RIALTO REDUX:
Rialto Pictures 10th Anniversary
December 15 - January 10
Over the past ten years Rialto Pictures has enriched American film culture both by reviving a significant number of classic films not seen in theaters since their original runs and by premiering extraordinary films never before distributed in America. Taking care to release fresh, and often restored, 35mm prints with new English subtitles, Rialto has given a new generation of film-goers the opportunity to experience the works of masters such as Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, Jules Dassin, Federico Fellini, and Carol Reed--to name a few--as they were meant to be seen, while inviting those who saw these films years ago to revisit them.
AFI joins the Museum of Modern Art, originator of this series, in saluting Bruce Goldstein, founder of Rialto Pictures, and his partner Adrienne Halpern for keeping classic cinema invigorated and contemporary.
Special thanks to Laurence Kardish, MoMA Senior Curator, and Leigh Goldstein, Executive Assistant, Department of Film.
Select screenings in the Rialto series will be followed by a 20-minute sampling of exclusive trailers created by Rialto Pictures for their rereleases. See individual film listings below and look for showtimes marked with an asterisk*.
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AFI member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the Rialto Redux Series.
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 THE THIRD MAN
"One great scene after another! One great shot after another! I've seen it 50 times and it's still magic."-- Roger Ebert
Famous for its climactic Vienna chase sequence and its unforgettable theme music, Carol Reed's dazzling collaboration with Graham Greene features Joseph Cotten as a novelist trying to puzzle through what's become of his old friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Robert Krasker's Oscar-winning cinematography is a symphony of angled shots and slashing shadows.
DIR/PROD Carol Reed; SCR Graham Greene. UK, 1949, b&w, 104 min. NOT RATED
Saturday, December 15, 8:20 (canceled); Sunday, December 16, 9:30 (canceled); Tuesday, December 18, 7:00, Saturday, December 22, 5:30, Sunday, December 23, 8:15*, Tuesday, December 25, 4:15, 9:15*
*Screening followed by a 20-minute sampling of exclusive trailers created by Rialto Pictures for their rereleases.
 MOUCHETTE
A favorite of directors from Ingmar Bergman to Jim Jarmusch, Bresson's adaptation of Georges Bernanos's novel plays out 24 hours in the life of Mouchette, a lonely, inarticulate fourteen-year-old girl living in a French backwater. She alternates between acts of kindness and vengeful petulance, until a rare moment of joy at a fairground gives way to a fateful encounter that leaves her even more alone. Loneliness, shame and other tragedies universal to human experience are evoked with compassion and subtlety by Bresson's nonprofessional actors.
DIR/SCR Robert Bresson, based on the book by Georges Bernanos; PROD Anatole Dauman. France, 1967, b&w, 78 min. In French with English subtitles.
Sunday, December 16, 1:00; Monday, December 17, 9:45*; Tuesday, December 18, 9:10*; Wednesday, December 19, 9:10*
*Screening followed by a 20-minute sampling of exclusive trailers created by Rialto Pictures for their rereleases.
 MAFIOSO
Alberto Lattuada's 1962 mob caper-black comedy was hugely influential on a young Francis Coppola, who would make a particularly memorable mafia movie a decade later. Alberto Sordi gives one of his greatest performances as Nino, a successful foreman in a Milanese car factory who takes his wife and children to visit his Sicilian roots and finds himself obliged to do an old patron a favor.
DIR Alberto Lattuada; SCR Rafael Azcona, Marco Ferreri, Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli, based on a story by Bruno Caruso; PROD Tonino Cervi. Italy, 1962, b&w, 105 min. In Italian with English subtitles.
Saturday, December 15, 8:20* - Just added!; Sunday, December 16, 9:30* - Just added!; Wednesday, December 19, 7:00; Sunday, December 23, 6:05; Wednesday, December 26, 7:00; Thursday, December 27, 4:45
*Screening followed by a 20-minute sampling of exclusive trailers created by Rialto Pictures for their rereleases.
 AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
Often considered Bresson's "supreme masterpiece," AU HASARD BALTHAZAR is a religious allegory conveyed through the life and death of a donkey. Baptized "Balthazar" by three young children, the donkey is thrown into a life of successive labors and abuses at the hands of different owners.
DIR/SCR Robert Bresson. France/Sweden, 1966, b&w, 95 min. In French with English subtitles.
Saturday, December 22, 1:00; Monday, December 24, 5:05; Tuesday, December 25, 2:15; Wednesday, December 26, 5:00
 RIFIFI
The American noir crime thriller was widely appreciated in France, and the best translations are BOB LE FLAMBEUR and Jules Dassin's highly-acclaimed heist film. The action is an arc--with a meticulous and silent 28-minute safe-cracking scene that is the center of the film, though not its climax. While the film takes place in Paris and exhibits classic French finesse, a particularly American tenacity adds the bite necessary to make it a perfectly balanced film noir.
DIR/SCR Jules Dassin; SCR René Wheeler, based on the novel by Auguste Le Breton; PROD René Gaston Vuattoux. France, 1955, b&w, 115 min. In French and Italian with English subtitles.
Thursday, December 27, 7:00; Friday, December 28, 2:15; Sunday, December 30, 5:00; Wednesday, January 2, 4:40
 ARMY OF SHADOWS
[L'armee des ombres]
Director Melville's 1969 masterpiece received a long-overdue US release, to great acclaim, in 2006. Drawing on his own World War II experiences, Melville depicts the calculated and covert maneuverings of French resistance fighters with an ambiguous sense of heroism. Friendship, loyalty and honor - nothing is sacred under the harsh interrogation light, and in war, there are no winners, only survivors.
DIR/SCR Jean-Pierre Melville, based on the novel by Joseph Kesse; PROD Jacques Dorfmann. France/Italy, 1969, color, 145 min. In English, French and German with English subtitles.
Friday, December 28, 4:40; Saturday, December 29, 4:45; Tuesday, January 1, 2:45
 BOB LE FLAMBEUR
An aging gambler known more for his unerring code of street morals than his criminal success assembles a team of honorable hoods for one last heist. Shot on the streets of Montmartre over a period of three years, Melville's tale presents the Parisian neighborhood as the glamorous realm of gamblers, pimps and ladies of the night.
DIR/SCR/PROD Jean-Pierre Melville; SCR Auguste Le Breton; PROD Serge Silberman. France, 1956, b&w, 98 min. In French with English subtitles. RATED PG
Saturday, December 29, 12:40; Sunday, December 30, 1:00; Wednesday, January 2, 9:00; Thursday, January 3, 4:40
 GODZILLA
[Gojira]
A sci-fi classic that also serves as a time capsule for 1950s nuclear anxiety, Godzilla was available in the US for years in only its comically dubbed and re-cut version. For the film's 50th anniversary Rialto restored 40 minutes of original footage, reestablishing the film as a dark comment on postwar Japan.
DIR/SCR Ishirô Honda; SCR Shigeru Kayama and Takeo Murata; PROD Tomoyuki Tanaka. Japan, 1954, b&w, 98 min. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Sunday, December 30, 7:20; Monday, December 31, 4:45; Tuesday, January 1, 4:45
 TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER
[2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle]
"In order to live in Paris today, on no matter what social level, one is forced to prostitute oneself," said Jean-Luc Godard in 1966, as the narrator addressing the audience of this film in a conspiratorial whisper. Inspired by a newspaper article on housewives dabbling in prostitution, Raoul Coutard's camera follows Marina Vlady on a typical day as she lunches, shops and goes off with johns; meanwhile the camera picks up conversations in the cafés, or follows a news crew interviewing a man on the street. The stunning Cinemascope photography juxtaposes elegant Parisian landmarks against the jumble of cranes, scaffolding and concrete slabs going up at the city's outskirts, while Godard as narrator delivers essays on architecture and modernity over images of both the city's streetscapes and Vlady's streetwalking. One of Godard's most experimental and successful films, it's thought-provoking, gorgeous to look at and occasionally quite funny - not least when the film, and Godard, poke fun at themselves.
DIR/SCR Jean-Luc Godard; SCR Catherine Vimenet, PROD Anatole Dauman and Raoul Lévy. France, 1967, color, 90 min. In French with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Friday, January 4, 2:30; Saturday, January 5, 12:45; Sunday, January 6, 7:45
 NIGHTS OF CABIRIA
[Le Notti de Cabiria]
1958's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar Winner, and the basis of the musical SWEET CHARITY
Fellini's touching tragicomic follow-up to LA STRADA was his second collaboration with wife Giulietta Masina, who won Best Actress at Cannes for her portrayal of a resilient prostitute. Betrayed by her respectable lover, she holds on to her belief in the goodness of life. The Rialto re-release restores a seven-minute sequence cut before the film's premiere.
DIR/PROD Federico Fellini; SCR Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy/France, 1957, b&w, 117 min.
Friday, January 4, 4:20; Saturday, January 5, 9:20; Sunday, January 6, 5:25; Tuesday, January 8, 7:00; Wednesday, January 7, 7:00
 MASCULINE, FEMININE
[Masculin, féminin]
"Graceful, intuitive...Godard gets at the differences in the way girls are with each other and with boys." - Pauline Kael
New Wave Master Godard captures "the children of Marx and Coca Cola" in this strikingly honest portrait of youth and sex in 1960s Paris. Godard's innovative camera takes to the streets, mixing documentary-style interviews about sex, love and politics with characters responding to actual events: suicides, homicides and a film-within-the-film.
DIR/SCR Jean-Luc Godard; SCR Guy de Maupassant; PROD Anatole Dauman. France/Sweden, 1966, b&w, 103 min. In English, Swedish and French with English subtitles.
Saturday, January 5, 4:45; Monday, January 7, 7:00; Thursday, January 10, 9:20
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