Ninth Festival of Preservation

Saturday, August 15
7:30 p.m.
WORKING GIRLS
(1931) Directed by Dorothy Arzner

This rarely seen Arzner gem is a subversively funny film laced with the director's characteristically ironic view of marriage, work and class. Film scholar Judith Mayne calls it "perhaps the most daring and innovative film Arzner ever made." Two Indiana sisters come to New York City to look for work. They learn how to be single girls in the big city and, after some intervening travails, find love and the right men. What makes WORKING GIRLS tick, however, are the winks and double entendres the script keeps throwing our way from the brazenly suggestive title to wisecracks insinuating gender confusion. Also intriguing is the way the film delineates the "ladylike" and "hardboiled" woman only to embrace both at the end.

Although not up to the standards of her great silent starring vehicles, Janet Gaynor's rarely seen Fox films of the sound era were immensely popular with audiences of the time, and hold many rewards today for fans of early '30s cinema. Based on a Swedish novel, this story of a rich girl in danger of losing her fortune, who takes a position as a maid to prepare herself for an impoverished future, also features a cartoon dream sequence by Walt Disney. The New York Times called the film, "an agreeable romantic comedy which will find high favor with those who visit the cinema primarily in search of entertainment."

Fox Film Corp. Producer: Winfield Sheehan. Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson. Based on the novel Vi som går kjøkkenveien by Sigrid Boo. Cinematography: Hal Mohr. Animated Sequence: Walt Disney. With: Janet Gaynor, Lew Ayres, Ned Sparks, Walter Connolly. 35mm, 88 min.

Sunday, August 16
7:00 p.m.
THE SPIDER WOMAN
(1944) Directed by Roy William Neill

A rash of wealthy men die by their own hands, but Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone, naturally) questions the validity of these "pajama suicides." Determined to prove the deaths as murders, Holmes fakes his own death in order to go undercover without suspicion. Disguised as an (East) Indian officer, he endears himself to Andrea Spedding (Gale Sondergaard), whom he suspects of being the "black widow" responsible for the murders. When Holmes is found out he faces intrigue, deceit and near death at the hands of the Spider Woman. Sondergaard's femme fatale proved popular enough to merit a sequel without Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are confronted with multiple murders while traveling on a train from London to Edinburgh with Detective Lestrade (Dennis Hoey). Fortunately, the train is an express, with no stops at intermediate stations where the killer could escape. The murders center around the seemingly cursed Star of Rhodesia diamond, and it is up to Holmes to figure out whether the murderer is among the passengers or hiding on the train. Of course, Holmes solves the puzzle and captures the killer. This was the penultimate pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the Sherlock Holmes series.

Universal Pictures. Producer: R.W. Neill. Screenplay: Frank Gruber. Based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Cinematography: Maury Gertsman. Editor: Saul A. Goodkind. With: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Alan Mowbray, Dennis Hoey. 35mm, 60 min.

The part-talking WEARY RIVER, which mixed scenes shot with and without sound, was praised by Variety for recapturing "that much bandied 'visual flow,' allegedly assassinated by conversation." Director Lloyd used sound primarily in scenes where a few actors were confined to a single set, liberating his camera where a strong sense of action was required or where background noise and many actors talking at once made it difficult to obtain a clear recording. Richard Barthelmess making his sound debut in the role of a gangster who, in prison, discovers his true vocation as a singer and composer was praised not only for the quality of his speaking voice but for his "melodious, vibrant tenor" (which embarrassed the actor, who had been dubbed).

First National Pictures. Producer: Richard A. Rowland. Screenplay: Bradley King. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Editor: Edward Schroeder, Paul Perez. With: Richard Barthelmess, Betty Compson, William Holden, Louis Natheaux. 35mm, part-talking, with silent sequences accompanied by music and effects (restored from Vitaphone disks), 84 min.

THUNDERBOLT
(1929) Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Assigned to direct his first talkie, Josef von Sternberg decided that "sound had to counterpoint or compensate the image, add to it not subtract from it." In THUNDERBOLT, a gangster film about a brutal racketeer (George Bancroft) framing the honest young man (Richard Arlen) who has stolen the love of his moll (Fay Wray), sound counterpoint is achieved through such devices as a convict quartet singing a rueful ballad while a prisoner is led to the electric chair. Sternberg's experiments were applauded in a telegram he received from fellow director Ludwig Berger: "THUNDERBOLT… is the first rounded out and artistically elaborated sound film. Bravo."

Ida Lupino's films, like those of her contemporaries Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller and Robert Aldrich, deal with the traumatic effects of postwar America uneasily settling into once familiar roles. Her socially conscious films probed subjects considered taboo rape, illegitimate children, bigamy. THE BIGAMIST features a trio of Lupino's disenfranchised characters. Salesman Edmond O'Brien and his ambitious, career-oriented wife Joan Fontaine want to adopt a child. When the adoption officer begins to investigate O'Brien, we embark on a series of flashbacks. Hence, we discover that one lonely trip to Los Angeles has led O'Brien into the arms of waitress Ida Lupino. She becomes pregnant, and O'Brien, seemingly doing the right thing, marries her. A double life ensues, culminating in a court trial and a surprisingly open ending.

SHOCK CORRIDOR
(1963) Directed by Samuel Fuller

Sensing a Pulitzer Prize-worthy story, an ambitious journalist feigns madness to get himself committed to a mental ward in order to catch a killer. But once inside he finds himself less and less sure of his own sanity as he gets closer to the truth. Director Samuel Fuller was called a tabloid poet, but his recent canonization tends to value the tabloid over the poet. With his decidedly unsubtle approach both toward filmmaking and his subject matter, Fuller risks being reduced to an emblem of hipster camp. But this view neglects the virtues of his unsubtlety (in countering patness and platitude) when dealing with the issues that obsessed him: the power of the media, the difficulty of justice and the weight of history in American race relations.

F&F Productions. Producer/Screenplay: S. Fuller. Based on the scenario Straitjacket by S. Fuller. Cinematography: Stanley Cortez. Editor: Jerome Thoms. Music: Paul Dunlap. With: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Best. 35mm, 101 min.