An event sponsored by
Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
La Farfalla sul Mirino

In collaboration with
SNCCI - Gruppo Regione Lazio

Many thanks to
Park Circus (Londra), Light Cone (Parigi), Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Lab80 Film
 

Someone Like It Classic is back for the thirteenth year, a unique event that reintroduces audiences to the great cinema of the past by screening 35mm and 16mm prints only - film is an increasingly fragile and precious medium but one with unparalleled appeal. As in previous editions, the festival is enriched by the contribution of the Sindacato Nazionale Critici Cinematografici Italiani - Gruppo Regione Lazio, thanks to which each title will be introduced to viewers by a historical and critical presentation.

The program spans different eras, styles and countries, and the opening falls to a jewel of Golden Age Hollywood, Raoul Walsh's High Sierra, the first major production starring Humphrey Bogart and a film that would mark the transition from gangster cinema to noir (not coincidentally, John Huston, who wrote the screenplay, made his debut the same year with The Maltese Falcon, also starring Bogart). Another noir on the program is Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow, which, like much cinema of the 1950s, incorporates a strong social theme: the racial issue. A nontrivial reflection on the society of the time is also found in King Vidor's Stella Dallas, with an extraordinary Barbara Stanwyck. American cinema also takes the lion's share with Lubitsch's Lady Windermere's Fan, perhaps his best film of the silent years, and two titles exemplary of the seasons of the New American Cinema and the New Hollywood: Jack Smith's scandalous Flaming Creatures and Scorsese's Taxi Driver, a film whose cult status shows no signs of waning after nearly fifty years.

From France, on the other hand, comes Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, a film often considered among the greatest ever made and back in the limelight after Skolimowski's tribute entitled EO, while British cinema is represented by Richard Lester's How I Won the War, starring John Lennon in an unexpected role, and by the Powell and Pressburger duo, at the top of their form in their first Technicolor film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, presented in its unabridged version. Finally, the program closes with a gem to be rediscovered: Stolen Desire, the debut film of one of the masters of Japanese cinema, Shōhei Imamura.