Cinema Space is a fully voluntary and independent initiative to bring you beautifully restored classics and contemporary world cinema! Programs are open and free to all audiences and enthusiasts.
RSVP is mandatory. Please select an upcoming program below and click on the [RSVP - Click Here] activated link to view information about the film and reserve your spot. You will receive an automatic email confirmation.
*Programs dates and times are subject to change.
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Mexico | 2000 | 153 mins | In Spanish | English Subtitles | 18+
Synopsis: Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu’s astonishing film heralded the arrival of a major new talent in world cinema. Beginning with a kinetic, bruising car accident, the film imaginatively interweaves the stories of its three victims: Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal) a young man who has fallen in love with his violent brother's wife; Valeria (Goya Toledo), a beautiful Mexican model for whom physical appearances are everything; and El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria), a former political assassin now exiled from his family. The result is a moving, visceral eulogy to life, loss and struggle. From Mexico's mean streets to its posh high-rises, no one is exempt from destiny.
(New Film Restoration!) | Family Friendly
Directed by Mel Brooks
USA | 1974 | 106 mins | In English | G
Synopsis: Comedy icons Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr and Madeline Kahn star in director Mel Brooks' brilliantly outrageous riff on Mary Shelley's classic story of Frankenstein. After inheriting his grandfather's castle in Transylvania, young Dr. Frankenstein (Wilder) follows in his ancestor's freaky footsteps as he sets out to reanimate a dead body. It has all the usual--and in this case slightly unusual--suspects: the reluctant scientist Frederick Frankenstein, his spoiled fiancé, Igor the pop-eyed hunchback, his dizzy assistant, the castle's hideous head housekeeper, and, of course, the Monster. Young Frankenstein' is both a zany comedy and a cinematic tour de force.
(New Film Restoration!)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Germany | 1979 | 107 mins | In German | English Subtitles | 12+
Synopsis: It is 1850 in the beautiful, perfectly-kept town of Wismar. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is about to leave on a long journey over the Carpathian Mountains to finalize real estate arrangements with a wealthy nobleman. His wife, Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) begs him not to go and is troubled by a strong premonition of danger. Despite her warnings, Jonathan arrives four weeks later at a large, gloomy castle. Out of the mist appears a pale, wraith-like figure with a shaven head and deep-sunken eyes who identifies himself as Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski). What Harker doesn't know is the magnitude of danger he, his wife and his town are about to experience.
[RSVP - 7:30 PM - CLICK HERE]
(New Film Restoration!)
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Japan | 1953 | 97 mins | In Japanese | English Subtitles | G
Synopsis: Kenji Mizoguchi’s exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy creates a delirious narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men. A supernatural tale par excellence and one of the most highly acclaimed works of the cinema, this is an intensely poetic and sublimely lyrical masterpiece. (Restored by The Film Foundation and KADOKAWA Corporation at Cineric Laboratories in New York. Special thanks to Masahiro Miyajima and Martin Scorsese for their contribution on this restoration. Restoration funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in association with The Film Foundation and KADOKAWA Corporation.)
Actor Robert Mitchum's incomparable career stretched across five decades as he blossomed from a bit player in war films and westerns in the 1940s into a bona fide star collaborating with iconoclastic filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Jacques Tourneur, John Huston, Vincente Minnelli, and Nicholas Ray. The magnetic presence he created on screen has endured as a paragon of timeless cool. This year marks Mitchum’s centenary and we encourage you to explore his legacy through films in the photo gallery below.
Directed by William Wellman
Robert Mitchum’s extraordinary, Oscar-nominated performance as the stoic, exhausted, and quietly beleaguered Lieutenant Walker in this adaptation of correspondent Ernie Pyle’s dispatches from the war in Europe, made him a star. Director William Wellman, himself a WWI vet, and producer Lester Cowan closely collaborated with Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith, who was doing service in the Air Force at the time) to make a film that was true to the life of the WWII soldier—the absolute exhaustion, the endurance of terror and shock and loss, the spells of boredom, the camaraderie. The result is a film built like a ballad, unlike any other of its era. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
This lovely, eloquently simple film about returning WWII vets and their difficulties adjusting to the homefront was made and released by RKO to get the jump on The Best Years of Our Lives. Robert Mitchum’s Tabeshaw, who has come home with a steel plate in his head, and his pal Cliff (Guy Madison), who left as a boy and has returned as a man, spend their days looking for something they can relate to, and the action is comprised of a series of small encounters, many of which (for instance, Madison and Dorothy McGuire’s war widow flanking a vet with the shakes at a lunch counter) are quietly devastating. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
A bit of an anomaly within Minnelli’s often more colorful and ebullient oeuvre, this black-and-white, paranoiac romantic thriller finds the master harnessing his consummate stylishness to spin a haunting, noirish tale. Timid Ann (Katharine Hepburn) marries the highly eligible Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), whose wealth and good looks conceal an underlying and profound cruelty. Ann grows increasingly obsessed with learning the truth about what happened to Alan’s brother, Michael (Mitchum), who has been missing for some time… This gripping movie casts Hepburn, Taylor, and Mitchum all against type, and was one of three films that Mitchum filmed simultaneously following his breakout performance in The Story of G.I. Joe. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Tourneur’s landmark noir boasts one of Mitchum’s most iconic roles. He is magnetic as Jeff, the low-key proprietor of a gas station in small-town California. When some ill-intentioned characters from Jeff’s shadowy past arrive on the scene looking for him, it sets off a riveting chain of events that reunites him with Kathie (Jane Greer, one of the all-time great femme fatales), the slippery girlfriend of powerful and shady Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). Out of the Past is singularly rich with twists, turns, and profound ideas concerning the complex relationship between the past, the present, and fate. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Walsh’s powerful, very dark and Freudian film noir/western hybrid—a favorite of Martin Scorsese—stars Mitchum as Jeb, the only survivor of a brutal massacre that wiped out the rest of his family when he was a boy. He is then adopted into the home of another family (led by chilly matriarch Judith Anderson), where he comes to fall in love with his foster sister (Teresa Wright). Now an adult, Jeb still yearns to untangle the messy, suppressed memories of his childhood trauma, and of the mysterious one-armed man who has haunted and tormented him throughout his life. Told in elaborate flashback, with frequent expressionistic touches, Pursued opened up new paths for the western and remains one of Mitchum’s great achievements. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
This adaptation of writer/director-to-be Richard Brooks’s novel The Brick Foxhole, about a group of vets, led by Robert Mitchum’s Sergeant Keeley, searching postwar Washington for their amnesiac friend (George Cooper) so they can clear him of a murder charge, embodies the essence of what has come to be known as “film noir”—moody, troubled characters; nocturnal action; chiaroscuro cinematography; low-key acting spiced with bits of bravura eccentricity; and a plot so crazy that it feels like a nightmare. If Robert Ryan’s unhinged southern bigot, Gloria Grahame’s thoroughly disenchanted cocktail hostess, and Paul Kelly as her ex-(or maybe not) husband get to play the acting solos, Mitchum does a beautiful job on rhythm. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Lewis Milestone
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) adapted three of his own classic short stories to create a powerful family portrait in The Red Pony. Young Tom Tiflin is unable to find the love and guidance he needs from his parents. For friendship and support, Tom turns to easy-going hired hand, Billy Buck (Robert Mitchum). In an attempt to become closer to his son, Tom’s father gives him a red pony to raise. As the horse becomes the focus of Tom’s life, it ultimately drives the family further apart as Tom turns to Billy for help in rearing his beloved pet. Family ties and Tom and Billy’s friendship are put to the test when the red pony becomes sick. Directed by award winning director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) with an evocative and rich musical score by Aaron Copland.
Directed by Robert Wise
Robert Wise’s synthesis of western and film noir was a breakthrough for the director and further solidified Robert Mitchum as one of Hollywood’s most intriguing leading men. Mitchum plays Jim Garry, an underemployed cowboy enlisted by an old friend (Robert Preston) to collude in a scheme to get an aging cattle owner to sell off his herd at a discount. The deadly intrigue that results from this plot leads Jim to wonder whether he’s on the right side of the conflict and to further crave the trust of the cattle owner’s daughter (Barbara Bel Geddes). Mitchum flourishes amid Wise’s assured direction of screenwriter Lillie Hayward’s foreboding, twist-laden, psychologically rich script, adapted from a novel by Luke Short. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by John Farrow
Mitchum had a good time shooting this ambling comedy thriller, playing a down-on-his-luck gambler who takes a mysterious gig that brings him to an exclusive Baja resort, where he meets up with a colorful crew of characters, including a beautiful woman (Jane Russell) and her movie star boyfriend (Vincent Price). The good time came to a close with endless reshoots of a new ending conceived by RKO studio head Howard Hughes and directed by Richard Fleischer. It is one of Mitchum’s best films. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
“The kind of love I have for the film,” said Nicholas Ray of The Lusty Men, “is not as a filmmaker adoring a child, it’s as a part of the literature of America.” Set in the punishing, rootless world of the rodeo circuit, this is one of Ray’s very best films, and Robert Mitchum’s Jeff McCloud is its sad, busted, but still beating heart. According to Lee Server’s biography of the actor, Mitchum was so excited by his work in the film (in which he did many of his own stunts) that he went out with his director to celebrate, got drunk, appropriated a gun from an FBI agent, and fired it into a stack of dishes. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Joseph von Sternberg
Nicholas Ray was brought on to finish this atmospheric crime yarn after producer Howard Hughes forced Josef von Sternberg off the project. (Allegedly, Robert Mitchum helped write a few scenes with Ray.) But its initial director’s signature textures and tones still shine through: dresses and gloves sheathed in glitter; an Escher-like casino; a pier-set finale that recalls Sternberg’s The Docks of New York. It was, by all accounts, an unpleasant, tumultuous production. The final movie, though, is buoyant—a shimmering cinematic vacation starring Mitchum as an American runaway tasked with capturing a crime lord while also wooing a singer played by Jane Russell. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Otto Preminger
Robert Mitchum finds himself caught up in the machinations of a femme fatale in Preminger’s seminal noir. When ambulance driver Frank Jessup is summoned to a Beverly Hills mansion after wealthy Catherine Tremayne is evidently poisoned, he enters the orbit of her enterprising stepdaughter, Diane (Jean Simmons), who persuades Frank to quit his job and become her chauffeur—and ultimately her lover. But after sensing there may be a devious agenda behind her gentle facade, he must find a way to extricate himself from her schemes before it’s too late. Mitchum is as sympathetic and charismatic as ever in this gripping thriller to rival Preminger’s other great noirs. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by William Wellman
In this CinemaScope western adventure, Robert Mitchum is ex-con farmer Matt Calder, who lives with his young son in a remote riverside area. Gambler Harry (Rory Calhoun) and his fiancée Kay (Marilyn Monroe), a former saloon singer, are stranded while en route to collect on a mining claim, and Matt takes them in. When Harry tests the limits of Matt’s hospitality, he makes off with his horse and rifle, leaving Kay behind. Susceptible to the threat of hostile Indians, Matt, his son, and Kay make off down the river in Harry’s abandoned raft, but the river itself proves to be just as perilous… Monroe and Preminger had a famously rocky on-set rapport (prompting Preminger to buy out his own contract from Fox), but Mitchum’s effortless subtlety beautifully balances Monroe’s broad strokes. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by William Wellman
Mitchum reunited with his Story of G.I. Joe director William Wellman (“I was very, very fond of him,” Mitchum said of Wellman, “and he tolerated me”) for a different kind of movie, based on a Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel, about a homesteading family in snow country whose livestock is being destroyed by a roaming mountain lion. Wellman and his DP William Clothier (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) worked out a stark visual design, keeping everything—sets, costumes, make-up, and exteriors—in black and white tones, with the exceptions of one scarlet hunting jacket and one yellow scarf. They also shot on location at Mt. Rainier, where 30-foot snowdrifts made for the most arduous and exhausting shoot of Mitchum’s career. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Charles Laughton
Robert Mitchum’s turn in the only film directed by Laughton is a towering achievement. An expressionist, southern gothic noir, The Night of the Hunter (adapted by James Agee from Davis Grubb’s novel) tracks the devious exploits of self-styled reverend and serial killer Harry Powell (Mitchum) as he gets out of jail and sets out to wed Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), the widow of his deceased cellmate, and murder her for her hidden fortune; it falls to her children to stop the madman living in their house. Mitchum is the charismatic monster lurking at the center of Laughton and Agee’s lyrical nightmare (one of only two films completed from an Agee script), and it ranks among cinema’s greatest and most chilling performances. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by John Huston
With a clever script by director John Huston and screenwriting veteran John Lee Mahin, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) stars Roberts Mitchum as a no-nonsense Marine and Deborah Kerr as a dedicated nun: a decidedly odd couple stranded on a South Pacific island overrun by hostile Japanese forces during World War II. Their struggle to survive and their growing friendship are beautifully captured by the camera of superb cinematographer Oswald Morris, and given further support by composer Georges Auric's lovely score.
Directed by Arthur Ripley
This tale of moonshine runners in the hills of Tennessee and Kentucky was the most personal project of Robert Mitchum’s entire career—in addition to starring, he produced and co-wrote it. Korean War vet Lucas (Mitchum) returns home and sets about working for his family’s moonshine business, making perilous deliveries in a modified hot rod. But he soon finds himself taking heat from both the cold-blooded city gangsters who want to take control of the moonshine network and the cops who want to crack down on it. A veritable cult classic with driving scenes that still seem daring, Thunder Road is both an exhilarating ride and a richly characterized expression of Mitchum’s artistry. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Robert Parrish
This Technicolor western adapted from a novel by Tom Lea stars Robert Mitchum as an expat mercenary who fled to Mexico at age 14 after avenging his father’s murder. He’s hired by a cruel Mexican governor (Pedro Armendáriz) to carry out an arms deal that takes him to Texas, where his refusal to help hunt Apaches puts him in conflict with a U.S. Army major (Gary Merrill)—and into the orbit of the major’s unhappy wife (Julie London). Mitchum’s layered performance as a reluctantly violent man at a moral crossroads, and caught between two national identities, is the heart of Parrish’s elegiac, cerebral western, exquisitely shot by Alex Phillips and Floyd Crosby. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli’s widescreen color melodramas for MGM are all very special, and this adaptation of William Humphrey’s sprawling 1958 saga of an overpowering Texas landowner and his family (with echoes of Giant and The Big Country) is one of the finest. Mitchum—whose Captain Hunnicutt was intended for Clark Gable—got along very well with Minnelli (they’d worked together a decade earlier on Undercurrent), but less well with his younger co-star George Peppard, who asked Mitchum if he’d studied the Stanislavsky Method. “No,” said Mitchum, “but I’ve studied the Smirnoff Method.” (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr star in a heartwarming romance as big as the Australian Outback--The Sundowners. Australia, 1920s. Ida Carmody (Kerr) loves her husband, Paddy (Mitchum), and Paddy loves the wandering life traveling the wide-open Outback as a sheep drover. Ida and their son, Sean (Michael Anderson), long to settle down on a ranch of their own. But no ranch can ever be big enough to hold hard-drinking, hard-gambling Paddy, no matter his intentions. And Ida should know that forced to choose between the home she yearns for and a wanderlust life with Paddy, she will follow her heart ... and her husband.