Astoria, Queens, New York, November 7, 2017—Museum of the Moving Image will present a twenty-film screening series to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Rialto Pictures, “the gold standard of reissue distributors” (according to Kenneth Turan in The Los Angeles Times). Rialto has reissued over 70 films and manages the Studiocanal library of over 2,000 titles. Indelible classics such as Grand Illusion, The Third Man, Nights of Cabiria, The Battle of Algiers, and Breathless are available in beautiful prints thanks to Rialto’s efforts, and the company has been responsible for major rediscoveries, including Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows and such neglected masterworks as the British films Went the Day Well? and It Always Rains on Sunday.
Rialto Pictures: 20 Films for 20 Years, runs November 17 through December 29, 2017. All of the titles listed above (and more) will be shown in the Museum’s majestic Redstone Theater, some with special presentations and guest speakers. Highlights of the month-long series include Thelma Schoonmakerintroducing a magnificent restoration of The Tales of Hoffman, co-directed (with Emeric Pressburger) by her late husband Michael Powell; Robert Henrey, child star of Carol Reed’s neglected masterpiece The Fallen Idol and survivor of the London Blitz during WWII, in a post-film interview; director Whit Stillman, introducing his Oscar-nominated debut feature Metropolitan; and presentations by Bruce Goldstein of Rialto trailers, and of the art of subtitling the company’s foreign language films.
“Rialto’s work reveals a true cinephile’s attention to detail,” said Chief Curator David Schwartz, who organized the series. “Its 35mm prints and new digital restorations are lustrous and pristine, and international films are given fresh subtitles, improving on the titles from their original releases. With flair and showmanship, Rialto has made—and continues to make—a tremendous contribution to film culture in the United States.”
Rialto Pictures was launched by film programmer extraordinaire Bruce Goldstein in 1997. Goldstein, best known as the Director of Repertory Programming at Film Forum in Manhattan, was inspired by the dearth of decent 35mm prints of foreign language classics then in U.S. distribution, as well as a long-held philosophy that classics should be freshly marketed for new audiences. A year later, Goldstein was joined by business partner Adrienne Halpern, with Eric Di Bernardo soon after joining the company as National Sales Director. The team, now including Dave Franklin as Marketing and Distribution Manager, continues to bring classic international films to U.S. audiences while introducing a new generation of filmgoers to these masterworks. Rialto's current release is a new restoration of Renoir's The Crime of Monsieur Lange,which opens November 17 at Film Forum.
The screening schedule is included below and also posted at movingimage.us/rialto. Screenings are free for Museum members at the Film Lover and MoMI Kids Premium levels and above. Find out more about membership here.
SCHEDULE FOR ‘RIALTO PICTURES: 20 FILMS FOR 20 YEARS’
All screenings take place at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue in Astoria, Queens, NY. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $15 ($11 seniors, students, Standard level members / Free for Museum members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above). Advance tickets are available online at movingimage.us.
카비리아의 밤 Nights of Cabiria (Le notte di Cabiria)
Preceded by a presentation of Rialto trailers by Bruce Goldstein
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Federico Fellini. 1957, 117 mins. 35mm. With Giulietta Masina. Academy Award, Best Foreign Language Film. In what Pauline Kael called “Fellini’s finest film,” Masina gives a heartwarming performance as a tough Roman streetwalker. In the decades before its 35mm reissue in 1998 by Rialto, the film had only been seen in dreary 16mm dupe prints. Rialto also restored a seven-minute sequence that had been cut before its original release. Prior to the screening, Rialto Pictures founder Bruce Goldstein, who oversees the company’s marketing, will present a selection of Rialto trailers.
내 멋대로 해라 Breathless (A bout de souffle)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2:30 P.M.
Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. 1960, 90 mins. 35mm. With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. Paying homage to hard-boiled American crime fiction and Humphrey Bogart, brash young genius Godard rewrote the rules of cinema with this exciting, romantic classic that defined the French New Wave. Small-time crook Michel (Belmondo) steals a car and murders a policeman. While on the run, he reconnects with Patricia (Seberg), a journalism student living in Paris, and tries to convince her to go on the lam with him. The 50th anniversary reissue by Rialto was a big hit for the company, and the magnificent 35mm prints made for the occasion are still circulating today.
경멸 Contempt (Le mépris)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 4:20 P.M.
Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. 1963, 102 mins. DCP. With Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance. Scenes from a marital breakdown between a screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) and his wife (Brigitte Bardot), as both become enmeshed in the behind-the-camera struggles of a director (Fritz Lang) and producer (Jack Palance) as they film an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, this crackling widescreen classic is one of Godard’s most bracing and entertaining movies. This was Rialto’s first blockbuster success. It was virtually unavailable before its 1997 reissue, as all existing prints had faded to magenta. Bruce Goldstein’s desire to show Contempt in a gorgeous color and CinemaScope 35mm print was one of his inspirations for founding Rialto.
심판 The Trial
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 4:30 P.M.
Dir. Orson Welles. 1962, 119 mins. DCP. With Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau. Josef K. (Perkins) is accused of an unspecified crime and shambles through a series of bizarre encounters in an attempt to clear his name in the face of a hellish bureaucracy. The surreal nightmare of Franz Kafka’s source novel inspired the dazzling, off-kilter visual style of one of Welles’s neglected masterworks.
La Notte
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. 1962, 122 mins. DCP. With Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti. A talented but callow novelist (Mastroianni) enjoys the acclaim afforded his just-published novel while his marriage to a well-to-do Milanese woman (Moreau) deteriorates. As she grieves for a dying friend she once loved, he is both bemused by and attracted to the advances of other women, particularly the ravishing daughter (Vitti) of a potential new benefactor. The second film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy (including L'Avventura and L'Eclisse), La Notte captures the intoxicating glamour and amorality of Italy's post-war nuovi ricchi.
The Man Who Fell to Earth
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Nicolas Roeg. 1976, 140 mins. DCP. With David Bowie. Roeg’s mind-bending science-fiction cult favorite features one of David Bowie’s iconic screen performances. Bowie plays an alien who crashes to Earth and immediately registers a series of world-changing patents in an effort to return to his parched planet and dying family. But will the authorities let him go? This 4K restoration was supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Tony Richmond.
The Phantom of Liberty
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Luis Buñuel. 1974, 104 mins. 35mm. With Adriana Asti, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Piccoli. One of Buñuel's more purely surreal films moves in constant interruption from highlight to highlight, most famously a scatological dinner party scene that features the characters sitting on toilets at the dinner table. As Roger Ebert described the freewheeling narrative: “Buñuel sweeps us into each new vignette so quickly there's no time to hang around while the last one is tidied up. We meet characters, they confront a crisis involving insanity, illegality, doom, fetishism, institutional stupidity, or all of the above, and then, just as the cause of the crisis is revealed as a paradox, the characters cross paths with a new set of characters and we're off on their heels.”
알제리의 전투 The Battle of Algiers
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 6:30 P.M.
Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. 1966, 120 mins. DCP. With Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef. A history of the three-year Battle of Algiers, chronicling the escalating terrorism and violence between French military forces and the Algerian guerrilla movement. With its documentary-style immediacy and its vivid depiction of the struggle between oppression and resistance, The Battle of Algiers is one of the most influential and important of all political films. More relevant today than ever, the film lives on in repertory theaters around the country due to Rialto’s efforts.
Army of Shadows (L’armée des ombres)
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville. 1969, 145 mins. DCP. With Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret. Philippe (Ventura), aided by Resistance compatriots including maitresse of disguise Mathilde (Signoret), goes underground in the face of the German Occupation; but the price of heroism can be truly horrific. Jean-Pierre Melville’s decidedly unsentimental view of the Resistance was controversial in its time. Not released in the U.S. until Rialto premiered it in 2006, it was the most critically acclaimed film of that year and included on the Top 10 lists of many major publications. It won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 37 years after it was made.
This Is Spinal Tap
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Rob Reiner. 1984, 82 mins. DCP. With Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer. In Reiner’s timeless spoof of The Last Waltz, Spinal Tap is the loudest band in England and they are making a comeback with a North American tour promoting their new album Smell the Glove. Marty DiBergi (Reiner) sets out to make a documentary of the legendary rock band’s exploits on the road, featuring front men Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), bearing witness to the highs and lows of what makes a musician into a rock star. While not the typical Rialto release, this is one of the company’s most beloved films. The late Robert Osborne introduced it at the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival as one of his favorite movies.
위대한 환상 Grand Illusion (La grande illusion)
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Jean Renoir. 1937, 113 mins. 35mm. With Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio, Erich von Stroheim. Jean Renoir’s undisputed anti-war masterpiece, Grand Illusion is also one of the most perfectly cast and most entertaining movies ever made. Yet it was only seen in poor prints (and poorly translated) for decades before its reissue by Rialto. Man-of-the-people Lieutenant Maréchal (Gabin) teams up with Jewish aristocrat Lieutenant Rosenthal (Dalio) to escape a World War I German POW camp run by Captain von Rauffenstein (Von Stroheim).
제 3의 사나이 The Third Man
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 6:00 P.M.
Dir. Carol Reed. 1949, 104 mins. DCP. With Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Alida Valli. In one of the most atmospheric and beloved of all noirflavored movies—its tone set by Anton Karas’s zither score—Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a pulp writer, arrives in a bombed-out, post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) only to find him dead. Martins develops the ultimate conspiracy theory after learning of a “third man” present at the time of Harry’s death, butting up against interference from British police officer Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), and falling head-over-heels for Harry’s grief-stricken lover Anna (Alida Valli). Still one of Rialto’s most popular titles, its original restoration in 35mm was followed by an even more beautiful digital restoration. Rialto’s prints are of the longer UK release, with Carol Reed’s narration at the beginning.
Went the Day Well
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 3:00 P.M.
Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti. 1942, 92 mins. 35mm. With Leslie Banks, Elizabeth Allan, Basil Sydney, Mervyn Johns, David Farrar. A British village welcomes a platoon of soldiers during World War II only to find out that they are German soldiers ordered to take control of the village in advance of a planned invasion. Adapted from a Graham Greene story, this surprising movie, one of Rialto’s great rediscoveries, morphs from what seems to be a cozy British comedy (it was produced by Ealing Studios, later famous for Alec Guinness comedies) to what Film Forum called a “unique blend of The Eagle Has Landed and Straw Dogs.”
Le Trou
Followed by a subtitling presentation by Bruce Goldstein
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 5:30 P.M.
Dir. Jacques Becker. 1960, 132 mins. DCP. With Marc Michel. The great director Jean-Pierre Melville called Becker’s Le Trou “a masterpiece, and…I weigh my words carefully: the greatest French film of all time.” A film of unrelenting drama, tension, and humanity, Le Trou follows four men in La Santé Prison. Staring down the barrel at hard time, they decide to try a prison break and are forced to bring on a fifth member, Claude Gaspard (Marc Michel), when he is assigned to their cell. The particulars of the escape, based on actual events, are rendered in painstaking detail as the five men dream of freedom. The screening will be followed by a presentation by Bruce Goldstein, who with his partner Adrienne Halpern has edited most of the company’s subtitles, on the art of movie subtitling. Rialto Pictures has set the highest standards for the proper subtitling of international classics—an overlooked aspect of film restoration.
Rififi
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Jules Dassin. 1955, 118 mins. DCP. With Jean Servais, Carl Möhner. Tony Le Stéphanois (Jean Servais), back from prison after taking a rap for Jo le Suédois (Carl Möhner), is ready to settle a few scores and mastermind a brilliant jewel heist. A worldwide smash hit, Rififi earned director Jules Dassin the Best Director prize at Cannes and set the standard for screen robberies for decades to come. Rialto’s 2000 reissue featured new subtitles by Brooklyn-born, Paris-based translator Lenny Borger, who has worked on all of the company’s French releases.
The Fallen Idol
With Robert Henrey in person
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 3:00 P.M.
Dir. Carol Reed. 1948, 95 mins. DCP. With Ralph Richardson, Robert Henrey. The first collaboration between Graham Greene and Carol Reed, before they made The Third Man, is a gripping and somewhat overlooked thriller. Phillipe, the young son of an ambassador in London, idolizes his only friend, the household butler. When the boy discovers a dark secret about Baines, he tries to protect him. This story, involving “adult secrets and childhood fantasies is both unexpected and exceptionally gripping,” wrote Kenneth Turan in The Los Angeles Times. Robert Henrey, the French-born actor who played Phillipe will have a conversation with Bruce Goldstein after the screening, sharing his amazing stories of living in London as a small child during the Blitz. (Henrey now lives in Connecticut.)
It Always Rains on Sunday
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 6:00 P.M.
Dir. Robert Hamer. 1947, 92 mins. 35mm. With John McCallum, Googie Withers. Escaped convict Tommy Swann (McCallum) attempts to hide out at the home of his former lover Rose (Withers), who has since married. Filmed in a grimy, blitzed-out post-War London, from (surprisingly) the director of Kind Hearts and Coronets, the stunning Brit Noir It Always Rains on Sunday defined a new hard-edged realism, largely thanks to Douglas Slocombe’s great cinematography.
히로시마, 내사랑 Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Introduced by Annette Insdorf, author of Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Alain Resnais. 1959, 90 mins. DCP. With Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada. A new restoration of one of the classics of cinema, Hiroshima Mon Amour depicts a brief affair between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) in the rebuilt and thriving Hiroshima of 1959. The couple's bliss is slowly eroded by the unavoidable memories of the war and atomic mass destruction. Columbia University Professor Annette Insdorf will introduce the screening, which will be followed by a book signing.
호프만의 이야기 The Tales of Hoffmann
Introduced by Thelma Schoonmaker
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 6:30 P.M.
Dirs. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. 1951, 138 mins. DCP. With Moira Shearer, Robert Rounseville. Singled out by both Martin Scorsese and George A. Romero as a major influence on their own work, this newly restored version of the 1951 Powell and Pressburger classic is based on the 1881 opera by Jacques Offenbach. An anthology of fantastic and romantic adventures, recounted by the fabulist Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville) and featuring Moira Shearer (The Red Shoes), Ludmilla Tchérina, and Ann Ayars. This was a surprise hit for Rialto, a stunning 4K restoration of the original Technicolor, overseen by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker (who was married to Michael Powell). Schoonmaker will introduce the screening.
Metropolitan
With Whit Stillman in person
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Whit Stillman. 1990, 98 mins. 35mm. With Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols, Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina. An American independent holiday classic, this ironically comic look at Manhattan’s endangered debutante scene chronicles the rise and ultimate decline of a group of young Park Avenue socialites who gather nightly to discuss love, honor, and the impending demise of their class, with a cold, snowy New York always in the background. |
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