AFI Silver Celebrates Julie Andrews and Peter Bogdanovich
metroweekly.comTorn Curtain, Alfred Hitchcock’s mediocre 1966 Cold War thriller starring Andrews as a woman hunting for her atomic scientist husband, portrayed by Paul Newman, who has defected behind the Iron Curtain. (8/6, 8/8-11)The zippy, zany Thoroughly Modern Millie, George Roy Hill’s romantic musical spoof set in Roaring Twenties comes next.
Andrews plays a country naif newly arrived in New York where she soon befriends Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing. (8/14-16)In STAR!, an extravagant seven-time Oscar-nominated showbiz biopic from the same creative team behind The Sound of Music, Andrews portrays the life and career of one of Britain’s most beloved entertainers, Gertrude Lawrence. (9/3-4)The series closes with a 40th-anniversary screening of 1982’s lavish Victor/Victoria, the story of a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman in order to become a star in pre-war Paris, a gender-bender musical farce starring Robert Preston in an Oscar-nominated performance as a gay man, groundbreaking for its time. (9/11-12, 9/14)Also getting AFI’s big-screen tribute is Peter Bogdanovich, an influential filmmaker, known for his deep knowledge of cinematic history, who died this past January from complications of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 82.Bogdanovich made his mark, as the AFI puts it, with original films “drawing inspiration from and reimagining genres popular during Hollywood’s glory days through a prism of 1970s cynicism.”The “Peter Bogdanovich Remembered” lineup starts with 1971’s The Last Picture Show, the filmmaker’s most acclaimed work, a coming-of-age elegy to the American West that also served to jumpstart Cybill Shepherd’s cinematic career — as well as her decade-long romance with Bogdanovich — as one of three.
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