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Event
New 35mm Restoration: WENT THE DAY WELL? (1942)
Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 14-16, 2011:
Los Angeles Premiere of the NEW 35mm RESTORATION!
(only previous L.A. screening was at the TCM Festival)
WENT THE DAY WELL?
1942, UK, 92 minutes, 35mm, Rialto Pictures
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti
Based on a story by Graham Greene
Starring Leslie Banks, C.V. France, Valerie Taylor,
Marie Lohr, Basil Sydney
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Show times (all times PM)
Fri, Oct. 14: 7:30, 9:30
Sat, Oct. 15: 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
Sun, Oct. 16: 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
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What the Critics Say About WENT THE DAY WELL:
"FILM OF THE WEEK! #1 CRITICS' PICK! THE CHANCE TO SEE THIS RARITY IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO INDULGE IN THE SORT OF CINEMATIC ECSTASY THAT MAKES US OBSESSED WITH MOVIES IN THE FIRST PLACE! The smooth switch-up from typical Ealing satire to a tense WWII thriller is nothing short of a narrative coup. Home-front propaganda has rarely seemed so cutthroat or so cunning."
David Fear, Time Out New York
"UNDESERVEDLY FORGOTTEN! Cavalcanti handles the story with crisp, vigorous wit. Went the Day Well? contemplates some pretty grim stuff, but with equipoise, discipline and a sense of humor that embody exactly the virtues it sets out to defend.
A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"A POTENT THRILLER! Think of Britain's Ealing Studios and sophisticated, gently mordant comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob will likely come to mind. But Alberto Cavalcanti's recently rediscovered and rereleased World War II propaganda film is a different beast entirely... that's since been compared to Peckinpah's explosively violent Straw Dogs and Wolf Rilla's horror film Village of the Damned."
Kristin M. Jones, The Wall Street Journal
"REMARKABLE! Begins as a precursor to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and escalates into all-out action as the unlikely villagers take up arms."
J. Hoberman, Village Voice
"Might have been a model for the kind of thing Hitchcock made during his peak period, The Birds in particular. The Brazilian-born Cavalcanti deploys baroque framing and tilted camera angles only sparingly, preferring instead to ratchet up the tension, paradoxically, but ingeniously, by applying a consistent style and rhythm across a developing narrative."
Jamie N. Christley, Slant Magazine
"THE BEST, MOST FEROCIOUS PICTURE OF THE WAR YEARS! THE WORK OF A TRUE AUTEUR."
Phillip French, The Observer
"Cavalcanti establishes, with loving care and the occasional wry wink, the ultimate bucolic English scene, then takes an almost sadistic delight in tearing it to bloody shreds in an orgy of shockingly blunt, matter-of-fact violence. Still truly unnerving, one can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for audiences facing the very real threat of Nazi enslavement."
Tom Huddleston, Time Out (London)
"Its influence shows up in Dad's Army, in Village of the Damned, and maybe even, with a twist, in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds... Thora Hird's performance as the stout-hearted land girl seeing off the Nazis is a joy, as is the infant Harry Fowler, playing the Just-William-ish lad who has a role to play in defending these islands. The dialogue about exotic animal recipes, when the besieged inhabitants of Paris in 1870 allegedly ate the occupants of the city zoo, is pure surrealist oxygen."
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"One of the most remarkable slices of wartime propaganda ever filmed. Its very oddness is magnificent, as though Dad's Army had suddenly morphed into a guerilla conflict of kill-or-be-killed."
The Independent
"Violence gains the upper hand in the second half of the movie, with a harshness that has no equivalent in British cinema of the period. Shots are fired in the back, the Germans who lob grenades at women and children are skewered on bayonets and finished off with blows of a gun butt.
Cavalcanti never refuses to delve into the consequences of violence... He never hides the price that must be paid."
Bertrand Tavernier
"What distinguishes [it] is Cavalcanti's cool, brutal depiction of suddenly erupting violence and death; not only are British 'heroes' often dispatched with shocking realism, but quiet, cozy housewives find themselves killing the enemy with almost hysterical relish."
Geoff Andrew
"A PROFOUND STUDY OF ENGLISHNESS AND A MASTERPIECE OF UNEASE! Went the Day Well? joins the askance, impolite, Romantic tradition that includes the work of Powell and Pressburger, Nicolas Roeg, Terence Davies, Derek Jarman and Ken Russell. It is based on a story by Graham Greene, but its inventiveness and non-conformism smell of its director, Alberto Cavalcantia filmmaker impatient with the real, in love with the sonic, poetic, rhythmic and discomforting."
Prospect Magazine
"ONE OF THE MOST CHILLING AND EFFECTIVE OF ALL BRITISH WARTIME FILMS. It is the clear-eyed realistic direction by that eternal outsider, Alberto Cavalcanti, who was always something of a cuckoo in the cozy Ealing nest, that is the chief reason why Went the Day Well? is so very different from the better known and so much more sweetly comforting and familiar Ealing films of the early post-war period."
Senses of Cinema
"ENGAGING AND SURPRISINGLY AFFECTING. Cavalcanti's design sense serves him well, and the beautifully lit scenes and crisp editing look like something MGM could have been proud of. William Walton contributes a brief but suitably grand score."
Kristin Thompson
"A RICH AND PROVOCATIVE FILM. Deserves to be celebrated more widely."
David Cairns
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LocationNew Beverly Cinema
7165 W. Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
United States
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