The TCM Classic Film Festival 2021

Every May, the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) channel organizes its own movie festival. Usually held in Hollywood, it’s an excuse for TCM fans to pay good money to see classic movies on the big screen, hear veteran stars introduce their earlier work, attend “premieres” of older films (I’ll explain) and generally live all about classic films for a long weekend. In 2020, pandémie oblige, the festival was cancelled in-person and a hasty version of it showed up on TCM a few weeks later. In 2021, pandémie aussi oblige, the festival was also held virtually, albeit with more preparations: its dates coincided with the usual weekend of the event, the programming had the oomph and stars we could expect of a festival, and a chunk of it occurred on HBOMax. Being Canadian, I had no access to HBOMax… but I took everything else in.

That meant recording TCM non-stop from 20:00 Thursday to 6:00 Monday, and going through the entire line-up. I did not watch every single minute — The TCM Classic Film Festival is a mixture of films both famous and obscure, and as luck had it, I had already seen 21 of the 36 main features. I did rewatch the new restoration of Annie Get Your Gun intentionally to see if I liked it any better the second time around (answer: yes, for the restoration and no, for much of the film), and accidentally took in Lady Sings the Blues again because I had forgotten I’d seen it—no wonder I felt it was so generic. The introduction to West Side Story with three of its stars was good enough that I rewatched the highlights of the film, I rewatched good chunks of Ocean’s 11 (notably “Eee-O-11” and “Ain’t that a Kick in the head?”) and obviously had to rewatch Bullit’s car chase (although, curiously, TCM did not bundle the documentary featurette they sometimes air about it).

Worthwhile new-for-2021 introductory material included Richard Dreyfus with a short but revelatory webcam interview about The Goodbye Girl and Debbie Allen talking Fame. Some of the better Film Festival reruns from previous years included Mel Brooks presenting The Producers, Martin Scorsese talking Mean Streets and Michael Douglas discussing The China Syndrome. I had fun watching the featurettes accompanying The Fortune Cookie and Ride the High Country, as well as the more substantial piece about Strangers on a Train. Finally, as someone who really thinks that TCM Underground should be hosted, I really enjoyed the four-way “TCM Slumberground” chat about Grease 2. I also tried, unsuccessfully, to rewatch Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I’ll discuss that in a moment.

(The one film at the festival that I should have seen sooner was Barry Levinson’s Diner. He was on hand to introduce this minor classic through video chat. The other “classic” that I finally saw was the straightforward crime drama Underworld U.S.A.)

(One of the scheduled films, My Favourite Wife, did not play in Canada due to licensing issues that I’m still trying to understand.)

Still, rewatching well-known films is only a chunk of the TCM Classic Film Festival. Much of the fun of it can be found in the documentaries meant to explore various aspects of movies, the good-but-obscure discoveries highlighted for us, and the classic film premieres.

Now, I hear you — how can a film festival dedicated to classic films feature “premieres”? Sometimes, the distinction is purely procedural — there are classic-era films from outside TCM’s library that have never been shown on the channel and are now available for broadcast. But most of the time, it has to do with new restorations of films either unseen for decades, or previously shown in a severely degraded state. Part of the thrill of watching the Festival is being told about how some films disappeared from view for decades, and have been recently restored to their former glories. Highlights of the Festival thus included…

The TCM premiere of a new restoration of Doctor X, a 1932 horror film from Warner Brothers tackling unusually gruesome topics (cannibalism, serial murder, rape) in flamboyant mad-scientist fashion set against 1930s New York City. But best of all is the film’s colour cinematography, filmed in eerie green-and-orange two-colour Technicolor. It was very recently restored to near-pristine state, far improving upon the faded colours of the version shown until now. It’s a pretty good movie as well, far more modern than you’d think in classic Pre-Code fashion.
The World Premiere of a new restoration of the little-known-but-compelling drama The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951), a story about what happens to a small town when there’s workforce cutbacks, labour unrest and technological change at the local factory. Unusually contemporary in its echoes of “the rust belt,” the film now looks amazingly good and sharp.
The TCM premiere of I Love Trouble (1947), a surprisingly enjoyable comedic noir film that combines the convoluted plotting of noir with the sarcastic quips of a jaded Private Investigator. The film could use restoration, but it’s quite enjoyable even in its humdrum state.
Easily one of the festival’s highlights, the World Premiere restored version of film noir They Won’t Believe Me (1947) not only touches up the film’s audiovisual presentation to the best standards, but restores 15 minutes (out of a total of 95 minutes!) that had been cut shortly after the film’s release for the rerun circuit. In other words, this was the first time since 1947 that the full version of the film could be seen — and it’s a good noir, suitably perverse in how it puts its flawed characters through the wringer.
The World Premiere of 1930’s Her Man had us going back to Pre-Code Havana for a tragic love story set between a jaded prostitute and an idealistic sailor. It certainly does not end well, but there’s plenty to like in the unusually sophisticated direction and mature themes.
Another solid highlight of the festival, 1935’s Princess Tam-Tam, is already remarkable for its Pygmalion-style narrative starring a singing, dancing Josephine Baker, but also as an excuse to rediscover Baker’s amazing life story.
Finally, So This is Paris (1926) is another great surprise: a silent film from Ernest Lubitsch featuring many of the trademarks we associate with his later sound films — a sophisticated comedy of adultery with plenty of biting jokes, but, perhaps more amazingly, a musical sequence set in the middle of a silent film. Yes, really. It works, and it works really well.

So: Seven major premieres, and not a single bad film in the bunch. Well done, TCM!

The rest of the festival was a mixed bag of documentaries, short features, excerpts from previous Festival events and just plain surprises for movie lovers. Results here were far more variable, although I tremendously enjoyed the variety of it.

I didn’t care much for Bill Morrison’s short experimental film let me come in (2021, world TV premiere), but the accompanying documentary on Morrison’s work in editing old decaying films was progressively engrossing, and reaffirmed my determination to watch Dawson City: Frozen in Time at some point.
A documentary on Tex Avery: The King of Cartoons was a treat, as was the following hour-long anthology of some of his better-known cartoons.
Nichols and May: Take Two illuminated the creative partnership of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, which had been on my list of “things I’d like to know more about,” ever since reading about the making of The Graduate. (It accompanied a showing of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
From Broadway to Hollywood was a pleasant-but-not-overly-memorable hour with pianist Richard Glazier as he told us about classic Hollywood musicals and played a few numbers. More muzak than anything worth watching closely — I liked it, but I can’t remember much of it.
Hollywood Home Movies: Stars at Work and Play was a mildly entertaining collection of some home movies shot by Hollywood people and preserved in the Academy Film Archives. Mildly interesting, but I did like the passion with which the curators and guests spoke about those films.
French filmmaker Chantal Akerman got a two-parter special with showings of News from Home and La Chambre — just enough to give me a primer on her work and her life, convince me that it’s not my kind of filmmaking, but that I really should be seeing her Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Sophia Loren looked gorgeous and told fascinating stories during an interview (with her son!) from 2015’s Film Festival.
Finally, my biggest disappointment of the weekend was the two-part special presentation of Plan 9 From Outer Space, with its broadcast preceded by the comedic “SF Sketchfest Presents Plan 9 from Outer Space Table Read.” Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t stay interested in either the film (which I had seen before, except in much better circumstances with a group of friends) nor the table read, which I found more laborious than amusing despite the narrator’s best efforts to insert self-referential pokes at the material. It does strike me that “comedic table reads” is an insider’s kind of thing and that I’m simply too new to the form to properly appreciate it.

Despite a (very) few duds, there was plenty to like in this 2021 Classic Film Festival — the premieres alone justified the trouble of “attending” the entire festival. More interesting was the experience of watching the festival at home: Having recorded everything but being constrained by—well— work, family, sleep and bodily functions, it took me five days to unpack the entire festival, and that’s even after skipping nearly twenty films I had already seen. As the recordings piled on, I’d watch the introductions and supplementary material, eventually making my way to the longer documentary pieces and then finally the fiction premieres. While solidly anchored in the classic Hollywood tradition and style, I appreciated the way the film struck out in different directions, also managing to hit TCM’s traditional programming of TCM Underground, Noir Alley, Saturday morning cartoons, Silent Sunday, Monday Night World Cinema and a highlight from a female director in keeping with one of last year’s major programming efforts.

While the impact of the pandemic has been terrible, having the festival at home was a delight — several “new” classic movies to discover, a buffet of classics to rewatch, plenty of fascinating ancillary material, and TCM doing what they do best in making older cinema accessible to wider audiences. I noticed that interest in some of the lesser-known premiering films spiked on imdb.com and shop.tcm.com shortly after their festival broadcast, and I can see why. Hopefully, they’ll show up again in the regular rotation… and hopefully the 2022 Film Festival will also carve out some time for home audiences.