TCMCFF 2011: WRAP UP

A scene from a TCM Classic Film Festival after party. Photo credit: Mathieu Young. 

Old movies for new audiences

By Ed Rampell

Britain may have held its regal nuptials April 29, but thanks to the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMCFF), that same day La-La-Land did London one better: We had that aristocrat of actors, Peter O’Toole. Although born the son of an Irish bookie at Connemara, County Galway, O’Toole has more accomplishment and majesty in his pinky than William and Kate have in their entire well-born beings -- their main talents residing in fortuitous births. Besides, in the stratified feudal totem pole of things, O’Toole portrayed King Henry II in 1964’s Becket and in 1968’s The Lion in Winter, while William is a mere prince. Furthermore, O’Toole was Oscar-nominated for both performances, and received six other Best Actor noms, while winning an Honorary Oscar in 2003. What did William ever earn? A Royal Order of the Garter or Girdle?

In any case, for misbegotten movie buffs hankering after magisterial marriages, TCMCFF presented Stanley Donen’s 1951 MGM musical, Royal Wedding, starring Fred Astaire and Jane Powell (who was in attendance) at, appropriately, one of Tinseltown’s original movie palaces, the Egyptian Theatre. Prior to this screening, at 9 a.m. the theater showed Becket, with a personal appearance by O’Toole. This was followed by an interview with O’Toole on the stage of the cozy Music Box Theater, conducted by Turner Classic Movies host and Hollywood Reporter veteran Robert Osborne.

I was in hog’s heaven for two hours, listening to O’Toole’s dulcet tones, as he discussed his life and illustrious career. During breaks in the shooting of the Q&A members of the small-ish audience were able to ask the personable Osborne questions, while O’Toole -- perched on a high director’s chair as if it was a camel’s hump -- stood (or rather sat) by. I requested that the knowledgeable interviewer inquire as to how much of the 1962 masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia, the blacklisted-Communist Michael Wilson had actually written, but, alas, Osborne declined. O’Toole, who revealed himself to be something of a Tory during the to-be-televised tête-à-tête, may have obliquely answered the query by stating his admiration for and friendship with screenwriter Robert Bolt, who had sole credit for writing the immortal Lawrence for 16 years, until Wilson (who had likewise co-written David Lean’s other classic, 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai) also received long overdue screen credit from the WGA for it the year Wilson died.

The controversy-adverse Osborne also missed an opportunity to ask the actor who portrayed the famed British agent who led the WWI-era Arab revolt what he makes of the current “Arab Spring” unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa. It would have been interesting to hear O’Toole’s twopence worth. Nevertheless, basking in the presence of one of the greats and hearing that voice of the gods was nothing short of glorious for we lucky few cinephiles. And for those who didn’t have enough of O’Toole-mania, the following morning he immortalized his footprints in Sid’s cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

O’Toole was not the only star of yesteryear and today to regale film fans at the Festival. Throngs lined up for Leslie Caron and Debbie Reynolds, who attended the Festival’s gala screening of, respectively, 1951’s An American in Paris at a packed 1400-plus seat Grauman’s and an Egyptian screening of 1964’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown and signed DVDs and a book, at “Club TCM,” held, appropriately, in the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Room, site of the very first Oscar banquet in 1929. Only festival passholders were allowed egress to Club TCM, where a number of parties, onstage conversations and panels were held. Highlights included the preeminent African-American screen historian Donald Bogle (whose new biography is about Ethel Waters) on “Black Hollywood”; “Voice Doubles” with Marnie Nixon and others who dubbed the singing voices of stars such as Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Wood in Westside Story, plus presentations on trailers, sequels, movie choreography, etc.

Enthusiastic cinema aficionados came from far and wide to the well attended festival, with gobs of tourists combining an L.A. jaunt with a film fete. Spirits were high and there was a great ambiance of camaraderie among attendees, who all shared not only a love of movies, but of vintage films, which were projected in 35mm on the silver screen in their original formats.

Erich Von Stroheim was one of the virtuosos of the silent era, and following an introduction by that period’s peerless historian Kevin Brownlow providing the down low on Stroheim’s studio clashes of the titans with MGM suits, 1925’s The Merry Widow was screened at the Egyptian in glorious black and white. The John Gilbert-Mae Murray romance was accompanied by live music from Maud Nelissen (who apparently flew in from Holland) and the Von Stroheim Virtuosi, who serenaded the enthusiastic audience with a vibrant score. What an effervescent treat! 

On April 30 I was too late for a screening at the Chinese Multi-Plex of the long neglected, restored 1942 UK propaganda movie, Went the Day Well?, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, suggested by a Graham Greene story. Fortunately, the well-organized TCMCFF added a second screening on the fete’s final day, so I and other buffs could see this tale of a Nazi invasion of Britain. Likewise, an additional screening of Clara Bow’s final flick, 1933’s circus-set Hoop-la, was likewise added to the schedule, so I was able to enjoy it, too. Whew!

Unable to enter the first showing of Went the Day Well? I was able to get one of the last seats of 1981’s Russian Revolution classic, Reds, in the Chinese Multi-Plex’s largest theatre. Afterwards, TCM regular Alec Baldwin interviewed director-producer-actor Warren Beatty. Oddly enough, for an epic about journalist John Reed and his struggle for free expression, there was excessive security during the Q&A, with a TCM-er warning audience members about a strict zero tolerance policy prohibiting photography and recording of any kind, upon pain of having one’s cellphone camera, et al, confiscated and ejection from the theater, as TCMCFF staffers patrolled the aisles (apparently at Beatty’s behest). This seemed pretty draconian and even hypocritical, especially given Reed’s onscreen battles with publishers and apparatchiks over his right to freedom of expression. Well, at least potential offenders weren’t threatened with deportation to the gulag archipelago.

The same night I stayed for a screening of another gargantuan epic, Federico Fellini’s 1960 La Dolce Vita, in exquisite black and white. After TCM host Ben Mankiewicz ballyhooed the digitally restored print, there was actually a snafu during the famous Anita Ekberg-Marcello Mastroianni Trevi Fountain scene, as the screen faded to black. The proverbial “technical difficulty” was resolved, the film proceeded, and as a big Fellini fan, I immensely enjoyed my first viewing of La Dolce Vita, especially on the big screen. But it was a little bit overwhelming seeing two lengthy cinema epics in one day.

However, inspired by Reds, the next morning, May 1, I marched in the May Day screening of The Devil is a Woman starring Marlene Dietrich, with a script by John Dos Passos full of prescience about the impending Spanish Civil War. What a way to close out the TCMCFF. 

The good times rolled and unspooled like a 35mm print effortlessly flowing through the sprockets of a projector at the April 28-May 1 TCM Classic Film Festival held at historic venues near Hollywood Boulevard’s celebrated Walk of Fame. I was impressed with the cinema selections, the mobs of appreciative film culture vultures, celebs, panels, etc. TCMCFF was expertly, excellently, efficiently organized.