Saturday, August 8 – Siskel Film Center — 164 N State Street
Tickets: $14 at the door or purchase in advance
1:00 PM
MEET ME AT THE FAIR
Directed by Douglas Sirk • 1953
Fresh off Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, Douglas Sirk turned to another scrappy musical, this one about an orphan on the run who joins up with a traveling medicine show headed by the charming Doc (undersung song-and-dance man Dan Dailey) and his assistant (a scene-stealing Scatman Crothers, making his Hollywood debut). Local do-gooder Zerelda (Diana Lynn) has focused her zeal on improving conditions at the orphanage and doesn’t think much of medicine shows, but that doesn’t stop her from getting tangled up with this one anyway. A lively slice of Americana filtered through the eye of German émigré and melodrama master Sirk, Meet Me At the Fair serves up romance, small town corruption, and showbiz hustle, with a Technicolor cherry on top. (TV)
87 min • Universal-International • 16mm from the Chicago Film Society, permission Universal
3:30 PM
THE BUSY BODY
Directed by William Castle • 1967
On rare occasions a film’s marketing tagline is accurate, and this is one of them: “All this picture has is SEX, GANGSTERS, STRIPPERS, A MILLION STOLEN BUCKS, 3 STIFFS IN A COFFIN and some of the other little Happenings in life.” Robert Ryan and Sid Caesar star as members of a Chicago criminal outfit on a wild goose chase for a missing dead body (a fatal BBQ accident victim) holding a pile of cash. Based on a novel by crime fiction master Donald Westlake, the film features some mildly ghoulish touches fitting of director Castle, beautiful exterior shots of ’60s Chicago, Dom DeLuise as a mortician, and a young Richard Pryor in his film debut. (RL)
101 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from the Chicago Film Society collection at the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, permission Paramount
6:30 PM
THE GODFATHER PART II
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola • 1974
Set both before and after the events of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster picture sequel is just as violent, devastating, self-serious, actually serious, and as full of life as its reputation suggests. Pauline Kael identified one reason we’re still so drawn to the Corleones: “the casting is so close to flawless that we can feel the family connections.” Technicolor delayed the decommissioning of their dye-transfer printers to accommodate the release printing of The Godfather Part II, a film which has the distinction of being one of the last films printed in Technicolor — as well as one of the longest. (JA)
202 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, permission Paramount
NEXT UP: TECHNICOLOR WEEKEND – Day Three!