Tuesday Nights at the Movies

 

 

A masterful exercise in ambiguity: small town defense lawyer James Stewart is pitted against slick prosecutor George C. Scott when Ben Gazzara, a soldier with a history of domestic violence, murders a barkeep over the alleged rape of his wife, Lee Remick, and is put on trial in director Otto Preminger’s controversial courtroom thriller. Memorable score by Duke Ellington (who also cameos).

 

The passionless Jutland 19th century village life of two unmarried sisters living with their minister father is upended with the arrival of a French refugee who makes an exquisite meal that no one will ever forget. One of the most celebrated food movies of all time, with food as a love affair. In Danish, French and Swedish with English subtitles

 

Writer-Director Preston Sturges’ Swiftian satirical take on the movie biz. Famous Hollywood director of light comedies Joel McCrea yearns to throw off the handcuffs of popularity and commercialism to create socially meaningful dramas. As research, he sets out to live as a hobo and in doing so connects with poor aspiring actress Veronica Lake. Photographed by the great John Seitz.

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s effervescent, sexy, romantic, and totally charming thriller starring Cary Grant as a retired cat burglar out to prove his innocence in a string of recent capers. Set on the French Riviera, Philadelphia’s own Grace Kelly sparkles as an heiress who has her jewels stolen, and who catches Grant’s twinkling eye.

 

A distinctive blend of comedy, drama, romance, survival, and suspense from director Frank Borzage wherein a romantic headwaiter, Charles Boyer, fights to save Jean Arthur from her possessive exhusband, Colin Clive.

 

Josef von Sternberg directs Marlene Dietrich as Shanghai Lily thrust together with her former lover Clive Brook on board a train held hostage during a revolution. With Warner Oland and Anna May Wong. Script by Jules Furthman. This screening of Shanghai Express is presented in loving memory of the late, David Mallery (1924- 2010), the heart and soul of Chestnut Hill Film Group for decades, who loved Sternberg-Dietrich movies.

 

 

Director Ernst Lubitsch’s delightful, spicy, and cynical pre-code comedy about a pair of con artists (Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall) and their romantic/ criminal triangle with heiress Kay Francis. Co-starring the ever wonderful Edward Everett Horton and C. Aubrey Smith.

 

Rueful and bittersweet, pre-code shipboard romance on a Hong Kong to San Francisco sailing. Captured-escaped murderer William Powell is being returned to prison for his imminent execution, but finds eleventh-hour love with terminally ill beauty, Kay Francis, having her one last cruise ship hurrah. Their passion smolders and they make the most of their monthlong final voyage. Powell and Francis’ 6th movie together, co-written by Wilson Mizner, and directed with expert finesse by Tay Garnett.

 

Here’s to the next 50 years of The Chestnut Hill Film Group! Our 50th season ends where it began: fifty years ago, The Chestnut Hill Film Group began with a screening of director Arthur Penn’s violent outlaw odyssey starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as gun-totin’ killers on the lam. One of the key movies that ushered in “The New Hollywood” of the 1970s, it memorably costars Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey, edited by Dede Allen, and music by Charles Strouse

 

** asterisk indicates selection for preservation by the National Film Registry as a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” film.