Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 192: Sat Jul 12

California Dolls aka ... All The Marbles (Aldrich, 1971): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3.10pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the great Moviedrome: Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen season. The other screening of the film (with introduction by season curator and Moviedrome’s producer Nick Freand Jones is on July 23rd).

Chicago Reader review:
Peter Falk as the manager of two female wrestlers, winningly played by Vicki Frederick and Laurene Landon. The subject seems perfect for director Robert Aldrich, with its themes of feminine violence (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) and existential conflict (Emperor of the North), yet his treatment isn’t particularly personal in this 1981 project, which turned out to be his last film. It succeeds, however, as adequately engrossing entertainment, and it has a surprisingly pleasant, high-minded spirit: Aldrich refuses to treat the women as freaks, but grants them the same opportunities for self-definition through physical struggle as his male heroes. With superbly sharp, dark cinematography by Joseph Biroc.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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