The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present three classic Hollywood films as part of its “Some Like it Cool” film series Dec. 9-11.
Held in conjunction with the exhibition “Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury,” the festival will feature screenings of “Rebel Without a Cause” Tuesday, Dec. 9; “Anatomy of a Murder” Wednesday, Dec. 10; and “North by Northwest” Thursday, Dec. 11.All screenings are free and open to the public and begin at 7 p.m. at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Blvd.
The lineup:
“Rebel Without a Cause,” Tuesday, Dec. 9. Directed by Nicholas Ray, this 1955 iconic film of adolescent rebellion stars James Dean as Jim Stark, a restless teen whose quarrelling parents move to the Los Angeles suburbs.
There, he befriends Plato (Sal Mineo), a worshipful but unstable 15-year-old, and Judy (Natalie Wood), a coolly ironic girl whose high-school gang is led by local bully Buzz Gunderson (Corey Allen).
Things come to a head when the gang challenges Jim to a disastrous game of “chickie run,” racing stolen cars towards a nearby cliff.
Manion admits to the crime but claims the dead man, bartender Barney Quill, had raped and beaten his wife, Laura Manion (Lee Remick). Biegler, lacking hard evidence and matched against big-city prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott), launches a daring defense, claiming that Manion was seized by a kind of temporary insanity.
“North by Northwest,” Thursday, Dec. 11. This breathless 1959 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock stars Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill, a middle-aged advertising executive who is mistaken for government agent George Kaplan.
Kidnapped by a gang of spies, Thornhill is interrogated by their leader, Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), but manages to escape, only to find himself framed for murder.
Realizing the only way to clear his name is to find the real Kaplan, Thornhill begins a 3,000-mile cross-country chase, aided only by a mysterious young woman, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), whose help almost costs Thornhill his life.
The exhibition “Birth of the Cool,” which explores the broad cultural zeitgeist of “cool” that emerged in Southern California in the 1950s and early ’60s, remains on view at the Kemper Art Museum through Jan. 5.
For more information about the film festival or the exhibition, call 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.