A View from the Vaults 2006: Recent Acquisitions and Restorations
July 1–August 17, 2006

The Museum of Modern Art’s film and media archive now comprises more than 23,000 titles. With the 1996 opening of the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center in Hamlin, Pennsylvania, the Museum, for the first time in its history, owns and operates a state-of-the-art facility for the storage of its moving-image treasures. This two-building complex, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, affords the Department of Film and Media sufficient space and a controlled environment in which to preserve those materials deemed essential to cinema history. This series illustrates the enormous diversity of the film and video collection, with classic Hollywood features, independent works that explore social issues, foreign films that examine cultural values not unlike our own, animation created by computer and by hand, and finally, the unique madness of John Waters’s Pink Flamingos.

Organized by Anne Morra, Assistant Curator, Department of Film and Media.

The Straight Story. 1999. USA/France. Directed by David Lynch. With Sissy Spacek, Richard Farnsworth. Seventy-three-year-old Alvin Straight travels from Iowa to Wisconsin on his John Deere riding mower to visit his estranged, ailing brother. Based on a true story, Lynch’s quiet, uncharacteristically tender film celebrates the decency of the common man. 112 min.
Saturday, July 1, 3:00; Monday, July 3, 8:30. T2

The Band Wagon. 1953. USA. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Screenplay by Betty Comden, Adolph Green. With Fred Astaire, Jack Buchanan. The classic songs of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz propel the story of Tony Hunter, a not-so-hot movie star who tries to revive himself and his career in a Broadway show with more than its share of preproduction woes. New 35mm print from the original negatives. 112 min.
Saturday, July 1, 5:30. T2; Friday, August 4, 6:00. T1

Real Women Have Curves. 2002. USA. Directed by Patricia Cardoso. With America Ferrera. Ana, a bright Latina high school senior, is torn between familial duty and a promising future. Will she go to college with a scholarship or work in her family’s small bridal gown factory? In one unforgettable scene, Ana inspires her girlfriends to strip down to their underwear and laugh about, and accept, their less-than-perfect bodies. 86 min.
Saturday, July 1, 8:15; Monday, July 3, 6:30. T2

Monsters, Inc. 2001. USA. Directed by Pete Docter. Codirected by Lee Unkrich, David Silverman. Sulley and Mike live and work in Monstropolis, a city powered by the screams of children scared by the monsters hiding in their closets. When a little girl named Boo gets loose, the tables are turned and the monsters’ world is thrown into chaos. 93 min.
Sunday, July 2, 2:00; Monday, July 3, 4:30. T2

Hohokekyo tonari no Yamada-kun (My Neighbors the Yamadas). 1999. Japan. Written and directed by Isao Takhata. Salaryman Takashi Yamada’s wife hates housework, his teenage son refuses to study, his small daughter speaks too loudly, and his sharp-tongued mother butts in. Based on Ishii Hisaihi’s long-running manga, the film captures the kind of traditional family that may be disappearing in an increasingly modernized Japan. In Japanese, English subtitles. 104 min.
Sunday, July 2, 4:30. T2; Friday, August 4, 8:15. T1

The Man Who Laughs. 1928. USA. Directed by Paul Leni. Based on Victor Hugo’s novel L’Homme qui rit. With Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin. The young aristocrat Gwynplaine is kidnapped and his face is mutilated into a perpetual, mad grin. Print restored by the Cinémathèque Française, Paris; Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milan; and the Cineteca del Commune di Bologna. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Ben Model and Jon Spurney. 110 min.
Saturday, August 5, 2:30 (Model); Sunday, August 6, 6:00 (Spurney). T1

The Film of Her. 1996. USA/Italy. Written and directed by Bill Morrison. The fictionalized story of real-life Library of Congress cataloguer Howard Walls. In 1939, Walls rediscovered the paper print collection, which included examples of the earliest days of filmmaking. 12 min.
The Purple Rose of Cairo. 1985. USA. Written and directed by Woody Allen. With Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels. In the middle of a movie, the leading man escapes his on-screen existence to sweep Cecilia, a diner waitress, off her feet. 82 min.
Saturday, August 5, 5:00; Wednesday, August 9, 8:00. T1

Pink Flamingos. 1972. USA. Written and directed by John Waters. With Divine. The story of two families competing for the title of “The Filthiest People Alive.” This twenty-fifth-anniversary print features an on-screen prologue and epilogue by Waters. 108 min.
Saturday, August 5, 7:30; Friday, August 11, 8:00. T1

Avalon. 1990. USA. Written and directed by Barry Levinson. With Aidan Quinn, Lou Jacobi. Levinson returns to his native Baltimore to tell the semiautobiographical story of the Krichinsky family. The family holds onto their Eastern European roots while fiercely embracing new American dreams. While the new generation is respectful of the old ways, they hold many traditions at bay. 128 min.
Sunday, August 6, 1:30; Monday, August 14, 8:00. T1

The Virgin Suicides. 1999. USA. Directed by Sofia Coppola. With Kirsten Dunst, James Woods. In her feature directorial debut, Coppola’s adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel details the unraveling of a 1970s Midwestern family. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon enforce a well-intentioned, but ultimately disastrous, repression upon their beautiful young daughters, the objects of desire to fascinated neighborhood boys. 97 min.
Sunday, August 6, 4:00; Wednesday, August 9, 6:00. T1

Key Largo. 1948. USA. Directed by John Huston. With Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson. Bogart takes the lead as disenchanted war veteran Frank McCloud, and Robinson concocts one of his nastiest characters in Johnny Rocco, accompanied by an alcoholic moll, paradoxically named Gaye Dawn. 100 min.
Monday, August 7, 8:00; Thursday, August 17, 6:00. T1

Umberto D. 1952. Italy. Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Screenplay by De Sica, Cesare Zavattini. With Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio. Together with his dog Umberto, an elderly pensioner faces hardships and loneliness as he struggles to pay his rent and watches as his friends age and die. The film illustrates that poverty and desperation do not cancel out one’s ability to participate in the world. In Italian, English subtitles. 91 min.
Friday, August 11, 6:00; Saturday, August 12, 7:30. T1

A Perfect World. 1993. USA. Directed by Clint Eastwood. With Eastwood, Kevin Costner. A combination chase film, character study, and social portrait, this is one of Eastwood’s richest and most ambiguous features. The tense world that Eastwood maps—Texas in the autumn of 1963—is fraught with explicit and implicit violence. 137 min.
Saturday, August 12, 2:30; Wednesday, August 16, 8:00. T1

Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows). 1959. France. Directed by François Truffaut. With Jean-Pierre Léaud. Truffaut’s semiautobiographical account of his youth, as seen through the eyes of his cinematic alter ego, Antoine Doinel. Filmed in and around Paris, many scenes, particularly the devastating final freeze-frame, remain indelible. 35mm print acquired in honor of the filmmaker Morris Engel. In French, English subtitles. 93 min.
Saturday, August 12, 5:00; Monday, August 14, 6:00. T1

Weddings and Babies. 1958. USA. Written and directed by Morris Engel. With Viveca Lindfors, John Myhers. This story of a couple struggling with her biological clock and his inability to commit to their future was filmed entirely in New York City, and won the Critics Award at the 1958 Venice Film Festival. Preserved in 2004 by MoMA, with materials supplied by Engel and funds provided by The Film Foundation. 78 min.
Sunday, August 13, 2:00; Wednesday, August 16, 6:00. T1

Buffalo ’66. 1998. USA. Directed by Vincent Gallo. With Gallo, Christina Ricci. After having some difficulty finding a bathroom, Billy, an underdog ex-con, kidnaps Layla, a Kewpie-doll tap dancer. Layla is then forced to convince Billy’s parents that she is his wife. A dinner with Billy’s football-obsessed mother and frustrated-singer father is unforgettable. 110 min.
Sunday, August 13, 4:00; Thursday, August 17, 8:00. T1