Quality Sunday screenings

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 16

Quality Sunday screenings

The Westend this Sunday introduces regular 8 p.m. screenings of major foreign, arthouse and classic movies. This special programme will run for seven Sundays, and if the concept is sufficiently well supported, may become a regular feature at the theatre. This initial programme has been varied quite widely — everything from recent film festival highlights through to major award-winning movies from previous years. A special emphasis has also been laid on classic works of the European cinema, since these cannot be correctly shown in their original versions on television. Members of the University of Canterbury Students’ Association, both of the Teachers' College Student Associations and the local film societies may obtain a reduction in the normal admission price by presenting their membership cards to the cashier on Sunday evenings. This Sunday’s screening is the Soviet Union-Japan film, “Dersu Uzala.” Although a Russian production, it was totally conceived and directed by the veteran Japanese film maker, Akira Kurosawa, who was officially invited to the Soviet Union and given a free hand to make this film. Set at the start of the century and based on fact, the story centres on the unusual and perilous adventures of a Russian survey

party exploring the wilderness that lies to the southeast of the Siberian mountains. A hauntingly beautiful and deeply moving film, "Dersu Uzala” has won more than 16 major international awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film — the first Russian movie to achieve this honour in almost 20 years. Other major works will include Fellini’s “La Strada” and “The Temptation of Doctor Antonio,” Peter Sellers in “Insomnia is Good for You,” the Howard Hughes fantasy, “Melvin and Howard,” Ingmar Bergman’s “Smiles of a Summer Night,” Roman Polanski’s “Cul-de-Sac,” Louis Malle’s “Frantic” (“Lift to the Scaffold”), Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” Rene Clair’s "Gate of Lilacs,” and “The Suitor,” starring the French mime clown. Pierre Etaix. The Academy Cinema, which has followed a policy of showing quality films of interest on Sunday evenings for quite some time now, will screen two Hollywood comedy classics this week at 7.15 p.m.: Billy Wilder’s “Some Like it Hot,” with Marilyn Monroe, and Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag, is truly great; and the original “The Pink Panther,” starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner and Capucine, introduced Sellers’s incredible version of Inspector Clouseau to the screen.