Columbia Pictures celebrates 100th anniversary at Locarno Film Festival 2024

From war films and westerns to film noir, from screwball comedies to musicals – Sony-owned Columbia Pictures has embraced every genre in its first 100 years. The 77th Locarno Film Festival is celebrating its centenary in the Swiss town. The organizers emphasized on the Internet that it “pays tribute to the beloved classics and obscure films produced by Hollywood studios from the birth of talkies to the late 1950s.” Tribute to the treasure.”

Sony Studios previously held a 100th anniversary celebration in Cannes in May, co-hosted by Tom Rothman, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group.

Locarno launched a retrospective of 40 films, most of them in black and white, underscoring the studio’s importance to Hollywood history. “In 1924, the relatively small film company Cohn-Brandt-Cohn renamed itself Columbia Pictures,” the festival explains on its website. “The new studio will eventually have as its headliner the Lady with the Torch, an image of a woman draped in an American flag like the Statue of Liberty that has become familiar to film buffs around the world. As Colombia Pictures, the studio became a huge success, scoring a string of major hits and becoming an integral part of the Hollywood ecosystem over the next decade.

Locarno artistic director Giona Nazzaro emphasizes: “Colombia offers the best career opportunities for women and gave Dorothy Arzner her first behind-the-scenes appearance.”

The festival promises a “large-scale, multifaceted retrospective” curated by documentary filmmaker, film critic and film curator Ehsan Khoshbakht that “will attempt to unpack the turmoil surrounding Colombia.” film industry’s thorny mythology and present a richer, more complex portrait of the studio” deserves to be celebrated. “

Kochbachert himself vowed to showcase “fast-talking career women, “existential cowboys” in screwball comedy, “prophetic anti-fascist thrills” and “disturbing ‘problem pictures'”.

So, which classic works from the golden era of Columbia Pictures will be presented in “Locarno 77”? Full lineup, including screen legends like Rock Hudson (gun fury1953), Spencer Tracy (man’s castle1933) and William Holden (picnic1955), can be found here.

Here are 11 selected works from the retrospective to whet your appetite.

wall street
No, this is not the 1987 film directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, starring Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah and Martin Sheen and distributed by Fox.

It was a 1929 film directed by Roy William Neal and starring Ralph Ince, Irene Pringle, Philip Strange, Sam de Grasse and Freddie Burke The film starring Frederic is the oldest of Columbia Pictures’ tribute films to Locarno.

At 68 minutes, it’s also shorter than other fare in the tribute show. The story focuses on a steelworker turned ruthless tycoon whose tough business tactics lead to the suicides of his competitors. The widow believes she can destroy the tycoon and conspires with her husband’s former partner.

bitter victory
The war film stars Richard Burton and Curd Jurgens as two British Army officers sent to carry out a commando raid in North Africa, and will be directed by Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive. Locarno introduces this war film.

The French-American co-production is based on Rene Hardy’s novel of the same name and also stars Ruth Lohmann and Raymond Pellegrin.

Directed by Nicholas Ray, the film not only brought exotic locales to the screen but also traveled within itself, premiering at the 1957 Venice Film Festival.

Address unknown
This 1944 film noir drama directed by William Cameron Menzies is based on Cressman Taylor’s 1938 novel of the same name. Cinematographer Rudolf Matt was often praised for his creative use of shadows and camera angles.

The 72-minute film tells the story of two families during the rise of Nazism in Germany before World War II began. The cast includes Paul Lucas, Carl Esmond, Peter van Eyk, Maddie Christians, Maurice Karnofsky and KT Stevens.

The film, shown at the Columbia Pictures retrospective in Locarno, was nominated for Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Art Direction.

gunman’s walk
As the title suggests, this is a Western. Locarno audiences will hear a special presentation from Grover Crisp, master of film restoration and digital mastering at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The film is directed by Phil Carlson and stars Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathleen Grant, and James Dahlen. Heflin plays a powerful rancher who protects his cantankerous adult son (Hunter) by paying damages and bribing witnesses until his crimes become too serious. Grant plays a beautiful half-French, half-Sioux woman who has a hot temper and makes unwanted advances towards her.

Quentin Tarantino later said the film was a sign of his influence cobblerhis fictional film once upon a time in hollywood.

gunman’s walk Premiered in 1958, a year before the other Western, and the latest film from Columbia Pictures to be included in the Locarno retrospective, solitary rideThe film is directed by Bud Boetticher and stars Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, and Pernell Roberts.

craig’s wife
This 1936 melodrama, adapted from George Kelly’s play of the same name, is a rare retrospective film by a female creator.

Dorothy Arzner, one of the few early female directors to have a long and successful career in Hollywood and later become the center of attention for film and human relations students, was based on Mary C. McCall, Jr. (Mary C. McCall Jr. directed the film from a script.

Rosalind Russell, John Boles, Billie Burke, Jane Darwell and Dorothy Wilson star in a film about Harriet, who is married to a man who Because he can provide the kind of luxurious lifestyle she wants. But her way of life is threatened when her husband is intimidated by the police.

You nasty spy!
This 1940 comedy short directed by Jules White and starring the famous slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curley Howard) is a Columbia The 44th of 190 short films with comedians released by the studio between 1934 and 1959.

The 18-minute film is often considered Hollywood’s first anti-Nazi comedy, as it preceded Charles Chaplin’s film great dictator months. The title is a parody of comedian Joe Penner’s catchphrase “You nasty man!” from the 1939 Warner Bros. film Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

Here’s the plot: Three ammunition manufacturers unhappy with profit decline caused by King Hermann 6+⁷⁄₈pacifist policy. So they plotted to overthrow him and establish a dictatorship. The unwitting puppet is the wallpaper hanger, chosen to be the puppet of the new regime

talk of the town
This romantic comedy/drama film directed by George Stevens premiered in 1942 and starred Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman.

Grant stars as Leopold Dilger, who is accused of arson and murder but escapes from prison during his trial and attempts to hide out in a remote cabin owned by Nora, a former classmate with whom he has a crush. Nora rents the cabin to a law professor (Coleman) who spends the summer writing a book. When Lightcap and Dilger arrived within minutes, Nora hid Dilger in the attic and things went from there.

Some elements of the film were unusual for the time. One is the use of two main characters. Another was the role of a valet, played by Rex Ingram, which at the time was a rare example of a black actor in a non-stereotypical role.

lady from shanghai
Orson Welles. Rita Hayworth. Everett Sloan. Noir thriller. Need we say more?

Well, we can. Welles starred in, directed, and wrote the screenplay for the 1947 film, which was adapted from the novel If I die before I wake up Written by Sherwood King. Glenn Anderson and Ted DeCorcia also star. Additionally, Charles Lawton Jr. handled photography.

This classic film tells the story of Michael (Welles), an Irish sailor who saves Elsa (Hayworth) when her coach is ambushed in Central Park and falls in love with her. But Elsa and her disabled criminal defense attorney husband (Sloan) have just arrived in New York City from Shanghai, en route to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Michael agrees to work as a seaman on his husband’s yacht.

hot day
This 1953 film noir packs equal parts punch and star power. Directed by “Master of Darkness” Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Jocelyn Brando.

The story is quickly explained: a policeman fights against the criminal gang that controls his city. As the film begins, a homicide detective is assigned to investigate the suicide of a fellow police officer.

For the production’s story, Columbia wanted Marilyn Monroe to star but didn’t want to pay 20th Century Fox the cost of loaning a rival star.

women’s prison
The cast of the 1955 Columbia Pictures classic is full of girl power: Ida Lupino, Jean Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Toth, Phyllis Thaxter.

Of course, behind the scenes, men are in charge. Louis Sailer directed the film from a script by Crane Wilbur and Jack DeWitt.

You can guess part of the plot from the title. A sadistic warden takes out his sexual frustrations on female prisoners, while a doctor tries to improve the prison’s brutal atmosphere. A pair of rebellious prisoners might take matters into their own hands.

Mr. Deeds comes to town
Can’t get enough of Cary Grant and Joan Arthur? Well, this is another 1936 romantic comedy/drama film.

The screenplay, Robert Riskin’s fifth collaboration with Capra, was adapted from Clarence Buddington Kellan’s short story “The Opera Hat.” During early principal photography, the project still used the short story’s title, retitled after the winner of a competition held by Columbia Pictures Publicity.

Grant stars as a humble greeting-card poet from a small town who inherits a fortune and heads to New York City, only to be pursued by those who seek to take advantage of him.