All month long the University Branch is highlighting classic Hollywood genres with free screenings every Saturday afternoon! Join us at 2:00 PM for these upcoming features. Did I mention FREE POPCORN?
This weekend we’re kicking off the series with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat, arguably the dancing duo’s greatest musical showcase. The film is bursting with memorable songs by composer Irving Berlin, including “Cheek to Cheek”. I assure you a dapper and delightful time will be had by all.
Thanks to the long-running series at the Seattle Art Museum, this city is festering with fluent fans of film noir. Looking for your fix of impressionistic shadows, hardboiled dialogue, and femmes fatale during SAM’s current noir hiatus? On March 15, come see Fritz Lang’s shocking The Big Heat starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, and a truly villainous Lee Marvin. Hold on to your coffee.
Screwball comedies might be the perfect argument for the integration of sound with moving pictures. Screwball perfection was attained early with the works of writer and director Preston Sturges. Sturges’s string of hits in the 1940s is unmatched. The cream of his cinematic crop has got to be The Lady Eve. The film stars Henry Fonda as an oblivious (and rich!) oaf who is taken in by Barbara Stanwyck’s myriad charms. Seriously, who could resist? The film plays March 22.
Few genres have captured popular imagination quite like the Western. Like screwball comedies, the Western’s days in the sun have waned a bit, but throughout the early half of the twentieth century, cowboys were everywhere in popular culture. No director is more synonymous with the genre than the peerless John Ford. Stagecoach, one of Ford’s biggest hits, launched a young B-movie actor into the Hollywood stratosphere, and to this day John Wayne remains the iconic Western star. The film closes out the series on March 29.
So walk the red carpet with us as we celebrate some of Hollywood’s greatest artistic achievements!
The University Branch is located at 5009 Roosevelt Way NE, on the corner of 50th and Roosevelt.
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