‘Chinatown’
Landmark’s Magnolia Theatre’s weekly Big Movie New Classic Series, sponsored by Dallas Voice, screens a different classic film each Tuesday at 7:30 and 10 p.m. This quarter’s lineup is filled with amazing Oscar winners:
Aug. 9: Now, Voyager. One of Bette Davis’ best weepers, a masterful romance with Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes with one match. Its score (by Max Steiner) won an Oscar.
Aug. 16: Death on the Nile. Bette Davis, 36 years after Now, Voyager, in this humdinger of a mystery, set on a glamour boat in the 1930s. An Oscar for its costumes.
Aug. 23: Fantastic Voyage. Raquel Welsh, shrunk to microscopic level, still has enormous boobs in exciting sci-fi adventure, which won an Oscar for special effects.
Aug. 30: Victor/Victoria. Blake Edwards’ comedy about a cabaret singer who becomes a drag queen; antics ensue. Its song score won an Oscar.
Sept. 6: Network. Probably the greatest satire of all-time, this vicious twisting of the news culture turned out to be unnervingly predictive. Winner of four Oscars: actor, actress, supporting actress and original screenplay.
Sept. 13: Touch of Evil. The last great film noir picture (a trend that began with 1942’s The Maltese Falcon) is also Orson Welles’ last true masterpiece of fiction (his documentary F for Fake was his last great film). The opening tracking shot is legendary.
Sept. 20: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The British comedy troupe’s unquestioned masterpiece, a parody of crusade films.
Sept. 27: A Place in the Sun. Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor forged one of the great Hollywood friendships on this Oscar winner for best director, a somber adaptation of Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy.
Oct. 4: Jules et Jim. One of Truffaut’s early French nouvelle vague films, about the delicate relationship between two men, both in love with the same woman.
Oct. 11: High Noon. Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winning triumph of control, a real-time Western in which a lone marshal defends his town against outlaws arriving on the noon train to murder him.
Oct. 18: Chinatown. Sixteen years after Touch of Evil, Roman Polanski helped usher in the genre of neo-noir in this mystery set in 1930s L.A., with Jack Nicholson as a private detective who uncovers a horrible truth. The screenplay won an Oscar.
Oct. 25: The Haunting. The quintessential haunted house thriller.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 22, 2016.
