This Summer, TIFF Will Have Us Dreaming in Technicolor
It’s Christmas in June for cinephiles at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Starting this Friday, TIFF will be launching their new summer series “Dreaming in Technicolor.” For those unaware of the Technicolor process, if you’ve seen any of the films in this series, you should already know about the gorgeous images and colours Technicolor produces. And for all of us here at Way Too Indie, we couldn’t be more excited about this series. TIFF has put together a fantastic lineup of classic films, along with an impressive list of special guests who will introduce special screenings, along with a master class from filmmaker Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg).
The series runs from June to August, and if you happen to be around the TIFF Bell Lightbox this summer, you shouldn’t have any excuse for missing out on these legendary films. Check out the full line-up below, and keep your eyes peeled throughout the summer for some features we’ll be writing about a few of our favourites in the series. To buy tickets, and find out more information about the series, be sure to visit TIFF’s website.
June 19th, 6:30pm – Singin’ in The Rain (35mm print)
“One of the most famous and beloved musicals of all time, Singin’ in the Rain is set in a 1920s Hollywood on the cusp of the sound era, where a swashbuckling matinee idol (Gene Kelly) falls in love with a bright-eyed newcomer (Debbie Reynolds) while trying to duck his jealous, narcissistic onscreen romantic partner (Jean Hagen), whose parrot-squawk of a voice makes her distinctly unsuited for the new talking pictures.”
June 20th, 2pm – Lawrence of Arabia (4K restoration introduced by Grover Crisp, head of film restoration at Sony Pictures)
“Peter O’Toole became an instant star in David Lean’s sprawling adventure epic as the eccentric and inscrutable British officer who rallies the nomadic desert tribes against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.”
June 20th, 7pm – Rope
“Filmed on a single set in a succession of long takes to simulate the sensation of one continuous shot, Alfred Hitchcock’s insidious drawing-room (or rather, dining-room) thriller was one of the director’s most stylistically daring endeavours.”
June 21st, 4pm – Becky Sharp (restored 35mm print)
“Miriam Hopkins received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress as William Thackeray’s indomitable heroine in this sumptuous adaptation of Vanity Fair, which was the first feature film shot entirely in the newly developed three-strip Technicolor system.”
June 21st, 6:30pm – Meet Me in St. Louis
“Minnelli’s much-loved musical classic spans a year in the life of the sizable Smith clan in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, whose youngest members — preening beauty queen Rose (Lucille Bremer), winsome, romantic Esther (Judy Garland), and pint-sized firecracker Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) — are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the 1904 World’s Fair in their city.”
June 23rd, 6:30pm – Bonnie and Clyde (35mm print)
“Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway became instant icons as the famed Depression-era outlaws in director Arthur Penn’s zeitgeist-altering masterpiece.”
June 25th, 8:45pm – Heaven Can Wait (35mm print)
“A recently deceased playboy recounts his lifetime of amorous adventures to a bemused Satan, in Ernst Lubitsch’s charming comedy-fantasy.”
June 27th, 3:30pm – The Wizard of Oz (archival 35mm print)
“The classic fantasy film looks even more spectacular in this magnificent 35mm print, struck during the last revival of the Technicolor dye-transfer process in the 1990s.”
June 28th, 3:30pm – Fiddler on the Roof (introduced by director Norman Jewison)
“Norman Jewison’s beloved, Academy Award-winning adaptation of the internationally acclaimed musical has become a classic for film and theatre lovers alike.”
June 30th, 9pm – All That Heaven Allows
“Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman star in this classic May-December romance which is considered the summit of director Douglas Sirk’s magnificent Technicolor melodramas.”
July 2nd, 6:30pm – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
“Baby-voiced blonde Marilyn Monroe and brash brunette Jane Russell embark on a European cruise in search of love and loot in Howard Hawks’ classic musical comedy.”
July 2nd, 8:30pm – Charade
“Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn luxuriate in early-’60s chic in Stanley Donen’s Hitchcockian comedy-thriller.”
July 4th, 1pm – The Black Pirate (35mm print)
“The third feature to be shot in the early, two-strip Technicolor process, this high-seas adventure is one of the last great action epics from the swashbuckling sovereign of silent cinema, Douglas Fairbanks.”
July 4th, 4pm – The Adventures of Robin Hood (35mm print introduced by Scott Higgins, author of Harnessing the Rainbow: Technicolor Aesthetics in the 1930s)
“The incomparable Errol Flynn stars as the bandit of Sherwood Forest in the definitive Golden Age swashbuckler.”
July 5th, 3:30pm – The Naked Spur (35mm print)
“A driven bounty hunter acquires unwanted partners as he tries to escort a wanted killer out of the wilderness, in the third and best of five classic westerns pairing director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart.”
July 7th, 6:30pm – Black Narcissus
“A young Mother Superior (Deborah Kerr) struggles with a maelstrom of carnal passions in a mountaintop nunnery near Darjeeling, in this glorious Technicolor fever dream from legendary writing-directing duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.”
July 11th, 6:30pm – The Red Shoes (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman, VP of Marketing and Public Relations for Technicolor)
“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s tale of a beautiful ballerina caught between her art and her love for a young composer is simply one of the most gorgeous colour films ever made.”
July 12th, 6pm – The Tales of Hoffmann (4K restoration introduced by Bob Hoffman)
“Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s dazzling cinematic envisioning of the Jacques Offenbach opera is even more ambitious and formally adventurous than their celebrated The Red Shoes.”
July 16th, 8:45pm – Bigger than Life
“A gentle schoolteacher (James Mason) is turned into a malevolent monster by the side effects of a cortisone treatment, in Nicholas Ray’s searing critique of 1950s conformity.”
July 18th, 6pm – Magnificent Obsession (Technicolor Master Class taught by filmmaker Guy Maddin)
“A spoiled playboy (Rock Hudson) finds redemption when he sets out to cure the blindness of the woman he loves (Jane Wyman), in this first of Douglas Sirk’s luscious colour melodramas for producer Ross Hunter.”
July 25th, 3:30pm – Rear Window (archival 35mm print)
“James Stewart and Grace Kelly star in Hitchcock’s nerve-wracking study of voyeurism, obsession and murder.”
July 26th, 5:30pm – Apocalypse Now Redux
“Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam epic is one of the most ambitious and awe-inspiring war movies ever made.”
August 1st, 3pm – The River (restored 35mm print)
“Jean Renoir’s Technicolor masterpiece chronicles the everyday lives and growing pains of three young women growing up on the Ganges.”
August 2nd, 1pm – The African Queen (4K restoration)
“Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn star in director John Huston’s classic comic adventure film.”
August 2nd, 6pm – The Godfather
“Marlon Brando won (and famously refused) his second Best Actor Oscar as the dignified Don Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s Shakespearean portrait of a powerful Mafia family.”
August 9th, 1pm – Ohayo (Good Morning) (35mm print)
“A remake and update of Yasujiro Ozu’s marvellous silent I Was Born, But…, this delightful satire of fifties consumerism is one of the great Japanese director’s best-loved films.”
August 13th, 8:45pm – The Four Feathers (35mm print)
“Charged with cowardice by his friends, an upper-class non-conformist adopts a native disguise and plunges into the maelstrom of the Madhist war in Sudan, in this spectacular Technicolor adaptation of the venerable adventure novel by A.E.W. Mason.”