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

  • Georges Méliès Shorts

    • Monday, July 27 5:00 PM

    Digital Restorations! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

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

  • Queen Kelly

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

    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.

  • Foolish Wives

    • Wednesday, July 22 7:30 PM
    Erich von Stroheim
    USA, 1921

     Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

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

  • La chienne

    • Saturday, July 18 6:30 PM
    Jean Renoir
    France, 1931

    Imported Print!

    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.

  • Prix de beauté

    • Saturday, July 11 6:30 PM
    Augusto Genina
    France, 1930

    Imported Print! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

    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. 

  • Nana

    • Wednesday, July 8 7:30 PM

    Imported Print! 
    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

     

    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.” 

  • The Unknown

    • Friday, July 3 7:00 PM
    Tod Browning
    United States, 1927

    Live Music/Judith Rosenberg on piano

     

    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.

  • Early Films by Abel Gance

    • Friday, June 26 7:00 PM

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

    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.

  • The Steel Beast

    • Saturday, June 20 7:00 PM

    1936

    Imported Print!

    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.

  • Lumière d'été

    • Wednesday, June 17 7:30 PM
    Jean Grémillon
    France, 1943

    Imported Print!

    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.

  • Forbidden Paradise

    • Saturday, June 13 6:30 PM
    Ernst Lubitsch
    United States, 1924

    Imported Print!
    Judith Rosenberg on piano.

    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.

  • Dimitri Kirsanoff & Nadia Sibirskaïa Collaborations

    • Friday, June 12 7:00 PM

    Imported Prints!
    Judith Rosenberg on piano.

    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.

     

  • Henri Langlois Centennial Tribute: Opening Program

    • Thursday, June 11 7:30 PM

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

    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).