THE CINEMA REBORN 2026 CATALOGUE IS NOW ON SALE

Here’s the splendid cover of the Cinema Reborn 2026 catalogue. Editor Anne Rutherford and designer David McLaine have assembled 88 pages of superbly written commentary by 30 contributors ranging from highly esteemed international critics to a bunch of insightful young local writers, critics and scholars. 

In Sydney the catalogue is on sale ($15) at Radio Free Alice 136a Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst, Store Hours: Mon - Sat: 11am - 6pm. In Melbourne its on sale at Asphalt Books,Nicholas Building, Level 4, Room 23/37 Swanston St, Melbourne, Thursday, Friday & Saturday 12-6pm

It will be on sale at our foyer Information Desks at the Ritz Cinemas in Sydney and the Lido Cinemas Hawthorn throughout the festival.

For those out of town who would like a copy we can send it by post for $20. Send an email to cinemareborn2025@gmail.com and we’ll give you the bank details for direct deposit and post it off as soon as we receive payment.

CINEMA REBORN - 2025 PROGRAMME LAUNCHED + ANDREI TARKOVSKY, CHARITABLE DONATIONS

THE CINEMA REBORN 2025 PROGRAM LAUNCHED Our biggest ever selection of restored classic cinema is now revealed on the Cinema Reborn website. All sessions for our Sydney and Melbourne seasons are set out with short notes on all of the films. The selection ranges from the 1920s with the newly-restored silent masterpiece STELLA DALLAS to the 1990s. We have four programs of films by Australian directors and another superb selection of Hollywood classics, European award-winners and some remarkable works from the Philippines, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Lebanon. To explore the whole program head for our website at cinemareborn.com.au There are links on each page enabling you to book at the Ritz and the Lido. BOOKINGS NOW OPEN If you were one of those who ordered an advance copy our 24 page program booklet you may already know just what you want to see and when. If so you can head straight to the Ritz and Lido websites and start booking now. Members of the Ritz and Lido Movie Clubs receive concessions at all sessions. Cinema Reborn offers student concession tickets of $15 for all sessions except for THE SACRIFICE. For the Ritz https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/events/cinemareborn-2025   For the Lido https://www.lidocinemas.com.au/events/cinema-reborn-2025 If you would like a digital Pdf copy of the program booklet emailed to you just send an email to cinemareborn2025@gmail.com SCULPTING IN TIME: THE FILMS OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY Leading up to Cinema Reborn 2025 we are  delighted to announce a collaboration with Ritz, Lido and Classic Cinemas in presenting a complete retrospective of the feature films of master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. These will be the first ever screenings in Australia to be devoted to a full career review of this master filmmaker. Tarkovsky’s work was previously at Cinema Reborn in 2022 when his masterpiece Mirror was presented in a superb 4K restoration. The retrospective will begin at the Ritz Cinemas in Sydney on March 20 and Lido and Classic Cinemas in Melbourne on March 27, where Tarkovsky’s debut feature Ivan’s Childhood will be screened at 7pm on those dates. In Sydney there will be an introduction to the season at the Ivan’s Childhood screening by Sydney University film studies scholar Matilda Mroz and the main screening of The Sacrifice during the Cinema Reborn 2025 season will be preceded by an introduction by actor, educator and film-maker Richard James Allen. In Melbourne, critics Grace Boschetti (Ivan’s Childhood) and David Heslin (The Sacrifice) will introduce those sessions at the Hawthorn Lido. The Sacrifice will be a part of the 2025 Cinema Reborn season at the Ritz on Thursday 1 May and at Lido on Thursday 8 May, and will  also screen at Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick on Thursday 8 May. Full details of the Tarkovsky retrospective, with links to bookings at each of the cinemas, may be found here0. The Hawthorn Lido https://www.lidocinemas.com.au/events/sculpting-in-time-the-films-of-andrei-tarkovsky The Randwick Ritz https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/events/sculpting-in-time-andrei-tarkovsky The Elsternwick Classic https://www.classiccinemas.com.au/events/sculpting-in-time-the-films-of-andrei-tarkovsky CHARITABLE DONATIONS Cinema Reborn has established a page to enable our supporters to make tax-deductible donations to support our work. Our organisation is run by a group of film industry professionals, working critics, curators and film conservation specialists. All work in an entirely voluntary capacity. Nevertheless there are significant costs, most notably our screening fees, which have to be met each year and we are always grateful for the financial support we receive that defrays these costs and charges. If you would like to make a donation you may do so via via the attached link established by the Australian Cultural Fund which enables small unincorporated organisations like ours to use a service which would otherwise not be easily accessible. To make a donation any time between now and the end of Cinema Reborn 2025 click on this link https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2EMn00000FDsl8MAD/cinema-reborn-2025 CINEMA REBORN MAILING LIST Please forward this email to any friends who may be interested in our presentations of restored cinema classics. Invite them to join our mailing list by sending an email to cinemareborn2025@gmail.com

AT CINEMA REBORN - A Filmic Postcard -Janice Tong responds to a fresh viewing of LE SAMOURAÏ (Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1967)

Poetics of an empty branch: Melville’s Le Samouraï

 

The superb 3 minute opening sequence is a masterclass of film-making

An empty interior in semi-darkness, two large rectangular windows with its curtains drawn wide cast an eerie pre-dawn light into the room, its ghostliness reflected on the ceiling; in between the two windows in the drab light, is a birdcage, we can hear the bell-like chirp of a bird. Oh, but the room is actually not empty at all; we detect a brief movement from the lone figure who is lying on the bed on the right hand side of the screen. They proceed to light a cigarette and a cloud of smoke rises from where they lay. The small bird keeps up its lonely singular cry; the traffic outside continues to pass.

 

We have arrived: at a world where life and death is thinly disguised as a choice on the edge of a blade; and death, as well as life, can only be experienced in solitude.

 

the enigmatic stoicism of Delon's Jef Costello

This poetic neo-noir lures us into its milieu without the need of dialogue; like the end sequence of Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild (1990), we find ourselves deeply invested in the life of this lone figure within the first few minutes of the film’s opening. His silence continues as we watch him get up, put on a raincoat and fedora with a practised motion that is cat-like, balletic. He then goes out into the street and steals a car, drives it to a grimy garage in an isolated part of town; number plates changed, a gun and money exchange hands – all without its characters uttering a word. 

 

There is an ontological fatalism at the core of this film that saturates Alain Delon’s character, Jef Costello – indifference oozes out of him. He is a magnificent animal who hunts as absolutely as he loves – magnetic and rare. So rare that, in fact, he may be a lone specimen in this jungle of crime. Paired with Melville’s eye, the lithe rhythm of the film and its monochromatic palette, seems to indicate that Costello’s world was already exsanguinated at birth. Although we will soon find out that not all his exchanges are bloodless affairs. 

 

Jean-Pierre Melville, dubbed as the spiritual godfather of the French New Wave – you can see him in Godard’s Breathless (1960), where he has a cameo as a renowned author. In Godard’s film, he was asked the question “What is your ambition in life?” Where he answers: “I want to be immortal and then die.” It seems Melville has lived up to his fictitious dream – his films have immortalised him – and over the years, he has a developed a huge following especially from latter day directors, the likes of Tarantino, Scorsese, Bertolucci, Frankenheimer, as well as Johnnie To, and Takeshi Kitano; well-loved by film students and cinephiles alike. His films have the ability to indoctrinate any filmgoer with a sense of the charismatic, through his stylised cinematic universe. And this film, Le samouraï, made when the director was 50 years old and only 5 years before his untimely death in 1973, is one of his best. 

Melville as Parvulesco in Godard's Breathless

One man lineup

 

Born Jean-Pierre Grumbach, he had a penchant for all things American and kept his pseudonym of Melville, (after his beloved American writer Herman Melville) coined during the resistance. His noir and neo-noir films are stylistically sparse; in fact, Melville’s “dream is to make a colour film in black and white, in which there is only one tiny detail to remind us that we really are watching a film in colour.” So much so that he photocopied bank notes in black and white for Delon to use in the film; and his longtime collaborator, cinematographer Henri Decaë refused to even give a hint of colour detail in the opening scene.

 

In the book Melville on Melville by Rui Nogueira, the director described the fateful moment when he was at Delon’s apartment reading the script out loud to the actor. This was their exchange: “You’ve been reading the script for seven and a half minutes now and there hasn’t been a word of dialogue. That’s good enough for me. I’ll do the film. What’s the title?” “Le samouraï,” I told him. Without a word, he signed to me to follow him. He led me to his bedroom: all it contained was a leather couch and a samurai’s lance, sword, and dagger.” It seems that the Gods had deemed this role to be made for Delon. And so began their partnership that led to two other films, Le cercle rouge (1970) and Un flic (1972); the former, just like Le samouraï, has little to no dialogue; preferring the kind of laconic existentialism of Hitchcockian’s pure cinema – to stage a scene visually without dialogue.

 

Despite the stars aligning that evening, the pair had a stuttering start to their relationship, After the success of Le doulos (1962), Melville had wanted to adapt another Pierre Lesou novel with Delon as the lead. But Delon turned down this offer in order to pursue other international and US roles instead. It wasn’t until years later until Delon reconnected with Melville and asked for a chance to work together. At that time, the rights to Lesou’s novel, Main pleine was no longer available (it had already been adapted into a film two years previous), so instead, Melville decided to pitch something different to him: said to be a script he had written for Delon that combines a remake of the American noir film This Gun for Hire (1942) and Joan MacLeod’s novel The Ronin. Of course, the latter book never actually existed. You see, Melville has a fondness for inventing fictive novels and quotes. Famously, the epigraph at the start of Le samouraï: “There is no solitude greater than a samurai's. Unless perhaps it is that of a tiger in the jungle. – The Book of Bushido". Sure enough Bushido, or the way of the warrior exists as a text, but the quote is entirely fictional, made up by Melville. Similarly, the quote attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, at the start of Le cercle rouge was another of his inventions.

 

Nathalie Delon as Jane Lagrange

Fiction aside, moments of the ‘real’ surfaced during the making of this film. Melville cast Delon’s wife, Nathalie, for his lover and standing alibi, Jane Lagrange, because he thought they looked like brother and sister (and this is especially true. My husband actually commented on how symmetrical her features were and upon seeing her surname ‘Delon’ in the credits, immediately drew the conclusion that they were siblings). In the scene where they bid each other goodbye, Costello kisses her hair with his eyes closed; a wordless gesture that ended his relationship with his lover – that same evening, Melville came to learn that Alain and Nathalie have actually agreed to separate; so the intensity captured on camera was in fact, their intimate parting of ways. Another haunting farewell was by André Garet, a previous collaborator with Melville in Bob le flambeur (1956), he was the garage mechanic. Garet was incredibly ill at the time, and only took the role to please Melville. He ended his last scene with the words “I warn you Jef, it’s the last time.” It really was his last time – as Garet only had time to dub this voice over before he went into the hospital to die. And Delon’s reply “All right”, dubbed after he learnt of Garet’s passing, was also spoken like a farewell to Garet.

 

Even with the great reception of the film, with 1.9 million tickets sold in France; Le samouraï has had a troubled existence. During the shoot, Melville’s Studio Jenner, a studio he had built himself in the 13th arrondissement, burnt down to the ground on the 29th June 1967. This incident destroyed all of Melville’s archives and also killed the little bird – a female bullfinch – the sole companion of the assassin, that was also the symbol of his solitude and confinement. Melville’s untimely death and the confusion over who owns the rights to his films, meant that Le samouraï, completed in 1967, was only able to get a release, in a badly edited and dubbed-to-English version in the United States in 1972; ridiculously renamed The Godson, in order to ride on the success of Coppola’s The Godfather (1972)

 

Cathy Rosier

The ending (spoiler alert), for me, carries a certain existential stoicism of the samurai. (And yes, two endings were shot – a ‘smiling’ Jef, and the one that was kept in the film). For a samurai, suicide means a chance to be redeemed, preferring the choice of an honourable death rather than bring shame to his clan or family if captured by the enemy. Here, Costello chooses to give up one’s own life for another’s. His seppuku takes the form of a bullet to the heart; and this sacrifice was made for the nightclub singer, Valérie (Latin root for valiant) (Cathy Rosier) who did not give him up at the lineup; which in turn, makes her a target if Costello continues to escape capture by men who hired him, or by the police. For him to choose death over life perhaps also means that finally, he is able to escape solitude and the confines of his existence. 

 

Le samouraï  is currently screening as part of the Cinema Reborn 2024 program. There is one more screening in Melbourne of  the film before it leaves these shores for possibly quite a long time.  The newly restored 4K version is at the Lido Cinemas In Melbourne on 14th May 2024 at 6.00 pm. Go and get a ticket – you will be in for a treat! Click on the link to book.

CINEMA REBORN 2024 - OPENING PROGRAM - MIDNIGHT (Mitchell Leisen, USA, 1939) World Premiere of 4K Restoration by Universal Pictures

Claudette Colbert, Midnight

 

Cinema Reborn 2024 will open its forthcoming Sydney and Melbourne seasons with the World Premiere of the 4K restoration of one of the greatest screwball comedies of the 1930s, MIDNIGHT, made in 1939, directed by Mitchell Leisen, from a laceratingly funny script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer and Mary Astor. 

 

MIDNIGHT will screen at 7.00 pm on Wednesday 1 May at the Randwick Ritz in Sydney and at 7.00 pm on Thursday 9 May at the Hawthorn Lido in Melbourne

 

Cinema Reborn is proud to have been entrusted with the very first screenings of the new restoration and gives special thanks to Universal Pictures.

John Barrymore, Claudette Colbert, Midnight

 

Universal Pictures has been a longtime friend and supporter of Cinema Reborn and in the past has brought such titles as RUGGLES OF RED GAP, TROUBLE IN PARADISE, CRISS CROSS and DESTRY RIDES AGAIN to Cinema Reborn audiences. As Universal Pictures’ Managing Director Mike Baard acknowledges: Cinema Reborn has become a most welcome annual celebration of some of the finest works in cinema history. The Festival’s mission is of utmost importance, helping showcase the latest restoration efforts thereby allowing audiences to appreciate them anew and keep their legacy alive. Universal Pictures is thrilled to partner with Cinema Reborn to present the World Premiere of the 4K restoration of director Mitchell Leisen’s Midnight, from a script by the legendary Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. This film is part of our Studio’s on-going film restoration program making classic titles in our 100+ year old library available for today’s audiences for enjoy”

 

Back in 1939 MIDNIGHT was an immediate hit. Frank S Nugent in the New York Times called it:  “One of the liveliest, gayest, wittiest and naughtiest comedies of a long hard season. Its direction, by Mitchell Leisen, is strikingly reminiscent of that of the old Lubitsch…it’s really too daffy to be synopsized. You’ll have to take our word for it that it’s fun…Pictures like Midnight should strike more often.” – 

 

Wilder and Brackett’s script takes aim at European aristocrats, fashion trends and the ostentatious rich while exploring the frictions between wealth and love. Claudette Colbert plays an unemployed, gold-digging American showgirl stranded in a Parisian rainstorm, when she meets an amorous Hungarian taxi-driver (Don Ameche). Gate-crashing a party held by a socialite (Hedda Hopper), she meets a wealthy industrialist (John Barrymore) who hires her to pose as an American wife married to a Hungarian Baron. …

 

Claudette Colbert, John Barrymore, Midnight

Cinema Reborn is being presented in both Sydney and Melbourne in 2024. This will be its first Melbourne screening. In Sydney the film will be introduced by the President of the Film Critics’ Circle of Australia CJ Johnson and in Melbourne the screening will follow an introduction by critic Keva York who contributes to ABC Online and publications such as the Metrograph Journal, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and MUBI Notebook.

 

The Original Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KmF0gSiaTA&t=56s

 

Bookings for the Opening screenings in Sydney and Melbourne are now open and may be made direct through these links to the  Ritz website or the  Lido website. 

 

Restoration Details

For this restoration, Universal Pictures primarily used a 35mm nitrate comp fine grain. The picture element was dry gate scanned in 4K on an ARRI film scanner for a 4K workflow. Universal applied digital processes to improve flicker and stability, address diagonal streaking issues, and clean up film damage, dirt, scratches, and stains. Audio was restored from the 35mm comp fine grain. Digital audio restoration tools were applied to reduce optical anomalies, noise floor, hum, rumble, and sibilance where possible. Restoration services conducted by NBCUniversal StudioPost.

Francis Lederer, Mary Astor, Midnight

Stills (from the original on set still camera) available on request to filmalert101@gmail.com

 

For further information

 

Geoff Gardner

filmalert101@gmail.com

0416 912567