April 16 - Special Season: François Truffaut, Child of the Cinema

April 16 - 7:00pm

Day for Night

François Truffaut (1973) 115 mins PG

A film-within-a-film, Truffaut’s richly textured homage to the everyday joys, thrills, chaos & torments of filmmaking won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Layers abound in this autobiographical epistle: Truffaut himself plays the director of the internal film’s torrid melodrama & its cast includes his alter-ego from the “Antoine Doinel” films, Jean-Pierre Léaud. Seen by many as an excellent return to form, critic Roger Ebert described it as the best film ever made about the movies. With Jacqueline Bisset, Alexandra Stewart & Nathalie Baye.

Imported 35mm print.

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April 16 - 9:10pm

The Bride Wore Black

François Truffaut (1968) 107 mins

Predating Kill Bill’s The Bride by several decades, Jeanne Moreau’s black-clad widow remains the original & the best when it comes to vengeance-seeking femme fatales. After 5 men make a young bride a widow on her wedding day, she takes her revenge by methodically killing each of them using various, increasingly inventive, methods. Despite its cool stylistic viciousness & excellent performances, the film received a hostile reception on its original French release. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel, Truffaut’s exciting Hitchcockian homage features an evocative Bernard Herrmann score.

Imported 35mm print.