The Lady With the Torch and “Prophetic Anti-Fascist Quickies”: Locarno Fetes Columbia Pictures at 100

From battle motion pictures and westerns to noir movies, screwball comedies all the method to musicals – Sony-owned Columbia Pictures has had them throughout its first 100 years. The 77th version of the Locarno Movie Pageant is celebrating the centenary in the Swiss city with “a tribute both to beloved classics and unheralded gems produced at the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s,” as organizers spotlight on-line.

The Sony studio had beforehand had a One hundredth-anniversary bash at Cannes in Might, co-hosted by Tom Rothman, chairman & CEO of Sony Pictures Leisure’s Movement Image Group.

Locarno unveiled its retrospective of 40, principally black-and-white, titles by emphasizing the significance of the studio for Hollywood historical past. “In 1924, the relatively small-scale motion picture company Cohn-Brandt-Cohn rebranded itself as Columbia Pictures,” the fest explains on its web site. “This new studio would eventually feature, as its masthead, the Lady with a Torch, the Statue of Liberty-like female figure draped in the American flag that has become recognizable to film lovers everywhere. As Columbia Pictures, the studio struck gold, producing a major string of successes and becoming, over the next decade, an integral part of the Hollywood ecosystem.”

And Locarno creative director Giona Nazzaro highlighted: “It was Columbia that offered the greatest professional opportunities to women and allowed Dorothy Arzner to make her debut behind the camera.”

The competition guarantees a “large, multi-faceted retrospective,” curated by documentarian, movie critic, and movie curator Ehsan Khoshbakht, that “will attempt to disentangle the knotty myths that surround Columbia Pictures and present a richer and more complex portrait of a studio worth celebrating.”

Khoshbakht himself vows to showcase “fast-talking career women of screwball comedies, “existentialist cowboys,” “prophetic anti-fascist quickies,” and “unsettling ‘problem pictures’.”

So what Columbia Pictures golden age classics will Locarno77 unspool? The full lineup, together with such silver-screen legends as Rock Hudson (Gun Fury, 1953), Spencer Tracy (Man’s Citadel, 1933), and William Holden (Picnic, 1955), could be discovered right here.

Beneath, see a choice of 11 of the titles featured in the retrospective to whet your urge for food.

Wall StreetNo, this isn’t the 1987 film directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, which stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, and Martin Sheen and was distributed by Fox.

That is the one directed by Roy William Neill and starring Ralph Ince, Aileen Pringle, Philip Unusual, Sam De Grasse, and Freddie Burke Frederick from 1929, making it the oldest Columbia Pictures film in the Locarno homage lineup.

At 68 minutes, it is usually shorter than different fare in the tribute program. The story focuses on a steelworker-turned-ruthless tycoon whose powerful enterprise strategies lead a rival to suicide. The widow believes she will destroy the tycoon and conspires along with her husband’s former companion.

Bitter VictoryThis battle movie, starring Richard Burton and Curd Jürgens as two British Military officers despatched out on a commando raid in North Africa, will likely be launched at Locarno by Haden Visitor, the director of the Harvard Movie Archive.

Based mostly on the novel of the identical title by René Hardy, the French-American co-production additionally options Ruth Roman and Raymond Pellegrin.

The film, directed by Nicholas Ray, not solely featured overseas lands on display screen but additionally traveled itself, debuting at the Venice Movie Pageant in 1957.

Deal with Unknown The 1944 movie noir drama, directed by William Cameron Menzies, is primarily based on Kressmann Taylor’s 1938 novel of the identical title. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté’s artistic use of shadows and digicam angles has typically been lauded.

The 72-minute film tells the story of two households caught up in the rise of Nazism in Germany earlier than the begin of World Warfare II. Its forged contains Paul Lukas, Carl Esmond, Peter van Eyck, Mady Christians, Morris Carnovsky, and Ok.T. Stevens.

The movie screening in Locarno’s Columbia Pictures retrospective acquired Oscar nominations for finest unique rating and finest artwork route.

Gunman’s WalkAs the title suggests, it is a Western. The Locarno crowd will likely be handled to a particular introduction from Sony Pictures Leisure’s movie restoration and digital mastering guru Grover Crisp.

Directed by Phil Karlson, this one stars Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathryn Grant, and James Darren. Heflin performs a strong rancher who all the time protects his hot-tempered grownup son (Hunter) by paying for damages and bribing witnesses – till his crimes change into too severe. Grant performs an attractive half-French, half-Sioux girl towards who the hothead makes undesirable advances.

In an indication of its affect, Quentin Tarantino later mentioned that the movie was an inspiration for Tanner, the fictitious film in his As soon as Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Gunman’s Stroll premiered in 1958, one 12 months earlier than one other Western, and the latest movie in the Columbia Pictures retrospective at Locarno, Experience Lonesome, directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, and Pernell Roberts.

Craig’s WifeBased on the eponymous play by George Kelly, this 1936 melodrama is a uncommon film from feminine creators in the retrospective.

Dorothy Arzner, one in all only a few ladies administrators who managed to have an extended and profitable profession in Hollywood in its early days and later grew to become a spotlight for college kids of movie and relationships, directed the movie from a screenplay by Mary C. McCall Jr. The introduction at Locarno will come from one other feminine voice, particularly freelance author, critic, and movie historian Pamela Hutchinson.

Rosalind Russell, John Boles, Billie Burke, Jane Darwell, and Dorothy Wilson star in the movie about Harriet, who has married a person as a result of he is ready to present the sort of posh way of life she wishes. However when her husband will get a scare involving the police, her lifestyle is threatened.

You Nazty Spy! The 1940 comedy quick, directed by Jules White, stars the well-known slapstick comedy staff The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Advantageous, and Curly Howard) and was the forty fourth of the 190 shorts launched by Columbia Pictures with the comedians between 1934 and 1959.

The 18-minute movie is usually acknowledged as Hollywood’s first anti-Nazi comedy as its launch predated that of Charles Chaplin’s The Nice Dictator by a number of months. The title mixes parody of comic Joe Penner’s catchphrase “You Nasty Man!” with the 1939 Warner Bros. movie Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

Right here is the plot: Three ammunition producers are sad a few revenue decline as a result of King Herman the 6+7⁄8‘s pacifist insurance policies. In order that they conspire to overthrow him and arrange a dictatorship. The unwitting Stooges are wallpaper hangers who get chosen as figureheads for the new regime

The Discuss of the TownCary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman star in the romantic comedy/drama, directed by George Stevens, that debuted in 1942.

Grant performs Leopold Dilg who’s accused of arson and homicide however escapes from jail throughout his trial and seems to be to cover in a distant cottage owned by his former schoolmate Nora, on whom he has had a crush for years. Nora rented the cottage to a legislation professor writing a ebook (Colman) for the summer time. When each Lightcap and Dilg arrive inside minutes of one another, Nora hides Dilg in the attic, and issues take their course from there.

A few the parts of the film had been uncommon for the time. One was the use of two main males. The different was the function of a valet, performed by Rex Ingram, which again then was a uncommon instance of a non-stereotypical half for a Black actor.

The Lady From ShanghaiOrson Welles. Rita Hayworth. Everett Sloane. Noir thriller. Do we have to say extra?

Effectively, we might. Welles stars in, directed, and wrote the screenplay for the 1947 film, primarily based on the novel If I Die Earlier than I Wake by Sherwood King. Glenn Anderson and Ted De Corsia additionally star. Plus, Charles Lawton Jr. dealt with the cinematography.

The traditional is about Michael, an Irish sailor (Welles), who rescues Elsa (Hayworth) when her coach will get waylaid in Central Park and falls for her. However Elsa and her disabled legal protection legal professional husband (Sloane) simply arrived in New York Metropolis from Shanghai and journey on to San Francisco through the Panama Canal. Michael agrees to signal on as a seaman aboard the husband’s yacht.

The Huge HeatThis 1953 movie noir additionally packs a punch and star energy. Directed by the “Master of Darkness” Fritz Lang, stars Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Jocelyn Brando. 

The story is rapidly defined: a cop takes on the crime syndicate that controls his metropolis. The film begins when a murder detective is known as on to analyze the suicide of a fellow cop.

So far as the story of the manufacturing goes, Columbia needed Marilyn Monroe to star however didn’t need to pay the quantity that twentieth Century Fox demanded for loaning a rival their star.

Girls’s PrisonThe forged record for the 1955 Columbia Pictures traditional is filled with feminine energy: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter.

Behind the scenes, after all, males had been in cost. Lewis Seiler directed the movie primarily based on a screenplay from Crane Wilbur and Jack DeWitt.

The plot can partly be guessed from the title. A sadistic jail warden takes out her sexual frustration on her ladies inmates, whereas a doctor tries to enhance the brutal ambiance in the jail. And a pair of rebellious inmates could take issues into their very own arms.

Mr. Deeds Goes to TownCan’t get sufficient of Cary Grant and Jean Arthur? Effectively, right here is one other romantic comedy/drama, this time from 1936. Plus, it’s directed by Frank Capra.

Robert Riskin wrote the screenplay in his fifth collaboration with Capra, primarily based on the quick story “Opera Hat” by Clarence Budington Kelland. Throughout early principal images, the mission nonetheless used the quick story’s title it was renamed primarily based on the successful entry of a contest held by the Columbia Pictures publicity division.

Grant performs an unassuming greeting card poet from a small city who heads to New York Metropolis after inheriting a fortune, solely to be hounded by individuals attempting to reap the benefits of him.