Bing Theater
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles
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Costume designers, like so many other great talents of the film industry, are often associated with one particular kind of film, but the Academy’s Saturday series demonstrated the remarkable creative range of many of film’s top designers over the decades. In conjunction with our Hollywood Costume exhibition, in January we began our series with four double features pairing impressive and varied achievements by designers working in all genres of the cinema.
Also in this series:
- Anna Hill Johnstone: East of Eden and The Godfather
- Theadora Van Runkle: Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather Part II
- Milena Canonero: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Barry Lyndon
Two Sides of a Costume Designer
Tony Walton worked in film as both a costume designer and a production designer, and we’ll be screening two wildly different Walton-costumed films from the 1960s, François Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, and the beloved musical fantasy Mary Poppins.
MARY POPPINS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10 | 5:00 P.M.
Walt Disney famously spent decades trying to convince author P. L. Travers to let him make a film of her Mary Poppins novels, and the effort proved to be more than worth it as the end result was one of the filmmaker’s most beloved productions. Broadway star Julie Andrews earned a Best Actress Oscar for her enchanting performance as the nanny – “practically perfect in every way” – who brings magic into the lives of the Banks family and wins the heart of chimney sweep Bert (Dick Van Dyke). Tony Walton designed the iconic costumes, and other visual delights include a classic Disney animated sequence and the painterly visual effects by Peter Ellenshaw, Eustace Lycett and Hamilton Luske. Topping off the package is the Oscar-winning original song score by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, with such classics as “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and the Oscar-winning “Chim Chim Cher-ee.”
1964, 139 minutes, color, DCP | Directed by Robert Stevenson; written by Bill Walsh, Don DaGradi, based on the novels by P. L. Travers; with Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, Ed Wynn, Hermione Baddeley.
Fahrenheit 451
Saturday, January 10 | 7:30 P.M.
Ray Bradbury’s classic science-fiction novel about a future in which literature is illegal is brought to the screen by French New Wave pioneer François Truffaut with this, his only English-language feature and his first in color. Jules and Jim’s Oskar Werner stars as a loyal “fireman” and obedient suburbanite tasked with burning books who begins to reconsider his job and way of life when he falls for a beautiful rebel who reveals to him the pleasures of reading. Tony Walton designed the costumes, helping Julie Christie to transform for a tricky double role, while future director Nicolas Roeg provided bold, colorful cinematography accentuated by Bernard Herrmann’s richly emotional score.
1966, 111 minutes, color, 35mm | Directed by François Truffaut; written by Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury; with Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring, Jeremy Spenser, Bee Duffell.
