On 4K UHD - David Hare recommends "the 4K of the year" - BEN HUR (William Wyler, USA, 1959)

Another recent release is Warner's huge and vastly gorgeous, manifestly detailed new 4K two disc (Plus third BD extras disc) steelbook set of 1959's Ben Hur, directed by the great William Wyler with a superb score (some think his best) from Miklos Rosza, second unit direction by the great Yakima Canutt for the Chariot Race and a cast of thousands including grand muscle and toga work from Chuck Heston and Stephen Boyd.

On those two let's remind ourselves of second string writer Gore Vidal (one of at least four more) on outlining the motivation for the two old adolescent friends, Judah (Heston) and Messala (Boyd) now reuniting after a youthful love affair only to be ripped apart by Judah's monotheistic zealotry. The first embrace has Heston literally slathering and drooling over Messala's neck. This barely concealed queerness gets another huge workout in the late Act 1 galley slave sequence when Jack Hawkins, fresh from The Bridge on the River Kwai takes to adopting Chuck as his "son" (one word for it) , fortuitously indeed as this grace and favour ultimately leads the "hero" into getting the rounds of a lifespan to shadow his near invisible contemporary, Jesus Christ. The movie darts around the religiosity very nicely but that's Wyler for you. A total expert at extracting the essences of narrative from the acres of flowery prose in the original novel.

Whatever else you want to make of it the show is genuinely epic with absolutely expert, tight direction from Wyler who stuck with the seemingly unwieldy 2.65 Aspect Ratio of the new Metro65 anamorphic 70mm format which manages to set everything up basically from (rarely) full wide to medium wide to occupy the focal depth with detail of importance while the script blocks and stages the players with long takes and very great, limpid technique. Wyler has a very attractive tic, not noticed by me previously, of doing edits from wider to closer shots of the same actor while speaking or listening to animate what Gore Vidal and the other credited and uncredited writers kept of the original thousand pages Lew Wallace nightmare.

The movie, I must confess has the very grand status of having introduced me to my first stirrings of homosexuality as a boy child, in particular the raft scene with Chuck and Jack Hawkins cut loose from the wreckage on the Roman barge. Hawkins and me both could not get enough of Chuck's very fine figure at this stage of his career (the year after he got Welles the gig to make Touch of Evil at Universal.) If anyone could ever be said to have tamed a performance of range and sublety out of Chuck, it was Wyler.

All the cast members are right, and fine, even Dame Frank Thring, late of Melbourne, playing Balthasar as a screaming dinner party queen. It works. He works, and everyone around him works with it. Even in his first shot and dialogue Thring manages to eyeball-undress Chuck and lick him remotely from top to toe in five seconds of screen time.

Movies like this don't get made any more. They're actually too sophisticated and the audiences are no longer there to really "get" them.

I recommend this as 4K of the year so far.

CINEMA REBORN – JANUARY NEWSLETTER ANNOUNCING THE FIRST TITLES and MULTI-TICKET DISCOUNT VOUCHERS

 

Shirley MacLaine, Artists and Models

Cinema Reborn 2026 is off and running with screening details announced of our first four titles. We’ve taken over the Classic Matinees and Make it Musical weekend time slots at the Ritz (1-10 May) and the Lido (8-17 May) and we’ll be presenting four Australian premieres of four films from Hollywood’s Golden Age all in beautiful new 4K restorations. We’re also announcing here details of our multi-ticket concession price passes which you will be able to buy and use to book these titles as well as the eighteen titles to come. 

The Heiress (Dir. William Wyler, USA, 1949)                                                                               

‘It’s a peerless, super-controlled movie … Wyler’s greatness here is that he can hold the elements of the film in his palm without constricting the actors. He frees them.’ – Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

‘It’s immaculately acted and crafted – it’s one of the finest films ever made about nineteenth-century America.’ – Martin Scorsese

In mid-nineteenth-century New York, the timid and ungainly Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland) lives with her wealthy father (Ralph Richardson), who spitefully measures her up against his beloved late wife. When Catherine is courted by the beguiling but fortuneless Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), her father’s resistance leads to grievous revelations about the true feelings of both men. 

Montgomery Clift, Olivia De Havilland, The Heiress

Based on a stage play adaptation of the 1880 Henry James novel Washington Square, William Wyler’s elegantly mounted character study is a prime example of classical Hollywood filmmaking and among the director’s finest achievements. It was the biggest winner at the 1950 Oscars, taking home awards for art direction, costume design, Aaron Copland’s score and de Havilland’s performance.

For session times and bookings at the Randwick Ritz click here

For session times and bookings at the Hawthorn Lido click here

Only Angels Have Wings  (Dir. Howard Hawks, USA, 1939)

‘A completely achieved masterpiece … drawing together the main thematic threads of Hawks’s work in a single complex web.’ – Robin Wood

‘The most amiable great movie ever made.’ – Michael Sragow, The Criterion Collection

Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth, Only Angels Have Wings

In South America, a group of intrepid pilots led by the laconic Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) navigate treacherous conditions to deliver airmail across the Andes, facing the possibility of death with every flight. Director Howard Hawks drew from his own experiences with aviation in creating this seminal adventure drama, which represents a masterful synthesis of the themes of his 1930s output. Co-starring Jean Arthur as spirited outsider Bonnie Lee – whose emotional openness contrasts Geoff’s stoicism – alongside Richard Barthelmess and Rita Hayworth in her first major role, Only Angels Have Wings is perhaps the quintessential demonstration of Hawks’s unparalleled ability to balance existential preoccupations with dazzling action sequences, humour and warmth.

For session times and bookings at the Ritz click here

For session times and bookings at the Lido click here

Artists and Models (Dir. Frank Tashlin, USA, 1955)

‘Provided the Dean Martin–Jerry Lewis duo with its finest screen hour … a dizzily reflexive play on movie illusion.’ – Adrian Martin

Comic book addict Eugene (Jerry Lewis) has lurid dreams about the adventures of avian superhero Vincent the Vulture. In waking hours, his favourite character is sexy crime fighter Bat Lady; unbeknownst to Eugene, however, not only is the comic strip’s creator Abigail (Dorothy Malone) living in the very same apartment block, but Abigail’s flatmate – and model for Bat Lady – Bessie (Shirley MacLaine) has taken a shine to him. Meanwhile, Eugene’s own roommate, self-assured painter and ladies’ man Rick (Dean Martin), has his sights set on Abigail – and, thanks to Eugene’s habit of talking in his sleep, an idea for a sneaky new business opportunity … 

Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Artists and Models

Shot in glorious VistaVision and featuring colour schemes that only Hollywood could invent, Frank Tashlin’s musical romantic comedy Artists and Models satirises mid-’50s moral panics over the supposedly corrupting influence of comic books while offering a sublime canvas for Martin and Lewis’s legendary double act.

For session times and bookings at the Ritz click here

For session times and bookings at the Lido click here

One Hour With You  (Dir. Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1932)

‘This charming, richly detailed film is a jewel in the director’s crown, and one of the finest musical comedies of the early sound era.’ – Wheeler Winston Dixon, Senses of Cinema

Maurice Chevalier, Jeannette MacDonald, One Hour With You

Even though this pre-code reimagining of his 1924 silent film The Marriage Circle was originally handed to a young George Cukor to direct, Ernst Lubitsch stepped back in midway through production to take the reins, lending his inimitable style to this comic tale of a loving couple simultaneously encountering opportunities for infidelity with each other’s unscrupulous friends. Brightened by a dash of Viennese operetta, some Parisian boulevard humour and recurring fourth-wall breaks from male lead Maurice Chevalier, Lubitsch’s musical also benefits from the gorgeous voice of fellow star Jeanette MacDonald and eight songs mostly composed by Oscar Straus and Leo Robin. Nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, One Hour With You is a fine example of the slyly subversive sex comedies that Lubitsch and his contemporaries perfected in early 1930s Hollywood – the likes of which would shortly be wiped out by the arrival of the censorious Motion Picture Production Code.

For session times and bookings at the Ritz click here

For session times and bookings at the Lido click here

MULTI-TICKET DISCOUNT PASSES

We are responding to public demand by introducing a discount pass for those who want to see the maximum of Cinema Reborn at the lowest possible price. Five ticket passes are $80 and ten ticket passes are a super-bargain at $140. Each ticket allows a maximum of two redemptions per session.

To buy a pass for sessions at the Ritz click here and fill in the box for which Voucher  you wish to purchase

To buy a pass for sessions at the Lido click here and fill in the box for which Voucher  you wish to purchase

Volunteers

Cinema Reborn always has a need for volunteers to help on our information desk and to monitor the door at the screenings. If you would like to know more send your name to cinemareborn2025@gmail.com and mention which city you are in and your availability (Nights, Weekends, Daytime). If you would like to know what it’s like to volunteer then here’s a glowing testimonial from one of those who worked on the 2025 program.

“I’m happy to share that I’ve been involved as a volunteer with the Cinema Reborn film festival 2025. Over the course of the festival, I assisted with the smooth running of ten film sections, welcomed audiences and supported venue operations. Grateful to be part of a passionate community celebrating film heritage and restoration. Special thanks to Grace Boschetti and Kevin Cassidy for creating a warm, supportive environment for all the volunteers; it made the experience even more memorable! Looking forward to more opportunities like this in the future!

If you know a young person who might enjoy being involved in the presentation of Cinema Reborn don’t hesitate to pass this newsletter to them and suggest they contact cinemareborn2025@gmail.com to make known their interest.

Charitable Donations

The major cost of presenting Cinema Reborn comes from the screening fees paid to archives and producers. Since our inception supporters have understood the need for continuing support to ensure that the annual season is able to present the very latest and very best international and Australian film restorations.

Tax deductible charitable donations have enabled us pay these fees and keep our admission charges to regular Ritz and Lido prices (with the lowest student concessions of any similar film-related event). We have once again set up a page via the Australian Cultural Fund to receive donations of any size,  from large or small. You can find it IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK

CINEMA REBORN NEWS - Multi-ticket passes for 2026, Dates, Volunteers Wanted, Tax Deductible Charitable Donations

 Multi-ticket discount passes for 2026

For the first time we will be able to offer multi-ticket concession passes that will admit to any five or any ten titles in our program. The five film pass will cost $80 and the ten film pass will cost $140. These are substantial savings on general admission prices at the Randwick Ritz and Hawthorn Lido. When added to the concessions available to Movie Club Members at the theatres and the cheapest student discount tickets on offer anywhere we would like to think we are making it possible for our audience to sample a seriously large part of the total program. Details of the multi-ticket purchases will be available early in the new year when we announce the first four titles for 2026.

2026 Program

We are quite long way down the road to confirming our Cinema Reborn 2026 titles. A number of previously unrepresented countries and directors will be featuring in our program. Some of the great film-makers will also be represented for the first time including the esteemed film-makers pictured below and at the bottom of the text.

Dates for 2026

Cinema Reborn is changing its programming arrangements for 2026 to enable our program to be presented over two weekends. In Sydney at the Randwick Ritz we will be opening on Friday 1 May and closing on Sunday 10 May. In Melbourne the season at the Hawthorn Lido will commence on Friday 8 May and close on Sunday 17 May.

Volunteers

Cinema Reborn always has a need for volunteers to help on our information desk and to monitor the door at the screenings. If you would like to know more send your name to cinemareborn2025@gmail.com and mention which city you are in and your availability (Nights, Weekends, Daytime)

Charitable Donations

The major cost of presenting Cinema Reborn comes from the screening fees paid to archives and producers. Since our inception supporters have understood the need for continuing support to ensure that the annual season is able to present the very latest and very best international and Australian film restorations.

Tax deductible charitable donations have enabled us pay these fees and keep our admission charges to regular Ritz and Lido prices (with the lowest student concessions of any similar film-related event). We have once again set up a page via the Australian Cultural Fund to receive donations of any size, large or small. You can find it IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK

A new publication - An excerpt from HOLLYWOOD'S MELODRAMATIC IMAGINATION: Film Noir, the Western and other Genres from the 1920s to the 1950s by Geoff Mayer

Editor's Note: This is the Preface to Geoff Mayer's new book HOLLYWOOD'S MELODRAMATIC IMAGINATION: Film Noir, the Western and other Genres from the 1920s to the 1950s. The book is published by McFarland in the US and is available locally at a number of bookshops including the online service  BOOKTOPIA 

A second excerpt from the Chapter titled Film Noir, Virtue, the Abyss and Nothingness will be published here shortly. 

Thanks to Stephanie Nichols of McFarland and to Geoff Mayer for assistance in preparing these excerpts for publication here .

********************************

Ricardo Cortez, Bebe Daniels, The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931)

Not everything in the Hollywood cinema prior to 1960 was melodrama.Yet it is the foundation of the American cinema. It is not a singular genre; it is more expansive as it functions as a “genre-generating machine” responsible for a wide range of Hollywood genres. Above all else it dramatizes a world with (ethical) meaning as opposed to, for example, the nihilistic universe portrayed in Dashiell Hammett's Flitcraft parable in The Maltese Falcon. The Introduction, Chapters One and Two focus on the characteristics of the most popular form of melodrama, sensational melodrama. This type of melodrama offers the visceral pleasures of spectacle, con-frontation, high emotion and performance embedded in a bipolar clash between good and evil.

Mary Astor, Humphrey Bogart, The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)

This book stresses, however, that while the function of melodrama is to identify the existence of a moral universe, the social and political terms of this universe are not decided by melodrama. They are culturally determined.This is shown through a wide range of examples, from the “populist” westerns of the 1930s, to William Randolph Hearst's 1917 propaganda serial Patria and the “Yellow Peril” fiction of Sax Rohmer as well as President Roosevelt's response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7,1941.

Chapters Two and Three examine different types of melodrama produced in Hollywood in the 1930s for different audiences. The series western appealed to rural, small town and provincial audiences. These films, exemplars of sensational melodrama, were different aesthetically and thematically from the small number of A-budgeted westerns produced by the major studios. On the other hand,the “sophisticated melodramas of passion” favored by the major studios for their first run theaters in large urban centers were often anathema to rural and small-town audiences. 

Jeanne Eagels, Herbert Marshall, The Letter (Jean De Limur, 1929)

Chapter Three focuses on this type of melodrama and examples are drawn from W. Somerset Maugham's short stories “The Letter” and “Miss Thompson” (retitled“Rain”). Particularly important is the comparison between the 1929 film version of The Letter starring Jeanne Eagels and the 1940 version starring Bette Davis, the same story with different outcomes, largely as a result of different institutional and social factors. Unlike the morally “subversive” 1929 version, the conservatism of the 1940 film was primarily determined by Hollywood censor Joseph Breen's systemic application of the principle of compensating moral values.

Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, The Letter (William Wyler, 1940)

Chapter Four focuses on the “problematic”world of  film noirs, a world often presented as traumatized protagonists struggling to survive in an arbitrary universe. This chapter traces the shift from the gentleman detective formula to the hard-boiled variation, James M. Cain's extravagant melodramas of violence and passion and the importance of the gothic tradition in the 1940s crime/suspense film.Despite claims that film noir subverted  the moral and formal basis of the  Hollywood system, this chapter includes a wide range of examples to demonstrate that while there were notable shifts in the crime/suspense film in the 1940s, most Holly-wood films, especially A budgeted films from the major studios, retreated to the ethical world of melodrama. 

Particular attention is directed to the ramifications of John Huston's decision not to film the final scene in his script for The Maltese Falcon along with Billy Wilder's elimination of the gas chamber sequence from Double Indemnity. On the other hand, Out of the Past and Criss Cross represent  rare examples of studio films that challenged the world of melodrama. This deviation from Hollywood's determining  dramatic mode was even  more pronounced  in a number  of low budget films such as Detour and Decoy where the financial risks were minimal. 

The book concludes with a comparison between two seemingly similar films starring Robert Mitchum: Where Danger Lives and Angel Face. This follows an earlier comparison between two films directed back to back by Joseph Lewis in the mid-1940s:  My Name Is Julia Ross and So Dark the Night. Only one film in each example is a melodrama.

On Blu-ray - David Hare welcomes a new edition of William Wyler's DETECTIVE STORY (USA, 1951)

 

Kirk Douglas (above) looks across the police van to "Abortionist" George Macready (below) and mutters, "you must have been kissed by a vulture in your cradle", after learning that another one of his botched "patients" has died in hospital letting Macready once again off a rap. 

 

Screens are from Wyler's Detective Story released by Paramount in 1951. The picture broke some small ground with the overweening Breen Office, who initially refused to permit any direct assignation of abortionist to Macready's character, but let loose the absurd "baby seeding" smear in some dialogue which makes the character even more obvious. More importantly the picture finally broke the Hays Code ban on showing cops being killed in the line of duty. In part the movie plays with this new trope inspired largely by the Philip Yordan screenplay with its muted but audible concerns about the rise of an authoritarian police state, with officers unanswerable to the law.

 

The movie also often finds itself cast into the net of faux Noirs, although its antithetical procedural atmosphere and narrative is quite clear. What perhaps leads some viewers to a more poetic reading visually at least is the luscious staging, lighting and close-up photography by the veteran DP Lee Garmes, surely the greatest close-up photographer in American movies, along with Bill Daniels. Interestingly John Seitz, the veteran DoP of so many earlier chiaroscuro Paramount Noirs is uncredited here as second c0ameraman and it's Seitz' work that most likely contributes the few elements of Noir style to the picture. 

 

The title has been released in a very fine quality transfer from what looks like a new 4K scan from Paramount through the Oz label, Imprint.