Angels with Dirty Faces
Tuesday, July 7 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1938/b&w/105 min. | Scr: John Wexley, Warren Duff; dir: Michael Curtiz; w/ James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, George Bancroft.

Childhood friends on opposite sides of the law fight over the future of a street gang.

View the film's trailer here.

Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II (Ivan Groznyy)
Friday, July 10 | 7:30 pm
Special Screening
1944 & 1958/b&w and color/186 min. plus intermission| Scr/dir: Sergei Eisentein; w/ Nikolai Cherkasov, Serafima Birman, Pavel Kadochnikov, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya. 

This two-part historical epic, Sergei Eisenstein's final film, depicts the life and murderous exploits of the sixteenth-century Ivan IV, the first czar and unifier of the Russian people. A spectacle of baroque splendor, the film opens with the teenaged ruler's opulent coronation in 1546. As Ivan struggles to consolidate his power by expanding his territory eastward, he attracts the enmity of the Russian nobility—especially his aunt, who plots to put her son, a simpleton, on the throne—and "the boyars," a centuries-old alliance of high-ranking landowners who refuse to swear allegiance to Ivan's one-year-old son. As the battles rage and the court intrigue plays out, Eisenstein's command of light and shadow creates a series of dynamic, eye-filling scenes. This unique visual quality, featuring ornate set design and costumes, along with a performance style influenced by Russian classicism, grand opera, and Kabuki theater, makes Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II one of the great masterpieces of world cinema. With a symphonic score by Sergei Prokofiev. "A majestic synthesis of disparate forms…seems to be as much a ballet or an opera or a moving painting (or a mutant kabuki show) as it is a movie."—J. Hoberman.

Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II (Ivan Groznyy)
Saturday, July 11 | 7:30 pm
Special Screening
1944 & 1958/b&w and color/186 min. plus intermission| Scr/dir: Sergei Eisentein; w/ Nikolai Cherkasov, Serafima Birman, Pavel Kadochnikov, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya. 

This two-part historical epic, Sergei Eisenstein's final film, depicts the life and murderous exploits of the sixteenth-century Ivan IV, the first czar and unifier of the Russian people. A spectacle of baroque splendor, the film opens with the teenaged ruler's opulent coronation in 1546. As Ivan struggles to consolidate his power by expanding his territory eastward, he attracts the enmity of the Russian nobility—especially his aunt, who plots to put her son, a simpleton, on the throne—and "the boyars," a centuries-old alliance of high-ranking landowners who refuse to swear allegiance to Ivan's one-year-old son. As the battles rage and the court intrigue plays out, Eisenstein's command of light and shadow creates a series of dynamic, eye-filling scenes. This unique visual quality, featuring ornate set design and costumes, along with a performance style influenced by Russian classicism, grand opera, and Kabuki theater, makes Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II one of the great masterpieces of world cinema. With a symphonic score by Sergei Prokofiev. "A majestic synthesis of disparate forms…seems to be as much a ballet or an opera or a moving painting (or a mutant kabuki show) as it is a movie."—J. Hoberman.

Jumbo
Tuesday, July 14 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1962/color/123 min./Panavision | Scr: Sidney Sheldon; dir: Charles Walters; w/ Doris Day, Stephen Boyd, Jimmy Durante, Martha Raye.

A lavish 1962 adaptation of the legendary Broadway spectacle in which Pop Wonder's circus, featuring versatile performing elephant Jumbo, battles a rival's take-over bid.

View the film's trailer here.

Bigger Than Life
Friday, July 17 | 7:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1956/color/95 min./Scope | Scr: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum; dir: Nicholas Ray; w/ James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau.

Mason produced and hired Nicholas Ray to direct this striking film based on a New Yorker article about the hallucinatory side-effects of the new miracle drug cortisone. As Ed Avery, upstanding teacher, husband and father turned suburban Jekyll and Hyde, Mason gives one of his best performances, and Ray, using dramatic Rebel Without a Cause-style compositions and lighting, portrays his bedeviled hero with both horror and pathos. Released to indifferent not to say hostile reviews, the film is now acclaimed for its gothic depiction of repression and conformity in mid-century America. "Under Ray's masterful direction, James Mason is given three or four of the most beautiful close-ups I have had the chance to see since the advent of CinemaScope… An exceptional story, an excellent portrait of marriage. A film of implacable logic and sanity, Bigger than Life uses both those very qualities as targets, and scores a bull's-eye in every frame."—François Truffaut.

New 35mm print

Bigger Than Life
Friday, July 17 | 9:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1956/color/95 min./Scope | Scr: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum; dir: Nicholas Ray; w/ James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau.

Mason produced and hired Nicholas Ray to direct this striking film based on a New Yorker article about the hallucinatory side-effects of the new miracle drug cortisone. As Ed Avery, upstanding teacher, husband and father turned suburban Jekyll and Hyde, Mason gives one of his best performances, and Ray, using dramatic Rebel Without a Cause-style compositions and lighting, portrays his bedeviled hero with both horror and pathos. Released to indifferent not to say hostile reviews, the film is now acclaimed for its gothic depiction of repression and conformity in mid-century America. "Under Ray's masterful direction, James Mason is given three or four of the most beautiful close-ups I have had the chance to see since the advent of CinemaScope… An exceptional story, an excellent portrait of marriage. A film of implacable logic and sanity, Bigger than Life uses both those very qualities as targets, and scores a bull's-eye in every frame."—François Truffaut.

New 35mm print

Disney Family Matinee: 20,000 Leagues under the Sea
Saturday, July 18 | 4:00 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1954/color/127 min./Scope | Scr: Earl Felton; dir: Richard Fleischer; w/ Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Peter Lorre.

Jules Verne's sci-fi fantasy is a story that reverberates for boys of all ages. It is the mid-1800s and a monstrous creature has been sinking ships off San Francisco; an expedition is dispatched to solve the mystery, but the sailors aboard soon discover that the monster is "the Nautilus," a futuristic submarine with a lush Victorian interior, owned by the brooding Captain Nemo, a brilliant messianic scientist who despises humanity and has built his own world under the sea. With its lavish production design and exciting underwater scenes—culminating in a giant squid attack—Disney's classic adaptation still moves the heart and stirs the imagination even after so many years.

All tickets: $5

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Saturday, July 18 | 7:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1949/color/123 min. | Scr/dir: Albert Lewin; w/ James Mason, Ava Gardner.

This sumptuous color film (shot by Jack Cardiff, the acclaimed cinematographer of The Red Shoes) is a heady mix of romance, fantasy, and poetic fatalism set in quaint Esperanza on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. As the seventeenth-century mariner doomed to sail the seas in search of a woman who will die for him, Mason is a magnificently eerie and brooding presence. Pandora, a willful chanteuse driven by strange passions (Gardner, at the height of her beauty), is his destiny. "Watching this film is like entering a strange and wonderful dream. Everything about it, from the magnificent performances of Ava Gardner and James Mason, to the gorgeous locations and Jack Cardiff's stunning photography, is infused with this ethereal, other-worldly quality. This restoration was several years in the making and I'm glad that the work we've done will allow new audiences to discover this unusual film."—Martin Scorsese.

New restored 35mm print.
Restored by George Eastman House in cooperation with Douris UK Limited. Restoration funded by The Film Foundation and the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the Directors Guild of America, Societe des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Writers Guild of America, West.

Age of Consent
Saturday, July 18 | 9:45 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1969/color/98 min. | Scr: Peter Yeldham; dir: Michael Powell; w/ James Mason, Helen Mirren.

Powell and Mason, who was himself an accomplished painter and caricaturist, joined forces on this story of an aging painter who retreats to an island off Australia to replenish his creative juices. His muse and lover appears in the form of a young, voluptuous, and frequently nude Helen Mirren in her first major film. "A lovely erotic and idyllic comedy."—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.

Restored 35mm print courtesy Sony Archive.

The Clock
Tuesday, July 21 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1945/b&w/90 min. | Scr: Robert Nathan, Joseph Schrank; dir: Vincente Minnelli; w/ Judy Garland, Robert Walker, James Gleason.

A G.I. en route to Europe falls in love during a whirlwind two-day leave in New York City.

View the film's trailer here.

The Reckless Moment
Friday, July 24 | 7:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1949/b&w/82 min. | Scr: Robert W. Soderberg, Henry Garson; dir: Max Ophuls; w/ Joan Bennett, James Mason.

A blend of character study and noir thriller, Ophüls' last American film centers on a respectable wife and mother (Bennett) whose middle-class life is shattered when she recklessly disposes of the body of her daughter's lowlife boyfriend, who has been accidentally killed in her garage. As she valiantly copes with an intrusive family and an inconvenient blackmailer (Mason at his most tortured and tender), Ophüls' circling camera further entraps his stoic heroine until she breaks down in a wrenching finale. Mason held Ophuls in high regard as he demonstrated by penning these affectionate lines: "A shot that does not call for tracks is agony for dear old Max. When separated from his dolly, he's wrapped in deepest melancholy."

Odd Man Out
Friday, July 24 | 9:00 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1946/b&w/116 min. | Scr: F.L. Green, R.C. Sherriff; dir: Carol Reed; w/ James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack.

Mason achieved international leading-man status in this harrowing story of an Irish rebel who stumbles through the streets of Belfast until midnight, the object of a citywide manhunt. In the words of critic Pauline Kael: "The tormented, delirious Johnny, bleeding to death, seeks but does not find refuge on his way to the grave… those he encounters see him as a man beyond help; his final denunciation of a world without charity is one of the most memorable scenes on film. Carol Reed has always been at his best when dealing with outsiders—in Odd Man Out, he gives you an experience you can't shrug off."

A Star is Born
Saturday, July 25 | 7:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1954/color/176 min./Scope | Scr: Moss Hart; dir: George Cukor; w/ Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson.

The part of Norman Maine, an alcoholic actor whose Hollywood star is falling as fast as his young wife's is rising, provided Mason with one of his signature roles, an Oscar nomination, and trivia fame thanks to the last line of the picture when Vickie Lester declares: "This is Mrs. Norman Maine." This sweeping musical comedy/drama, Cukor's first in color and CinemaScope, is ravishing to look at, fascinating to listen to, and heartbreaking to experience. At the film's core is Judy Garland who, despite problems that slowed down production—the shoot lasted ten months!—was at the height of her powers as an actress and singer. As for Mason, "I was having a wonderful time. Judy was a witty, lively, talented, touching, adorable woman. She had a quality which can only be compared to Charlie Chaplin's: always optimistic, always gay, always inventive."

Restored 35mm print.

View the film's trailer here.

Julius Caesar
Tuesday, July 28 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1953/b&w/122 min. | Scr: William Shakespeare; dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; w/ Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud, Greer Garson, Deborah Kerr.

Caesar's former comrades Cassius and Brutus lead the conspirators to murder the self-appointed dictator, and face the wrath of Mark Anthony, his loyal protégé.

View the film's trailer here.

Julie & Julia
Tuesday, July 28 | 7:30 pm
Preview Screening
2009/color/123 min. | Scr/dir: Nora Ephron; w/ Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina.

Writer-director Nora Ephron’s beguiling new comedy intertwines the true stories of two women: Julia Child (Meryl Streep), a 39-year-old housewife on the road to becoming a chef extraordinaire in 1950s Paris; and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a 29-year-old Brooklyn secretary at a crossroads in life who vows to make the 564 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. Though separated by time and space, Julie and Julia both discover that the right combination of passion, fearlessness, and butter makes anything possible.

View the film's trailer here.

5 Fingers
Friday, July 31 | 7:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1952/b&w/108 min. | Scr: Michael Wilson; dir: Joseph Mankiewicz; w/ James Mason, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Rennie.

Based loosely on a true story, this elegant espionage film set in Ankara in 1944 stars Mason as an Albanian-born valet working at the British embassy who teams up with an unscrupulous countess (Darrieux) to sell secret Allied documents to the Germans. An excellent screenplay made even better by the witty embellishments of Mankiewicz, "The tale becomes an irresistibly cynical comedy of manners in which the crafty gentleman's gentleman (a marvelous performance from Mason), scheming to promote himself as a member of the leisure classes, falls victim to his own pretensions. An irresistible treat."—Time Out.

The Deadly Affair
Friday, July 31 | 9:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1966/color/107 min. | Scr: Paul Dehn; dir: Sidney Lumet; w/ James Mason, Harriet Andersson, Simone Signoret, Maximilian Schell.

This sophisticated, adult spy thriller, based on a novel by John le Carré, stars Mason as a burnt-out security inspector in the Foreign Office who finds himself threatened by an espionage ring while investigating a colleague's suicide. On display are the genre's standard ingredients-intrigue, betrayal, and violent death-but Lumet's primary focus is on a fascinating group of characters brought vividly to life by a stellar international cast including Signoret, who gives gut-wrenching performance as a Holocaust survivor. Master cinematographer Freddie Young, of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago fame, pre-exposed the film to give the images a psychological realism unique to the mid-sixties Cold War era. "Thematically it was a film about life's disappointments. I wanted to get that dreary, lifeless feeling London has in winter. I wanted to desaturate the colors."—Sidney Lumet.

View the film's trailer here.

Lolita
Saturday, August 1 | 7:30 pm
Weekend Series: James Mason on Film
1962/b&w/152 min. | Scr: Vladimir Nabokov, Kubrick; dir: Stanley Kubrick; w/ James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers.

If ever an actor was born to play a fictional character it was James Mason as Humbert Humbert, the pedophile narrator of Nabokov's controversial best-selling novel. Hiding his dark and twisted desires behind the façade of a suave European academic, Humbert insinuates himself into the life of fourteen-year-old Lolita by marrying her sexually frustrated mother, a strident and suspicious presence conveniently silenced by a speeding car. Disguised as father and daughter, Humbert and his self-centered nymphet embark on a cross-country car trip closely shadowed by the chameleon-like Clare Quilty, Lolita's "true love." A visually striking adaptation of a novel that many felt could not be filmed, Kubrick's Lolita is a black comedy set in a vulgar America of shabby motels and fast-food stands, and a postmodern version of Pandora's Box in which the predator is destroyed by his own obsession. "A simple, lucid film, precisely written, which reveals America and American sex better than Melville."—Jean-Luc Godard.

View the film's trailer here.

Summer Stock
Tuesday, August 4 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1950/color/109 min. | Scr: George Wells, Sy Gomberg; dir: Charles Walters; w/ Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria De Haven.

A farmer gets sucked into show business when a theatrical troupe invades her farm.

View the film's trailer here.

Being Jewish in France (Comme un Juif en France)
Friday, August 7 | 7:30 pm
Documentary
2007/b&w and color/185 min./digital | Scr/dir: Yves Jeuland.

Yves Jeuland's sweeping new documentary explores the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first country to grant them citizenship. Beginning with Revolutionary cries of "Vive la France" in Yiddish, the film explores the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis, and the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII. With interviews with more than a dozen leading French politicians, intellectuals, and artists—amid a treasure trove of archival material—Being Jewish in France masterfully interweaves human testimony and historical evidence. Narrated by Mathieu Almaric, a regular in Arnaud Desplechin's films and the star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the film won the Jewish Experience Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

Being Jewish in France (Comme un Juif en France)
Saturday, August 8 | 3:00 pm
Documentary
2007/b&w and color/185 min./digital | Scr/dir: Yves Jeuland.

Yves Jeuland's sweeping new documentary explores the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first country to grant them citizenship. Beginning with Revolutionary cries of "Vive la France" in Yiddish, the film explores the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis, and the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII. With interviews with more than a dozen leading French politicians, intellectuals, and artists—amid a treasure trove of archival material—Being Jewish in France masterfully interweaves human testimony and historical evidence. Narrated by Mathieu Almaric, a regular in Arnaud Desplechin's films and the star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the film won the Jewish Experience Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

Being Jewish in France (Comme un Juif en France)
Saturday, August 8 | 7:30 pm
Documentary
2007/b&w and color/185 min./digital | Scr/dir: Yves Jeuland.

Yves Jeuland's sweeping new documentary explores the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first country to grant them citizenship. Beginning with Revolutionary cries of "Vive la France" in Yiddish, the film explores the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis, and the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII. With interviews with more than a dozen leading French politicians, intellectuals, and artists—amid a treasure trove of archival material—Being Jewish in France masterfully interweaves human testimony and historical evidence. Narrated by Mathieu Almaric, a regular in Arnaud Desplechin's films and the star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the film won the Jewish Experience Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

Being Jewish in France (Comme un Juif en France)
Sunday, August 9 | 1:00 pm
Documentary
2007/b&w and color/185 min./digital | Scr/dir: Yves Jeuland.

Yves Jeuland's sweeping new documentary explores the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first country to grant them citizenship. Beginning with Revolutionary cries of "Vive la France" in Yiddish, the film explores the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis, and the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII. With interviews with more than a dozen leading French politicians, intellectuals, and artists—amid a treasure trove of archival material—Being Jewish in France masterfully interweaves human testimony and historical evidence. Narrated by Mathieu Almaric, a regular in Arnaud Desplechin's films and the star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the film won the Jewish Experience Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

The Badlanders
Tuesday, August 11 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1958/color/85 min./Scope | Scr: Richard Collin; dir: Delmer Daves; w/  Alan Ladd, Ernest Borgnine, Katy Jurado, Claire Kelly.

Western outlaws join forces for a daring gold robbery in this remake of The Asphalt Jungle.

View the film's trailer here. 

Léon Morin, Priest
Friday, August 14 | 7:30 pm
Revival Screening
1961/b&w/115 min. | Scr/dir: Jean-Pierre Melville; w/ Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva.

During the Occupation in a provincial French village, Communist widow Riva becomes enthralled by serenely devout Belmondo, fresh off Breathless and switching gears from hardboiled gangster to enigmatic man of the cloth. Under the taut direction of noir master (and Jewish atheist) Jean-Pierre Melville and based on an autobiographical novel by Beatrice Beck, the platonic encounters and intellectual jousts of this unlikely couple are at once erotic and cerebral. This reissue of a film rarely seen on the big screen may help to secure its place in the canon of transcendental cinema.

Léon Morin, Priest
Saturday, August 15 | 7:30 pm
Revival Screening
1961/b&w/115 min. | Scr/dir: Jean-Pierre Melville; w/ Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva.

During the Occupation in a provincial French village, Communist widow Riva becomes enthralled by serenely devout Belmondo, fresh off Breathless and switching gears from hardboiled gangster to enigmatic man of the cloth. Under the taut direction of noir master (and Jewish atheist) Jean-Pierre Melville and based on an autobiographical novel by Beatrice Beck, the platonic encounters and intellectual jousts of this unlikely couple are at once erotic and cerebral. This reissue of a film rarely seen on the big screen may help to secure its place in the canon of transcendental cinema.

Today We Live
Tuesday, August 18 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1933/b&w/115 min. | Scr: Edith Fitzgerald, Dwight Taylor; dir: Howard Hawks; w/ Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Robert Young, Franchot Tone.

An aristocratic English girl's tangled love life creates havoc during World War I.

View the film's trailer here. 

The Cincinnati Kid
Tuesday, August 25 | 1:00 pm
Tuesday Matinees
1965/color/113 min. | Scr: Ring Lardner Jr., Terry Southern; dir: Norman Jewison; w/ Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn, Jack Weston, Cab Calloway.

Cardsharps try to deal with personal problems during a big game in New Orleans.

View the film's trailer here. 

$5 second film only of a double-feature; no advance purchase.

$2 Tuesday matinees.
$1 Tuesday matinees, seniors (62+).

Where to Buy
Buy tickets at the museum box office (tel. 323 857-6010) or online. Many programs sell out so try to purchase in advance.

Included
Your film ticket covers both films in a double bill, except where noted, and includes entrance to the museum galleries as well.

Film Department
Tel. 323 857-6177
Ian Birnie, Director
Bernardo Rondeau, Program Coordinator
Lee Marcuse, Volunteer
Pauline Posner, Volunteer

If you would like to subscribe to the Film Department’s e-mail newsletter, please send a message to film@lacma.org.