This year marks the centennial for the iconic American vocalist and actor, Frank Sinatra. To commemorate his legacy, the Film Society is pleased to announce our new series Frank at 100, which will showcase some of his most beloved roles on the big screen including The Manchurian Candidate, Ocean’s 11, From Here to Eternity, and more. The series runs July 24-26, immediately preceding a July 27 sneak preview of Sundance hit People Places Things, starring Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement, which will feature a Q&A with the film’s director Jim Strouse.

Frank at 100:

Arguably the 20th century’s most admired vocalist and an abiding icon of cool, Frank Sinatra was also an accomplished screen actor, earning high praise from his peers and contributing to many undisputed classics. To mark Sinatra’s centennial, we’re doing it his way, offering a selection of his film work that displays the range and intensity of his talents.

From Here to Eternity
Fred Zinnemann, USA, 1953, DCP, 118m
Sinatra rebounded from a professional slump with his dramatic turn as Maggio, a cocky GI stationed at Pearl Harbor in the days preceding the invasion. When he read James Jones’s epic novel about the entwining destinies of soldiers and their lovers, he knew the role of the feisty, ill-fated private would restore his career to its former glory, offering to work for free (and nearly making good on his offer). The result was one of Hollywood’s greatest comebacks, earning him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, revitalizing his film and recording careers and ensuring his place on the A-list for the remainder of his life. Sinatra credited co-star Montgomery Clift with coaching him in his most challenging scenes. Fred Zinnemann’s sensitive direction and Donna Reed’s turn as an escort earned statuettes as well, and the film was named Best Picture by the Academy.
Saturday, July 25, 6:45pm
Sunday, July 26, 1:30pm

The Man with the Golden Arm
Otto Preminger, USA, 1955, 35mm, 119m
Sinatra gives an astonishing performance as Frankie Machine, a heroin-addicted drummer released from prison who returns to his neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side and resolves to pick up the pieces of his life. Friends in low places and a toxic relationship with his wheelchair-bound wife (Eleanor Parker) threaten his newfound sobriety. Featuring withdrawal scenes that perhaps represent the apex of Sinatra’s acting career (earning him a richly deserved Oscar nomination), the film was a feather in the caps of director Otto Preminger (who flouted Hollywood’s Production Code in tackling the forbidden subject of drug addiction), composer Elmer Bernstein (whose jazz score supplies much of the film’s tension), and legendary titles designer Saul Bass. Restored 35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Friday, July 24, 4:00pm & 9:15pm

The Manchurian Candidate
John Frankenheimer, USA, 1962, DCP, 126m
“Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?” Nothing is as it seems in John Frankenheimer’s quintessential Cold War thriller, as even this banal directive can trigger world-scale pandemonium. George Axelrod adapts Richard Condon’s account of a decorated Korean War hero (Laurence Harvey) whose inscrutable behavior and ties to a Joseph McCarthy–like demagogue alarm his former commander (Sinatra). Frankenheimer’s taut direction captures the paranoid charge of the Kennedy era, with Angela Lansbury’s turn as Harvey’s manipulative, quasi-incestuous mother landing the coup de grâce. Realizing the urgency and importance of the subject matter, Sinatra gave his all to the production, including the use of his private plane. J. Hoberman contextualized the film’s legacy by calling it “a chunk of America’s psycho-history—as much oracle as movie.”
Saturday, July 25, 9:15pm

None But the Brave
Frank Sinatra, USA/Japan, 1965, 35mm, 106m
The lone directorial effort by Sinatra is a tense and intelligent drama about the crew of a downed World War II plane, stranded on a remote island in the Pacific, compelled to forge a tentative peace with a Japanese platoon. Also serving as one of the film’s producers, Sinatra takes the supporting role of Chief Pharmacist Mate, confidant to the company’s captain (Clint Walker). Notable as the first Japanese/American co-production, None But the Brave depicted war from dueling perspectives four decades before Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima films. The project also threatened Sinatra’s life, as he was caught in a riptide while filming and nearly drowned, rescued in the nick of time by co-star Brad Dexter.
Saturday, July 25, 4:30pm

Ocean’s 11
Lewis Milestone, USA, 1960, 35mm, 127m
Before Steven Soderbergh made it a franchise, Oscar winner Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) helmed the original hangout heist film. Danny Ocean (Sinatra) heads an 11-man team with plans to rob five Vegas casinos simultaneously. His crew includes the entire Rat Pack (Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop), who filmed by day and performed by night in those same casinos. Their chemistry is palpable, with much of their interplay ad-libbed. A glitzy, good-natured time capsule, the film features a wide-ranging cast that also includes Angie Dickinson, Red Skelton, and honorary Rat Packer Shirley MacLaine in a cameo shot on a break from The Apartment (she received a car as payment for her services).
Sunday, July 26, 9:15pm

Pal Joey
George Sidney, USA, 1957, DCP, 111m
Sinatra is at his swaggering best as Joey Evans, a nonchalant singer and womanizer about to meet his match in wealthy Vera (Rita Hayworth), whose financing of his club “Chez Joey” comes with strings attached. A chorus girl (Kim Novak) rounds out the love triangle. Freely adapted from the Broadway show in turn derived from John O’Hara’s epistolary novel, Pal Joey boasts a Rodgers & Hart score packed with standards, including “Bewitched,” “My Funny Valentine,” and the immortal “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Despite some of Joey’s rather unsavory opinions, Sinatra’s Golden Globe–winning turn is so infused with his signature insouciant charm, it’s impossible to dislike.
Sunday, July 26, 6:45pm

Some Came Running
Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1958, 35mm, 137m
Five years after his triumphant turn in the James Jones adaptation From Here to Eternity, Sinatra brings another Jones novel to the screen: the 1,200-page chronicle of postwar disillusionment and small-town hypocrisy Some Came Running, shrewdly directed by Vincente Minnelli. In one of his most textured portrayals, Sinatra is Dave Hirsh, an embittered ex-GI who returns to his Midwestern hometown to write the next chapter of his life. He’s torn between the “respectable” influences of his social-climbing brother (Arthur Kennedy) and schoolteacher love interest (Martha Hyer), and the decadence embodied by gambler Dean Martin (brilliant in his first pairing with Sinatra) and floozy Shirley MacLaine (in her breakout role). Sinatra suggested changing the book’s finale to favor MacLaine, predicting the final twist would win her an Oscar nomination; it did, with additional nods for Kennedy, Hyer, and the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen song “To Love and Be Loved.”
Friday, July 24, 6:30pm
Sunday, July 26, 4:00pm

Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Busby Berkeley, USA, 1949, 35mm, 93m
The second of three pairings with Gene Kelly (sandwiched between their sailors-on-leave classics Anchors Aweigh and On the Town), Take Me Out to the Ball Game is an unheralded gem from MGM’s peerless Arthur Freed unit. A turn-of-the-century musical conceived by Kelly, who wanted to honor the early days of baseball, the film boasts tuneful Comden and Green/Roger Edens songs including “It’s Fate, Baby, It’s Fate” and “The Right Girl for Me”—the latter memorably performed by Sinatra. Featuring a rare dry-land performance by Esther Williams, Take Me Out to the Ball Game is as buoyant and seemingly effortless a romp as you’d expect from its director, the legendary Busby Berkeley.
Saturday, July 25, 2:30pm

Sneak Preview:

People Places Things
Jim Strouse, USA, 2015, DCP, 85m
Writer-director Jim Strouse’s warm and original take on single fatherhood features an inspired lead performance by Flight of the Conchords’ droll genius Jemaine Clement. He plays Will, a professor and graphic novelist who, at a birthday party for his precocious twin daughters’ birthday party, gets an unpleasant surprise when he discovers his wife Charlie (Stephanie Allynne) mid-tryst with their performance-artist friend Gary (Michael Chernus). A year later, now living in Astoria, Will spends as much quality time with his daughters as he can while negotiating an erratic single life and coping with Charlie’s impending marriage. But when a student (Jessica Williams) sets him up with her mom, Diane (Regina Hall), he finds himself moved to take responsibility, accept a new friendship with his ex, and come to terms with himself as both a father and an artist. Join us for a sneak preview of this New York City–set romantic comedy, a highlight at Sundance this year. A Film Arcade release.
Monday, July 27, 7:30pm (Q&A with Jim Strouse)