May 29 - July 2

“One of the great American directors.” – Foster Hirsch

“Otto Preminger must hold some sort of record for one of the longest stretches of provocative and intelligent mainstream filmmaking in American cinema.” – Elliot Stein, The Village Voice

The long awaited, much anticipated Preminger retrospective finally arrives at the Cinematheque, including many recently struck, restored, rare, and archival prints. Spanning Preminger’s career, from his celebrated series of films noirs made at Fox through the independent films that broke all manner of Hollywood taboos, fatally undermining the Production Code, through his “institutional” epics, the retrospective encompasses many genres including western, musical, mystery, melodrama, biopic, courtroom drama, historical saga, Restoration romp, all of which Preminger brought his personal touch to, even when adverse to the assignment. Throughout, Preminger’s coolly objective view of humanity, incarnated in a style based on gliding long takes, spatial articulation, and detached vantage, and a tone that was darkly ambiguous, resulted in a cinema that packs its own a/c.

As he emerges from two recent critical biographies, The World and its Double by Chris Fujiwara and The Man Who Would Be King by Foster Hirsch, Preminger is a much more complex and contradictory figure than hitherto portrayed, not just the bald, libidinous tyrant of popular myth, but a prescient genius, underestimated by many American critics. (The French were naturally among the first to deify him.) Fujiwara’s more theoretical, occasionally metaphysical reading of Preminger stresses the correlation between the director’s mise en scène and the consciousness of his characters. Both studies realign the Preminger pantheon, arguing for films once denigrated or ignored. Our retrospective reflects some of their arguments, and makes its own. – James Quandt

THE A - Z OF OTTO PREMINGER

Autocrat – Or Otto-crat, as some sad wag might characterize the infamously volatile Preminger, who was a charming sybarite of Viennese wit and civility off the set, but, when filming, easily turned apoplectic, abusing any technician or actor he found wanting. There were many: the list is long of stars who suffered his rage and relentless criticism, often shouted at close proximity and accentuated by raised veins and spittle. Pitiable when not apocryphal, the stories of