Dave Kehr

Ghibli Gilda

The Lady at 100: Columbia Classics from the Locarno Film Festival | MoMA Film series. Apr 16–May 24, 2025. In celebration of Columbia Pictures’ centennial, MoMA and the Locarno Film Festival present a series tracing the evolution of Hollywood’s scrappiest major studio. Fro...

The schedule is up for THE LADY AT 100, my affectionate variation on the Columbia Pictures retrospective that Ehsan Khoshbakht curated for the Locarno Film Festival last summer. 30 Columbia bangers April 16 through May 24.

www.moma.org/calendar/fil...

Playing daily at MoMA through Feb. 12. The most formally accomplished film you are likely to see this year.

A still from Rob Tregenza’s The Fishing Place (2024)

Rob Tregenza has worked with Godard, Béla Tarr, Alex Cox … His new film, THE FISHING PLACE, sees its North American premiere tonight @ MoMA — www.criterion.com/current/post...

MoMA Presents: Rob Tregenza’s The Fishing Place | MoMA Film series. Through Feb 12. In this formally inventive historical drama, acclaimed American filmmaker Rob Tregenza explores the moral complexities of World War II and the permutations of history and ...

www.moma.org/calendar/fil...

‘The Fishing Place’ Review: A Village Under Suspicion Rob Tregenza’s latest film, set in a German-occupied Norwegian village, follows a housekeeper dispatched to spy on a priest.

Manohla Dargis on ‘The Fishing Place,’ a new film by Rob Tregenza (TALKING TO STRANGERS). At MoMA through Feb. 12. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/m...

Jerry Schatzberg | MoMA Film series. Jan 31–Feb 9, 2025. This comprehensive retrospective celebrates Jerry Schatzberg, the photographer-turned-filmmaker whose work captured the raw edges of American life in the 1970s and bey...

Prepared something special at MoMA with @davekehr.bsky.social. Q&As with Jerry Schatzberg this Friday (7 pm) for Puzzle of a Downfall Child & Scarecrow on February 8, 4 pm.

Shoulder Arms. 1918. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin The Bond. 1918. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin | MoMA Shoulder Arms. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. With Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Sydney Chaplin. Silent. 46 min. The Bond. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. With Chap...

www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

A Charlie Chaplin Movie Like You’ve Never Seen It Before The Museum of Modern Art has worked on a meticulous restoration of Chaplin’s 1918 film “Shoulder Arms,” screening on Thursday, that likely differs in every frame from what viewers have seen.

Ben Kenigsberg on MoMAFilm's restoration-in-progess of Chaplin's WWI comedy SHOULDER ARMS. Screens Thursday at 7 pm.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/m...

Whenever someone writing about Westerns uses some variation on the phrase, "the white hats vs the black hats," I stop reading. This has never been standard in the genre, even in the serials & B-Westerns.

If you said that shit in front of John Ford, he'd throw your ass out of his movie screening:

Shoulder Arms. 1918. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin The Bond. 1918. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin | MoMA Shoulder Arms. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. With Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Sydney Chaplin. Silent. 46 min. The Bond. 1918. USA. Written and directed by Charles Chaplin. With Chap...

www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

Released at the height of the 1918 pandemic, Chaplin's SHOULDER ARMS still broke box office records. Here's the Strand boasting that "New Yorkers took their lives in their hands" to pack the theater "all week." New @MoMAFilm resto plays 7pm Thurs.

Still a good movie, though! I'm glad people are making the effort to show 20th century cinema in no matter what form.

Was it letterboxed? The real shortcoming of 16mm is that practically everything was cropped to 1.33.

The sad, simple truth is that the studios don't care about revival screenings -- it's a microscopic part of their business -- and they seldom make theatrical grade material available. It's all about making files for streaming these days.

That's another debate! It's probably a battered survivor of the 1970s boom in non-theatrical distribution (which is what fueled my college film society). You might be better off with a blu-ray.

Not weird at all, Norm. It's very rare, if not unheard of, for a studio to pay for a new 35mm print these days. Most of them won't even make DCPs.

María Candelaria. 1943. Directed by Emilio Fernández | MoMA María Candelaria. 1943. Mexico. Directed by Emilio Fernández. Screenplay by Fernández, Mauricio Magdaleno. With Dolores del Rio, Pedro Armendáriz, Alberto Galán. New York premiere. In Spanish; English...

We're screening a restoration (from the camera negative) of Fernandez's masterpiece MARIA CANDELARIA next week at MoMA.
www.moma.org/calendar/eve...

On this day, it's important to remember that the Oscar statue was likely modeled after Mexican-Kickapoo filmmaker & actor Emilio Fernandez (aka, Gen. Mapache in The Wild Bunch)

Last chance for TSAP's sleeper of the year, today at 4:30.

Interesting take here from Eric.

A Fox trade ad from 1929, looking back on their last full year of silent films: FOUR SONS and MOTHER MACREE by John Ford, STREET ANGEL and 7th HEAVEN by Frank Borzage, RED DANCE and IN OLD ARIZONA by Raoul Walsh, AIR CIRCUS and FAZIL by Howard Hawks, and FOUR DEVILS by F.W. Murnau. Not too shoddy.

Hoping they'll make some DCPs, and this isn't just a streaming proposition.

Rosaura at 10 O’Clock Released the same year as Vertigo (1958), and similarly driven by sexual obsession, psychological delusion, narrative game-playing, and dream logic, the great Argentine director Mario Soffici’s late-c...

David Schwartz on a real sleeper in this year's @MoMAFilm preservation festival, the unclassifiable ROSAURA AT 10 O'CLOCK. Mario Soffici’s 1958 film begins as a folksy comedy and ends on the far side of noir. 6:30 Mon/4:30 Fri. www.screenslate.com/articles/ros...

Thanks to Katarina Docalovich for this fine account of Alberto Cavalcanti's rare Brazilian comedy A REAL WOMAN, which screens today and Thurs., Jan 16 in TSAP, @MoMAFilm's annual preservation festival.
www.screenslate.com/articles/rea...

And here’s a (roughly) chronological walk through the program ! www.criterion.com/current/post...

TO SAVE AND PROJECT, MoMA's annual festival of preserved films, starts tonight and continues through Jan. 30. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...

A nice BTS still from 7th HEAVEN, with director Frank Borzage horsing around with character actor Albert Gran. An upgraded restoration opens MoMA's preservation festival, TO SAVE AND PROJECT, Thurs. Jan. 9. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...

New NitrateVille Radio episode! Dave Kehr on MoMA's To Save and Project (including Raskolnikow from 1923), Thomas Christensen on the Copenhagen Silent Film Festival, and the authors of Moguls: The Lives and Times of Hollywood Pioneers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck. www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.ph...

Next week brings us To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, programmed this year by the mighty @davekehr.bsky.social. Opening night Jan. 9 is a new restoration of 7TH HEAVEN. I wrote about this Frank Borzage masterpiece in 2018: silentfilm.org/seventh-heav...