Weekend Loew's Report

I saw two classic films at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre here in the JC this weekend. Yeah, I could see these on DVD on my plasma, but watching these old chestnuts in CinemaScope on a 50-foot screen is quite a different experience.

The Lion in Winter (1968)

This is one of those 1960s highbrow films, the sort they don't make too often for theatrical release anymore; they're now considered BBC/PBS fare. Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn, as medieval royals, make like George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, tearing each other apart with verbal barbs, even though they clearly love each other on some level. As King Henry II, he's obsessed with finding a successor among his three smarmy sons, and as his queen, she's a plotter who's so manipulative that Henry keeps her locked up in a tower for most of year, only letting her out on holidays. Hepburn won an Oscar for this, her third of four, and she's a "great actress." But the thing about Hepburn, it seems to me, is that she was always playing herself. How hard is that, really? Lucky for her, all the roles she was cast in called for a "Hepburn type" -- strong-willed, intelligent, witty. Hard not to admire that sort of character, but I wonder if she could have played an airhead or a maniac. Anyway, an excellent film of this type. The director, Anthony Harvey, was on hand and talked a bit about the making of the film before the show.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

The CinemaScope restoration print of this was gorgeous. I didn't see the recent remake, but I've heard that the original (as usual) is better. They don't make this kind of earnest, straight-forward, sci-fi-for-the-whole-family movie anymore; these days, they're full of wisecracks and stomach-churning digital eek-fex. This was an elaborate production for the time. Some of the effects, like using tiny lizards to portray dinosaurs, seem hokey now, but much of the film was shot in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, and that realism makes up for a lot of the unavoidable cheesiness. Good acting and art direction. Pat Boone? Well, he didn't ruin it, and James Mason and Arlene Dahl were quite effective. Dahl was present in person for this showing (she's still pretty glamorous), and talked about the film afterward. She said she hadn't seen it on the big screen in 50 years. I would call this film fantasy, by the way, not science fiction. You'd be crispy long before you reached the center of the Earth, I'm afraid, dear reader -- Geology 101.(Bonus points for the terrific Bernard Herrmann score.)