Guild Cinema Presents 'Veterans on Film' Series

From Albuquerque's Guild Cinema:

NOVEMBER 10-15: VETERANS ON FILM Series: For the week of Veterans Day, we present a five-film mini-series offering different looks at returning soldiers from WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. From the changing relationships seen in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES to the traumatized reactions of the men in TARGETS and A HATFUL OF RAIN, these films offer complex narratives where adjusting to civilian life is never easy, and ticker-tape parades are nowhere in sight.

Rather than approaching the series from a documentary perspective, we've chosen Hollywood films (and one from Britain) which depict fictional veterans from a variety of angles, all focusing on the sociological over the political. Thus, this series is based neither around hawks nor doves, but the lingering effects of war on the individual, the family, and the society at large. Two of the films in the series are getting extremely rare screenings (THE SMALL BACK ROOM and A HATFUL OF RAIN), and the programs of November 12-15 are two-for-one double features.

NOVEMBER 10 & 11 (SAT & SUN): 3:30, 7:00
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
Dir. William Wyler - 1946 - 172m
A monumental cinema classic, this multi-Oscar winning drama about three men, one from each branch of the armed forces, coming home after WWII resonates with honest emotion. In superlative performances, Dana Andrews, Fredric March and Harold Russell play the trio who meet on an airship, each headed home to different families, and a different nation, than they had left behind. Myrna Loy, Cathy O’Donnell, Virginia Mayo and Teresa Wright all shine as the women of the men’s past and present. Masterfully photographed by Gregg Toland (CITIZEN KANE, STAGECOACH), this understated drama has lost none of its power and relevance some 71 years after its release.

"It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought... In working out their solutions (the filmmakers) have achieved some of the most beautiful and inspiring demonstrations of human fortitude that we have had in films." - New York Times, 1946

NOVEMBER 12 & 13 (MON & TUE): 2-FOR-1 DOUBLE FEATURE!

I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (4:45, 8:30)
Dir. Mervyn LeRoy - 1932 - 93m
WWI vet Paul Muni yearns for something beyond the dull desk job held for his return, but a wrong place-wrong time incident lands him on a vicious Southern chain gang - and into a hell worse than the battlefield he’d just left. This nail-bitingly suspenseful and tense drama was such a searing indictment of the chain gang system that it led to its eventual dismantling, and what makes it even more compelling is the fact that the story is true. The getaway scene through the swampland remains one of the great chases of cinema history.

RARE SCREENING - THE SMALL BACK ROOM (6:30)
Dirs. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 1949 - 106m
UK - shown on digital video
One of the least-seen masterpieces of British film legends Powell and Pressburger stars David Farrar as Sammy, a troubled master bomb diffuser in WWII London who seems to be a ticking timebomb, himself. Kathleen Byron (BLACK NARCISSUS) co-stars as Sammy's clandestine lover, and their sensuous relationship plays out against a backdrop of mystery about Sammy’s wartime past and a crippling leg injury, and his battle with the bottle.

"Sammy, in David Farrar's brooding, psychotic performance, is a prototype anti-hero of a later decade, and the expression of his private hell brilliantly condenses the menace and dislocation of Lang's American films noirs, from MINISTRY OF FEAR to THE BIG HEAT...THE SMALL BACK ROOM also struck a very different note from the cosy unanimity of most British war films, long before it became fashionable to challenge such myths. The violence and implicit sexuality of the relationship between Sammy and Susan seems equally alien to the genteel naïvete that still dominated British films, apart from the licence granted to such passions in period melodrama." - British Film Institute

NOVEMBER 14 & 15 (WED & THU): 2-FOR-1 DOUBLE FEATURE!

TARGETS (4:45, 8:40)
Dir. Peter Bogdanovich - 1968 - 90m
An all-American boy-next-door (Bobby O’Kelly), fresh from Vietnam, calmly goes on a horrific rampage. An aging horror film star (Boris Karloff), tired of on-screen mayhem, decides to retire. Fate will bring them together, culminating in one of the screen’s most horrifying and memorable climaxes. Bogdanovich’s first feature (written with an uncredited Samuel Fuller), is a shocking low-budget parable, informed by a decade drawing to a tragic close.

RARE SCREENING - A HATFUL OF RAIN (6:30)
Dir. Fred Zinnemann - 1957 - 109m - Cinemascope
Based on the play by Michael V. Gazzo, the film follows the story of a veteran Korean War soldier who becomes addicted to morphine, leading to some of the most intense family dynamics of any 1950s film. The performances are uniformly first-rate, particularly Don Murray as the junkie husband and Oscar-nominated Anthony Franciosa as his brother. Tough screenplay by a then-blacklisted Carl Foreman, whose name was only added to the credits in 1998, 14 years after his death.

"...a tremendously taut and true description of human agony and shame, of solicitude and frustration and the piteousness of tangled love. And it is so directed by Mr. Zinnemann and acted by an excellent cast that every concept and nuance of the story is revealed. Make no mistake: this is a striking, sobering film." - New York Times, 1957

The Guild Cinema is located in the heart of the historic Nob Hill district of Albuquerque at 3405 Central Avenue NE, two blocks west of Carlisle on the north side of the street (Map). PARKING: We recommend parking north of the theater along Tulane (two doors west of the theater) or Campus, where there are no hourly restrictions. DO NOT park in the Red Wing Shoes parking lot - they will tow you. There are also meters along Central.