AUTUMN PROGRAMME 2024
Rififi 12
France | 1955 118 minutes
9 September 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Jules Dassin
STARRING
Jean Servais|Carl Möhner|Robert Manuel
In the ABC of Cinema, D is for Jules Dassin, US-born actor, writer, producer and director.
In Rififi, Tony, an ageing jewel thief, just out of prison, is persuaded to take on another job, which he enlarges into a much more audacious and lucrative robbery. The theft itself is the centrepiece of the film, showing how the thieves enter the premises and work together to evade the security system and break the safe. With no dialogue or music, this half-hour scene is probably the most famous heist sequence in film history.
Despite a very low budget, Dassin produced a heist movie par excellence, also reckoned to be one of the best examples of French film noir. And it won him the Best Director Award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.
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GAP
4 Charlie Chaplin Comedies U
USA | 1916 | 103 minutes
16 September 2024 MONDAY 19:30
GREEN ROOM BAR
Tickets £7.00|£5.00 (up to age 25)
DIRECTED BY
Charles Chaplin
STARRING
Charles Chaplin|Edna Purviance|Eric Campbell|Lloyd Bacon
In 1916,
aged 26, Charles Chaplin signed a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation to
make 12 two-reel comedies over the course of twelve months.
We shall
screen four of these comedies in the Green Room Bar, with a short interlude
between each one, providing an opportunity for purchases from the bar.
The
Floorwalker U (29 mins)
The Fireman U (24 mins)
The
Vagabond U (24 mins)
One A.M. U (26 mins)
These films are among the best and most famous of
Chaplin’s short comedies, which were important forerunners of his feature
films, such as Modern Times (1936) – The Eclectic Cinema’s inaugural
screening, back in January 2022.
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GAP
Roger Corman Double Bill
The Little Shop of Horrors PG
USA | 1960 | 73 minutes
The Masque of the Red Death 15
USA/UK | 1964 | 84 minutes
30 September 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £12.00|£10.00 (up to age 25)
Note that these films cannot be booked separately.
DIRECTED BY
Roger Corman
STARRING
Jonathan Haze|Jackie Joseph|Mel Welles|Jack Nicholson
Vincent Price | Hazel Court | Jane Asher
Roger Corman died in May this year, aged 98. When there were such things as B-movies, Riger Corman was likely involved – he was the producer of hundreds of films and the director of more than fifty.
Jack Nicholson appears in The Little Shop of Horrors in one of his earliest film roles. We begin to see his unhinged side as Wilbur Force, a dentist’s patient, who is mainly interested in the experience of pain. Of course, this film is a comedy, so no need to hide under the seat, even in the presence of the blood-thirsty plant, which has been nurtured by the hapless assistant of the titular little shop.
In the 1960s, Corman directed a series of adaptations based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. The Masque of the Red Death is one of these. Vincent Price is the star, as he was for all but one the eight films in Corman’s Poe Cycle. Price plays a wicked prince who terrorises the local peasantry, leaving them to suffer the pestilence then stalking the land. But he takes in one of the villagers, Francesca, on whom he has extra-marital designs. She is played by a young Jane Asher.
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GAP
Wuthering Heights 15
UK | 2011 | 129 minutes
7 October 2024 MONDAY 19:30
GREEN ROOM BAR
Tickets £7.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Andrea Arnold
STARRING
Shannon Beer & Kaya Scodelario (as Cathy)
Solomon Glave & James Howson (as Heathcliff)
As a companion-piece to The Playhouse Company’s stage production of Brontë (by Polly Teale), we are screening Wuthering Heights. There are many film adaptations to choose from, but this is the one directed by Andrea Arnold and it’s interesting for several reasons. First, it captures the atmosphere of the Yorkshire setting extremely well – rain, mists and mud, as well as exceptional beauty. Second, Arnold eschewed big stars in the cast and chose her Cathy and Heathcliff to be younger than usually portrayed, but more in keeping with Emily Brontë’s book. And third, she was the first to cast Black actors in the Heathcliff role.
The narrative you probably know, but essentially it is a tale of love and passion between Cathy (daughter of Farmer Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights) and Heathcliff (a homeless boy taken in by the Earnshaw family).
Please note that the stage production of Brontë is on at the Playhouse before this film screening: it runs in the main auditorium 18-21 September 2024.
You've missed this film!
GAP
The Innocents 12A
UK | 1961 | 100 minutes
28 October 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Jack Clayton
STARRING
Deborah Kerr|Peter Wyngarde | Megs Jenkins
With the spooky season upon us, it’s a good time to screen this adaptation of the Henry James ghost story The Turn of the Screw.
The narrative follows Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) as she applies to become the governess of Flora and Miles, orphans under the guardianship of their uncle. Miss Giddens must take full responsibility for the children and the uncle is not to be troubled with any problems. The previous governess, it transpires, died suddenly in circumstances not entirely clear.
To the inexperienced Miss Giddens the children behave oddly and seem unusually secretive. She is soon aware of voices and the apparitions of a man and a woman, with whom the children seem to be communicating. But is this paranormal activity or the hyperactivity of Miss Giddens’ sexually repressed mind?
GAP
Gravity 12
USA/UK | 2013 | 91 mins
11 November 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Alfonso Cuarón
STARRING
Sandra Bullock|George Clooney
The film
opens in the endless expanse of space during routine maintenance by a Space
Shuttle crew: the confident, easy-going Kowalski (George Clooney) and the nervous,
inexperienced Stone (Sandra Bullock). A voice from Mission Control
reports that an unrelated missile strike on a satellite has created a
field of debris orbiting the Earth at lethal speed. They are hit, severed from
their safety tethers, sent careering into the blackness and left to find a way
to get home.
GAP
The Passenger 15
Italy | 1975 | 126 minutes
18 November 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Michelangelo Antonioni
STARRING
Jack Nicholson|Maria Schneider
We screened an earlier Antonioni film last year as the first instalment of The ABC of Cinema. That was Red Desert (1964), starring Monica Vitti and Richard Harris. The theme of alienation pervades Antonioni’s films. In the earlier film it was Monica Vitti alienated from modern life; in The Passenger it is Jack Nicholson.
Nicholson plays a washed-up war correspondent who takes the unusual step of adopting the identity of a dead man. Complete with the passport and appointments schedule of the deceased, the life of a correspondent becomes more purposeful, exciting … and dangerous. Along the new road taken, Nicholson is joined by Maria Schneider, and together they take a trip into the unknown through (red) desert country – a road-trip to disaster.
GAP
Swan Song 12
USA | 2021 | 105 minutes
25 November 2024 MONDAY 19:30
GREEN ROOM BAR
Tickets £7.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Todd Stephens
STARRING
Udo Kier|Jennifer Coolidge|Linda Evans
We last saw Udo Kier in Bacurau (2019), where he played the violent hard-man leader of a bunch of assassins. Following a career filled with the roles of eccentric, flamboyant characters, here he is again as a very camp hairdresser, Pat Pitsenbarger. In the story, his professional life as a coiffeur is long behind him, but he responds to an unusual request to do a hair and make-up job on a corpse – that of a long-time rival and one-time friend who needs to look her best at her funeral.
GAP
Tokyo Godfathers 12
Japan | 2003 | 88 minutes
2 December 2024 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (25 or less) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Satoshi Kon
An unusual
offering for Christmas: an anime from Satoshi Kon. The narrative is set just
before Christmas time in Tokyo. Three homeless people search for presents in
the city’s piles of garbage and find a new-born baby discarded amongst the
rubbish. The three have banded together as a ‘found family’ to support and
protect themselves. They are Gin, a male alcoholic, Hana, a transgender woman,
and Miyuki, a teenage girl who has run away from home. The baby they name
Kiyoko, from the Japanese translation of Silent Night. The story follows
them on their adventures as they search for the baby’s real mother, adventures
that are filled with incredible coincidences, even miracles.