The Discreet Charm of George Cukor
December 13 – January 7
George Cukor was one of Hollywood’s most successful and versatile filmmakers: a master of the musical drama, the screwball comedy, the domestic thriller, and the literary adaptation—not to mention a legendary director of actresses, guiding the likes of Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Judy Garland to career-defining performances. In collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival, we present a complete overview—the first in many years in New York—of the director’s remarkable career.
Special holiday ticket prices! See five films for just $25 with our Discount Package!
Head to our YouTube channel to check out a series of fun trailers for the retrospective!
Download the series brochure as a PDF.
ACCIDENT
Title: ACCIDENT ¥ Pers: SASSARD, JACQUELINE / BOGARDE, DIRK ¥ Year: 1967 ¥ Dir: LOSEY, JOSEPH ¥ Ref: ACC002AN ¥ Credit: [ LONDON INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS / THE KOBAL COLLECTION ]…
The Actress
Jean Simmons is radiant as a young woman itching to flee her sleepy New England town for a big-city acting career in this tender family comedy from an autobiographical play by Ruth Gordon.
Adam’s Rib
Introduction by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and Locarno Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian on December 14!
Feuding lawyer spouses Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy let their domestic power struggles spill over into the public sphere when they end up on opposite sides of a high-profile murder trial.
Bhowani Junction
Cukor adapts John Masters’ 1954 novel about an Anglo-Indian woman (Ava Gardner) torn between lovers and national allegiances in the midst of de-colonization.
A Bill of Divorcement
When the head of the Fairchild family returns for Christmas after 15 years in a psychiatric institution, his ex-wife flees but his daughter (Katharine Hepburn in her screen debut) breaks off her own engagement to be with him.
The Blue Bird
Long out of circulation, Cukor’s unlikely adaptation of the celebrated 1908 Maeterlinck play was the first ever American-Soviet co-production and is headlined by a trio of Hollywood greats: Liz Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Jane Fonda.
Born Yesterday
Introduction by film editor (and Judy Holliday's son) Jonathan Oppenheim at the 8:30pm screening on December 29!
An unscrupulous tycoon (Broderick Crawford) hires a journalist (William Holden) to cultivate his ditsy chorus-girl mistress (Judy Holliday in an Oscar-winning turn), but doesn’t expect the two to hit if off so well…
Camille
Greta Garbo’s magisterial turn as a doomed 19th-century Parisian courtesan in Cukor’s lavish adaptation of Dumas, fils’ The Lady of the Camelias is widely considered one of the all-time great screen performances.
The Chapman Report
Four suburban women (Jane Fonda, Glynis Johns, Shelley Winters, and Claire Bloom) are grilled about their sex lives in this (very) thinly disguised reflection on the then-still-contentious Kinsey Reports.
The Corn is Green
Free screening!
In their final collaboration, Cukor regular Katharine Hepburn stars as the willful schoolteacher Lily C. Moffat, whose efforts to set up a school in a Welsh coal-mining town are met with local opposition. Complimentary tickets will be available at the box office on a first-come, first-served basis starting one hour prior to the event. Limit one ticket per person, subject to availability.
David Copperfield
Cukor’s Copperfield is a rich, comic, humane panorama of 19th-century British life, featuring a remarkable turn by W.C. Fields and a screenplay by the great British novelist Sir Hugh Walpole.
Dinner at Eight
This unsparing send-up of upper-class pretentions and fascinating window into the anxieties—social and economic—of mid-Depression America teeters masterfully between stone-faced comedy and tragic farce
A Double Life
Ronald Colman, in his only Oscar-winning performance, plays a beloved thespian whose Othello complex ultimately drives him to madness and murder.
Edward, My Son
Spencer Tracy plays (with chilly malevolence) an amoral businessman and Deborah Kerr is his long-suffering wife in this essential showcase for Cukor’s gift at dramatic atmosphere.
Gaslight
A young opera singer (Ingrid Bergman) haunted by her aunt’s murder marries a handsome pianist (Charles Boyer) and settles down in her relative’s long-abandoned London mansion, where footsteps echo in the attic, gaslights dim, and secrets come to light…
Girls About Town
Two girls, out to make their fortune in New York, loving and leaving wealthy businessmen, take a trip on a yacht, where they meet a Michigan millionaire and his young associate.
Grumpy
In his country home, an eccentric retired barrister investigates the theft of a diamond brought from South Africa by the fiancé of his granddaughter Virginia, revealing a web of intrigue and romance.
Heller in Pink Tights
Sophia Loren plays the star of a theater troupe touring the Old West, with Anthony Quinn as her poker-faced husband and Steve Forrest as her hired-gun object of desire.
Her Cardboard Lover
The great Norma Shearer gave her last performance in this adaptation of a 1926 farce by Jacques Deval (translated by P.G. Wodehouse!) about a young woman who, in a last-ditch effort to fend off a stubborn ex, hires a man to pose as her new lover.
Holiday
Cukor’s gracious, delicate comic masterpiece follows an eager young businessman (Cary Grant) with a drive for adventure as he gets engaged to a society beauty (Doris Nolan), only to fall instead for her vivacious sister (Katharine Hepburn).
It Should Happen to You
Jack Lemmon gave his breakthrough performance alongside the great Judy Holliday in this sharp satire of modern celebrity culture that serves as a touching time capsule of a vanished New York.
Justine
This intoxicating, rarely screened adaptation of Lawrence Durrell’s beloved novel features an unfamiliar scenery (an incense-heavy, pearl-encrusted Egypt) and an all-star European cast (Anouk Aimée, Anna Karina, Dirk Bogarde, and Philippe Noiret).
Keeper of the Flame
One of Cukor’s most explicitly political films, Keeper of the Flame re-united offscreen couple Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn after their smash hit earlier the same year with George Stevens’ Woman of the Year.
Les Girls
Hailed by Andrew Sarris as a musical Rashomon, Cukor’s glorious CinemaScope bauble stars Gene Kelly as a dance troupe impresario who gives one of three differing accounts when one of his dancers accuses another of libeling her in a tell-all memoir.
Let’s Make Love
Let’s Make Love finds Marilyn Monroe at the peak of her powers: vital, eager, playful, in some moments strikingly naïve, in others profoundly aware of her influence on the men in her orbit (Yves Montand, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, and Milton Berle).
A Life of Her Own
Cukor’s 1950 melodrama about a successful model (Lana Turner) and her ill-fated affair with a married man suffered from studio interference and low enthusiasm, but went on to gather a base of critical supporters, not least among them François Truffaut.
Little Women
Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett star in Cukor’s adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic about a group of small-town sisters growing up in the shadow of the Civil War.
Love Among the Ruins
Katharine Hepburn stars as a widowed actress in Edwardian London who seeks out a long-ago lover (Laurence Olivier) to serve as her lawyer in a sensitive personal case.
The Marrying Kind
In the chambers of a divorce court, a couple (Judy Holliday and Aldo Ray) re-play their creaking marriage blow-for-blow: the sun-dappled meeting in Central Park; the speedy marriage; the first home; the difficulty coping; the petty resentments; the drifting apart.
The Model and the Marriage Broker
Thelma Ritter’s marriage broker enters this lovely, minor-key comedy doing what she does best: fixing up a parade of shy and lonely souls (including Zero Mostel) and stubbornly bottling up her own heartbreak in the process.
My Fair Lady
To George Bernard Shaw’s story of a wealthy professor (Rex Harrison) who resolves to transform a poor flower girl (Audrey Hepburn) into a society lady, Cukor brought a delicate touch, a vast reserve of empathy, and a perfect measure of devilish wit.
Our Betters
A British lord begrudgingly marries an American heiress for her money only to have her turn into a force among high society in this biting satire on the snobbery of Britain’s upper classes in the 1930s
Pat and Mike
Unfortunately, Peter Bogdanovich can no longer attend the December 14 screening. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Cukor re-united with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn for this delightfully mellow portrait of a determined athlete who escapes the clutches of her controlling boyfriend, only to get dangerously close to her gruff promoter.
The Philadelphia Story
Of all the Hollywood classics, few have aged so little, or so well, as this comedy of remarriage centered on warring trio Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Cary Grant.
Rich and Famous
Introduction by star Candice Bergen at the 6:30pm screening!
Cukor’s final film follows two college friends (Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen) through 20 years of marriage, success, jealousy, frustration, falling outs, and reconciliations. With Meg Ryan in her first acting role.
Rockabye
A Broadway actress with a complicated past falls in love the with playwright of her new hit play, but after discovering he has a newborn child she leaves him for her devoted manager.
The Royal Family of Broadway
Cukor’s first movie on the world of show business and its dazzling play of mirrors is also a parody of his friends the Barrymores, America’s first theatrical family.
A Star Is Born
A musical remake of the 1937 Janet Gaynor/Fredric March drama, Star was produced as Judy Garland’s return to the screen after a four year absence and won her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
Susan and God
Cukor’s first of two collaborations with Joan Crawford was this daring tragicomic study of a society woman whose frivolous, self-satisfied tendencies take on a dangerous tint when she falls under the sway of a popular religious cult.
Sylvia Scarlett
In a scheme to help her embezzling bookkeeper father escape Marseilles for London, young Sylvia (Katharine Hepburn) cuts her hair, dons a fedora, and changes her name to Sylvester. En route, they encounter a “gentleman adventurer” (Cary Grant, at his most louche) and together the trio starts grifting. Condemned by the Legion of Decency, Cukor’s Sylvia Scarlett is a gender-bending picaresque tale in which the terms of erotic identification are constantly, cleverly evolving, for the cast and audience alike.
Tarnished Lady
After marrying a wealthy suitor, a worldly-wise woman (Tallulah Bankhead) realizes her mistake and attempts to get back with the writer she believes she loved, but is thwarted by her life’s unexpected turns.
Travels With My Aunt
Maggie Smith is a vivacious septuagenarian with a fortune-teller lover and some shady business dealings in Cukor’s quick-footed, emotionally nuanced Graham Greene adaptation.
Two-Faced Woman
A ski instructor (Greta Garbo) falls for a bigshot magazine editor; they marry; he returns to the city on business; she follows him disguised as her flirtatious (and nonexistent) sister. Soon, the jig is up, and husband and wife wind up stuck in a spiral of mutual deception.
The Virtuous Sin
During WWI, a wife offers herself to a general in order to save her husband from the firing squad. In her search for freedom the young woman finds true love with the general, and her husband eventually agrees to let her go her way.
What Price Hollywood?
Cukor’s first film with David O. Selznick was a prototype for the various versions of A Star is Born, with an insider’s view of Hollywood that follows the rise to stardom of a waitress “discovered” by an ace director.
Wild Is the Wind
In this full-throttle melodrama, a torrid tale of lust and betrayal plays out against the backdrop of the American Southwest. Magnani earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the wife of a Nevada rancher (the equally explosive Anthony Quinn) driven into the arms of another man (Anthony Franciosa).
Winged Victory
In 1944, Cukor returned to civilian life after a six-month stint in the Signal Corps and was quickly assigned this Army-commissioned portrait of five aspiring Air Force pilots (based on a play by Moss Hart, who would re-team with Cukor for A Star Is Born)
A Woman’s Face
This dreamlike, psychologically acute noir about a disfigured woman stuck in a life of crime, adapted from a Swedish Ingrid Bergman vehicle, features a daring and brilliant turn by Joan Crawford.
The Women
Norma Shearer, Joan Fontaine, and Rosalind Russell lead a gaggle of New York society women who spend their days in gossip, petty rivalries, divorce ranch showdowns, and copious chatter about men, not one of whom ever appears on screen.
Zaza
Claudette Colbert gives a radiant lead performance in this drama of infidelity set in and around a meticulously designed open-air Paris cabaret near the turn of the century.
