Film Forum

PINK STRING AND SEALING WAX

4:15   7:45  Buy Tickets

(1945, Robert Hamer) In Victorian Brighton, publican’s wife Googie Withers, saddled with a drunken, abusive husband, befriends Gordon Jackson (Upstairs, Downstairs), bullied son of pharmacist Mervyn Johns, who of course stocks poisons. First feature from director of Kind Hearts and Coronets. 35mm print imported from UK. Approx. 89 min.

“An elegantly mounted period melodrama with a superlative performance from Googie Withers as the local femme fatale. What was most distinctive about this film was the intense and refined feeling for the period, the extreme elegance of the visual style, and Hamer’s evident gift for producing a high level of ensemble playing, all in accordance with the slightly heightened artificial style he had set as proper to the subject and ambience.”
– John Russell Taylor, Cinema: A Critical Dictionary

LIVING ON VELVET

6:05   9:35  Buy Tickets

(1935, Frank Borzage) Normally hotshot pilot George Brent, guilt ridden after a crash that killed his family, is introduced to Kay Francis by his friend Warren William – only trouble is, she’s William’s girlfriend. Rare nice guy part for “King of Pre-Code” William. 35mm. Approx. 80 min.

“A roller-coaster ride of emotional extremes… there’s so much unusual, eye-catching, ambiguous, or simply peculiar side business in [Borzage’s] movies—and that calculated near-randomness gives them a documentary tinge.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker