Dune on 70mm

At once wounded, compromised, majestic, and impossible to forget, David Lynch’s first “Universal Picture” remains one of the strangest monuments in American studio filmmaking. Kyle MacLachlan, in his first collaboration with the filmmaker, stars as noble heir Paul Atreides, sent to the desert planet Arrakis ostensibly to oversee his family’s stewardship of a valuable spice trade, only to uncover an imperial plot engineered to destroy his lineage. Frank Herbert’s original space-opera epic touched on everything from political manuvering to ecology and mystical consciousness, but Lynch—whose career-long fascination has always circled the disorienting and foreboding web of conspiracy, especially in Hollywood—converts the novelist’s cryptic mythology and palace intrigue into something altogether darker, stranger, and more tactile. Sometimes it’s stripped-down and brutally compressed, in other instances amplified by a weird, Academy Award–nominated soundscape (with music from Toto and Brian Eno), lavishly camp costumes, and optical manipulations and VFX that snap between the oneiric and grotesquely corporeal. Having lost creative control of the final cut, Lynch famously disowned this theatrical version (removing his name entirely from the television cut)—an experience difficult to ignore when considering his second film made with Universal, Mulholland Drive.

Filmed in Todd-AO 35 anamorphic by Freddie Francis, with additional VistaVision effects work, and enlarged to 70mm as part of its original theatrical release in 1984.

Please note: FLC is screening from one of the original release prints, which uses a vintage magnetic soundtrack. Audio tracks are stored on magnetic stripes attached to the film print itself and are more prone to degrade than optical soundtracks. It will sound louder and richer compared to most 35mm prints and many digital sound systems, but because it’s an older analog format you’ll also hear the wear-and-tear of its many years going through projectors. This is part of the experience, so let every hiss, softness, pop, intermittent silence and visual imperfection remind you of the many audience members who saw this same print before you.