Curated by Sam Fielder
Mailing list: cinematheque@chauvelcinema.net.au

Cinémathèque screenings are open to members and their guests. Membership is simple and available at the door. Admission 18+, unless the film has been rated in Australia

TICKET PRICING:
Mini Membership (4 screenings/1 guest) A$20/C$16.50 

Quarterly Membership (12 screenings/3 guests) A$40/C$35.50 

Annual Membership (52 screenings/12 guests) A$99/C$82.5

Membership covers cost of tickets for duration of membership.

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Monday 27 February, 6.30pm
ANGEL FACE
(US/1952/B&W/92mins/16mm/NFVLS/18+)

Dir:Otto Preminger

One of Preminger's 'moodily fluid studies in perverse psychology' made at Fox in the forties and early fifties, here with the recurring noir theme of fatally obsessive relationships. Characteristically, Preminger plays down the hysteria inherent in melodrama and does not employ noir chiaroscuro. Mitchum's almost dreamy restraint has the effect of heightening the sense of fatalism. Simmons' real obsession is her father. Outwardly angelic but inwardly predatory, her very blankness, suggestive of icy sexuality runs counter to the femme fatale stereotype.

Monday 5 March
DETOUR
(US/1945/B&W/68mins/NFVLS/18+)  

Dir: Edgar G Ulmer  

A piano-player recounts how he became enmeshed in a web of circumstance and fate while hitch-hiking from New York to Los Angeles to marry his girl. Shot on a low budget in less than a week, virtually on three sets and a back projection stage, it has become a notable example of 'noir' paranoia which lends conviction to nightmarish coincidence and brings an unusual dimension to the roles of the femme fatale and narration in film noir.

Monday 12 March
REPULSION
(UK/1965/B&W/100mins/16mm/NFVLS/18+)

 Dir:Roman Polanski   

Catherine Deneuve plays an isolated and sexually repressed young Belgian girl living in London who descends into schizophrenia. Repulsion was Polanski's first English language film and his best known early work.

Monday 19 March
EVEN DWARVES STARTED SMALL
(Germany/1970/B&W/96mins/NFVLS/18+)  

Dir: Werner Herzog  

A grotesque tale told in flashback of a doomed revolt by dwarfs in an institution on a barren volcanic island. The institution's director is absent and the dwarf instructor is temporarily in charge. The dwarfs' outrage is initially directed against their deformity accentuated by the scale of the penal institution, and is, by implication, also directed against Mother Nature who has created them as freaks. The bleak view of humankind excluded from a state of grace, is epitomised by hollow laughter, impotence and misdirected energy, but is tempered by the quirky humour and a certain engaging quality in the dwarfs' antics.

Monday 26 March
DEATH IN VENICE
(Italy/1971/Colour/130mins/NFSA/18+)

Dir: Luchino Visconti

Visconti transforms the writer at the centre of Mann's novel into a composer in his adaption of the book. Von Ashenbach, ageing, in poor health and suffering a crisis of his creative powers, visits Venice where he becomes possessed by the beauty of a young Polish boy. Even as the city is engulfed by a cholera plague and his state of health worsens, his obsession compels him to stay on. Visconti's transposition of Mann's novel is at once powerful and sensitive. The photography and the use of Gustav Mahler's music evokes the lush beauty of 'fin-de-siecle' Venice to perfection.

Monday 2 April
PERSONA
(Sweden/1966/B&W/82mins/NFSA/18+)  

Dir: Ingmar Bergman 

An actress's nervous breakdown occasions her deliberate withdrawal into speechlessness. As a consequence she appears to break down her nurse's confident personality. However, Persona cannot be summarised in terms of conventional plot. It is a virtual monologue in which language is presented as fraudulent.

Monday 9 April
THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE
(Sweden/1920/B&W/60mins/NFSA/18+)  

Dir: Victor Sjostrom

The past of the alcoholic David Holm is reconstructed in flashback through his recollections as he waits in a churchyard for Death's wagon to bear him away. The novel, a tale of conversion and moral struggle, reflects the author's interest in the mystical and the supernatural with potential for visualisation. Jaenzon developed his experiments with superimposition exposing as many as four images in a single frame, creating a ghost-like effect as Holm's soul seems to leave his body. Sjostrom referred to the ghosts as "three-dimensional in their spirituality". His playing of Holm is ranked with his role as Isak Borg in Bergman's Wild Strawberries as his greatest characterisation as an actor.

Monday 16 April
MASTER OF THE HOUSE
(Denmark/1925/B&W/81mins/NFSA/18+)

Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer   

The first part of the film is a portrait of a bourgeois household undermined by the father's overbearing egoism. His wife is finally persuaded to leave him and the second half of the film is taken up with the consequences of her stand. Dreyer richly combines detailed observation with humour.

Monday 23 April
THE CROWD
(US/1928/B&W/94mins/NFSA/18+)  

Dir: King Vidor    

John Sims takes on his father's belief that someday his son is 'going to be big'. However, the reality of John's life is at odds with his belief in his destiny. Visual stylisation at times invokes the theme of the anonymity and regimentation imposed upon the individual by modern urban society. However, this does not negate individual responsibility. Sims is shown to be a man shackled by his avoidance of reality, an inability to recognise that he is ultimately one of the crowd.

Monday 30 April
A GIRL IN EVERY PORT
(US/1928/B&W/64mins/NFSA/18+)  

Dir: Howard Hawks

A friendship or 'love story', as Hawks described it, between two womanising sailors is temporarily threatened by McLaglen's romance with a two-timing side show entertainer in this bouyant comedy which has a touch of romantic melodrama. The 'love story' anticipates male relationships in some later Hawks' films, particularly 'The Big Sky’.

 

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The Chauvel Cinémathèque acknowledges the assistance of the National Film & Sound Archive in creating this program.