This week people will undoubtedly think I look like Maurice Chevalier...or maybe Jeanette MacDonald.

Ken, now you talking my type of movies. Thanks for an excellent writeup. I’d like to see the Fine Arts or Brew and View run classics like these. I do have a thing for Jeanette MacDonald, so I will never mistake you for her. :)

There are some sizable problems to the Fine Arts or Asheville Pizza doing this—apart from drawing a large enough crowd to support such an undertaking. It would be very hard to find 35mm prints of most titles and impossible to find 35mm prints that could be run on a platter system. So chances are the movies would have to be run from DVD. That’s not as bad as it sounds, though, depending on the source material. I saw the DVD of Richard Lester’s THE KNACK...AND HOW TO GET IT projected just last night and it was razor sharp. That’s not likely to be as true with films from the 1930s, but they’d still be very watchable. Still, the rights clearances for a commercial venue would probably be restrictive.

You may want to make note of the fact that in May I’m slated to screen three Busby Berkeley musicals on successive Monday nights—WHOOPEE! (1930), GOLDDIGGERS OF 1933 (1933), and THE GANG’S ALL HERE (1943). More on this nearer the time.

The following link is a great recent article on the difficulties facing the showing of classic films.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/11/MNVVURG40.DTL

marc

Interesting article and it contains a lot of home truths. It’s very true that a lot of the fare in question was shown from often beat-up 16mm prints, but no one seemed to mind then—at least we were able to see them.

We’re very spoiled by DVD—so spoiled in fact that we’ve done ourselves a damage now and again. For instance, Criterion was planning to release Sternberg’s SHANGHAI EXPRESS (see article above) on DVD as a follow-up to their release of THE SCARLET EMPRESS, but there was so much bitching and moaning over how grainy SCARLET EMPRESS was that they nixed the whole project. Not that some of the kvetching isn’t deserved—as witness Universal and Tod Browning’s DRACULA. First, they release the film as a stand-alone title and use the print that the music had been stripped from for that ghastly Philip Glass score someone got the bright idea of slapping on the film. Problem was they forgot to put all the music back for the DVD. Plus, it didn’t look all that hot. So then they put it out in a “Dracula” set, at which time they somehow got ahold of an old TV print that lacked the restoration work done on some of the soundtrack and looked like hell. Come 2006 and they put out the “75th Anniversary” edition, which was a significant improvement over the last two—which basically meant it looked as good as the laserdisc from 15 or so years ago. Now there’s talk of a possible FOURTH DVD release—if it turns out to be true that a print with additional footage (notably the long missing curtain speech) has really been found in the Library of Congress.

But I digress. One of the main points of the article is that movies were meant to be a communal experience. Really unarguable—at least with a good audience. I’ve seen some bad audiences during the college and rep house days, but I’ve also seen the best audiences then. There’s nothing to equal the sight of a bunch of just too cool college kids watching a film like King Vidor’s THE CHAMP (1931) and seeing them go absolutely wild when the Champ wins—and then seeing them reduced to wiping their eyes two minutes later when he dies.

I do believe that digital—and I expect most theaters to be digital within five years (a resuable hard-drive that weighs about a pound vs. a $4000 35mm print that weighs a ton?)—will make a difference. The issue of reel-to-reel projection and archival prints will be moot.

Asheville’s a little unusual in being able to draw a certain amount of people to older movies. Marc knows this from Walk-in Theater. World Cinema is very often at full capacity. Neither of these, of course, are commercial venues. That makes a difference. That said—and these are special in a different way—the film festival did close to capacity on THE MUSIC LOVERS, WOMEN IN LOVE and MAHLER in 2005 (and even respectable no’s on the midnight shows, as well as solid business on TOMMY, which was $20 a ticket, but then that one came with Ken Russell in attendance and an after-party). BULLETS OVER BROADWAY and BOUND did the same in 2006, and all three Tess Harper films were near capacity (LOGGERHEADS may have been capacity) in 2007. It also should be noted—as the article mentions—that in some cases (in all cases with the Ken Russell films) the films were shown from DVD, which is coming to be a mainstay for this sort of thing. Good DVD projection IS acceptable on the big screen and the communal experience is, of course, identical.

Ken, let us know when you are going to screen these flicks, and where. I want to attend. I love the classics.

The films will be screened on Mondays in May (I’ve forgotten the exact dates) in Lord Auditorium at the downtown library. I’ll review them in the paper (the issue of the week they run) and will do a piece here on movie musicals the Friday before they start.

I hope a lot of people will attend—especially those who think they don’t like “old movies” in the case of GOLDDIGGERS OF 1933, a film I’ve used for years to show to people who are resistant to anything not made in the last ten years—and it usually surprises them.

I’m glad they’re being screened in May - my wife will be back from UCF (Orlando) the end of April and I know she’ll want to see them (I do also, but the scheduling’s harder)

In defense of the DVD, I’ve gotten to see a lot of foreign films I would’ve otherwise missed (but not dubbed - I would much rather hear the actors speaking while reading subtitles). Of course, I’ve also seen some real stinkers I should’ve missed, but the titles looked interesting (’Vampires vs Zombies’, what was I thinking?)
~David

DVDs don’t really need defending. They’re a wonderful thing. They simply don’t take the place of seeing a film in something like a theater setting. And DVD’s—at least well-authored ones—are able to be projected to that end with increasingly good results.

If you’ve ever had the experience of trying to do an in-depth analysis of a movie from a 16mm print or even from a VHS tape, you fully appreciate the DVD format with its ability to be paused and quickly searched.

Of course, in general, it’s the availability of titles that makes the format so appealing. That said, there are still some strange omissions in availability. One of the films in the musicals screenings—WHOOPEE!—was available on VHS and laserdisc (the latter is the source of the copy being shown), but has never made it to DVD. In fact, there’s a healthy list of such titles.

I like the old ones too Ken. Got a good dvd collection of classic movies. But there is nothing like sitting in a theater, or a roomful, of others and watching together. Where are you going to show these movies you mentioned?

According to the latest information I have, they’ll be on consecutive Mondays—May 5, 12, 19—at 6 p.m. and will be in Lord Auditorium at Pack Library.