For the first full day of TCMFF 2018, I started things off by doing two things I’d always wanted to do at the festival: go to an event at the Cinerama Dome and go to an event Eva Marie Saint would be at. Going to the screening of Grand Prix meant skipping one of my favorite movies — Witness for the Prosecution — but it was totally worth it because I’ll probably never be able to have that experience of seeing it in an original Cinerama Dome ever again.
I wouldn’t say it was my favorite movie of the festival, but it was one of my favorite experiences. Grand Prix was meant to be seen in Cinerama theaters and it made full use of every single inch of that massive screen. I absolutely could have ordered the DVD off Amazon when I got home or waited for TCM to show it, but it just wouldn’t have been the same. Plus, there wouldn’t have been the drama of seeing it in its original roadshow format, complete with overture and exit music. I really appreciated the effort they put into recreating the experience of seeing Grand Prix at the Cinerama Dome in 1966. They even handed out reproductions of the original program, similar to the ones you get when seeing a live theater show.
During the after-movie discussion with Eva Marie Saint, she stated that this wasn’t one of her favorites of the movies she made, but she was able to tell us stories about things like what it was like to work with legendary hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff. She also discussed what it was like to work with Brando on On the Waterfront.
After Grand Prix, I had originally been planning to head back to the TCL Multiplex to catch How to Marry a Millionaire. But when the discussion with Eva Marie Saint ran a little bit long, I didn’t have enough time to get over there. But I was just a few minutes away from the Linwood Dunn theater, where they were doing a special presentation of Harold Lloyd’s 3D photography, presented by Harold’s granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd, which I was extremely interested in anyway.
Whenever I talk to people who are attending TCMFF for the first time and they ask if I have any advice, one thing I’ll say is to just relax and go with it. And this is a good example of why I say that because even though the Harold Lloyd event wasn’t what I set out planning to go to that day, it ended up being one of my favorite events of the festival. This was a truly unique event that was so much more than just 3D photography, which was absolutely spectacular. He was a master at playing with depth. Lots of familiar faces were among his photography subjects, including Dick Powell, Arlene Dahl, Ronald Reagan, Jayne Mansfield, and Marilyn Monroe. Lloyd’s 3D photographs of Marilyn Monroe are actually the only time she is known to have been photographed in 3D. One photo that got a huge reaction from the crowd was one of Glenn Ford standing on the ledge of a cliff.
One of the biggest highlights of the event was getting to see some of Harold’s home movies. It’s always interesting to see the home movies of Hollywood legends because you can really learn a lot from them. The main thing I learned by seeing Harold’s home movies is that he very genuinely loved film technology. They showed a series of clips that spanned several decades and some of them were remarkably innovative in regards to the technology involved. There was footage of him with his family in the 1920s which was shot on 35mm, there was footage from the late 1920s/early 1930s which was in color, and most remarkably, there was footage from the 1930s which actually had sound.
They also screened a couple of his short films on a hand-cranked projector from 1909 and accompanied by one of the few remaining original fotoplayers from the silent film era. There was also a sequence from Safety Last! which had gone through an experimental 3D conversion. I normally have strong opinions against converting films to 3D when the filmmaker is no longer around to approve of it. But I believe that if any of the big silent film stars would be OK with having one of their movies converted to 3D, at least just as an experiment, it would have been Harold Lloyd. I was impressed by how good it looked.
After the Harold Lloyd event, I had a little bit of a break before checking out I Take This Woman starring Carole Lombard and Gary Cooper. I won’t cut corners on this one — it wasn’t a particularly great movie. The cast did the best they could with what they had to work with, but it just wasn’t the greatest script. However, I’m very happy that I at least had a chance to see it for myself. I’m a fan of both Lombard and Cooper so this is the sort of movie that I could picture myself reading about on IMDB and really wishing I could see it. Now I’ve seen it and I’m a little bit closer to seeing as many Carole Lombard movies as possible.
For my last movie of the day, I couldn’t resist the chance to see Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter on the big screen. There were a lot of great things going on during that time slot, but I always get such a big laugh out of Rock Hunter and I knew getting to see it on the big screen with a crowd was going to be a lot of fun — and I was not disappointed. There really isn’t anything quite like seeing a great comedy with an appreciative crowd. It had been a while since I’d last seen it, so all the jokes felt really fresh to me. It was a delightful way to end the day.
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