WEST ORANGE, NJ — Held over eight Sundays throughout January, February and March in the town where Thomas Edison invented movies, the West Orange Classic Film Festival returns for its 12th season, once again giving lovers of cinema a chance to experience their favorite films as they were meant to be seen: on the big screen. This year’s festival runs the gamut from satire to slapstick, from foreign spectacle to film noir, with each film followed by a discussion led by a local film scholar/critic.
All screenings are Sundays at the AMC Theatre in Essex Green Shopping Center on Prospect Avenue in West Orange at 2 p.m. Tickets will be available for purchase at the theater box office or through Fandango shortly.
The festival premieres Sunday, Jan. 15, with Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes,” with an appearance by Stephen Whitty, film critic and author of “The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia.” “The Lady Vanishes,” 1938, concerns an English tourist traveling by train in continental Europe who discovers that her elderly traveling companion seems to have disappeared. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is helped by a young musicologist, the two proceeding to search the train for clues to the old lady’s disappearance.
- Jan. 22: “Network,” 1976; New York Times cultural reporter and author of “Mad as Hell,” David Itzkoff, will lead the film chat. Decades ahead of its time, this American satirical black comedy-drama written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet deals with how a fictional television network’s struggle with poor ratings is seemingly resolved by a messianic news anchor. Winner of four Academy Awards, the film stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty and Beatrice Straight.
- Jan. 29: “The Manchurian Candidate,” 1962; with journalist/critic Allen Barra. Directed by John Frankenheimer, this adaptation of Richard Condon’s novel tells of the brainwashing of the son of a prominent right-wing political family who becomes an unwitting assassin in an international conspiracy, and stars Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury.
- Feb. 5: “Hold That Ghost,” 1941, with writer and documentary film producer Paul Castiglia. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello portray gas station attendants who inherit a tavern where the previous owner, a criminal, hid his ill-gotten fortune.
- Feb. 19: Black Maria Film Festival, with Jane Steuerwald, professor of film at New Jersey City University and executive director of the festival. The Black Maria Film Festival is an international juried competition that has been celebrating and preserving the diversity, invention and vitality of the short film since 1981. The festival advances and exhibits the work of diverse filmmakers from across the United States and around the world. Some of the filmmakers will appear and discuss their films.
- Feb. 26: “Gilda,” 1946, with Boris Gavrilovic, chairman of the film department at Centenary College. Directed by Charles Vidor, this film features Rita Hayworth in her most iconic role, as the much-lusted-after wife of a criminal kingpin, as well as the former flame of the kingpin’s bitter henchman.
- March 5: “High Noon,” 1952, with film critic and author Stephen Whitty. Directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Gary Cooper in an Academy Award winning performance and Grace Kelly, the film tells the story, in nearly real time, of a retiring town marshal forced to face a gang of killers by himself.
- March 12: “Ran,” 1985, with local film teacher Gerard Amsellem. Akira Kurosawa’s revamping of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” concerns an aging warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons, presented against the backdrop of 16th-century Japan.
For further information, contact Ken Mandel at wofilmsociety@aol.com.
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