Samuel Goldwyn Theater
8949 Wilshire Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
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Cinema has endured for decades in the face of competing visual storytelling mediums. In connection with our event The New Audience: Moviegoing in a Connected World, discover how studios and filmmakers – long before tablets, smartphones and the Internet – responded as audiences began trading regular visits to the movies for the ease and affordability of the first small screen: television. In response, numerous widescreen cinematic formats were rolled out around the world and capitalized on the breathtaking width of the projected image, not to mention the heightened fidelity of stereophonic sound, to achieve effects far beyond the reach of TV sets. This Is Widescreen offers a colorful assortment of films that demonstrate how filmmakers found new means of engaging the flexibility of the cinema and the key larger-than-life film formats employed over a 15-year period in Hollywood – from the launch of Cinerama in 1952 and the subsequent widescreen boom that included CinemaScope, VistaVision, Todd-AO and others – plus highlights from the first wave of 'Scope filmmaking from around the globe.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Friday, May 22 | 7:30 P.M.
Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, The Shootist) directed this classic science-fiction chiller about an undercover alien invasion, which has spawned countless imitations as well as two remakes. Kevin McCarthy is Dr. Miles Bennell, who starts to suspect that something is amiss in his postcard-perfect California town when multiple patients turn up at his office claiming their relatives are not themselves despite their otherwise normal outward appearances. Slowly unearthing an intergalactic conspiracy to replace humanity with emotionless “pod people” replicas, Bennell must rally the locals to combat the impostors…unless it’s already too late. Cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks (an Oscar nominee the following year for his Technirama-Technicolor work on Sayonara) imbues the black-and-white SuperScope images with paranoia and dread, and the film remains evocative and unsettling nearly 60 years after its original release.
1956, 80 minutes, black and white, 35mm | Directed by Don Siegel; written by Daniel Mainwaring, based on the serial story The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney; with Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes, Ralph Dumke.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
Friday, May 22 | 9:05 P.M.
The final American film from director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M) is an intricately plotted noir as well as an indictment of capital punishment. Publisher Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer of Rosemary’s Baby) recruits his daughter’s fiancé, aspiring novelist Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews), to be the fall guy in a plot to expose the dangers of circumstantial evidence, but things quickly become more complicated and dangerous for the well-meaning plotters. Lang and cinematographer William Snyder (Creature from the Black Lagoon) use black-and-white SuperScope to underscore the claustrophobia of the twisting web that ensnares Andrews, and the film’s jaw-dropping conclusion makes it one of the darkest noirs of its time.
1956, 80 minutes, black and white, 35mm | Directed by Fritz Lang, written by Douglas Morrow; with Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Philip Bourneuf, Shepperd Strudwick, Robin Raymond, Barbara Nichols.
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