ABTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Films Back For Festival

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 7

ABTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Films Back For Festival

A major theatrical contribution to the Pan Pacific Arts Festival will come from two Christchurch cinemas which will show four Shakespearean films in addition to ballet, jazz and foreign films. Sir Laurence Olivier is the ztar and director of two of the Shakespeare films, “Richard III” and “Hamlet.”

A new colour print of “Richard III” has been obtained from London by Amalgamated Theatres to take the place of a Polish film, “A Knife in the Water,” which was not available in time for showing during the festival. The film has a distinguished cast, including four knights of the realm, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. The music was composed for the film by Sir William Walton.

The other Shakespeare films are British productions of “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Susan Shentall and Laurence Harvey and directed by Renato Castellani, and “Macbeth,” with Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson, and

directed by George Schaefer.

A film with a more tenuous theatrical link is “The Man With the Green Carnation,” about the playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde. Three ballet films will be shown. “Black Tights” contains four dance sequences. “The Diamond Cruncher,” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “A Merry Mourning,” and “Carmen.” “The Royal Ballet,” a film produced by Paul Czinner, and starring Margot Fonteyn, contains Act 2 of “Swan Lake,” “Firebird,” and “Ondine.” “Cinderella" is a film of a complete Bolshoi Ballet production of Prokofiev’s ballet. “Jazz on a Summer's Day,” filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival, combines an informal study of the audience with the music of the performers. The foreign films which will be shown are “My Uncle,” starring the French comedian, Jacques Tati, “Wild Strawberries,” and “Virgin Spring,” both made by the famous Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, and an Italian film, “Rocco and his Brothers?’ All the films will be shown for one day, with the exception of “Richard III,” which will have a longer run. Appropriately, the film contribution to the festival will end with the showing of “Genevieve,” the film which led to the world-wide revival of interest in old cars. Genevieve, the 1904 Darracq car which stole scene after scene in the film, will be in Christchurch “in the metal” for the international vintage car rally.

This portrait of Sir Laurence Olivier as Shakespeare’s royal villain, Richard 111, by the Spanish painter, Salvador Dali, was commissioned by Sir Alexander Korda. It caused raised eyebrows even in the most bohemian of art circles. When asked if he had not erred in giving Sir Laurence Olivier three eyes instead of two, Dali replied: “C’est possible, I have had no time to count them.”