What you've seen on the big screen (but not in its original release)
By Edward Copeland
As my readers can no doubt tell, my contributors and myself don't have much in the way of original copy to offer this week (that's why you've seen three days in a row of From the Vault posts of old reviews written when the films in question originally came out prior to this blog's existence). I'm taking this "week off" because I have several projects coming up that require lots of watching and writing so I can more or less place ECOF on autopilot. It then occurred to me that this would be a great opportunity to me to run something I've always wanted to and that really isn't labor intensive.
Since seeing movies in a theater, for the most part, is a logistical impossibility for me now, I've always wanted to list the films that I was fortunate enough to see in a theater through re-releases that I either wasn't born when they originally came out, I was too young to see in their original release or somehow I missed the first time and they happened to come back. I figured that would be a great comment starter. I've only linked to reviews I wrote based on being able to see the films in a theater the way God intended. Of course, I didn't count The Rocky Horror Picture Show since it never stopped playing. I just went with alphabetical order. I hope I've recalled them all.
Alice in Wonderland (1951) directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfrid Jackson & Hamilton Luske
Bambi (1942) with seven credited directors
Belle de Jour (1967; 1968 U.S.) directed by Luis Buñuel
Blade Runner (1982) directed by Ridley Scott
Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932; 1967 U.S.) directed by Jean Renoir
Casablanca (1942) directed by Michael Curtiz
A Christmas Story (1983) directed by Bob Clark
Cinderella (1950) directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfrid Jackson & Hamilton Luske
Citizen Kane (1941) directed by Orson Welles
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) directed by Steven Spielberg
Contempt (1963; 1964 U.S.) directed by Jean Luc-Godard
Doctor Zhivago (1965) directed by David Lean
Dracula (1931) directed by Tod Browning
Dumbo (1941) with six credited directors
The Exorcist (1973) directed by William Friedkin
Fantasia (1940) 11 uncredited directors
Frankenstein (1931) directed by James Whale
Giant (1956) directed by George Stevens
The Godfather (1972) directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Gone With the Wind (1939) directed by Victor Fleming
Jaws (1975) directed by Steven Spielberg
The Jungle Book (1967) directed by Wolfgang Reitherman
The Last Waltz (1978) directed by Martin Scorsese
Lady and the Tramp (1955) directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfrid Jackson & Hamilton Luske
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) directed by David Lean
Lolita (1962) directed by Stanley Kubrick
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) directed by John Frankenheimer
Nashville (1975) directed by Robert Altman
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) directed by John Landis
Nights of Cabiria (1957) directed by Federico Fellini
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) directed by Clyde Geronimi,
Hamilton Luske & Wolfgang Reitherman
Pather Panchali (1955; 1958 U.S.) directed by Satyajit Ray
Peter Pan (1953) directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfrid Jackson & Hamilton Luske
Pink Floyd — The Wall (1982) directed by Alan Parker
Pinocchio (1940) with seven credited directors
Sleeping Beauty (1959) directed by Clyde Geronimi
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) with six credited directors
Some Came Running (1958) directed by Vincente Minnelli
Song of the South (1946) directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson
The Sound of Music (1965) directed by Robert Wise
Spartacus (1960) directed by Stanley Kubrick
Sunset Blvd. (1950) directed by Billy Wilder
Touch of Evil (1958) directed by Orson Welles
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) directed by Jacques Demy
Vertigo (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
The Wild Bunch (1969) directed by Sam Peckinpah
The Wizard of Oz (1939) directed by Victor Fleming
Yellow Submarine (1968) directed by George Dunning
Earlier this year I caught the Seattle Noir City at SIFF. The double bill that night was "Don't Bother to Knock" and "They Won't Believe Me" the latter of which I don't think is available on DVD or otherwise. Dressing up to go to the theater and settling in with a crowd sure does set the mood for a noir double bill, IMHO. http://venetianblond.blogspot.com/2011/02/noir-city-seattle-saturday-nights.html
ReplyDeleteI've caught quite a few of the same movies on the big screen, and too many others to remember, but I want to highlight a couple of groupings I've managed. The first is when the five Hitchcock movies were re-released in the mid-80's. Even more than Vertigo, Rear Window was such a revelation. All five were shown at the Coronet in San Francisco in pristine prints. What a treasure.
ReplyDeleteI've also seen all the Preston Sturges '40-'44 movies on the big screen, except The Great Moment, and five Astaire/Rogers movies. However, the two greatest not original release movie experiences I've had were The Seven Samuri at the Castro and Godfathers I and II on the same day. also at the Castro.