Saturday, August 23 – Gene Siskel Film Center — 164 N State Street
Tickets: $13 at the door or purchase in advance
2:15 PM
LILI
Directed by Charles Walters • 1953
Five years before Gigi, Leslie Caron starred as Lili, a happy-go-lucky French lass surrounded by lecherous men (and impressively crafted puppets) in Charles Walters’s largely forgotten, winsomely kooky MGM musical. Lili doggedly pursues a manipulative magician (Mel Ferrer), eventually lands a decent job at the carnival, and finds her niche in the troupe after her colleagues discover her earnestly conversing with the puppets as though they’re her friends (she cares quite deeply for them). Screenwriter Helen Deutsch was nominated for an Academy Award for her script; she later pitched the concept to Broadway, where it became the stage musical Carnival! (RIN)
81 min • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer • 35mm from Chicago Film Society, permission Park Circus
4:45 PM
ARABESQUE
Directed by Stanley Donen • 1966
On the heels of the Cary Grant showpiece Charade, Universal Pictures and choreographer-turned-director Stanley Donen looked to replicate their success with another frothy continental romance-caper. Gregory Peck was cast as a kidnapped hieroglyphics expert with Sophia Loren as the woman who helps him escape certain death; their enthusiasm for the project carried the film into production, despite Donen’s growing distaste for its script. Rather than attempt to rein in its jumbled intrigues and inscrutable motivations, Donen opted to focus on the film’s visual design, bringing a dazzling and experimental flamboyance to action set pieces (including a bonkers LSD-addled bicycle chase and a deadly showdown during an optometry appointment) and otherwise-rote exposition alike. (CW)
105 min • Stanley Donen Enterprises • 35mm from Chicago Film Society, permission Universal
7:45 PM
THE PARALLAX VIEW
Directed by Alan J. Pakula • 1974
“There will be no questions.” In this tense and scrambling film, a headstrong news reporter (Warren Beatty) quixotically struggles to expose a sinister Kennedy-style assassination conspiracy. Pakula’s second collaboration with legendary lensman Gordon Willis (Klute, The Godfather) wedded the burgeoning genre of “American political thriller” to a severe, Antonioni-ish sense of scale, composition, and color — Beatty and other puny humans are frequently dwarfed by pale, unfeeling cityscapes and gargantuan modernist architecture in vibrant primary hues. Among the film’s other monuments: a small, stirring performance from the great Paula Prentiss that serves as the story’s emotional linchpin. (GW)
102 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, permission Paramount
NEXT UP: TECHNICOLOR WEEKEND : Friday, August 22 – Sunday, August 24 at the Film Center