KANSAS CITY / PETE KELLY'S BLUES

ABOUT THE EVENT:

6:00pm | Doors open & Live musical performance by the Nick Rossi Swing Four

7:00pm | Live musical performance by singer Elizabeth Bougerol

7:05pm | Introduction by Eddie Muller, Elizabeth Bougerol and Nick Rossi

7:15pm | KANSAS CITY

9:11pm | Intermission

9:21pm | Introduction by Eddie Muller, Alan K. Rode, Elizabeth Bougerol and Nick Rossi

9:31pm | PETE KELLY’S BLUES

Start times are approximate.

ABOUT THE FILMS:

KANSAS CITY, 1996, Dir. Robert Altman, 116 Mins, AGFA, USA

Originally released August 16, 1996

Jennifer Jason Leigh is a Jean Harlow obsessed housewife trying to free her loser husband from the clutches of a local gangster. She kidnaps the wife of a politician as leverage, but things get complicated when the two women develop a friendship and discover just how crooked their city has become. All this on the day before the 1934 Democratic primary election, no less. Shot with painstaking attention to period detail, director Robert Altman enlists real musicians to play venerated jazz figures like Ben Webster, Lester Young and Mary Lou Williams. Their performances, captured by Altman in a concert-documentary style, give the film an intoxicating sense of excitement despite its bleak conclusion. Featuring a sensational late-period turn by Harry Belafonte as the incredibly named “Seldom Seen.”

FORMAT: DCP

PETE KELLY’S BLUES, 1955, Dir. Jack Webb, 95 Mins, Warner Bros., USA

Originally released July 31, 1955

The lone Technicolor offering of the festival has Jack Webb as a Prohibition-era bandleader who refuses to bend the knee to a local bootlegger. The actor maintains the same ironclad will that made him a star on DRAGNET, but PETE KELLY’S BLUES, which he also directed, ventures further into the darkness than the procedural franchise ever could. The gangland violence and speakeasy musical numbers are skillfully recreated, especially when they collide in the astonishing final act. Webb also assembles a Murderers’ Row of supporting talent from noir stalwarts Edmond O’Brien and Lee Marvin to vocal powerhouses Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald. Lee, in only her third onscreen appearance, scored a 1956 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as a boozy torch singer.

FORMAT: DCP