Charlton Heston, who passed away on April 5 of last year, was a singular presence in American film. With a rangy, robust physique and chiseled features, Heston was uniquely suited to playing heroic, historical figures in assorted epics of the 1950s and 60s, including Biblical prophets, American presidents, Wild West cowboys and famed military commanders. In the late 1960s and 70s, he reinvented himself in a series of apocalyptic-minded science fiction films, his characters marked by a rueful, sardonic attitude about mankind's culpability in destroying its own future; the most memorable of these being PLANET OF THE APES, THE OMEGA MAN and SOYLENT GREEN. Heston's charitable work, service to others, and devotion to causes he cared about loom as large as his acting accomplishments. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1965-71, AFI Board Chairman from 1971-82, and AFI President from 1983-2002. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1959 for BEN-HUR and received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978.

AFI Member passes will be accepted at all films in the Charlton Heston Remembered series.

THE BIG COUNTRY

Rival Texas ranchers Charles Bickford and Burl Ives (in an Oscar-winning performance) go to war over water rights and access to precious riverfront property owned by schoolmarm Jean Simmons. Newly arrived easterner Gregory Peck, engaged to the wealthy Bickford's spoiled daughter Carroll Baker, is seemingly a fish out of water in this conflict. Pacifistic by nature, Peck backs down from a fight with Ives's rowdy gang of cowpokes, led by a lunkheaded Chuck Connors, and loses Baker's esteem when he refuses to fight her father's roughhewn ranch foreman Charlton Heston--who wants Baker for himself. But it's Peck's cool thinking that will ultimately prevail in William Wyler's epic Western--its widescreen vistas a spectacular sight on the big screen.

DIR/PROD William Wyler; SCR James R. Webb, Sy Bartlett, Robert Wilder, based on the novel by Donald Hamilton; PROD Gregory Peck. US, 1958, color, 165 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, May 9, 2:30; Wednesday, May 13, 6:30

TOUCH OF EVIL

Orson Welles's Classic, Restored!

Despite Orson Welles's full decade away from a Hollywood director's chair, Heston lobbied Universal to hire him for this edgy thriller, and prevailed. Amazingly consigned to the bottom half of a double bill when first released, this film has enjoyed cult status ever since and is now acknowledged as one of the high points of both film noir and Welles's oeuvre. It is renowned for its legendary opening sequence as witnessed by Mexican DA Heston and his American wife Janet Leigh--a long and intricate tracking shot, where a car bomb planted on the Mexican side of a seedy bordertown explodes across the US border, killing a wealthy businessman and his girlfriend. But the crime scene is on the turf of Welles's sheriff Hank Quinlan, a hulking, sweaty, maniacal presence who investigates the case according to his own perverse agenda. Russell Metty's celebrated cinematography--all slanted angles and inky nighttime lighting--and a colorful cast that includes Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Dennis Weaver add flair to this suspense classic.

DIR/SCR Orson Welles; based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson; PROD Albert Zugsmith. US, 1958, b&w, 95 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, May 9, 10:30; Sunday, May 10, 3:10, 9:40; Tuesday, May 12, 9:15; Wednesday, May 13, 9:40; Thursday, May 14, 9:15

BEN-HUR

50th Anniversary!
Winner of 11 Oscars®, including Best Picture

William Wyler's greatest screen triumph finds just the right balance between the epic sweep and spectacle of its Roman empire setting and the more personal evolution of Heston's Judah Ben-Hur. In first century Judea, Heston is the proud son of a wealthy merchant family. Stephen Boyd is Messala, a childhood friend who has grown up to be an ambitious, but conflicted, officer in Caesar's army. Deprived of his family and livelihood after an opportunistic betrayal by Boyd, Heston endures prison and the virtual death sentence of galley slavery before a reversal of fortune restores his place in the world and returns him to Judea. Here his desire for vengeance leads him into the arena to square off against his rival in gladiatorial combat in one of the most celebrated scenes in cinema history--the breathtaking, bravura chariot race.

DIR William Wyler; SCR Karl Tunberg, based on the novel by Lew Wallace; PROD Sam Zimbalist. US, 1959, color, 212 min with an intermission. RATED G

Saturday, May 16, 3:20; Sunday, May 17, 3:20

PLANET OF THE APES

"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" So says time-tossed astronaut Heston to his intelligent ape captors on the mysterious planet where he has crash-landed. Franklin J. Schaffner's enduring sci-fi classic is memorable for the breakthrough makeup effects that transformed Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans into ape scientists Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Zaius, earning makeup artist John Chambers an honorary Oscar. The ace script is credited to THE TWILIGHT ZONE creator Rod Serling and former blacklistee Michael Wilson. The pulse-pounding score is by the great Jerry Goldsmith.

DIR Franklin J. Schaffner; SCR Michael Wilson, Rod Serling, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle; PROD Arthur P. Jacobs. US, 1968, color, 112 min. RATED G

Friday, May 22, 4:30, 7:00; Saturday, May 23, 9:15; Monday, May 25, 9:00; Wednesday, May 27, 9:00; Thursday, May 28, 7:00

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Billed upon release as "The Greatest Event in Motion Picture History!" Heston's iconic, star-making role as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolor remake of his 1923 silent era hit remains a cultural touchstone, as does the then-cutting edge, still ingenious special effect where he parts the Red Sea (which won an Oscar for effects whiz John P. Fulton, the only win of the film's seven nominations). See it on the big screen, the way it was meant to be seen!

DIR/PROD Cecil B. DeMille; SCR Aeneas MacKenzie, Jesse Lasky Jr., Jack Gariss, Fredric M. Frank, based on novels by J.H. Ingraham, A.E. Southon and Dorothy Clarke Wilson. US, 1956, color, 220 min with an intermission. RATED G

Saturday, May 23, 2:45; Monday, May 25, 2:45

MAJOR DUNDEE

The Extended Version!

"What rescues MAJOR DUNDEE in the end from its many conflicts and unresolved passions is Heston--always effective as ruthless, self-righteous sons of bitches, this most reviled of dime-store demigods makes a fearsomely convincing misanthrope-authority figure, a loathsome frontier despot capable of convincing everyone in his wide path that he's destined to create history, not just witness it." --Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

Beset by script problems and runaway production costs on this ambitious Western epic, rookie director Sam Peckinpah was nearly fired by his studio bosses, saved only by the intervention of his star, Heston, who waived part of his salary to get the picture completed. Originally released in a truncated version, in 2005 Sony Pictures restored 13 minutes of Peckinpah's intended material, and the results are revelatory. Union man Heston offers Confederate prisoner Richard Harris and various other undesirables a deal--keep rotting in prison or ride posse with him to track down raiding Apaches across the border in Mexico--"until the Apache is taken or destroyed." What follows is something like a Civil War/Western version of APOCALYPSE NOW, with the tense and ragtag US forces contending with the Apache, the occupying French, and themselves.

DIR/SCR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Harry Julian Fink, Oscar Saul, based on the story by Harry Julian Fink; PROD Jerry Bresler. US, 1965/2005, 136 min. RATED PG-13

Sunday, May 31, 8:30; Monday, June 1, 7:00; Tuesday, June 2, 7:00

THE OMEGA MAN

Adapted from Richard Matheson's enduring classic novel I Am Legend--adapted as THE LAST MAN ON EARTH with Vincent Price in 1964 and as I AM LEGEND with Will Smith in 2007--this film finds former military scientist Heston the sole survivor of a global war fought with biological weapons, ruefully picking over the detritus of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles by day, and barricading himself from the attacks of the mutant marauders by night. A true cult classic, with Heston's oddball one-liners providing campy good fun.

DIR Boris Sagal; SCR John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson; PROD Walter Seltzer. US, 1971, color, 98 min. RATED PG

Saturday, June 6, 7:40; Sunday, June 7, 7:30

SOYLENT GREEN

New York, 2022: ecological disaster has struck. The world is overheated, overpopulated, mostly unemployed and underfed. The masses subsist on the Soylent Corporation's bland processed food, while the privileged pay exorbitant amounts for even a small taste of natural foods. Jaded cop Heston, called on to investigate the murder of Soylent exec Joseph Cotten, at first just enjoys making himself at home in the rich man's world of entitlement, high above the teeming masses. But the secrets Heston uncovers lead to one of the screen's most deliciously wicked revelations. Edward G. Robinson, in his final role, turns in a moving performance as Heston's best friend.

DIR Richard Fleischer; SCR Stanley R. Greenberg, based on the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison; PROD Walter Seltzer, Russell Thacher. US, 1973, color, 97 min. RATED PG

Saturday, June 6, 1:00, 9:45; Sunday, June 7, 3:00; Monday, June 8, 7:00; Thursday, June 11, 9:45

WILL PENNY

Heston's personal favorite of all his roles. Aging cowboy Heston, a ranch hand working a lonely detail as a lineman high in the mountains, returns to his cabin one day to find a woman and her young son squatting there. Abandoned by their guide on the way to the Oregon territory, and with winter coming on, they are desperate for shelter and Heston, despite his reservations, lets them stay, soon finding himself powerfully drawn to the woman. But then trouble arrives, in the form of psychotic outlaw preacher Quint (Donald Pleasence) and his son Rafe (Bruce Dern), with whom Heston has some unfinished business.

DIR/SCR Tom Gries; PROD Fred Engel, Walter Seltzer. US, 1968, color, 108 min. NOT RATED

Friday, June 12, 5:00; Saturday, June 13, 12:45; Sunday, June 14, 7:45

EL CID

Film legends Heston and Sophia Loren ignite the screen in this medieval tale of passion and chivalry. Heston plays the heroic Spanish knight Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, known to his followers as "El Cid," Moorish for "one who is both compassionate and a great warrior." Without compromising his strict sense of honor, he succeeds in driving the Moors from Spain and becomes a legend. Loren plays the mysterious Chimene, a Moorish princess torn between her desire for revenge against Heston--whom she blames for her father's death--and her developing love for him. Directed by the great Anthony Mann.

DIR Anthony Mann; SCR Ben Barzman, Philip Yordan, Fredric M. Frank, based on the story by Fredric M. Frank; PROD Samuel Bronston. Italy/US/UK, 1961, color, 182 min. NOT RATED

Wednesday, June 24, 7:30; Thursday, June 25, 7:30; Saturday, June 27, 12:30; Sunday, June 28, 1:00