Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 277: Tue Oct 4

Two Weeks in Another Town (Minnelli, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT1 8.45pm


This 35mm screening is part of the Kirk Douglas season at BFI Southbank. You can read all the details here. This film is also being shown on September 25th.

Chicago Reader review:
Though crippled by studio recutting that tried to adjust this neurotic 1962 melodrama for the family market, Vincente Minnelli's adaptation of Irwin Shaw's novel is one of his last great pictures, reversing the Henry James model of innocent Americans encountering corruption abroad—it's the Americans who are decadent here. Intelligently scripted by Charles Schnee, the film reunites the director, writer, producer (John Houseman), star (Kirk Douglas), and composer (David Raksin) of The Bad and the Beautiful, describing the attempted comeback of an alcoholic ex-star (Douglas), asked to help a director friend (Edward G. Robinson) with a new picture in Rome, who encounters both his destructive ex-wife (Cyd Charisse) and a redemptive young Italian woman (Daliah Lavi) in the process. George Hamilton plays a spoiled young actor who falls under Douglas's tutelage, and Claire Trevor plays Robinson's wife. The costumes, decor, and 'Scope compositions show Minnelli at his most expressive, and the gaudy intensity—as well as the inside detail about the movie business—makes this compulsively watchable.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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