I Love Old Movies

Among the many programs featured each year at the film festival it is perhaps the archival program that I enjoy the most. I have screened many great films from years past, both well known and obscure, in large venues packed with movie lovers.

This year's archival screenings are introduced by Robert Osborne, that knowledgeable, film-savvy host from Turner Classic Movies. He's like a professor: he knows everything about every movie ever made. And he is also much like a favorite uncle who knows all the family gossip, but in Osborne's case they are stories from Hollywood's Golden Age. Watching him introduce a movie is like having him in your living room, rummaging through you DVD collection and offering observations like,"Once Hitchcock completed filming the classic shower scene he realized he could never use Janet Leigh in a movie again because viewers would forever associate her with Psycho."

Osborne introduced The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, a lively, colorful and action-packed yarn that has held up well in the 71 years since it was released. Today marked the first time I have seen it on the big screen, and it plays very well. Warner brothers sent along a short to accompany the screening called "Rabbit Hood," starring Bugs Bunny and Errol Flynn.

Osborne also introduced the 1950 Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard, and told an amusing story about mogul Louis B. Mayer (who walked out of a screening of the picture) blasting Wilder for making a film that made Hollywood look bad. And so it does, but the film, starring William Holden in his break-through role, and Gloria Swanson, is considered the best movie about Hollywood ever made, and among the best films to ever come out of the studio system.