The Patio Theater – 6008 W Irving Park Road – $5.00 per ticket
For the full schedule of classic film screenings at the Patio, please click here.
Wednesday, September 4 @ 7:30pm
ONE HOUR WITH YOU
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1932
Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald have been married for three years and still go at it like squirrels in the park, but their splendiferous matrimony goes awry when Chevalier spends an hour alone with MacDonald’s best friend Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin). Ernst Lubitsch’s last musical for Paramount was originally assigned to George Cukor, and a pre-release argument over who actually directed the bulk of the picture ended in Cukor suing Paramount and eventually leaving the studio to work for RKO. None of that tension shows up on screen: One Hour With You is magnificently frothy and cute, and per the Philadelphia Inquirer: “The result is something so delightful that it places the circle of leaves jauntily upon the knowing head of Hollywood’s most original director” … whoever that is. Songs include: “What a Little Thing Like a Wedding Ring Can Do,” “We Will Always Be Sweethearts,” and the titular “One Hour With You.” (JA)
80 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from Universal
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And come back next Wednesday for a brand new 35mm print of Days of Heaven, now with 50% more Magic Hour.
Wednesday, September 11 @ 7:30pm
DAYS OF HEAVEN
Directed by Terrence Malick • 1978
Did any modern classic receive more dismissive and flippant opening day notices than Days of Heaven? David Denby called it “one of the most perversely undramatic, uninvolving, and senseless movies ever made,” and one can almost see what he means. There isn’t much meat to the story and this is perhaps the most silent talkie you will ever see (as is Malick’s way). Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler’s magic hour visuals are held together by Linda Manz’s impromptu voiceover narration—a naïve but unconsciously wise reflection on a soured American Dream. Manz, her brother (Richard Gere), and his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) flee Chicago for the Texas panhandle where their fate turns tragic after Adams, in the hope for a better life for them all, marries a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard). Appointed with sometimes-surreal compositions, a dreamily hopeful score of Ennio Morricone by way of Saint-Säens, and a haunting swarm of locusts, Days of Heaven is now recognized as a singularly beautiful cinematic experience. (HG/KW)
94 min • Paramount • 35mm from Paramount
