IL CINEMA RITROVATO - Frank Borzage, Katharine Hepburn, Lewis Milestone, David lean

"Can you tell me what are those badges are you are wearing? We've had a lot of people through today with them." Said the waitress at the rather nice restaurant Va Mo La, way down near the  university as we sat down for dinner. She said it in perfect English too. So we explained about our accreditation lanyards for Il Cinema Ritrovato  and she said "Ah yes I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the Piazza Maggiore last night. Spielberg is one of my favourite directors" A cinephile waitress no less. "Who is your favourite?" "Maybe Ettore Scola. I saw lots of his films with my parents on TV." Wow.... "Who else do you like?" "I like Toto" ...."And Alberto Sordi?" One of us prompted. "Oh yes. He's Roman and so am I"

Local favourite Ettore Scola

Not sure you'd have that conversation in Sydney...

But you may get a chance to see classic Hollywood... Till We Meet Again (Frank Borzage, 1944) has been given a magnificent makeover by Universal and the packed house loved every second of it, notwithstanding rather a lot of religious sentimentality and a continuing subtext about the obligations placed on those who serve the Lord not to lie. It's not an obligation always honoured, as the case of George Pell and his accompanying miscreants demonstrated, but here it's the foundation of a story of trust and betrayal involving Ray Milland as a shot down airman trying to get back home and of course carrying  documents that will win the war. Borzage had a great feel for war movies about trust and this one, while not in the same class as his masterpiece, Three Comrades, digs into the subject with a lot of grip.

Barbara Britton, Ray Milland, Till We Meet Again

Not sure Hollywood covered itself with glory with Lewis Milestone's Rain, restored but also restoring all the censorship cuts made after the Code came to be enforced (and on view in the YouTube and public domain copies that have been all we had to rely upon). Farran Smith Nehme's intro tried to sell us on the idea that this was a much better film than most people thought but I think I'm in the most people camp.

Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Summertime

Then there was a 35mm print of Summertime,  the only David Lean film which had eluded me, despite countless showings late night on the ABC over the years. It was part of Molly Haskell's Hepburn strand and although Molly didn't do an intro for this one, she has battled out lots of others despite taking a tumble on Bologna's cobblestones on the day of her arrival. Hepburn's Akron Ohio 45 year-old spinster being wooed by a supersmooth Rossano Brazzi on her first, likely only, trip to Venice has a timeless fascination. She acts every scene and it made me wonder if Lean had any control of her...Brazzi is mostly almost immobile but delivers his lines brilliantly. The fireworks display may have passed muster as a metaphor back in the 50s but it looks a bit quaint. I headed into the theatre having inadvertently found myself walking and chatting with Ian Christie. Ian's view was that I was in for a treat and that Lean had been given a hard time of it back in the sixties, the pack being lead by Andrew Sarris and the boys from "Movie". Ian was heading off to see a silent version of Les Miserables...