Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 11: Wed Jan 11

 Summer Madness (Lean, 1955): Regent Street Cinema, 6.30pm

David Lean's movie, which is well worth seeking out, will be screened from 35mm.

Time Out review:
Katharine Hepburn is a spinster from Ohio making a lone trip to Venice, desperately in search of a 'miracle'. She gets more than she bargained for, though, when she falls for the distinctly continental charms of antique dealer Rossano Brazzi. Shirley Valentine later shamelessly milked all the exotic romance clichés, but this (based on Arthur Laurents' play The Time of the Cuckoo) is an infinitely more subtle, poignant piece, with a lovely performance from Hepburn at its centre. David Lean may well have identified with this 'fancy secretary', her ciné camera always primed, for the film marks a turning point in his career: this was his first movie shot on location abroad, an experience he obviously enjoyed.
Adrian Turner

Here (and above) is the trailer.


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THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL POST BUT THE SCREENING HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Day of the Outlaw (De Toth, 1959): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.40pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Prince Charles Cinema's 'Cinematic Jukebox' season. You can find all the details here. Andre de Toth's western is one of my favourite repertory cinema discoveries of recent years and comes highly recommended.

Chicago Reader review:
Arguably Andre de Toth's greatest film, this 1959 western combines a hostage situation with a bleak, snowbound terrain to produce a gripping vision of hopeless entrapment. Robert Ryan stars as a rancher who's about to start a gunfight over land when a motley gang of outlaws led by Burl Ives ride in and take over the town. Because it's at the end of the trail, the outlaws become "prisoners of a white silence," in de Toth's words: isolated, surrounded by snow, they're about to run wild with the townswomen when Ryan leads them on a false escape route through the mountains. Their final ride is one of the most despairing visions in all cinema: the turning course followed by the men seems to twist back on itself, and the stark black-and-white background of rock and snow forms a closed, lifeless world excluding all human warmth.
Fred Camper

Here (and above) is the opening of the film.