PLAY MISTY FOR ME replaces RED SKY AT MORNING on March 29

March 16, 2015 - 10:41am
Posted by Jim Healy

The UW Cinematheque is announcing a schedule change within its currently running ‘Sunday Cinematheque at the Chazen: Universal ‘71’ series. After confirming a booking last fall, Universal Pictures has discovered that their 35mm print of Red Sky at Morning is in deteriorating condition and cannot be loaned for our screening, originally scheduled for March 29. In place of Red Sky at Morning, Universal is making available a 35mm print of Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me, one of the few of Universal’s low-budget slate in 1971 to turn a profit! The screening of Play Misty for Me will take place one week after the March 22 screening of The Beguiled, also starring Eastwood and directed by his mentor, Don Siegel, who appears as a bartender in Play Misty.

The screening of Play Misty for Me, on March 29 at 2 p.m., will be held in the auditorium at:

Chazen Museum of Art

750 University Avenue

Madison, WI 53706

PLAY MISTY FOR ME

USA | 1971 | 35mm | 102 min.

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills

In his directorial debut, Eastwood plays an overnight jazz disc jockey who hooks up with one of his ardent fans (Walter), little knowing that she is dangerously possessive and homicidal. One of the few medium-budget movies produced at Universal in 1971 that went on to become a box office success, Play Misty for Me is a tightly crafted, unnerving thriller that was surely an influence on a number of movies to come, particularly Fatal Attraction (1987). Walter gives a memorably unhinged performance “so creepy and sexually aggressive that she hardly worked again for years” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader).  Decades later, she became well-known as Arrested Development’s matriarch, Lucille Bluth.

About this series:

Sunday Cinematheque at the Chazen: Universal ‘71

In 1971, one of the great years in Hollywood history, Universal Pictures released a slate of high quality original productions with low-to-medium budgets that, collectively, went unmatched by any other studio’s annual lineup during the early 1970s. Inspired by Columbia Pictures’ success with Easy Rider, Universal provided full creative freedom to many up-and-coming directors like Peter Fonda, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Hopper, John Cassavetes, Milos Forman, and Monte Hellman. Meanwhile, old Hollywood hands like Don Siegel and Robert Wise were encouraged to make daring stylistic choices. While critically acclaimed, few of the Universal ‘71 releases found wide acceptance from audiences at the time of their original release, though their reputation among cinephiles has grown steadily over the subsequent five decades. All of these selections will be shown in 35mm prints.

To read more about the series, go here.

All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public. Seating limited.

https://youtu.be/9v-q7zr1oSY