Paul Newman Film Series Shown at Museum of the Moving Image

Paul Newman was one of the most charismatic, compelling screen actors of the past fifty years, delivering indelible performances in a wide range of popular and acclaimed Hollywood films. A selection of thirteen of his best films will be shown during a month-long series at Museum of the Moving Image, from July 9 through August 7, 2011. If his good looks made him one of Hollywood's most enduring stars, it was his ability to inhabit roles that cut against his handsome physique that made him such a great actor. Newman relished playing distinctly imperfect characters, flawed men who are self-destructive, weak, or immoral. He was also an actor who refused to glide through parts on his charm; his performances are understated and thoughtful.

The Moving Image series ranges from his fierce early performances in classics such as Somebody Up There Likes Me and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof to his late-career triumphs in Twilight and Nobody's Fool. "This is a great summer show," said the Museum's Chief Curator David Schwartz, "with the pleasure of popular, big-screen movies like Hud, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Slap Shot. Newman not only carries these star vehicles, he brings to them surprising layers of depth."

The series opens with a weekend triple-feature including Newman's final performance as the grumpy Doc Hudson in Cars, his career-defining role as the troubled pool shark Eddie Felson in The Hustler, and the film that won him his Academy Award for Best Actor, Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, in which he reprises the role of Eddie opposite Tom Cruise. Other series highlights include a rare screening of Alfred Hitchcock's cold war thriller Torn Curtain; and his first starring role, in Somebody Up There Likes Me, based on the life of boxer Rocky Graziano, and presented in an archival print from the Academy Film Archive.

All screenings take place in the Museum's new 267-seat main theater, which was named "Best New Theater for Old Movies" by New York Magazine. Other upcoming film series include Errol Morris's America (July 12-August 13), The Films of Frank Sinatra (August 12-September 4), The Rural Route Film Festival (August 5-7), Gus Van Sant (September 9-30), and matinee screenings of Muppet movies and other Jim Henson works, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Jim Henson's Fantastic World (beginning July 16).

SCHEDULE FOR ‘Paul Newman,' JULY 9-AUGUST 7, 2011
All screenings take place at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY, and are included with Museum admission unless otherwise noted.

Cars
Saturday, July 9, 1:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 10, 1:00 p.m.
Dirs. John Lasseter, Joe Ranft. 2006, 117 mins. 35mm. With the voices of Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt. In his final film role, Paul Newman plays Doc Hudson, a grouchy old car that, through Pixar's ingenious animation, bears uncanny resemblance to the actor. Owen Wilson plays the young hotshot who gains perspective when he is waylaid in a dusty small town.

The Hustler
Saturday, July 9, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 10, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. Robert Rossen. 1961, 134 mins. 35mm. With Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott. In one of his finest roles, Newman is Fast Eddie, the brash pool hustler who drifts through seedy nocturnal cityscapes until meeting his match in Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats. His self-destructive impulses also meet their match, in his rocky and tender relationship with Sarah (Piper Laurie).

The Color of Money
Saturday, July 9, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 10, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Martin Scorsese. 1986, 119 mins. 35mm. With Tom Cruise. In an Academy Award-winning performance, Newman reprises his role from The Hustler as Fast Eddie Felson, twenty-five years later and retired. He takes a brash young talent under his wings, but egos clash and the men part ways. Ultimately, Felson is lured back to confront his protégé and the demons that have long haunted him.

Hud
Friday, July 15, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 16, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Martin Ritt. 1963, 112 mins. 35mm. With Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas. Working with Martin Ritt, one of his favorite directors (Paris Blues; The Long, Hot Summer), Newman plays a hell-raising cowboy with a pink Cadillac who doesn't get along with his moralistic rancher father (Melvyn Douglas). Patricia Neal won an Oscar as the housekeeper whose beauty tempts Hud even as she refuses his ungentlemanly advances.

Somebody Up There Likes Me
Saturday, July 16, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. Robert Wise. 1956, 113 mins. 16mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. With Eileen Heckart, Sal Mineo. In his first starring role, in a film based on Rocky Graziano's autobiography, Newman impressively captures the boxer's tumultuous journey from juvenile delinquent to championship boxer. Variety declared that "Paul Newman's talent is large and flexible."

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Sunday, July 17, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. Richard Brooks. 1958, 108 mins. 35mm. With Elizabeth Taylor, Burl Ives. Earning an Oscar nomination for this powerhouse adaptation of Tennessee Williams's seething southern melodrama, Paul Newman is the aptly named Brick, an alcoholic ex-football star who angrily resists the affection of his gorgeous and frustrated wife, Maggie. Meanwhile, the family waits for the patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives) to die so that they can claim his estate.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Saturday, July 23, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 24, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. George Roy Hill. 1969, 110 mins. 35mm. With Robert Redford, Katharine Ross. Newman and Redford appear for the first time in this classic pairing of iconic Hollywood hunks. They play train robbers on the lam, with a witty Oscar-winning script by William Goldman and lustrous Oscar-winning cinematography by Conrad Hall.

The Sting
Saturday, July 23, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 23, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. George Roy Hill. 1973, 129 mins. 35mm. With Robert Redford. In one of their most beloved films, Newman and Robert Redford are Depression-era con men. Newman is a seasoned, always drunk veteran who is game for one final score before retirement. With its Scott Joplin soundtrack and 1930s atmosphere, the film, which won an Oscar for Best Picture, is suffused with lighthearted wit and nostalgia.

Slap Shot
Friday, July 28, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 31, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. George Roy Hill. 1977, 123 mins. 35mm. Teaming up again with George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting), Newman plays a selfpromoting, unskilled hockey coach who aims to lead the second-rate, minor league Charleston Chiefs to victory and popularity through the use of excessive violence on the rink. Amid the film's raucous laughs and brutal humor, Newman shines in what Pauline Kael of The New Yorker called "the performance of his life-to date."

Hombre
Saturday, July 30, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 31, 7:00 p.m.
1967, 111 mins. 35mm. With Fredric March, Richard Boone. Newman plays an Apache-raisEd White man in this thoughtful, beautifully photographed (James Wong Howe) revisionist western, which is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard. One of Newman's finest but lesser known films from the 1960s, it is also his sixth and final film directed by Martin Ritt.

Torn Curtain
Saturday, July 30, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. 1966, 128 mins. 35mm. Hitchcock's fiftieth film is a cold war spy thriller starring Newman as an American nuclear physicist who defects to East Germany and must escape with his fiancée (Julie Andrews), who is hidden in the midst of a Russian ballet company. Although widely considered uneven by Hitchcock's standards, the film features some bravura sequences and a convincingly naturalistic performance by Newman.

Nobody's Fool
Saturday, August 6, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 7, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. Robert Benton. 1994, 110 mins. 35mm. With Jessica Tandy. One of the treasures of Newman's late career is his understated and compelling performance as Sully, an out-of-work construction worker avoiding his son and his ex-wife while living in a rooming house owned by his eighth-grade teacher (Jessica Tandy) in upstate New York. This adaptation of the Richard Russo novel is also one of director Robert Benton's finest moments.

Twilight
Saturday, August 6, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 7, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Robert Benton. 1998, 94 mins. 35mm. With Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon. A contemporary L.A. noir, Twilight is also a rich meditation on aging and death, with Newman as a retired detective who is living in the garage apartment on the property of his movie-star best friends when he becomes embroiled in a mysterious unsolved murder case. The sterling ensemble also features Reese Witherspoon, Liev Schreiber, James Garner, and Stockard Channing.

MUSEUM INFORMATION
Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, 10:30 to 8:00 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Closed on Monday except for holiday openings).
Film Screenings: See schedule above.
Museum Admission: $10.00 for adults; $7.50 for persons over 65 and for students with ID; $5.00 for children ages 3-18. Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Paid admission includes film screenings (except for special ticketed events and Friday evenings) Tickets for special screenings and events may be purchased in advance by phone at 718.777.6800.
Location: 35 Avenue at 37 Street in Astoria.
Subway: R or M trains (R on weekends) to Steinway Street. N or Q trains to 36 Avenue.
Program Information: Telephone: 718.777.6888; Website: http://movingimage.us