Second Tier: George Stevens

This citywide series of screening events dedicated to underappreciated auteurs from Hollywood's Golden Age and beyond comes to the Film Society for a night celebrating the work of director George Stevens. A two-time Oscar winner (for the iconic Elizabeth Taylor vehicles Giant and A Place in the Sun), Stevens spent much of his career on the Hollywood A-list, but was roundly dismissed as an empty craftsman by the young Turks of Cahiers du cinéma and by Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema. Today, his intelligent crowd-pleasers and ambitious melodramas beg reevaluation for their acute insights into the American character.

Vivacious Lady | 1938 | USA | 93m
After falling in love at first sight in New York City, a shy professor (Jimmy Stewart) brings his new wife, a nightclub singer (Ginger Rogers), home to his patrician small town family, to mixed results. Rogers and Stewart were actually involved, and the chemistry between the two is palpable, which adds to the screwball frustration of the two newlyweds who cannot get a moment alone. This charming romance is notable for its stretched-out comedic tone (as slow as His Girl Friday is fast) and for what may be the best catfight in cinema history.

George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin | 1994 | USA | 46m
Introduction by Film Comment Editor-at-Large Kent Jones. During WWII, Stevens headed a film unit known as Stevens' Irregulars, and captured breathtaking images of the landing at Normandy, the liberation of Berlin, and-most crucially-some of the only color footage of death camps at Dachau. This footage has been called “an essential visual record” of WWII by the Library of Congress, and was edited into this Emmy-winning documentary by Stevens's son, George Stevens, Jr. The experience documented here marks a transition for Stevens, who was known as a comedy director before the war, but afterwards shifted to a darker, more somber tone. This footage also plays a crucial role in Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Image courtesy of RKO / The Kobal Collection / John Miehle.