LACMA

FOR THE MOST UP-TO-DATE MUSIC LISTINGS, VISIT LACMA.ORG. TO WATCH A SLIDESHOW OF WORKS FROM THIS EXHIBITION, VISIT LACMA.ORG. 8 public programs film Special Screening Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II (Ivan Groznyy) This two-part historical epic depicts the life and murderous exploits of the sixteenth-century Ivan iv, the first czar and unifier of the Russian people. The film opens with the teenaged ruler's opulent coronation in 1546. As Ivan struggles to consolidate his power by expanding his territory eastward, he attracts the enmity of the Russian nobility—espe- cially his aunt, who plots to put her son, a simple- ton, on the throne—and "the boyars," a centuries- old alliance of high-ranking landowners who refuse to swear allegiance to Ivan's one-year-old son. The film's visual quality and performance style make Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II, one of the great masterpieces of world cinema. Ivan the Terrible, Part I & II July 10 & 11 | 7:30 pm | New 35mm print 1944 and 1958/b&w and color/186 min. plus intermission | Scr/dir: Sergei Eisentein; w/ Nikolai Cherkasov weekend Series BIGGER THAN LIFE: James Mason on Film July 17–August 1 Blessed with dark good looks and a mellifluous voice, James Mason (born 1909) possessed an uncanny ability to suggest rampant emotion beneath a demeanor of absolute calm, and he projected an otherworldliness and melancholy that allowed him to play both romantic leads and charismatic villains. With age, Mason re- mained in demand as a prestigious supporting actor in a wide range of roles. Though known as a man who preferred his privacy, Mason was nonetheless an indefatigable worker: the last of his astonishing 151 films and television credits was 1985, a year after he died of a heart attack at his home in Switzerland. Bigger Than Life July 17 | 7:30 pm & 9:30 pm | New 35mm print Mason produced and hired Nicholas Ray to direct this striking film based on a New Yorker article about the hallucinatory side effects of the new miracle drug cortisan. As Ed Avery, upstanding teacher, husband, and father turned suburban Jekyll and Hyde, Mason gives one of his best performances, and Ray, using dramatic Rebel without a Cause-style compositions and lighting, portrays his bedeviled hero with both horror and pathos. 1956/color/95 min./Scope | Scr: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum; dir: Nicholas Ray; w/ James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau Disney Family Matinee: 20,000 Leagues under the Sea July 18 | 4 pm | All tickets $5 Jules Verne's sci-fi fantasy is a story that reverberates for boys of all ages. It is the mid-1800s and a monstrous creature has been sinking ships off San Francisco; an expedition is dispatched to solve the mystery, but the sailors aboard soon discover that the monster is the Nautilus, a futuristic submarine with a lush Victorian interior, owned by the brooding Captain Nemo (Mason), a brilliant messianic scientist who despises humanity and has built his own world under the sea. 1954/color/127 min./Scope | Scr: Earl Felton; dir: Richard Fleischer; w/ Kirk Douglas, James Mason | Print courtesy the Walt Disney Company Pandora and the Flying Dutchman July 18 | 7:30 pm | New restored 35mm print This sumptuous color film shot by Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes) is a heady mix of romance, fantasy, and poetic fatalism set in a village on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. As the seventeenth-century mariner doomed to sail the seas in search of a woman who will die for him, Mason is a magnificently brooding presence. 1949/color/123 min. | Scr/dir: Albert Lewin; w/ James Mason, Ava Gardner | Restored by George Eastman House in cooperation with Douris UK Limited. Restoration funded by The Film Foundation and the Franco-American Cultural Fund Age of Consent July 18 | 9:45 pm | Restored 35mm print Mason produced this story of an aging painter who retreats to an island off Australia to replenish his creative juices. His muse appears in the form of a young, volup- tuous, and frequently nude Mirren in her first major film. 1969/color/98 min. | Scr: Peter Yeldham; dir: Michael Powell; w/ James Mason, Helen Mirren | Restored 35mm print courtesy Sony Archive The Reckless Moment July 24 | 7:30 pm Both character study and noir thriller, Ophüls's last American film centers on a respectable wife and mother whose middle-class life is shattered when she recklessly disposes of the body of her daughter's low-life boyfriend, who has been accidentally killed in her boathouse. Mason plays an inconvenient blackmailer who is touched by her plight. 1949/b&w/82 min. | Scr: Robert W. Soderberg, Henry Garson; dir: Max Ophüls; w/ Joan Bennett, James Mason Odd Man Out July 24 | 9 pm Mason achieved international leading-man status in this harrowing story of an Irish rebel who stumbles through the streets of Belfast until midnight, the object of a citywide manhunt. 1946/b&w/116 min. | Scr: F. L. Green, R. C. Sherriff; dir: Carol Reed; w/ James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack A Star Is Born July 25 | 7:30 pm | Restored 35mm print The part of Norman Maine, an alcoholic actor whose Hollywood star is falling as fast as his young wife's is rising, provided Mason with one of his signature roles, an Oscar nomination, and trivia fame thanks to the last line of the picture, when a grieving Vickie Lester declares from the stage: "This is Mrs. Norman Maine." 1954/color/176 min./Scope | Scr: Moss Hart; dir: George Cukor; w/ Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson 5 Fingers July 31 | 7:30 pm Based on a true story, this elegant espionage film, set in Ankara in 1944, stars Mason as a valet working at the British embassy who teams up with an unscrupulous countess to sell secret Allied documents to the Germans. 1952/b&w/108 min. | Scr: Michael Wilson; dir: Joseph Mankiewicz; w/ James Mason, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Rennie The Deadly Affair July 31 | 9:30 pm This adult spy thriller, based on a novel by John le Carré, stars Mason as a burnt-out inspector in the Foreign Office who finds himself threatened by an espionage ring while investigating a colleague's suicide. On display are the genre's standard ingredients—intrigue, betrayal, and violent death—but Lumet's primary focus is on a fascinating group of characters brought vividly to life by a stellar international cast. 1966/color/107 min. | Scr: Paul Dehn; dir: Sidney Lumet; w/ James Mason, Harriet Andersson, Simone Signoret, Maximilian Schell Lolita August 1 | 7:30 pm If ever an actor was born to play a fictional character, it was James Mason as Humbert Humbert, the pedophile narrator of Nabokov's controversial best-selling novel. Hiding his dark and twisted desires behind the façade of a suave European academic, Humbert insinuates himself into the home of fourteen year-old Lolita. Posing as father and daughte, Humbert and his self-centered nymphet embark on a cross-country car trip closely shadowed by the chameleon-like Clare Quilty, Lolita's "true love." 1962/b&w/152 min. | Scr: Vladimir Nabokov, Kubrick; dir: Stanley Kubrick; w/ James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers preview Screening Julie & Julia July 28 | 7:30 pm Writer-director Nora Ephron's beguiling new comedy intertwines the true stories of two women: Julia Child (Meryl Streep), a 39 year-old housewife on the road to becoming a chef extraordinaire in 1950s Paris; and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a 29 year-old Brooklyn secretary at a crossroads in life who vows to make the 564 recipes in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in 365 days. Though separated by time and space, Julie and Julia both discover that the right combination of pas- sion, fearlessness, and butter makes anything possible. Documentary PREMIERE Being Jewish in France (Comme un Juif en France) August 7 | 7:30 pm August 8 | 3 pm & 7:30 pm August 9 | 1 pm Yves Jeuland's sweeping new documentary explores the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first country to grant them citizenship. Beginning with revolutionary cries of "Vive la France" in Yiddish, the film explores the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis, and the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII. Featuring interviews with more than a dozen leading French politicians, intellectuals and artists, Being Jewish in France masterfully interweaves human testimony and historical evidence. 2007/b&w and color/185 min./digital | Scr/dir: Yves Jeuland THEATRICAL RELEASE Léon Morin, Priest August 14 & 15 | 7:30 pm & 9:40 pm | New 35mm print During the Occupation in a provincial French village, Communist widow Riva becomes enthralled by serenely devout Belmondo. Under the taut direction of noir master Jean-Pierre Melville and based on an autobio- graphical novel by Beatrice Beck, the Platonic encoun- ters and intellectual jousts of this unlikely couple are at once erotic and cerebral. 1961/b&w/115 min. | Scr/dir: Jean-Pierre Melville; w/ Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva COMING IN SEPTEMBER The Films of Hong Sang-soo In conjunction with Your Bright Future, lacma will screen films by contemporary, award-winning Korean film- maker Hong Sang-soo. His crisply constructed and painfully droll dramas deal with social relations among characters whose bonds are never as simple as they seem. His bohemian men and resilient women engage in intimate love triangles and verbal jousts teeming with evasions, misunderstandings, and self-revelations. TICKETS & INFORMATION Film tickets can be purchased at the museum box office or at lacma.org. Prices: $7 for members, seniors 62+, and students with ID; $10 for nonmembers. Tickets to the second film on a double bill are $5. All films and guests are subject to change, and many films are unrated and may not be appropriate for

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