Event

THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH in 35mm

Monday, September 3 @ 7:00 PM / Music Box Theatre
THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH
Directed by Basil Dearden 1957
This British gem about a young couple (Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers) who inherit a movie theater is strangely underseen considering how much cinema-dwellers love to see themselves on screen. Upon discovering they are not the proud new owners of the Grand (a sparkling modern cinema spied from their taxi window) but of a nearby derelict gothic dump the locals call the fleapit, the pair reluctantly decide to reopen said dump after their lawyer convinces them it may push the Grands owner to buy them out. The staff of the fleapit is a bickering triad of fantastic character actors. Peter Sellers (Mr. Quill, projectionist), Margaret Rutherford (Mrs. Fazackalee, cashier), and Bernard Miles (Old Tom, usher) are living embodiments of the building itselfshabby, full of loose screws, and impossible not to adore. McKenna and Travers gamely succumb to the joys and pains of running a decrepit single screen: elaborate concessions sales schemes, customers who pay in pork chops, and the eternal problems of management vs. projection. (My equipments more important than your rats! is a classic grievance.) This love letter to movie houses and their occupants will be felt keenly by anyone who watched a multiplex go up around the corner from their local neighborhood cinema and wished that once, just once, it would mysteriously burn to the ground. (RL)
80 min British Lion Films 35mm from Pinewood Studios, imported by Rialto Pictures
Short: Cinema Time Capsule (Scott Norwood, 2013) - 5 min - 35mm