american dreamer: burt lancaster may 5 -- 18, 2000 photo: atlantic city

box office and ticket information | calendar program description This program was organized by Kathleen Murphy, with the help of Kent Jones, Kate Buford, and Richard T. Jameson. Speaking of Burt Lancaster’s remarkable charisma and vitality, critic/historian David Thomson described it as "more than cheerfulness or strength; he seemed charged with power. This accounts for his threatening, polite calm as a villain and coincides with Norman Mailer’s comment that he never looked into eyes as chilling as Lancaster’s." In an American Dream career that took him from a poor kid literally “saved” by his involvement with East Harlem’s Union Settlement* to circus acrobat to Academy Award-winner to charismatic star of Luchino Visconti’s masterpiece THE LEOPARD, Lancaster played naifs, noir antiheroes, con artists, men of war, swashbucklers, lovers, Westerners, monsters, and old lions with amazing grace—physical and emotional. Along the way, he stood out as a courageous political activist (he had many a run-in with the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 50s) as well as classic American movie star. On the occasion of the publication of Kate Buford’s splendid new biography Burt Lancaster: An American Life, published by Knopf, we are pleased to present a selection of films that celebrate the larger-than-life gifts of this Hollywood megastar. *For information about the Union Settlement benefit-—Burt Lancaster: A Tribute to An East Harlem Hero-—presented in association with the Film Society’s Burt Lancaster Retrospective on May 15 at Bridgewater’s, South Street Seaport, phone 212-786-9368.

the leopard the killers criss-cross apache from here to eternity courtesy photofest

program: THE LEOPARD / IL GATTOPARDO (Luchino Visconti, France/Italy, 1963; 205m) "So I opened the drawers and saw that they were filled with beautiful, handmade things. And I said to Visconti, ‘But we won’t be able to see them.’ And he told me, ‘It doesn’t matter. They are your things. You know they are there.’" What possessed Luchino Visconti to cast Burt Lancaster as a Sicilian prince, who sees himself and his class fading into history on the eve of Garibaldi’s unification of Italy? Perhaps because no other actor could hold the screen like this American aristocrat. Lancaster actually looks like the world is his possession. His transformation here (helped along by a letter-perfect dubbing job—he spoke his Italian dialogue phonetically) is nothing less than astonishing, and he’s the center of gravity in this magnificent adaptation of Lampedusa’s historical novel. With Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, the great Paolo Stoppa, future spaghetti western star Terence Hill and a very young Pierre Clémenti. A masterpiece, and a masterful performance, one of Lancaster’s favorites. Fri May 5: 1 & 8 Sat May 6: 6 THE KILLERS (Robert Siodmak, USA, 1946; 105m) It’s a rare film indeed that boasts the stellar debut of not just one but two of the screen’s most vivid icons. Nor does it hurt that Ernest Hemingway, author of the classic short story so chillingly re-created in the opening reel, always cited THE KILLERS as the best movie ever made from his work. Burt Lancaster’s first movie role, as a small-town guy known only as “the Swede,” begins only moments before his death. He knows it’s coming and he doesn’t try to run: “I did something wrong—-once.” What he did and why it used him up is the subject of the rest of the movie, a gangster story and a doomed romance told in jagged flashbacks as an insurance investigator (Edmond O’Brien) looks into the Swede’s enigmatic legacy and his haunted past. Ava Gardner shines darkly as a quintessential femme fatale named Kitty Collins; Miklos Rozsa’s score supplies the keynote of doom; and Robert Siodmak’s pungent direction was deservedly Oscar-nominated. Anthony Veiller is credited with the screenplay, but it’s not hard to detect the hand of his unbilled collaborator, John Huston. Fri May 5: 4:45; Sun May 7: 7:05 Tues May 9: 1 Special Invitation to Burt Lancaster Roundtable Discussion: Buy a ticket to any film on the first day of the Burt Lancaster series to receive complimentary admission to a free-wheeling roundtable discussion about this great star’s life, career and politics. At presstime, we expect John Guare (playwright and ATLANTIC CITY screenwriter); John Turturro (actor, director, and Lancaster admirer); Kate Buford (author, Burt Lancaster: An American Life); film critics Dave Kehr, David Thomson and Richard T. Jameson. Fri May 5: 6:30 CRISS-CROSS (Jules Dassin, USA, 1947; 94m) Jean-Luc Godard once observed that a director makes the same film all his life, so let’s not call CRISS-CROSS a remake of THE KILLERS. True, there’s Burt Lancaster again as a spectacular slab of beefcake led from the straight-and-narrow by his passion for a gangster’s moll (Yvonne De Carlo). Again, there’s a spectacular criminal caper in which he must play a central role. Again the film unfolds through an intricate weave of flashback and ongoing action, pressing inexorably toward catastrophe for all concerned. But who’s complaining? Although it didn’t receive the attention accorded THE KILLERS (there’s no Hemingway pedigree-—just a terrific script by Daniel Fuchs), CRISS-CROSS is every bit its equal and just maybe an advance on the first film when it comes to the vividness and Gothic grandeur of Siodmak’s direction. Lancaster is excellent, but the performance you’ll never forget is Dan Duryea’s as his chief tormentor and rival; his last expression--the last image in the film-—is one of the all-time great moments in film noir. Sat May 6: 4 & 9:45 ATLANTIC CITY (Louis Malle, Canada/France/USA, 1980; 104m) That Burt Lancaster lost the 1981 Best Actor Oscar (to Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond) remains one of the most egregious lapses in Academy history. A seat on Parnassus would be a more fitting honor, and one that we trust has been conferred. He plays Lou, a passed-over mob foot soldier who has long since settled into a marginal living as retainer to (and occasional bedmate of) the widow of a long-ago kingpin. The highlight of his existence has become the chance to peep at Sally (Susan Sarandon), the beautiful, none-too-bright neighbor across the way, as she scrubs away the stink of her job at a fish store. Then trouble arises in the form of Sally’s estranged husband, a petty crook who’s reached for a big score and consequently placed her in jeopardy. Lou comes out of retirement-—if, that is, he ever really was the hard guy he likes to dream he was-—and the results are some kind of sublime. Certainly Lancaster and Sarandon’s performances are, under the never-better direction of Louis Malle. An across-the-board winner at the National Society of Film Critics, plus New York Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics, and British Film Academy Awards for Lancaster. The excellent screenplay is by John Guare. Sun May 7: 5 & 9:10 Mon May 8: 3:05 & 7:15 THE CRIMSON PIRATE (Robert Siodmak, USA/UK, 1952; 104m) After their noirish sojourns in the late 40s, Lancaster and director Robert Siodmak turned their attention to something lighter. In this affectionate near-parody, Lancaster gives free rein to his talents as an acrobat, aided and abetted by his old buddy Nick Cravat (who did similar duty in The Flame and the Arrow). Lancaster is Captain Vallo, the Crimson Pirate, who has a high time pillaging and plundering the Mediterranean. Officially, the film is set in the 18th century, but the real period is Hollywood at the tail end of its glory days, the only time and place that could have produced something so breathlessly freewheeling. Look for a very young Christopher Lee in a supporting role. Mon May 8: 1, 5:10 & 9:20

ulzana's raid elmer gantry courtesy photofest sweet smell of success the swimmer local hero birdman of alcatraz

APACHE (Robert Aldrich, USA, 1954; 91m) Brand-New Print! During Geronimo’s surrender to the U.S. Cavalry, a lone Apache warrior, Massai, interrupts the ceremony to hurl defiance against the white conquerors. Captured and shipped off to the Florida Everglades, he escapes and begins an epic journey back to his desert Southwest home. Lancaster’s superbly athletic Massai is among the noblest (and least risible) white essays in Native American heroism, and Aldrich’s anti-Establishment sympathy naturally gravitates to this rebel. With Jean Peters as Massai’s lover and fellow fugitive, John McIntire as the grudgingly sympathetic frontier scout who must pursue them, and Charles Bronson (then Buchinsky) as an old Apache rival who has donned Cavalry blue. Tues May 9: 3:15 Fri May 12: 1, 5 & 9:10 FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (Fred Zinnemann, USA, 1953; 118m) Adapted from James Jones’ raw, tough-talking war novel, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY racked up 13 Academy Award noms, taking home eight statues, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and two Best Supporting Actors (Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed.) Peacetime life at Schofield Army Barracks in Honolulu pulses with illicit affairs (Burt Lancaster’s NCO falls for Deborah Kerr, his lowdown commanding officer’s wife; Montgomery Clift’s lonely private loves Donna Reed, “hostess” at a local house of ill repute) and ugly testosterone-driven tensions among the rank and file (Clift is brutally bullied and Sinatra’s skinny Italian wisecracker is targeted by Ernest Borgnine’s sadistic sergeant). All the emotional sturm und drang of these halcyon days is put into sudden, sharp perspective when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Sinatra’s career came back to life with this film (cf. The Godfather); and no one ever again saw the ladylike Deborah Kerr in quite the same demure light after her legendary horizontal embrace with gorgeous Lancaster on a moonlit Hawaiian beach. Wed May 10: 1 & 6:15 ULZANA'S RAID (Robert Aldrich, USA, 1972; 103m) Two decades after APACHE, Lancaster and Robert Aldrich reunited for a darker, infinitely more complex meditation on the Indian wars. This time the aging scout is played by Lancaster —- in what Andrew Sarris hailed as the performance of his career —- and the renegade Apache (Joaquin Martinez) is no persecuted man seeking only to make a new life, but rather a vicious killer carrying out horrific depradations against white settlers. The early ’70s saw a rash of “hippie Westerns” glibly deploring U.S. “genocide” against Native Americans; ULZANA'S RAID, with a brilliant, toughminded screenplay by Alan Sharp, disdains their kneejerk sentimentality by making Ulzana truly terrifying and the Cavalry officers well-meaning, and still finding historical justice in Ulzana’s bloody, doomed campaign. This is one of the greatest and certainly bravest of Westerns, and second only to Kiss Me Deadly in Aldrich’s filmography. With Jorge Luke, Bruce Davison, Richard Jaeckel; cinematography by Joseph Biroc. Wed May 10: 3:30 Fri May 12: 2:50 & 7 Tues May 16: 3 ELMER GANTRY (Richard Brooks, USA, 1960; 146m) Credit muckraking novelist Sinclair Lewis for the source material; but it’s Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster who made Elmer Gantry an avatar of the quintessential American conartist, so hot to sell salvation he almost believes in his own product. His Bible-thumper fairly burns with the sheer physical joy of his own bigger-than-life charisma, his gift for taking people in. Topped by his macho mane, his jaw foresquare with rectitude, Lancaster spreads his famous grin like divine love, primed to embrace flesh as much as spirit. Jean Simmons, as a genuine evangelist, and Shirley Jones, a minister’s daughter gone bad, are softies when it comes to the power of Gantry’s energetic persuasion. (When a discouraged Jones wanted to give up on her role, Lancaster urged her to persevere, predicting her Academy Award.) The rich, even tragic complexity of Lancaster’s performance is echoed in Robert Duvall’s superb salvation-peddler in The Apostle. Thurs May 11: 1 Sat May 13: 6 Tues May 16: 8 GO TELL THE SPARTANS (Ted Post, USA, 1978; 114m) A cult fave--and deservedly so--GO TELL THE SPARTANS was hard-headed and brutally realistic about our dead-end presence in Vietnam; released the same year as Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, the film garnered critical admiration, but audiences preferred individualized sagas, sentiment and romantic melodrama. Rather than tackle the effects of the war on physically and/or emotionally wounded vets, this brave film exposed the fundamental tactical lunacy of the conflict-as perceived by an American officer (Burt Lancaster) who knows better but must follow through on stupid, self-destructive orders from above. This is one of Lancaster's best performances: embittered, a cog in the military juggernaut, this good man foresees the killing waste to come. With Craig Wasson as an idealistic young draftee. (Adapted from Daniel Ford's fine novel Incident at Muc Wa.) Wed May 10: 8:40 Sun May 14: 6:20 Mon May 15: 1 SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (Alexander MacKendrick, USA, 1957; 96m) In which the handsome, powerful Burt Lancaster transformed himself into J.J. Hunsecker, the sexless gossip columnist who rules the world from his table at ’21.’ As Lancaster speaks Ernest (North by Northwest) Lehman’s syncopated dialogue, you may have the impression that every word is being etched right into your skin with acid. He holds his powerful frame in frightening check, the king rat watching all the peon rats swarm beneath his ironclad gaze. With Tony Curtis, revving himself up past the speed of light, as gutless columnist Sidney Falco, Susan Harrison as Hunsecker’s lost little sister and a pre-Adam 12 Martin Milner as her hapless jazz musician boyfriend. Featuring one of Elmer Bernstein’s very best jazz scores and the electric camera eye of cinematographer James Wong Howe. Sat May 13: 4 & 9 Mon May 15: 3:15 GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (John Sturges, USA, 1957; 120m) Lancaster and Kirk Douglas were memorably teamed from the early years (I Walk Alone) to the twilight (Tough Guys) of their careers, never more entertainingly than in this handsome VistaVision account of the friendship between frontier lawman Wyatt Earp (BL) and hard-living gambler-gunfighter Doc Holliday (KD). Directed by John Sturges in high-50s epic mode, with a classic Dimitri Tiomkin score, Frankie Laine intoning the title ballad, and Dennis Hopper making an early appearance as junior outlaw Billy Clanton. Sun May 14: 4 & 8:40 THE SWIMMER (Frank Perry, USA, 1968; 94m) Neddy Merrill decides to "swim" his way home through the all the pools in the backyards of high WASP country, the Connecticut valley. Every stop brings back another memory. Lancaster brings exactly the right kind of sad athleticism and cheerful disenchantment to Frank and Eleanor Perry’s adaptation of the John Cheever story: there’s a whole biography woven into this performance, as you watch the desolation of one man’s entire life slowly rising to the surface. Lancaster’s powerful physique and piercing eyes give poetic life to the concepts of faded glory and shattered dreams. With a terrific cast that includes Janice Rule, Kim Hunter and the eternally underrated Rose Gregorio. Tues May 16: 1 & 6 LOCAL HERO (Bill Forsyth, UK, 1983; 112m) Junior oil executive Mac MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) is sent to a remote Scottish fishing village to negotiate for offshore drilling rights with the supposedly rustic natives, who are secretly keeping their collective fingers crossed that they’ll be making a killing and packing off for Bermuda. But he’s counselled by his eccentric boss Felix Happer (Lancaster) to devote most of his attention to the northern lights. "Remember, Macintosh, I want daily reports…keep your eyes on the sky." Lancaster fits right into the subtle, surpassingly delicate comic universe of Scottish director Bill Forsyth, nowhere more so than when he’s on the phone instructing his security force in how best to handle the aggressive shock tactics of his therapist (Norman Chancer): "Shoot to kill." Tues May 16: 8 Thurs May 18: 3:45 BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ (John Frankenheimer, USA, 1962; 143m) Back in the era of what was once referred to as the drama of "social consciousness," Burt Lancaster teamed up with then young turk John Frankenheimer for this quietly intense and moving film. Lancaster is Robert Stroud, the man who found his freedom while serving a life sentence on the rock by not only raising birds but studying them so thoroughly that he became a world-renowned authority. This is the film in which Lancaster really works from a sense of stillness and quiet, where the concentration is more mental than physical, and he brings a precious insight to the role: in extreme situations, intellectual and spiritual life are one and the same. With an amazing cast that includes the great Thelma Ritter as Stroud’s mother, Neville Brand, Karl Malden, Betty Field, Telly Savalas, Edmond O’Brien and Leo Penn, father of Sean. Tues May 16: 3 Thurs May 18: 1