| Western
Classics - The Golden Age
This is an Aero Theatre Exclusive!
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The western genre today is cinema’s most neglected
form. However, between 1940 and 1970, a phenomenal number of American movie masterpieces
were released that just happened to be westerns. This was truly the golden age for the
genre in America, with such rugged, cinematic auteurs as John Ford (MY DARLING
CLEMENTINE), Howard Hawks (RED RIVER), Henry Hathaway, Anthony Mann, John Sturges
(MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), Budd Boetticher, Andre DeToth and Sam Fuller – to name only
a few! – contributing to the treasure trove of stupendous sagebrush sagas hitting the
silver screen. As a brief sequel to our westerns series in 2004 at The Egyptian, please
join us for this sampling of some of the great, enduring classics of an all-too-often,
unjustly forgotten genre.
Wednesday, February 1 - 7:30 PM
RED RIVER 1948, UA (Sony Repertory), 133
min. Dir. Howard Hawks. Cattle baron John Wayne and foster son Montgomery
Clift (in his first film) take 'em to Missouri but fall into conflict along the way in
director Hawks' seminal Western classic, in which the director commands the epic as well
as the intimate. With Joanne Dru, Walter Brennan, Coleen Gray, and music by the great
Dimitri Tiomkin.
Thursday, February 2 - 7:30 PM
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, 1946,
20th Century Fox, 104 min. John Ford directs one of the most beautiful,
melancholic, lyrical westerns ever made, painting an atmospheric interpretation of Wyatt
Earp (Henry Fonda), the Earp siblings (Ward Bond, Tim Holt), Doc Holliday (Victor
Mature) and their escalating feud with the cattle-rustling Clanton family (Walter
Brennan, John Ireland and Grant Withers). Alhough Ford hews closer to the legend than the
cold hard facts (especially with the fictionalized female characters, Cathy Downs as
Clementine and Linda Darnell as Chihuahua), that is, in large part, the point of
the film - an elegaic vision of an heroic age when almost-mythological personalities
walked the earth as real, flesh-and-blood people. Poignant, exhilirating and gorgeous from
beginning to end. (We will be screening the recently-discovered and restored pre-release
print which is approximately 8 minutes longer than the original theatrical release.)
Courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Friday, February 3 - 7:30 PM
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, 1960,
UA (Sony Repertory), 128 min. Excellent, Americanized version of the Akira Kurosawa
classic THE SEVEN SAMURAI, helmed by noted action auteur John Sturges (THE GREAT
ESCAPE, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK), with charismatic Steve McQueen making his first
star turn alongside Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert
Vaughn, Brad Dexter and Horst Bucholz as seven gunmen hired to safeguard a Mexican farm
village from marauding bandit chieftain Eli Wallach. With an instantly memorable
Elmer Bernstein score that inspired everything from future westerns to cigarette
commercials (!) for decades to come. |
