Sunset Spectacle

by Nora Kletter

When Sid Grauman opened the Egyptian, his second film palace, in 1922, he changed the way audiences viewed going to the movies.  Grauman spent his early professional life as a failed gold prospector and had no real ties to the film industry aside from a few small silent film theaters in Alaska and Northern California.  However Grauman understood, perhaps better than many contemporary film-makers at the time, that film at its core is not about art, but instead about spectacle.  Grauman strove to build film palaces that were as grand and full of illusions as the films themselves.

Walking through the colonnade of palm trees en route to the Egyptian Theater, which appears more like Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple than a movie theater, imbued audiences with a sense of glamour.  Going to the cinema became more than a way to kill a few hours, it became an event.  Although the Egyptian has been long outshined by its younger sibling, Grauman’s Chinese, home to the handprints of Hollywood’s brightest stars, the Egyptian was the birth place of the Red-Carpet Premiere.

When Hollywood Boulevard lost its sparkle and fell into disrepair in the 1980s, so did The Egyptian Theater. But in 1996, the City of Los Angeles sold the monument of cinema to the non-profit film group, The American Cinematheque for the generous price of one dollar. On December 4^th, 1998 they re-opened the Egyptian Theater and have been screening Classic Cinema Retrospectives, Documentaries and Cutting Edge Film Programs ever since.

This Thursday marks the 10^th Anniversary of the grand-reopening of the Egyptian Theater.  To celebrate this historic event, the American Cinematheque presents “Best in 10” series, 10 films selected from a list of audience and staff favorites which includes The Silent Movie The Passion of Joan of Arc, Classic Hollywood Films Casablanca, and Citizen Kane, Akira Kurisowa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai, Francis Ford Coppola’s New Hollywood Titan The Godfather, and guilty pleasures Valley of the Dolls and Love Machine.

The series kicks off on December 4^th with a Red-Carpet Premiere Event Screening of Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder’s biting classic about a hack screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) and a has-been silent film siren Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) searching for a life raft in the tumultuous seas of the film industry in the height of the Studio Era.  Look for cameos by real silent film actors Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, Anna Q. Nillson.  Darkly rich with self-references, Sunset Boulevard still stands as Hollywood’s definitive indictment of itself—which seems particularly appropriate when you consider that screening itself is self-referential.  After all, Sunset Boulevard’s haunting last line,“I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille,” references Cecil B. DeMille, the director of The Ten Commandments, which was the premiere screening when the American Cinematheque re-opened the Egyptian Theater in 1998.

The “Best in 10” series runs from December 4^th – December 14^th at the Egyptian Theater

For directions, tickets, and info about the films please visit: www.americancinematheque.com