Thanks to Henri Langlois: A Centennial Tribute

One of the final series in our current theater honors French film archivist and cinephile Henri Langlois (1914–1977), who inspired the international cinematheque movement and whose approach greatly informed the vision of BAM/PFA. Our tribute includes French silent cinema as well as work by Langlois’s favorite auteurs, Tod Browning, Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir, Erich von Stroheim, and others. 

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Past Films

  • Henri Langlois Centennial Tribute: Opening Program

    Introduction/Founding PFA Director Sheldon Renan & Former PFA Director Tom Luddy
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

    Thursday, June 11 7:30 PM

    A collection of shorts on the legendary Langlois, as well as the 1918 Italian short La Tosca, a lost film found by Langlois in the BAM/PFA Collection. Titles include Langlois (1970), Chit Chat with Henri Langlois (1975), and La Cinémathèque française (1962). 

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  • Dimitri Kirsanoff & Nadia Sibirskaïa Collaborations

    Imported Prints!
    Judith Rosenberg on piano.

    Friday, June 12 7:00 PM

    Two rare works from the great silent-era director Dimitri Kirsanoff: the evocative portrait of two young sisters, Ménilmontant, and Autumn Mists, a short about a melancholy soul.

     

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  • Forbidden Paradise

    Ernst Lubitsch
    United States, 1924

    Imported Print!
    Judith Rosenberg on piano.

    Saturday, June 13 6:30 PM

    Lubitsch teams with his favorite muse, the great actress Pola Negri, for this comedy inspired by the amorous intrigue surrounding Catherine the Great of Russia. Adolphe Menjou costars.

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  • Lumière d'été

    Jean Grémillon
    France, 1943

    Imported Print!

    Wednesday, June 17 7:30 PM

    A remote mountain inn is the setting for a class-crossed love affair split between working class and idle rich. Coscripted by Jacques Prévert, it is acclaimed as one of the greatest French films made during the German Occupation. Followed by excerpts from Parlons cinema—à propos du cinéma dans la résistance.

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  • The Steel Beast

    1936

    Imported Print!

    Saturday, June 20 7:00 PM

    Commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of a rail line in 1935, this film by great German photographer Willy Otto Zielke is a daring collage of abstractions, rhythms, and historical commentary, and was immediately banned by the Nazis.

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  • Early Films by Abel Gance

    35mm Restored Prints! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

    Friday, June 26 7:00 PM

    Two early and rare shorts, The Madness of Doctor Tube and The Deadly Gases, that demonstrate the fledgling skills of the director who would later make one of the silent era’s greatest epics, Napoleon.

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  • The Unknown

    Tod Browning
    United States, 1927

    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

     

    Friday, July 3 7:00 PM

    A circus performer has his arms amputated to satisfy his lover’s strange desires in Tod Browning’s shocking tale of madness and love, starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford.

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  • Nana

    Imported Print! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

     

    Wednesday, July 8 7:30 PM

    An actress turns courtesan to make ends meet during Europe’s decadent Second Empire in Renoir’s first full-length vehicle for his wife, Catherine Hessling. Renoir: “My first film worth talking about.” 

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  • Prix de beauté

    Augusto Genina
    France, 1930

    Imported Print! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

    Saturday, July 11 6:30 PM

    The last major role for silent-era beauty Louise Brooks (Pandora’s Box) was as a Parisian typist who wins a beauty contest and a movie contract, only to face the violent disapproval of her husband. 

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  • La chienne

    Jean Renoir
    France, 1931

    Imported Print!

    Saturday, July 18 6:30 PM

    Michel Simon is an unhappily married middle-aged bank clerk whose only passion in life is painting, until he becomes obsessed with a prostitute. Remade by Fritz Lang as Scarlet Street, Renoir’s original is infused with a sadomasochistic sexuality that is both heightened and tempered by Renoir's camera.

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  • Foolish Wives

    Erich von Stroheim
    USA, 1921

     Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

    Wednesday, July 22 7:30 PM

    Monte Carlo provides the suitably decadent setting for von Stroheim’s look at money, temptation, and marriage. “Never was a film more revolutionary” (Langlois). 

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  • Queen Kelly

    Erich von Stroheim
    USA, 1928
    Friday, July 24 8:50 PM

    In a debauched Central European kingdom, a mad queen must wed a notorious libertine, who instead falls for a young nun (Gloria Swanson). One of the most infamous unfinished film maudits in history, and praised as Erich von Stroheim’s masterpiece.

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  • Georges Méliès Shorts

    Digital Restorations! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

    Monday, July 27 5:00 PM

    The genius shorts of the father of cinema, many hand-painted and restored by La Cinémathèque française in 2013 with the Éclair Group. 

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