “Yes, We Can”), widely adopted by activists and political organizations,was originally coined by Dolores Huerta, a Chicana civil rights activist and labor movement leader, who zealously fought for racial, labor, and gender justice. Huerta cofounded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez in 1962 to advocate for and protect the rights of agricultural workers. This inspiring documentary explores Huerta’s uncompromising commitment to her activism as well as the intimate stories of her personal life.
Director: Peter Bratt
Cast: Dolores Huerta, Angela Davis, Luis Valdez, Ricardo S. Chavez, Cesar Chavez (archival footage)
Running time: 97 minutes
THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED
Screening Jan. 11
Considered the oldest surviving animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a stunning saga that combines meticulous hand-crafted animation with an epic tale. Adapting One Thousand and One Nights, the film tells of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into a fateful journey. Filmmaker Lotte Reiniger devised a groundbreaking silhouette technique for the film and the resulting work remains a high-water mark of animation, referenced in films such as Fantasia (1940) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).
Director: Lotte Reiniger.
Running time: 67 minutes
Screening Jan. 12
For her directorial debut, Elaine May also wrote and starred in the film, and accomplished it all in arguably the hardest genre: comedy. To this day, the screwball characters in A New Leaf can still make audiences laugh. In her perfectly executed off-kilter comedy, an aging and now-broke libertine (Walter Matthau) seduces and cons the batty botany professor and heiress Henrietta (May steals scene after scene with her physical comedy). Murder and mayhem continually raise their heads, but are averted by love- in the form of a fern.
Director: Elaine May
Cast: Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, George Rose
Running time: 102 minutes
Screening Jan. 13
Written and directed by Charles Burnett, the celebrated filmmaker of Killer of Sheep (1978), To Sleep with Anger is a canonical piece of American cinema (and a classic Los Angeles film). Danny Glover anchors the film with an unforgettable performance of a man whose unannounced arrival at a family home stirs up simmering tensions.
Director: Charles Burnett
Cast: Danny Glover, Paul Butler, Mary Alice, Carl Lumbly
Running time: 95 minutes
Screening Jan. 15
The true story of Bill Lishman, an inventor who used an ultra-light plane to lead a migration of Canadian geese, inspired this sensitive fictionalized drama from director Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion, 1979). Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin star as an estranged father and daughter who bond over the plight of a family of orphaned geese when the two team up to lead the geese to safety. Caleb Deschanel earned an Oscar nomination for his warm cinematography.
Director: Carroll Ballard
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Anna Paquin, Dana Delany, Terry Kinney
Running time: 110 minutes
THE SEARCH, preceded by FORBIDDEN PASSAGE
Screening Jan. 16
Winner of four Academy Awards and working across several genres, director Fred Zinnemann’s films include A Man for All Seasons (1966), High Noon (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), and Oklahoma! (1955). Zinnemann was interested in fusing documentary and fiction; in the case of The Search, he returned to Europe for the first time since emigrating to the United States, to film the story of a son and mother searching for each other in a postwar ravaged Europe.
The Search plays with Zinnemann’s Academy Award-nominated short film Forbidden Passage, about a father who illegally enters the United States.
Forbidden Passage
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Cast: Addison Richards, Wolfgang Zilzer, Hugh Beaumont, George Lessey
Running time: 21 minutes
The Search
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Aline MacMahon, Wendell Corey, Ivan Jandl
Running time: 105 minutes
Screening Jan. 16
Liv Ullmann received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in this epic film, the first in a diptych by Oscar-nominated director Jan Troell. Based on the novel of the same name by Vilhelm Moberg, The Emigrants stars Ullmann opposite fellow screen legend Max von Sydow as a couple from Southern Sweden with their sights set on crossing the Atlantic to a better life in the American Midwest. Troell’s sensitive depiction of the ruggedness of 19th-century rural Småland, combined with Ullmann and von Sydow’s soulful performances, make The Emigrants a powerful testament to the human spirit.
Director: Jan Troell
Cast: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, Sven-Olof Bern
Running time: 191 minutes
Screening Jan. 17
Samuel L. Jackson gives a subtle and charismatic performance as Louis Batiste, a respected doctor and patriarch in 1960s Louisiana in Kasi Lemmons’s evocative small-town family drama, the actress’s debut feature as a writer-director. The focus of Lemmons’s story is 10-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett), whose growing suspicions of her father’s infidelity turn her family’s life upside down. The excellent supporting cast includes the legendary Diahann Carroll as a mysterious fortune teller.
Director: Kasi Lemmons
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Jurnee Smollett
Running time: 109 minutes
Screening Jan. 18
On the cusp of the sound era, Buster Keaton (uncredited as a director) plays an inept tintype photographer who has fallen hopelessly in love with a girl on the MGM lot. Keaton brings his iconic stone face and physicality to the role in his final masterpiece. The film also employs meta nods to the art—and toils—of filmmaking, showcasing Keaton’s expertise in front of and behind the camera.
Directors: Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton
Cast: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracy
Running time: 68 minutes
EL REBOZO DE SOLEDAD (SOLEDAD’S SHAWL)
Screening Jan. 20
Arturo de Córdova, the tortured embodiment of Mexico’s urban modernism, meets Pedro Armendáriz, the heroic representative of Mexico’s romanticized rural feudalism, in this rich melodrama centered directly on the structuring contradiction of Gavaldón’s work. A medical researcher from Mexico City becomes emotionally involved with the people of the small village he is visiting for his work—and more particularly with Soledad (Stella Inda of Los Olvidados), an Indigenous woman who becomes his nurse. The film was Gavaldón’s first collaboration with Mexico’s internationally influential cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.
Prior to the screening, enjoy a music playlist of boleros and rancheras ranging from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema to contemporary sounds, curated by Joel Jerome.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Arturo de Córdova, Pedro Armendáriz, Stella Inda
Running time: 108 minutes
Screening Jan. 21
This Gavaldón classic suggests that what the boxing world is to the American film noir, the high-speed game of pelota (jai alai to American tourists) is to its Mexican cousin. Pedro Armendáriz, Mexico’s great romantic lead, plays against type as an arrogant pelotari who seduces and discards women at will, until he becomes the target of a cunning revenge plot. He meets his fate in a final image that is quintessentially noir yet inconceivable in an American film of that time.
Prior to the screening, enjoy a music playlist of boleros and rancheras ranging from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema to contemporary sounds, curated by Doris Muñoz.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Pedro Armendáriz, Anita Blanch, Rebeca Iturbide
Running time: 85 minutes
Screening Jan. 21
The pearly bones of Shakespeare’s The Tempest are just visible in this romance set in the jungle around Veracruz, where a research scientist (Ricardo Montalbán, taking some time out from MGM to return to his native country) has gone in search of barbasco roots, used in the production of synthetic hormones. Lost deep in the interior, he encounters a mysterious, machete-wielding stranger and his beautiful daughter—played by Mexico’s national scream queen, Ariadna Welter (El vampiro).
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Ricardo Montalbán, Ariadna Welter, Víctor Parra
Running time: 85 minutes
Screening Jan. 22
Based on characters from Michael Bond’s books, Paddington, a live-action animated comedy, follows the adventurous journey of a young bear who leaves the jungles of Peru in search of a new home. The bear ends up at Paddington Station in London where he meets the Brown family, who offer him a place to stay. Life in London seems okay until he catches the eye of an evil taxidermist, Millicent, who schemes to add him to her collection.
Director: Paul King
Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Nicole Kidman, Ben Whishaw
Running time: 95 minutes
Screening Jan. 22
Austrian-born Billy Wilder returned to Europe for this black comedy set in postwar Germany. Featuring sequences shot in the actual ruins of Berlin, this Hollywood take on the rubble film (Trümmerfilm) finds strait-laced Iowa Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur) on a fact-finding visit to the American Occupation Zone, where not everything is as it seems. As she becomes entangled in a love triangle involving the slippery Captain John Pringle (John Lund) and his German paramour, cabaret-singer Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich, in her classic maneater mode), Wilder creates a riotous, decadent panorama of a world caught between the past and the future.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund, Millard Mitchell
Running time: 116 minutes
Screening Jan. 22
Aimed at an international audience—and indeed, it was the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Academy Award, as well as Mexico’s entry in the 1960 Cannes Film Festival—Macario takes the form of a macabre fable about an impoverished peasant (Ignacio López Tarso) who is kind to a mysterious stranger on Día de los Muertos, and is rewarded with the power to heal the sick. Drawing on a novella by B. Traven (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), Gavaldón and his cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa create a rich pageant of folkloric imagery.
Prior to the screening, enjoy a music playlist of boleros and rancheras ranging from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema to contemporary sounds, curated by Maurice de la Falaise.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Ignacio López Tarso, Pina Pellicer
Running time: 90 minutes
Screening Jan. 22
For their third B. Traven adaptation, Gavaldón and Tarso recruited the Spanish-born writer and frequent Luis Buñuel scenarist, Julio Alejandro. A surrealist element is conspicuous in this story of a naïve young woman from the countryside (Pina Pellicer) who invents a fictional fiancé and baby. Eventually, she comes to accept the deception herself.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Pina Pellicer, Ignacio López Tarso
Running time: 95 minutes
Screening Jan. 23
The great popular hero of Mexican cinema, Pedro Armendáriz, here plays a morally ambiguous cacique—a rural political boss who is both of the people and their ruthless exploiter. When he is implicated in the death of a political reformer, his reign over his nameless village is threatened, a social development that Gavaldón seems to both welcome and regret.
Prior to the screening, enjoy a music playlist of boleros and rancheras ranging from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema to contemporary sounds, curated by Cesar Saez.
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Cast: Pedro Armendáriz, Carlos López Moctezuma, María Douglas, Carlos Navarro
Running time: 83 minutes
Screening Jan. 23
Acting legends Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda worked together for the first and only time in this heartwarming adaptation of Ernest Thompson’s oft-produced stage play, earning Oscars for their performances as Ethel and Norman Thayer, an elderly couple coping with their mortality as well as their strained relationship with their adult daughter (Jane Fonda, also starring with her father for the first time).
Director: Mark Rydell
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Doug McKeon
Running time: 109 minutes
Screening Jan. 25
An American film crew travels to a remote island on the Indian Ocean and discovers that it is inhabited not only by prehistoric animals, but also “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” King Kong continues to bear cultural and cinematic importance to this day: the image of the colossal ape atop the Empire State Building has been etched into our collective memory. Fay Wray’s scream and Kong’s roars cannot be unheard. The innovative audio work of Murray Spivack and Earl A. Wolcott amplify the thrills and drama of this essential pre-Code creature feature.
Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher
Running time: 110 minutes
WORLD BUILDING IN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION
Screening Jan. 28
World-building is a crucial concept in cinematic creation, facilitating the audience’s empathy with and immersion into the universe a film is conjuring. In animation, where the world is often being built utterly from scratch out of the filmmakers’ imaginations, the world-building itself can play an even more fundamental role in the basic definition, expression, and reception of the work. Inspired by the Academy Museum’s temporary exhibition celebrating master animation world-builder Hayao Miyazaki, this program explores the radically diverse and wildly imaginative approaches that some experimental animators have taken in creating their own audiovisual universes. This program features three recent digital shorts alongside three classic films restored by the Academy Film Archive, each developing and exploring its own incredibly unique and vivid landscape in a way that only animation can enable. Through techniques including stop-motion, cel animation, computer generated imagery (CGI), and complex photographic experimentation, these six films invite us into their worlds as they variously touch on video games, antique toys, Afrofuturism, mystical visions, space bunnies, and the phallic asparagus.
This program contains mild adult content.
Octane
Director: Jeron Braxton
Running time: 7 minutes
The Golden Chain
Directors: Adebukola Bodunrin, Ezra Claytan Daniels
Running time: 14 minutes
Ace of Light
Director: Sky David
Running time: 8 minutes
Asparagus
Director: Suzan Pitt
Running time: 19 minutes
Solar Walk
Director: Réka Bucsi
Running time: 21 minutes
The Secret Story
Director: Janie Geiser
Running time: 9 minutes
Screening Jan. 29
Gene Tierney reunites with her Laura director—Austrian-born Otto Preminger—for this entrancing noir. Tierney plays the brooch-snatching wife of famous psychiatrist Richard Conte from whom she keeps her kleptomania a secret. She is lured by astrologist-turned-hypnotist José Ferrer for a cure and slowly becomes ensnared in a sinister plot out of her control. This twisty thriller from one of classic Hollywood’s most boundary-pushing producer-directors is also an incisive look at the mental and emotional toll of modern life.
Director: Otto Preminger
Cast: Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer, Charles Bickford
Running time: 97 minutes
Screening Jan. 29
Co-directed with Sadat’s producing partner, Katja Adomeit, Not At Home is a hybrid documentary. This genre-bending approach to filmmaking continues throughout Sadat’s work, as she works with first-time actors and emphasizes naturalism in her screenplays. Here Sadat and Adomeit follow a family with four daughters in Kabul, along with the story of a young refugee in a German displaced persons camp. Sadat drew on her close friend’s experience leaving Afghanistan to create this layered narrative.
Directors: Shahrbanoo Sadat, Katja Adomeit
Cast: Hilla Wali Mohammad, Nikmal Dostakhel
Running time: 65 minutes
Screening Jan. 29
Sadat’s fiction debut is immersed in the world of a group of shepherd children in a remote village in Afghanistan. The youth live in awe of the legendary Kashmir wolf, who is said to walk on two legs and shapeshift into the form of a beautiful fairy. Sadat visually weaves in this fantastical lore while anchoring the film in a documentary-like feel, as we follow two youths, Qodrat and Sediqa. But, while the village lives in fear of the wolves, in the end, it’s not this animal that they must run from.
Director: Shahrbanoo Sadat
Cast: Sediqa Rasuli, Qodratollah Qadiri, Amina Musavi, Sahar Karimi
Running time: 86 minutes
Screening Jan. 30
The Orphanage picks up Qodrat’s tale from Wolf and Sheep, as he is now living in Kabul. It’s 1989 and Bollywood films are his passion, as he escapes into their world. Sadat brings audiences into the fantasy with vibrant, diegetic musical sequences. When Qodrat is placed in a Soviet-run orphanage, he finds his world upended as the USSR withdraws from the country and the mujahideen inch closer to his newfound home.
Director: Shahrbanoo Sadat
Cast: Quodratollah Qadiri, Sediqa Rasuli, Masihullah Feraji, Hasibullah Rasooli
Running time: 90 minutes
Screening Jan. 30
Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung took his own childhood as inspiration for his Best Picture-nominated drama about a South Korean immigrant (Best Actor nominee Steven Yeun) who moves his family to rural Arkansas in hopes of successfully turning their lives around by building his own farm. Yuh-Jung Youn won a Supporting Actress Oscar for her inspiring performance as Soonja, the grandmother who becomes the closest friend of young David (the delightfully natural Alan Kim).
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Cast: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Alan S. Kim, Yuh-Jung Youn, Will Patton
Running time: 115 minutes
Screening Jan. 31
Classic 1950s Hollywood crashes head-first into the wreckage of silent cinema in this witty, haunting, and pitiless look at the perils of stardom. Gloria Swanson made herself a legend all over again in her Oscar-nominated role as the unforgettable Norma Desmond, William Holden (also nominated) is the perfectly charming and cynical hack writer Joe Gillis, and Austrian director Erich von Stroheim plays the heartbroken butler Max. One of the many highlights in the legendary career of producer-director-screenwriter Billy Wilder, Sunset Blvd. was nominated for a total of 11 Academy Awards. The masterpiece won a total of 3 Oscars, one for Franz Waxman’s unsettling Score, one for its brilliant Writing, and another for its Art Direction.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson
Running time: 110 minutes
