The Living Idol

Albert Lewin
Part of

54th New York Film Festival

September 30 - 11, 2016

Albert Lewin made only six movies, each one rarefied, proudly literary, mythic, meticulously art-directed, and delicately haunting. The Living Idol, based on his own novel, feels like an emanation from an alternate world of moviemaking.

DIRECTOR
Albert Lewin
YEAR
1957
COUNTRY
USA
RUNTIME
100 minutes

Albert Lewin began as a critic, went to work for Samuel Goldwyn in the 1920s, became Irving Thalberg’s right-hand man in the 1930s, and produced a handful of excellent films before becoming a director at age 48. Each of his six movies is rarefied, proudly literary, mythic, meticulously art-directed, and delicately haunting. His last—and strangest—is The Living Idol, based on his own novel about an archeologist who comes to believe that a jaguar in captivity is the physical manifestation of a Mayan god. This is not a great film, but it is a very unusual and a uniquely compelling one: it feels like an emanation from an alternate world of moviemaking. A Cohen Media Group release.

The Living Idol
The Living Idol
The Living Idol

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