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October 18, 19, 20, 2024
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The Vintage Film Festival has a couple of changes to announce regarding its 2022 programme.
In addition to moving a few films around in the schedule for this year's Festival on October 21st, 22nd & 23rd, we are changing a couple of the titles.
The Mary Pickford Foundation will not have their remastered edition of her 1914 silent film Tess of the Storm Country available for us to screen this year. In its place, VFF 2022 will present 1923's Little Old New York. This movie, together with 1922's When Knighthood Was in Flower, made Marion Davies a silent screen star.
And, as our traditional foreign film offering, we will show, not Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, but something much more delightful for a Sunday morning: Jacques Tati's 1953 classic, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Les Vacances de M. Hulot).
Jacques Tati (1907-1982), born Jacques Tatischeff, was the grandson of an Imperial Russian Army general and a circus performer. After having spent a few years working in the family picture-framing business and playing semi-professional rugby, Tati exploited his innate talent as a mime in the development of an act called Impressions Sportives. It made him a star of the Parisian music hall stage during the Thirties, and led to performances in London and Berlin as well. During the same decade, he also starred in a few short films, some of which he wrote himself.
Following service in the Second World War, Tati returned to cabaret performance, and appeared in the 1946 comedy feature, Sylvie et le fantôme. Connections made on this production led to the making of films with Tati as director, as well as writer and star. His 1947 short, L'École des facteurs (The School for Postmen), won the Max Linder Prize for film comedy. He expanded the short into his first feature, Jour de fête (The Big Day), which received Le Grand Prix du Cinéma Français in 1950.
In 1953, Jacques Tati released what would be the first of four movies featuring his newly created title character, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. It won Tati an international reputation, and earned him and co-scenarist Henri Marquet an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Its sequel, 1958's Mon Oncle (My Uncle), won Tati the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the New York Film Critics Award, and a Special Prize at Cannes. It was followed by two more Hulot movies, Playtime (1967) and Trafic (1971).
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday is a film with very little dialogue: the comedy is largely visual (although it also generates humour from sound effects). M. Hulot himself is a comic character in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin's little tramp and Buster Keaton's “great stone face”. He also anticipates the very similar Mr. Bean, whose creator, Rowan Atkinson, acknowledged his debt to Tati.
Please join us this October, at Port Hope's beautiful Capitol Theatre, to enjoy thirteen films, featuring great actors in their breakout roles, at the 29th Vintage Film Festival!
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Great news! Beginning next year, the Vintage Film Festival will return to its traditional 3rd weekend in October timeslot. Mark your calendars for VFF 2022 on October 21st, 22nd & 23rd!
The theme for our 2022 Vintage Film Festival is "breakout roles". We'll be sharing thirteen great films which made one of their cast members a star, or vaulted an actor to a new level of renown. Check out this programme!
- James Dean in East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955)
- Cary Grant in The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)
- Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)
- Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet (Clarence Brown, 1944)
- Mary Pickford in Tess of the Storm Country (Edwin S. Porter, 1914)
- Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
- Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968)
- Gene Wilder in The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1968)
- Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)
- Sophia Loren in Two Women (Vittorio DeSica, 1960)
- Norma Shearer and Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Seastrom [Sjöström], 1924)
- Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942)
- Carole Lombard in Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934)
There is definitely something for everyone here! Every decade from the Teens to the Seventies is represented, as well as a huge range of vintage film genres: melodrama, gangster, horror, screwball comedy, film noir – as well as classic drama and comedy, and even something for the young people. As usual, we've made sure to schedule a musical, a foreign film offering, and two silent films which will be presented with live piano accompaniment. (The silent movies feature Canadian-born Mary Pickford and Norma Shearer, who will be joining Cobourg's own Marie Dressler as stars of the new Canadian Women in Film Museum: https://www.cdnwomeninfilm.ca/.)
Plan to join us next October, at Port Hope's beautiful Capitol Theatre, for the Vintage Film Festival!
Rick Hill, Chair
Vintage Film Festival Committee
Marie Dressler Foundation
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A highly successful 2021 Vintage Film Festival was presented on the weekend of September 24th, 25th & 26th! And this, after having had to cancel the planned 2020 Festival, and in spite of continued pandemic-driven restrictions on indoor activities.
Film fans came from all over Northumberland County, Durham Region and the GTA, and from as far afield as Kingston, Ottawa, Waterloo and London. More than seventy of them enjoyed the luxury of seeing as many movies as they wanted on a weekend pass, while nearly two hundred single tickets were sold (or given free to guests 25 and under).
All of these movie lovers were able to enjoy VFF 2021 thanks to:
- months of planning by the Vintage Film Festival committee
- tremendous support from the Capitol Theatre staff
- a generous grant from the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund
- a carefully prepared and executed COVID-19 Safety Plan, which protected the health of all patrons and volunteers
- many hours of time donated over the weekend by the Capitol's volunteers and by members of the VFF committee, the Marie Dressler Foundation board, and the community
- the cooperation and patience shown by all of our guests as they worked with us to conduct our Festival safely
