Screening 35mm & 16mm film prints from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.
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The Patsy
Sunday, November 3 @ 8:00 PM / Music Box Theatre — 3733 N Southport Ave
Tickets: $12 at the door or purchase in advanceDirected by King Vidor • 1928
Broadway showgirl Marion Davies became a movie star through the dedication (and pocketbook) of her paramour and patron William Randolph Hearst. Yes, Davies was the inspiration for Susan Alexander Kane, the talentless opera star foisted heedlessly upon the world in Citizen Kane — but that gloss shortchanges Davies as an actress and an artist. One impediment to appreciating Davies’s range was often Hearst himself, who decreed that her world-historical beauty and vivaciousness would be commemorated in costume-heavy period pictures that had all the spontaneity of a high school history textbook. Davies’s admiration for The Big Parade inspired her to request that film’s director, King Vidor, to oversee The Patsy, a fleet, modern comedy about a woman striving to assert her own personality in a world of male indifference and imbecility. Davies stars as Patricia Harrington, the neglected younger sister of a social butterfly (Jane Winton) who barely bothers to keep track of her own beau. But Pat is no Patsy — she’ll land upon a luminous, boy-friendly personality through careful study of books and the silver screen. Though based on a successful Broadway comedy, Vidor had the good sense to ask Hearst, “Why don’t we forget the play that’s written and let Marion do as she does?” The result, in the words of film scholars Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon, is a performance where “her vitality is her healthy defense against Kane-styled pretensions in high society and art.” (KW)
84 min • Cosmopolitan Productions • 35mm from Library of Congress
Preceded by: TBA
Live musical accompaniment by Jay Warren!NEXT UP: Simple Men on Wednesday, November 6 at NEIU
Upcoming screenings:
View all upcoming screenings & venue info →
Sun 11/3 at 8:00 PM
The Patsy • Advance Tickets
Wed 11/6 at 7:30 PM
Simple Men
Wed 11/13 at 7:30 PM
Moonlight and Pretzels
Wed 11/20 at 7:30 PM
All That Heaven Allows
Mon 11/25 at 7:00 PM
Birth • Advance Tickets
Mon 12/2 at 7:00 PM
The Shop Around the Corner • Advance Tickets
Wed 12/11 at 7:30 PM
Curse of the Cat People
The Chicago Film Society works to promote the exhibition of analog film prints, to preserve the equipment and skills used to create and exhibit them, and to encourage an approach to film history that positions cinema as part of the broader history of technology and society.
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