(clockwise from left) Knock Down the House, None Shall Escape, Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Melody Man.
Technology old and new will be among the stars at the Wisconsin Film Festival, April 4-11. Cutting-edge restoration techniques are bringing life to forgotten cinema jewels, including a 1950s feature made in 3-D — but never before seen that way.
But first, one of the hottest tickets will be a new documentary that just premiered at Sundance Film Festival, says Jim Healy, director of programming for the festival. It’s Knock Down the House, which follows four left-leaning female candidates through last year’s election cycle. The film’s focus is superstar freshman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC), the former bartender from the Bronx who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and recently stood out for her sharp questioning of Michael Cohen. “Everyone likes an underdog story, and when the underdog is as eloquent, passionate and righteous as these four women are, the final reels of this film feel like a Rocky movie,” writes Jordan Hoffman in a review in The Guardian.
While AOC and her colleagues represent the future, other film festival highlights look to the past. “The classics we show are some of the best films of the festival because they’ve already stood the test of time,” Healy says. “We wouldn’t be showing them if they weren’t still relevant. You’re still going to be thinking [about them] weeks, months and years after you see them.”
One of those films is Jivaro, a 1954 action-adventure with Brian Keith, Fernando Lamas, Rhonda Fleming, Rita Moreno and Lon Chaney, Jr.
“It was filmed in 3-D but was released only in 2-D,” says Healy, “because by the time it was released, 3-D had pretty much died out. It’s been restored and we’ll have the first-ever digital 3-D screening.”
Other 3-D attractions include Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), starring Julie Adams, a native of Waterloo, Iowa, who died Feb. 3.
From China comes Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018). “No relation to Eugene O’Neill,” quips Healy. “The entire last hour is in 3-D, and in a single take. I have a feeling they did some trickery in there, but it’s pretty impressive.”
UW-Madison alum Phil Johnston will be visiting for a screening of Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) in 3-D. He served as co-director and screenwriter of the popular film.
Another homecoming: Sun Prairie native Rita Belda. As vice president for asset management, film restoration and digital mastering at Columbia Pictures, she oversees a massive library that includes most of director Frank Capra’s films. Healy describes Belda as “a leader in the field.”
Belda will present None Shall Escape (1944), perhaps the only studio film to confront the Holocaust while it was happening.
“I was just bowled over by it when we started preservation work on the film,” says Belda. “It was just such an incredibly strong story and really very moving.”
Even though it was made as a B-picture, Columbia had the foresight to take special care of it for future generations.
“This is pretty amazing. It was protected like no other film I have ever seen from that era,” says Belda. “But as a part of the process to protect the negative they had applied a lacquer to it.”
Instead of safeguarding the film elements, over time it had the opposite effect. The lacquer stained, and it had been applied unevenly. “The only way to really deal with that was to address it in a digital restoration,” says Belda.
She will also be presenting Columbia’s first musical, The Melody Man (1931), made with an early form of Technicolor that made use of only the green and red portions of the color spectrum.
Restoration was completed in January, after a year of work. “It was probably one of the more difficult challenges I’ve had in a while,” she says. “I’m very excited to bring it to an audience.”
