Classics and camp on show in 1950s Film Forum retrospective
50 From the 50s is a four-week film retrospective featuring screenings and conversations from October 13 through November 9.
The early 1950s were a time of crisis for the movie business, faced with McCarthy’s witch hunts and the Hollywood blacklist, the loss of lucrative theater chains, and the biggest threat of all: TV. In high-defense mode, the major studios ballyhooed new technologies (3-D and CinemaScope chief among them), loosened censorship, and introduced a whole new generation of iconic actors.
The festival has been programmed by Film Forum’s Repertory Artistic Director Bruce Goldstein and film historian Foster Hirsch, author of the new book Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties: The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher — Television, which will be published by Knopf on October 10).
Several of the screenings will also feature panels and conversations moderated by Hirsch as well as book signings.
Highlights sure to be of LGBTQ+ interest include All About Eve, which kicks off the festival, Imitation of Life, Johnny Guitar, Sunset Boulevard, A Star Is Born, A Streetcar Named Desire, Kiss Me Kate and It Came From Outer Space (in 3-D!) and many more films rarely seen on the big screen.
With support from the Robert Jolin Osborne Fund for American Classic Cinema of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.
Get tickets here. View the schedule here.
