Archival Print!

Special admission: $10 general, $8 members, students, and other discounted categories (see p. 15)

"From the opening scene you know you are in the hands of a master," Kevin Brownlow noted of this lost Borzage film rediscovered and restored in the 1980s. Beginning with a sunrise lit through fog and the steam of a kettle in a rural hovel, the film will take us all the way to World War I France; but it always returns to this American village, where Grant Wood meets German Expressionism. As the surreptitious lovers Mary Tucker and Tim Osborne, the popular romantic duo of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell give performances rooted in gesture and nuance. Mary is a bumpkin, plain and not-so-simple; Tim, a disabled veteran whose wheelchair acrobatics and emotional grace offer an extraordinary on-screen image of disability. Mary and Tim transform each other through love-a twist on the Pygmalion legend, or l'amour fou for the down-to-earth set.