Toronto – This season, film lovers will enjoy a breathtaking summer vacation at Cinematheque Ontario with unforgettable statue- sucking women, wingless fairies, cunning gangsters, bicycle thieves and sultry French and Italian temptresses. 

Beginning May 22, Torontonians can indulge in the Surrealists’ haunting trips into the unconscious, delight in Daniel MacIvor’s acerbic wit and intelligence, meet Otto Preminger’s drifters and opportunists, accompany accident-prone Monsieur Hulot during his seaside holiday, experience the shadowy doom of Jean-Pierre Melville’s underworld, spend days and nights with the leading ladies of Italian Cinema and hang out in Paris with the band of outsiders that changed world cinema forever. More than just a feast for cinephiles, this Summer Season at Cinematheque Ontario is an all-inclusive vacation full of possibilities, revealing film history in all of its magical splendour.

Under the Spell: Surrealism and the Cinema

Running from May 22 to July 8, Under the Spell: Surrealism and the Cinema features both popular and underground films affiliated with this revolutionary movement that liberated desire and the imaginary from reality’s constraints. Presented as a complement to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s “Surreal Things” exhibition (May 9 to August 30), the programme launches the season with one of the most famous short films ever made, Un Chien Andalou (1929), Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s staggering assault on beauty and normality, followed by the Spanish duo’s last collaboration, L’Âge d’or (1930), which provoked Fascists and anti-Semites to throw ink on the screen at its premiere. Other highlights include a new restoration of Germaine Dulac’s phantasmagorical La Coquille et le clergyman (1927), to be presented with live piano accompaniment; Lowell Sherman’s She Done Him Wrong (1933), starring Mae West as an all-lips-and-hips bejeweled singer in an 1890s Bowery bar ruled by crime; Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), featuring the famous Dalí dream sequence; a free screening of Joseph Cornell’s short films, including Rose Hobart (1936), the perfect Surrealist fetishistic homage to the film’s star Linda Randolph; and a rare Toronto return of Louis Feuillade’s noir serial Les Vampires (1915), a 10-episode film that chronicles an anarchic gang of cunning criminals led by cross-dressing temptress Irma Vep (played by vampy Musidora, beloved femme fatale of the Surrealists), also to be presented with live piano accompaniment.

Pasts Imperfect: The Films of Daniel MacIvor

Cinematheque Ontario, partnering with the Inside Out Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, presents Pasts Imperfect: The Films of Daniel MacIvor from May 22 to May 26. Featuring key films in the unique oeuvre of one of English Canada’s most acclaimed playwrights, performers and filmmakers, this retrospective opens with John Schlesinger’s seminal Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), to be introduced by MacIvor as the film that most impacted his work. Other guests include filmmaker Amnon Buchbinder, who will introduce A Whole New Thing (2005), a hilarious and poignant story that follows a precociously intelligent boy throughout his crush on his English teacher (played by MacIvor); and Laurie Lynd and Karen Lee Hall, director and producer of The Fairy Who Didn’t Want to Be a Fairy Anymore (1992), a Genie-award winning absurdist fantasy starring MacIvor (who also wrote the script). The series also includes MacIvor’s emotionally devastating debut feature, Past Perfect (2002), and the assured and exquisitely performed Wilby Wonderful (2004), which features an ensemble cast of Canada’s best-known actors (Paul Gross, Rebecca Jenkins) in roles MacIvor wrote especially for each of them.

Fallen Angels: The Films of Otto Preminger

The eagerly anticipated retrospective of “Big O’s” films finally arrives in Toronto, featuring dozens of classic Hollywood stars. The first retrospective in 40 years, Fallen Angels: The Films of Otto Preminger runs from May 29 to July 2 and spans the daring and diverse career of one of the most revered American directors, celebrated for his moral ambiguity and seamless formalism. Opening with the lauded Laura (1944), a delicately crafted study of obsession and the male gaze, the retrospective includes other noir classics such as Angel Face (1953), a melodrama starring Jean Simmons as the ultimate femme fatale; Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), a brooding and claustrophobic tale of a troubled and unhappy cop who crosses the line; and the restored 35mm print of Fallen Angel (1945), a twisty tale of deceit and murder that follows a con man as he gets mixed up with two very different dames. Preminger’s relentless interest in the irrationality of human behaviour gave birth to a series of independent films that broke all manner of Hollywood taboos: The Moon Is Blue (1953), a sexual comedy that caused nation-wide furor when the director flouted the Production Code’s condemnation of its suggestive treatment of promiscuity and virginity; The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), starring Frank Sinatra in one of his best performances as an ex-con junkie struggling to stay clean, presented in a restored print; Advise and Consent (1962), a political exposé starring Henry Fonda that moves from Foggy Bottom mansions to Greenwich Village gay bars; and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), a powerful courtroom drama scored by Duke Ellington that managed to include a discussion of rape, sperm, climax and panties. In addition, the series includes buried treasures such as the director’s masterful cult classic Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), a puzzle movie set in swinging mid-1960s London; Daisy Kenyon (1947), a dark and haunting romantic melodrama starring Joan Crawford; and Whirlpool (1950), a perverse psychological thriller that follows Gene Tierney as she falls under the spell of deceit, blackmail and murder.

Nouvelle Vague: The French New Wave, Then and Now

Having just reached its half-century mark, one of the most significant and influential film movements of post-war cinema receives a major appraisal at Cinematheque Ontario from July 3 to August 22. Nouvelle Vague: The French New Wave, Then and Now assembles familiar classics by its five central figures and rare works little known in North America by directors who were tangential to the movement. This mandatory cinematic feast includes treats such as François Truffaut’s first feature, The 400 Blows (1959), and his sublimely romantic Jules and Jim (1961); Jean-Luc Godard’s futuristic thriller Alphaville (1965), and an exclusive limited run of the new 35mm print of Made in USA (1966), a visual pop-art display starring Anna Karina as a female Humphrey Bogart who is drawn into an international conspiracy; Jacques Rivette’s film debut, Paris nous appartient (1960), and a rare print of The Nun (1966), a masterful adaptation of Denis Diderot’s satirical novel about the plight of an illegitimate daughter forced into a convent; Eric Rohmer’s darkest moral tale, La Collectionneuse (1966), and his first film, The Sign of Leo ( 1959), a wittily observed tale of an American expat living in Paris who experiences various changes of fortune and ends up serenading sightseers on the banks of the Seine; and the rare screenings of Claude Chabrol’s first film, Le Beau serge (1958), a sombre tale of a convalescent young theology student who returns to his hometown to discover his childhood friend has become a hopeless drunk, and the much praised but little known Les Godelureaux (1961), a sharp portrait of sex and the city that sardonically exposes the bourgeoisie’s conformity and the pretension of the Left Bank’s art scene. Some of the rare films by fellow travellers of the New Wave include Jean-Daniel Pollet’s Méditerranée (1963), a mesmerizing film essay imbued with visual poetry that deeply influenced Godard and Rivette’s films; Jacques Rozier’s Adieu Philippine (1962), filled with French pop music and innovative camera work, follows a young television technician in his last few months before military service as he attempts to seduce two beautiful young women; and Roger Vadim’s scandalous And God Created Woman (1956), starring Brigitte Bardot as the free spirit and “sex kitten” Juliette, whose sun-bronzed sexuality stretches throughout the copious Scope frame.

As the New Wave is still going strong, Nouvelle Vague: The French New Wave, Then and Now features four recent films by the remaining directors: Godard’s Éloge de l’amour (2001), an eloquent mourning for a lost culture and a time of political heroism, masterfully capturing the tenor of our times; Chabrol’s La Fille coupée en deux (2007), starring Ludivine Sagnier as a young and beautiful TV weather girl trapped in a Bermuda triangle of lust, jealousy and passion; Rivette’s Ne touchez pas la hache (2007), a titillating tale of amour fou set in 1820s Restoration Paris that follows a brooding hero of the Napoleonic Wars (the late Guillaume Depardieu) as he attempts to capture the attention of a married duchess (Jeanne Balibar); and Rohmer’s Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (2007), an enchanting tale of forbidden love set in a luminous, verdant and mystical forest replete with singing troubadours, Druids, togas, humour and perky (***censored***)eroticism.

Signore and Signore: Leading Ladies of the Italian Cinema
After reaping critical praise during its tours through Europe and the United States, Signore and Signore: Leading Ladies of the Italian Cinema runs in Toronto from July 10 to August 21, presenting a deluxe selection of both familiar and rare classics dedicated to the great actresses of Italian post-war cinema. Covering a remarkable range of styles, this homage opens with Sophia Loren in her towering performance as Cesira, a widowed shopkeeper who flees the Allied bombing of Rome during World War II in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women (1960). The series also features Claudia Cardinale as a sultry nightclub singer seduced and abandoned by a wealthy playboy in Valerio Zurlini’s The Girl with a Suitcase (1960), and as the title character in Luchino Visconti’s exquisitely baroque and incestuous Sandra (1965). Giulietta Masina shines in three roles: as Cabiria, an ingenuous Roman prostitute who is tricked and ridiculed by an assortment of hookers, priests and film stars in Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957); as the waif Gelsomina, sold by her mother for a plate of pasta to a strong-man circus performer in another Fellini masterpiece, La Strada (1954); and as a lonely and impressionable housewife, presiding over a villa outside Rome in Fellini’s visually extravagant Juliet of the Spirits (1965). Other leading ladies include Anna Magnani as Pina, the good-hearted pregnant widow whose fiancé gives refuge to a resistance leader that is fleeing the Gestapo in Roberto Rossellini’s seminal Rome Open City (1945); Monica Vitti, offering a splendid parody of her Antonioni heroines, as a flower seller who ends up at the centre of a working-class triangle in Ettore Scola’s A Drama of Jealousy (1970); and Stefania Sandrelli as Adriana, a naive beauty who aspires to move from her village to Rome and become a star in Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well (1965), a bitterly ironic portrayal of a woman adrift in modernity.

The French Connection: Jean-Pierre Melville

The French Connection: Jean-Pierre Melville, in conjunction with the adjoining survey of the nouvelle vague, offers Toronto audiences an imperative crash course in post-war French cinema from July 17 to August 23. This selective retrospective celebrates the sense of melancholic contemplation and impending betrayal in Melville’s cinema, commencing with the velvety black-and-white Bob le flambeur (1956), starring Roger Duchesne, the proverbial “silver fox,” as an aging gambler who, down on his luck, masterminds an impossible heist. Melville’s austere and rigorous style is also apparent in existential thrillers such as Le Doulos (1962), a beautiful and violent tale of treachery starring Jean-Paul Belmondo; the phenomenally successful Army of Shadows (1969), a tense, gripping portrayal of honour and betrayal set in the clandestine world of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation; Le Cercle rouge (1970), featuring a trio of Europe’s most iconic actors – Alain Delon, Yves Montand and Gian-Maria Volonté – as a team who sets out to rob a chic, impregnable jewellery store in Paris; and Melville’s most celebrated film, Le Samourai (1967), also starring Alain Delon, here as a lone assassin who performs his executions with meticulous care. Although the retrospective is itself a buried treasure, other rare Melville films include his debut, Le Silence de la mer (1947), a lyrical depiction of the experiences and struggles of occupation and resistance during World War II, and the first Toronto screening in a decade of Léon Morin, Priest (1961), an intense, sexually charged study of spiritual crisis and consolation.

Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati
A summer vacation in itself, Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati is a complete retrospective that chronicles the career of one of cinema’s greatest artists, who decisively transformed both the tradition of film comedy and the conventions of cinematic space, framing, narrative and sound. Running from July 31 to August 11, the entire series will be presented in new 35mm prints imported from France and opens with Tati’s greatest international success, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), a pivotal work of modernist cinema that introduced the character who was to become the director’s alter ego. The film follows Monsieur Hulot on his beachside hotel vacation as he innocently causes damage and distress wherever he goes. In Playtime (1967), Monsieur Hulot, affectless as ever, wanders through a modernist maze of glass and steel full of American tourists, while in Mon Oncle (1958), the Academy Award®-winning satire about the impersonality, tedium and sterility of modern life, he plays the “uncle” of the title, and once again wreaks havoc all over the map. The restored colour print of Tati’s hilarious opera prima, Jour de fête (1949), provides Toronto audiences with the unique opportunity to see France’s post-war countryside in the colours that Tati originally intended, and which he could only dream of, as he died without ever seeing the restoration completed.

Bicycle Thieves – Exclusive 60th Anniversary Screenings

On July 10, 11, 16 and 18, Cinematheque Ontario is proud to present an exclusive limited run of the new 35mm print of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), which has just celebrated its 60th anniversary. Considered one of the most influential films of post-war cinema, this inexhaustible neorealist classic follows the desperate search for the precious bike of an unemployed man who is struggling to survive amid Rome’s post-war confusion.

Cinematheque Ontario screenings are held at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto (use the east entrance at McCaul Street), unless otherwise noted. Regular tickets are $5.90 for members and $10.14 for non-members. Limited Runs and Special Presentations are $7.08 for members and $11.56 for non-members. Lecture Series tickets are $9.91 for members and $15.33 for non-members. Prices do not include GST, building-fund fee or service charges. Films playing at Cinematheque Ontario that have not been rated by the Ontario Film Review Board are restricted to individuals 18 years of age or older; check the Cinematheque Ontario website for updates on film ratings. Visit our Box Office at 2 Carlton Street (on the West Mezzanine, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.) or call 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM for tickets and more information. Tickets for the Summer Season go on sale beginning May 5 for members and May 19 for non-members.