Classics at The Alameda: The Maltese Falcon

The third week of classics at the Alameda Theatre commenced yesterday afternoon with The Maltese Falcon, John Huston's first film and one of Humphrey Bogart's finest moments. I have always enjoyed the movie but have rarely been able to follow the storyline no matter how many times I see it. Still, it's always fun to see a movie like that on the big screen -

- even if the projection disappoints. This time, in addition to the usual strange focus issues - maybe it does have to do with print quality, though I still don't understand how that could be - the film was projected to fill the full rectangular screen. This meant that a good 1/5 or more of the image was cut off, ruining Huston's framing. Back in 1941, when the film was released, films came in the squarer 1.33:1 "Academy" aspect ratio. The projectionist could have used a special lens to project the film properly; don't know if they lacked the lens or made the choice to fill up the screen. I believe that some films have been shot with the intention of "masking" part of the frame during projection - I need to look into this, as I've always wondered about it - but Falcon was not one of them.

Enjoyably enough, prior to the main feature the classic comedy short, The Absent-Minded Waiter, starring Steve Martin, was shown.

Classics at The Alameda!

Kudos to the Alameda Theatre and Cineplex which, beginning next week, will be running a classic film series on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I am very excited about this, even though I have seen this particular slate of films many, many times:

January 14-15: Vertigo
January 21-22: North by Northwest
January 28-29: The Maltese Falcon
February 4-5: Rear Window

It's interesting that's it's basically a Hitchcock series, with a Huston thrown in - but they'll get no complaints from me. I hope this continues on throughout the year. I have longed for such a series since the fabulously renovated theater re-opened in May, but had not dared to hope there was room yet for repertory film programming in this world of ours. I will be attending every one of these films - and hopefully will be able to twist some nearby arms to attend with me.

I believe I have only seen Vertigo on the big screen in the past - though possibly Rear Window, too. The opportunity is simply not there often enough. I hope folks come out for these screenings so they will continue. The theater has changed the website announcement a couple of times since I first saw it; at one point the films were labeled as being on AFI's list of the 100 Best American Films, which suggests they might explore more of that list in the future. Yay! I hope they show Citizen Kane (which actually happens to be one of my favorite films, absolutely thrilling every time I see it, and I've seen it A LOT). I get the feeling that few people have actually watched the "greatest film of all time."

Which, about that - I brought up this series last night at the Lucky 13, where I successfully warded off the urge to smoke as my friends were doing, and there was some general argument about the relative weakness of AFI's list. I'd have to agree that lists that rank films (or whatever) in order of greatness are usually pretty stupid. Or perhaps the word is boring, or pointless. Whether the "greatest film" is Kane or The Rules of the Game or Ants in Your Pants of 1939 is really not a very interesting question. How the estimation of a film changes over time is rather interesting, though, which is why I think the Sight & Sound poll is valuable - this is a critics poll, taken every ten years since 1952 (with a separate director's poll, since 1992) by the British Film Institute, that asks for a list of the ten greatest films. Kane has topped the list since 1962, but what has come next has changed dramatically over time. The first film in The Alameda's series is now regarded as the #2 film of all time, for instance, though it didn't appear in the list until '82.

The best response to AFI's list, now a decade old (though it has been updated since), is that of my favorite film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum. He rips AFI's list to shreds, for all the right reasons, and proposes an alternative list, unranked, that is vastly more idiosyncratic and worthwhile. Check it out here!