Sunday, April 13, 2014:
I went into the final day of the festival with very few plans in mind. A large part of Sunday’s schedule wasn’t announced until Saturday afternoon, so I didn’t want to get make a bunch of plans, only to end up having to make even more hard decisions once the “To Be Announced” slots were announced.
The Sunday “To Be Announced” slots are typically given to movies that were more popular than expected and deserve a second run. However, this year, the first “To Be Announced” spot was decided before the festival even started. Since Mickey Rooney had passed away just a few days before the festival, a screening of National Velvet was added to the schedule with Mickey’s long-time friend Margaret O’Brien in attendance to share her memories.
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Stay tuned for a post specifically dedicated to this event. TCM always does an excellent job with memorials and this was no exception. It was extremely heartfelt and touching; I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. A very fitting way to remember one of cinema’s most enduring stars.
After a lunch break, Jessica (Comet Over Hollywood), Carley (The Kitty Packard Pictorial/The Black Maria) got in line to see Gone With the Wind at the Chinese Theater. After the amazing experience of seeing A Hard Day’s Night there the day before, I absolutely loved the idea of seeing Gone With the Wind in that theater. We only stayed for the first half of the movie, but that was enough to blow me away. I had seen Gone With the Wind in a theater once before, but this was a totally different experience. Before, I had sat pretty far back in the balcony. This time, I was much closer to the screen and the impact of being so close was pretty intense. The print we saw was the new 75th anniversary print, which looked divine.
As fabulous as it would have been to stay for all of Gone With the Wind, Carley, Jessica and I were really eager to check out The Heart is a Lonely Hunter introduced by Alan Arkin. Earlier that afternoon, Arkin had recorded a “Live from the TCM Film Festival” interview with Robert Osborne at the Montalban theater. If the discussion before Heart is a Lonely Hunter was a taste of what’s to come in the Robert Osborne interview, I can’t wait to see that interview.
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was one of my few new-to-me movies of the festival and it was a good one. Alan Arkin gave an amazing performance in it and even though you know from the very beginning that it’s going to be a tearjerker of a movie, I wasn’t prepared for just how devastating the ending would be.
After a short break, it was already time for my final movie of the festival — Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger. The Lodger has long been on my list of movies to see, so getting to see it in a stunning digital print with live music by the Mont Alto Orchestra was an incredible way to get to see it for the first time. And I had the added bonus of watching it with my friend Trevor (A Modern Musketeer). Since Trevor and I became friends because we both love silent films, watching one together in person was a really good way to end the festival.
