The eighth annual TCM Classic Film Festival brought at sheen of historical glitter to Hollywood at the weekend, presenting vintage films and celebrating the talents — many now since departed — who made them.
“We don’t care about the age of our viewers, we care about their passion,” TCM General Manager Jennifer Dorian enthused. “Appreciation of classics is growing, nostalgia is on the rise.
“Our goal is to get viewers, old and new, into classic movies.”
This vintage viewpoint seems popular, as crowds of enthusiastic fans, including many out-of-towners, packed the screenings, live celebrity interviews and parties. Two million tickets reportedly sold since the first TCM Classic Film Festival in 2010.
Presented by the Turner Classic Movies channel, this year’s highlights included a 50th anniversary screening of 1967 best picture winner “In the Heat of the Night,” a racially charged, Mississippi-set drama. Sidney Poitier — who portrayed the Philadelphia detective who memorably told Rod Steiger’s redneck sheriff, “They call me Mister Tibbs!” — was reunited with co-star Lee Grant, director Norman Jewison and Quincy Jones, who composed the movie’s jazz score.
The “In the Heat of the Night” reunion took place at the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX (formerly Grauman’s Chinese Theatre), with its fabled courtyard containing stars’ hand and footprints imprinted in cement. During this year’s festival father-and-son Carl and Rob Reiner’s hand and feet impressions were immortalized, with Billy Crystal and “All in the Family” creator Norman Lear looking on.
Fitting in well with this year’s festival theme of “Make ‘Em Laugh: Comedy in the Movies,” Mel Brooks made a personal appearance at the Chinese Theatre to show off his 1977 Hitchcockian parody “High Anxiety.” Peter Bogdanovich also presented his loving ode to screwball comedies, 1972’s “What’s Up, Doc?” at the Egyptian Theatre. And Harold Lloyd’s 1928 silent comedy, “Speedy,” was accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra performing its original score live.
Movie reviewer and author Leonard Maltin introduced a screening of 1952’s “This is Cinerama,” shown in the original three-strip, big-screen format at Sunset Boulevard’s Cinerama Dome. Mr. Maltin also hosted a conversation with Miss Grant at Club TCM inside Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel’s ballroom.
Miss Grant spoke about how the Hollywood blacklist ruined her career following her Oscar-nominated role in 1951’s “Detective Story,” which also screened at the fest.
TCM host Ben Mankiewicz interviewed actor/producer Michael Douglas, who played ruthless Gordon “greed-is-good” Gekko in 1987’s “Wall Street,” at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. Both are sons of Hollywood royalty: Mr. Douglas’ father is centenarian “Spartacus” star Kirk Douglas, while Mr. Mankiewicz’s grandfather Herman Mankiewicz co-wrote 1941’s “Citizen Kane,” and his grand-uncle Joseph directed 1953’s “Julius Caesar.” Additionally, Mr. Mankiewicz’s father Frank was Bobby Kennedy’s press secretary during 1968’s presidential campaign, and brother Josh now reports for NBC.
Mr. Douglas also attended a screening of “The China Syndrome,” a 1979 nuclear power plant disaster drama he produced and co-starred in with Jane Fonda.
Devoted as it is to remembering movies and stars of yore, several commemorations took place to memorialize the recently departed. To honor funnyman Gene Wilder, who died August 29, 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was projected poolside at the Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Academy Awards ceremony took place in 1929.
Tributes to Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher, who both died within a day of one another in December, were held by showing the former’s beloved 1952 musical, “Singin’ in the Rain” and her daughter’s thinly veiled account of their fraught relationship, 1990’s “Postcards from the Edge,” starring Meryl Streep.
Fisher’s brother Todd Fisher appeared at both screenings.
But of those memorialized this year, pride of place was reserved for Robert Osborne, the primary host of Turner Classic Movies from its 1994 start until his death March 6, and to whom this year’s festival was dedicated. TCM staffers, including Osborne’s likely heir, Mr. Mankiewicz, and actress Diane Baker — who debuted in 1959’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” and was a subject of Osborne’s “Private Screening” interviews — reminisced about the beloved film historian.
“It’s a sad occasion, the first TCM Festival without Robert Osborne,” said filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who introduced a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1934 film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” “But there is no better way to celebrate [Osborne], this real lover of film, than with nitrate screenings. This is the way these films were originally meant to be seen,” Mr. Scorsese said.
Despite its rich tonality, celluloid nitrate was abandoned by 1952 because of its highly flammable quality, and most silent and other films shot on this stock have since been lost. For the first time ever, the festival screened a series of four original nitrate prints, including Hitchcock’s film, Otto Preminger’s noir masterpiece “Laura” and 1947’s Himalayas-set “Black Narcissus,” with its eye-popping Technicolor palette. These films were screened at the Egyptian, with its projection booth specially refurbished to resist possible nitrate-related fires.
The new documentary “Dawson City: Frozen Time” chronicles the discovery of a treasure trove of 1,500 reels of nitrate film that had literally been frozen in a swimming pool at that Yukon Gold Rush boomtown. Notably, it includes an image of the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, a brothel President Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, opened after gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896.
The film claims it was this venture that started the Trump family fortune.
L.A.-based film historian/critic Ed Rampell co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book” (Hawaiimtvbook.weebly.com).
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