Something in Your Eye: Early Meet Cutes
Programmed by: Ursula Wagner and Jack Miller
The romantic ideal of the “meet cute” did not begin with 1990s romcoms, nor is it restricted to that genre. In 1991, Roger Ebert wrote of this integral cinematic feature, with its implausible twists and wish-fulfillment fantasies: “Hollywood has since time immemorial defined the Meet Cute as a comic situation contrived entirely for the purpose of bringing a man and a woman together, after which they can work out their destinies…”
And we adore that contrivance. In a world where any first date not facilitated by an app is noteworthy, wouldn’t it be lovely if romance were just as likely to blossom from more delightful circumstances? If a chance encounter could put you face-to-face with your soulmate?
Until then, we’ll always have the movies. Spanning the Golden Age of Hollywood, this series represents genres from screwball to sex comedy, crime thriller to classic literature, musical to melodrama. It also showcases notable actress-director pairings, from Stanwyck and Hawks to Taylor and Minnelli. The existence of these memorable meetups across different story types makes them all the more interesting; a whimsical start to a relationship is no guarantee of a happy ending.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome, we know that the woman (with coal grit in her eye) and the man (who removes it) will fall in love despite their unlikely beginning, and we want to know how they will get there. We became invested the second he reached for his handkerchief, and we are along for every gritty moment of the ride. Decades after their initial release, each of these classics remains an ideal viewing for a romantic evening with that special someone.
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Alfred Hitchcock · 103m · DCP
Long overshadowed by surrounding works of Hitchcock’s, this film shows the master reveling in the implausible pleasures of fiction and represents his most successful foray into romantic comedy. Hitchcock’s perennial theme of “innocent man wrongly accused” is given its breeziest manifestation as Cary Grant and Grace Kelly become involved in a mystery involving swindlers and jewel robbery. Both acquit themselves with poise in the glamorous Côte d’Azur.
Thursday, March 27 7pm
Brief Encounter (1945)
David Lean · 86m · 35mm
The most poignant, passionate love story in movie history may be this understated account. Two perfectly ordinary people (Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard) meet on a train platform amid air thick with coal dust and embark on a romance doomed by their marriages. David Lean, later known for colorful epics, was never better than when he delivered this quietly devastating slice of middle-class British life, based on a play by Noël Coward.
Thursday, April 3 7pm · Sunday, April 6 3pm
Bells Are Ringing (1960)
Vincente Minnelli · 126m · 35mm
The most neglected of Minnelli’s musicals, this delightful work stars Judy Holliday as a charismatic but lonely switchboard operator who plays matchmaker for her answering service clients until she stumbles upon love herself in the form of Dean Martin’s frustrated playwright. With catchy songs written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (Singin’ in the Rain), Minnelli renders the story cinematic through his adventurous handling of CinemaScope.
Thursday, April 10 7pm
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Gregory La Cava · 94m · DCP
At the height of the Depression, William Powell (of The Thin Man fame) is Godfrey Smith, a homeless man with a secret past. Irene, a young socialite, “collects” Godfrey for a wealthy scavenger hunt but makes the humiliation up to him by offering him a job. Powell agreed to star as Godfrey only if his ex-wife, screwball queen Carole Lombard, was cast opposite him as Irene. Despite the divorce, their on-screen chemistry endured.
Thursday, April 17 7pm
Ball of Fire (1941)
Howard Hawks · 111m · 35mm
In this sexy screwball take on Snow White, Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) is a nightclub singer who helps a group of professors (led by Gary Cooper) write a dictionary of contemporary slang. Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and featuring a rendition of “Drum Boogie” performed by Gene Krupa’s band, this is a quintessentially Hawksian jam session through the camaraderie among its players and its robust vision of a world dominated by women.
Thursday, April 24 7pm
Pillow Talk (1959)
Michael Gordon · 102m · 35mm
Jan, a happily single interior decorator, bears the misfortune of sharing a Manhattan phone line with Brad, a womanizing composer. Jan sees Brad as a snake, while he sees her as his greatest challenge yet. The first of the iconic Rock Hudson and Doris Day collaborations, this sex comedy with zero sex but copious innuendo revamped both stars’ careers, proving the dramatic Hudson could be funny and the squeaky-clean Day could be raunchy.
Thursday, May 1 7pm
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)
Ernst Lubitsch · 85m · DCP
This rarely revived Ernst Lubitsch comedy stars Gary Cooper as an American millionaire on the French Riviera who fails to tell Claudette Colbert about his previous seven wives before proposing to her. Their pajama-clad first encounter is the definitive meet-cute later described in Nancy Meyers’s The Holiday. Billy Wilder, a Lubitsch disciple and perhaps his most direct successor in American film comedy, collaborated with Charles Brackett on the script.
Thursday, May 8 7pm
The Sandpiper (1965)
Vincente Minelli · 117m · 35mm
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were newlyweds (for the second time!) when they co-starred in this pulpy melodrama, and it shows. Taylor plays a hippie artist homeschooling her out-of-wedlock son and Burton is a married Episcopal priest who runs the school the boy must attend. Soon he is drawn into her free-spirited world, and the two can’t stay away from each other. Filmed in gorgeous Big Sur, the drama of the setting heightens their forbidden love.
Thursday, May 15 7pm
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Victor Fleming · 223m · 35mm
In adapting Margaret Mitchell’s hit novel, producer David O. Selznick toned down the romanticization of the Antebellum South and wisely focused more on the character of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and the intense sparks that ensue when she meets her match in Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Hearts and plantations are set afire, and Scarlet’s endurance in the aftermath is as breathtaking as the score and the Technicolor cinematography in this historic epic.
