James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain in Ned Benson's The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

A sneak preview of an anticipated Cannes film and a tribute to a screen legend have been added to the Film Society's September programming.

Ned Benson's The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy, will screen at the Film Society on September 8 prior to its national theatrical release on September 19. Benson will attend the event and will take part in a Q&A after the screening with New York Film Festival programmer Kent Jones.

In honor of the late Lauren Bacall, who died August 12 at the age of 89 in New York, the Film Society will host a tribute evening on September 15, featuring two of the actress's most notable films, Howard Hawks’s To Have and Have Not and Vincente Minnelli’s The Cobweb.

“Sultry, chic, and alluring, the late Lauren Bacall epitomized movie-star glamour and film noir backbone,” observed the Film Society in making Thursday's announcement. “While her most iconic roles paired her with first husband Humphrey Bogart, after his death she found that 'being a widow is not a profession' and forged a career rich with comebacks, including her first Oscar nomination at age 72. With her seductive voice and signature 'look,' chin held low and eyes cast upward, Lauren Bacall was among the last of the true Hollywood sirens.”

Tickets to both events are now on sale.


Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks’s To Have and Have Not. Photo: Warner Bros./The Kobal Collection

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
Ned Benson, USA, 2014, DCP, 122m

Writer-director Ned Benson depicts the complexities of a relationship in the aftermath of tragic loss in his epic and enigmatic romance The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them. Previously split into two features (The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her and Him), this film boldly plumbs the inner lives of its protagonists, Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) and Conor (James McAvoy). The latest version, which screened at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, creatively synthesizes the two halves into a seamless whole, heightening the interplay of the lovers’ dueling perspectives. Boasting a first-rate supporting cast (including William Hurt, Viola Davis, Isabelle Huppert, Ciarán Hinds, Bill Hader, Jess Weixler, and Nina Arianda), Them presents Benson’s ambitious vision as an affecting account of how lovers experience their love in radically different ways.
September 8, 7pm (Q&A with Ned Benson)

A Tribute to Lauren Bacall:

To Have and Have Not
Howard Hawks, USA, 1944, 35mm, 100m

“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.” With these words, 19-year-old Betty Joan Perske became screen legend Lauren Bacall, entrancing America and Humphrey Bogart in equal measure. The result of a bet between Ernest Hemingway and director Howard Hawks that a good film could be distilled from the author’s worst novel, To Have and Have Not stands as one of the greatest, if least faithful, treatments of Hemingway’s prose. The story concerns a fishing-boat captain (Bogart) persuaded to smuggle French resistance fighters into Martinique, but the Bogart/Bacall chemistry (inspired by Hawks and wife Nancy Keith, whose pet names “Slim” and “Steve” are appropriated) accounts for its immortality. With piano-man Hoagy Carmichael accompanying Bacall’s memorable rendition of “How Little We Know.”
September 15, 6:30pm

The Cobweb
Vincente Minnelli, USA, 1955, 35mm, 134m

Grand Hotel in a psychiatric hospital, with MGM lavishing its legendary gloss on Minnelli’s star-studded melodrama. Adapted from the novel by playwright William Gibson (The Miracle Worker), The Cobweb details a deluxe clinic whose disturbed patients are no match for its dysfunctional staff. Richard Widmark is the dedicated psychiatrist tasked with putting out the fires of philandering doctor Charles Boyer. When Widmark’s wife (Gloria Grahame) orders new drapes for the library—a typically Minnellian focus on set design—everyone from administrator Lillian Gish to artist-patient John Kerr (in a role meant for James Dean) is thrown into turmoil. Bacall affectingly co-stars as Widmark’s widowed colleague and possible love interest, an oasis of sanity in this colorful and eccentric CinemaScope soap.
September 15, 8:45pm


Lauren Bacall and Richard Widmark in Vincente Minnelli’s The Cobweb. Photo: MGM/The Kobal Collection