Film historian Karina LongworthS “You have to remember this“Podcast has been loved by Cinephiles since it was launched 11 years ago to explore“ The Secret and/or Forgotten Histories of Hollywood’s first century. “The last season,”The old man is still alive“Is Longworth’s most enlightening and entertaining to date. A deep dive into late career transformations of Hollywood legends, including Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcockand Otto Preminger“The Old Man Are Still Alive” explores how veteran leaders met with the challenges in a developing industry and changed flavors with varying degrees of artistic and commercial success.
The idea for the season started with a trip 2023 to Cinémathèque Française, where Longworth saw Vincente Minnelli’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” for the first time. “I thought of myself as a big Minnelli fan, and I hadn’t even known this movie,” Longworth told IndieWire. “I went to see it myself and had a very powerful experience. The fact that I had no one to talk to about it afterwards made me feel that I had to find some way to communicate that this movie exists, and it is incredible. ”
The following summer, Longworth was in Cinémathèque again for a show of John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, and the idea for a podcast season began to crystallize. “Connecting the two films felt really important to me,” Longworth said about “Liberty Valance” and “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” “They are both from 1962, and they are both made by guys who are more associated with their films in the 1940s but worked in the 1960s and, in Minnelli’s case, even in the 1970s and made some of their most risky and most interesting films during that time.”
When Longworth had Ford and Minnelli, it became a matter of thinking about who would include, and she quickly found that there were many other directors who created fascinating work at the moment that the film industry and the audience largely abandoned them. One of the great pleasures of “The Old Man Are Still Alive” is Longworth’s articulated defense of films that have been unfairly dismissed or ignored, as Billy Wilder‘S 1978 Gem “Fedora,’ A Hollywood poison pen letter that makes” Sunset Boulevard “look like” La la land. ”
“Another one I hope people will apply for is William Wylers’ The Liberation of LB Jones,” who really wasn’t on my radar before I started this season, “Longworth said. “It’s an extremely wavy movie for Wyler to do, not just as his last movie but as his follow -up of” Funny Girl. “There is rarely a composition of two things that are so different next to each other in a filmmaker’s career.” Longworth also points to George Steven’s “The biggest story ever told” as underestimated, although rumors have it a restoration is in the works. “Hopefully that movie is in line with evaluated,” she said.
Longworth’s own re-evaluations are eloquently articulated and consistent eye-opening, especially when she goes against the barley of calcified wisdom-as she often does throughout “the old man is still alive.” “There are not many large door stops published about film directors today, and when they are, they tend to be of the same half -dozen people, and they are not women,” Longworth said. “So I always feel that my perspective is a little different. Even putting gender aside, many of these directors have not been talked about how I talk about them, passing the biggest hits to talk about what happened. “
Longworth’s scholarship extends beyond her podcast to public programs that expand her work; One of the most significant of these is an ongoing repertoire series at Vidiots in Los Angeles, which consists of dual functions programmed by Longworth in connection with “The Old Man is still alive.” On Saturday, March 15, Vidiots will Screen Billy Wilders “The Apartment” and “Avanti!”; Previous double bills included Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” and “Torn Curtain” and Minnellis “Gigi” and “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
“The idea was to show a certified Banger, one of the director’s most popular films, with one of the latter, the Stranger films,” Longworth said. “The idea is that hopefully people will come for both and have a richer understanding of who these filmmakers are.” This weekend Longworth will also present a series of films on Frida Cinema In Santa Ana, California, Peter Bogdanovich’s wonderful (and criminal malignant in his time) is musical comedy “at long last love.”
“I think there are many interesting parallels between that movie and what I’m talking about this season of” You have to remember this, “said Longworth.” I always think of Bogdanovich as a bridge character between the old Hollywood and the new. “Speaking of the new Hollywood, Longworth also sees parallels between what her subjects went through 1960 Scorsese, Francis Coppola and Michael Mann are going through now.
“Look at Coppola that sweeps raids for ‘megalopolis’,’ Said longworth. “Fortunately, he has a humor and wrote a really elegant answer to that. But right now, in Hollywood and in culture in general, there is an appetite to attack people who are perceived as going beyond their boundaries. There is a desire to punish surplus, and unfortunately it leads to very homogeneous filmmaking from the studio. But guys like Scorsese and Coppola and Schrader and Mann have an understanding that every movie can be their last, so they really go for it, and I also saw it in some of these previous filmmakers. ”
There is no question where Longworth is in the spectrum between conformist thinking and authorist risk -taking. “I take a thousand” Ferrari is over most of what comes out every week, “she said.
“Avanti!“And”The apartment“Will be shown on Vidiots on March 15.”Finally longworth“Run March 8-13 at Frida Cinema. “You have to remember this: The Old Man Lives is still alive” is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms.
