Revivals and Special Events at the 52nd New York Film Festival

Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America

Opening September 26, the 52nd edition of the New York Film Festival features its usual full slate of must-see titles.  But true movie fans will be just as excited by the revivals being screened at the Festival.  They run the gamut from a 30th anniversary celebration of This Is Spinal Tap to Oidhche Sheanchais, the first Irish talking film, and one thought to be lost for decades.

For New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones, the revivals are an opportunity to revisit familiar movies in new contexts.  "It's important to fit these retrospectives into the Festival," he said.  "The series allow you to look at new films in light of older films and older films in light of newer films."

The narrative strategies in Hiroshima Mon Amour (screening October 10) are just as startling today as when the movie was released in 1959.  But it has not been shown in theaters for almost twenty years.  The NYFF is screening a new 4K restoration from the Cineteca di Bologna, overseen by director Alain Resnais' longtime cinematographer Renato Berta.  (Resnais passed away in March at the age of 91.)

Director Sergio Leone meant Once Upon a Time in America (September 27) to be an homage to crime films, but his vision never reached theaters in the US intact.  Studio executives cut the movie from four hours to two, rearranging the plot and eliminating entire passages.  Material was added back in over the years, but the version screening at the NYFF includes material never seen here before.

"For years people talked about material that was missing," Jones said.  "It got to the point where we were starting to think that Louise Fletcher's scenes were lost, but it turns out that they still exist."
 
Jones also pointed out The Tales of Hoffmann (October 3), a 1951 movie directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.  "This was a restoration done with great love and care over a long period of time," he said.

From The King and the Mockingbird. Courtesy Rialto Pictures.

Bruce Goldstein, the founder of Rialto Pictures, is especially excited about The King and the Mockingbird (October 5), an animated film that was "thirty years in the making."  Directed by Paul Grimault and written by Grimault and Jacques Prévert from a Hans Christian Andersen story, the movie was originally released in 1953. 

But Grimault was unhappy with that version, and after obtaining the rights in 1967, spent another 12 years working back to the way he thought the movie should look.  Rialto's new translation and subtitles will give viewers a better sense of the film's satire and whimsy.

Two films by Robert Flaherty also deserve attention.  Released in 1926, Moana (September 30) is an extraordinary and intimate look at life on Samoa, at the time one of the more isolated islands in the South Pacific.  Along with his wife and children, Flaherty spent more than a year on Samoa, capturing images of indelible beauty.

Almost forty years later, Monica Flaherty returned to Samoa to add a soundtrack to her father's work.  She recorded the sounds of leaves rustling, waves lapping, of birds and wildlife.  She also had Samoans repeat lines of dialogue to match up with the actors on screen.

Archivist Bruce Posner worked from 35mm elements to restore Moana, syncing Monica Flaherty's soundtrack as well as ensuring the best possible quality for Robert Flaherty's cinematography.  Critic John Grierson coined the term "documentary" when reviewing Moana, but the movie is more than just an ethnographic record.  Flaherty was a singular artist, and Moana may be the best expression of his vision.

Flaherty traveled to Ireland in the early 1930s to make Man of Aran, a study of life on the beautiful but bleak islands in the Galway Bay.  During post-production for the movie he made Oidhche Sheanchais, or A Night of Storytelling, the first sound film in the Irish language.

Title frame from Oidhche Sheanchais. Harvard Film Archive.

It was commissioned by the Irish Free State to commemorate and preserve a vanishing cultural heritage.  The film was distributed to Irish theaters, but a fire in 1943 destroyed the only known copies. However, the Harvard College Library had purchased a copy in 1935, and this nitrate print resurfaced in 2012 during a cataloging update at the school's Houghton Library.

The short will be shown with Moana on September 30.

As Jones points out, this is not the only recent rediscovery.  Upstream, a 1927 backstage drama directed by John Ford, was found in a New Zealand archive after being thought lost.  Who knows how many other "lost" films are waiting to be discovered in libraries and archives?