Category Archives: Film Restoration

Returns to NYC in New 4K Restoration: Can She Bake a Cherry Pie

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can-she-bakeHenry Jaglom’s quietly offbeat 1983 film Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? is getting a new 4K restoration and a theatrical run at Metrograph beginning February 20.

Shot entirely on the Upper West Side, the film stars Karen Black as a woman navigating love and loneliness in Jaglom’s loose, conversational style. The movie favors lived-in moments over plot, letting scenes wander in ways that feel more like real life than scripted drama.

The film has picked up cult status over the years, helped by an unusual supporting cast that includes Orson Welles, Frances Fisher, and a pre-Seinfeld Larry David. The new restoration, sourced from a 4K scan of the original 35mm materials, preserves the film’s rough, intimate feel while giving it new clarity on the big screen.

For fans of New York–set cinema and indie films that play by their own rules, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? is a welcome return.

 

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Bitter Rice, Giuseppe De Santis’ Neo-Realist Classic, Returns in a New 4K Restoration

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bitter-riceGiuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice (1949), one of the most provocative and influential films of Italian neorealism, will screen at Film Forum from January 30 through February 5 in a newly restored 4K edition.

Set during planting season in Northern Italy’s Po Valley, Bitter Rice follows a group of rice-field workers known as the mondine, focusing on an earthy laborer played by Silvana Mangano who becomes entangled with a small-time criminal, portrayed by Vittorio Gassman, and his glamorous accomplice, played by Doris Dowling. The film blends social realism with melodrama, pairing its portrait of grueling manual labor with sex, crime, and moral tension.

Filmed on location with real mondine visible in the background, Bitter Rice stands out even within neorealism for its raw physicality and pulp energy. The film was an early international success for producer Dino De Laurentiis, premiered at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Story the following year.

De Santis, who came up as a critic and screenwriter before directing, was deeply shaped by anti-Fascist film culture in Italy and by his collaborations with figures like Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. Bitter Rice reflects that background, merging political consciousness with a visceral, almost sensational style that helped broaden the reach of neorealism beyond strictly austere realism.

The new 4K restoration offers a rare chance to see Bitter Rice with renewed visual clarity, restoring the texture and immediacy of a film that helped redefine postwar European cinema, and remains strikingly modern in its mix of social critique and genre filmmaking.

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Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces Returns in Newly Restored 4K Edition

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five-easy-piecesFilm Forum will present a new 4K restoration of Bob Rafelson’s landmark drama Five Easy Pieces from December 19 to 25. Released in 1970, the film is considered a defining work of the New Hollywood era and features one of Jack Nicholson’s most celebrated early performances.

Nicholson stars as Bobby Dupea, a former piano prodigy turned oil-rig worker drifting through a life he can’t fully commit to. The film follows his uneasy relationships, including his volatile dynamic with girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black), encounters with fellow travelers on the road, and a return to his estranged family for a final attempt at reconciliation. Its blend of working-class realism, counterculture disillusionment, and character driven storytelling helped cement the film’s reputation as a touchstone of American independent cinema.

Shot by cinematographer László Kovács, the film was written by Carole Eastman, under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce, from sketches developed with Rafelson. Five Easy Pieces went on to earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

The restoration offers audiences a rare chance to revisit the film on the big screen more than fifty years after its release.

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Film Forum to Host Weeklong Hitchcock and Herrmann Festival

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vertigoFilm Forum is set to launch Hitchcock and Herrmann, a one-week festival celebrating one of cinema’s most influential director-composer partnerships. Running December 12 to 18, the series highlights the collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and legendary composer Bernard Herrmann, whose work together shaped some of the most iconic suspense films ever made.

The program showcases newly restored 4K presentations of classics including North by Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as a 35mm screening of The Wrong Man. The festival coincides with the release of Steven C. Smith’s new book Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship & Film Scores That Changed Cinema. Smith will appear throughout the week to introduce select screenings, participate in conversations, and deliver an illustrated talk titled “Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Sound of Murder.”

Additional events include a discussion on The Wrong Man with author Jason Isralowitz and Film Forum Repertory Artistic Director Bruce Goldstein, exploring the real wrongful-conviction case that inspired Hitchcock’s film.

The full schedule, including introductions and special events, is available through Film Forum.

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New 4K Restoration of Stanley Donen’s Charade Opens December 5 at Film Forum

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CharadeA new 4K restoration of Stanley Donen’s 1963 classic Charade will screen at Film Forum in New York from December 5 to 11. Starring Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and Walter Matthau, the film blends romance, suspense, and comedy, often described as “the most Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made.”

Set in Paris, Charade follows a widow pursued by several men trying to recover stolen money linked to her late husband. Known for its sharp dialogue, stylish direction, and the chemistry between Grant and Hepburn, the film remains one of Donen’s most celebrated works.

The restoration brings renewed clarity to the film’s cinematography and design, offering audiences a chance to revisit the title on the big screen more than six decades after its release.

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Luis Buñuel’s “Viridiana” Returns in New 4K Restoration at Film Forum

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ViridianaJanus Films will release a new 4K restoration of Luis Buñuel’s Palme d’Or-winning classic Viridiana (1961), opening November 14 for a one-week engagement at Film Forum in New York City.

Banned in Franco-era Spain and condemned by the Vatican upon release, Viridiana remains one of cinema’s most provocative works. The film follows a novice nun (Silvia Pinal) whose idealistic faith collides with corruption and hypocrisy when she moves in with her uncle, played by Fernando Rey, in a narrative that skewers religious dogma and human weakness.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, the film has long been regarded as one of Buñuel’s masterpieces. Co-written with Julio Alejandro and photographed by José F. Aguayo, the restoration showcases the film’s bold imagery and subversive wit for a new generation of audiences.

Viridiana runs November 14 to 20, 2025, exclusively at Film Forum.

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Film Forum to Host 36-Film Tribute to Kevin Brownlow Featuring ‘Napoleon,’ ‘The Wind,’ ‘Unknown Chaplin’

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Kevin-BrownlowFilm Forum will present a 36-film retrospective honoring filmmaker, historian, and preservationist Kevin Brownlow from October 24 to November 6 in New York.

The two-week series will feature works Brownlow directed, films he helped restore, and silent classics that influenced him. Highlights include the first New York screening since 1981 of Abel Gance’s 1927 epic Napoleon in its full 5½-hour version, Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s WWII drama It Happened Here (1964), Winstanley (1975), and the documentary Unknown Chaplin (1983). Screenings of silent landmarks such as The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Intolerance (1916), Safety Last (1923), and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) will feature scores by the late composer Carl Davis, with select titles accompanied live on piano by Steve Sterner.

The retrospective will also include Victor Sjöström’s The Wind (1928) in a restored 35mm print, opening night introductions from filmmakers and authors including Diane Baker and Daniel Kehlmann, and a special daylong presentation of Napoleon.

Brownlow, who received an Academy Honorary Award in 2010 and TCM’s Robert Osborne Award in 2019, is recognized as one of the most influential voices in film history and preservation. His books, including The Parade’s Gone By, and documentaries such as Hollywood and Cinema Europe have been credited with reshaping the way silent cinema is viewed and valued.

Film Forum’s tribute is supported by the Robert Jolin Osborne Trust and the Ira M. Resnick Foundation.

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René Clément’s “Forbidden Games” New 4K Restoration At Film Forum

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forbidden-games“Forbidden Games”, the 1952 French war drama by René Clément based on François Boyer’s novel Les Jeux Interdits, will run in a new 4K restoration at Film Forum from Friday, May 9 to Thursday, May 15.

“Michel! Michel! Michel!” France 1940, as a refugee column trudges along a country road, a dog makes a break for it, with its tiny blonde mistress in pursuit — and then the German fighters strike. But if 5-year-old Brigitte Fossey’s understanding of death is limited as she strokes her mother’s cold face, at least she can bury the dog discarded by her peasant rescuers, aided by 11-year-old farm boy Georges Poujouly. As they build a special, secret friendship, their pet cemetery steadily grows, topped by crosses stolen from graveyards, even as the adults play their own games of grotesque peasant feuds… And then Fossey (“in a performance that rips the heart out” – The New York Times) shouts his name again.

A masterpiece of French post-war cinema by director René Clément (who would make the classic thriller Purple Noon, starring Alain Delon, eight years later), adapted by the legendary team of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost from Boyer’s successful novel, with a haunting hit score played by guitar virtuoso Narciso Yepes, the ultimately beautiful, hilarious and disturbing “Forbidden Games” initially did so-so box office and screened only on the fringes of the Cannes Festival, then nearly got shut out of Venice — where it promptly won its top prize, the Golden Lion — and then became a worldwide art house smash and Clément’s second Best Foreign Film Oscar winner (following the previous year’s The Walls of Malapaga).

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Film Feature: “Killer of Sheep” Charles Burnett’s American Independent Masterpiece

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killer-sheep“Killer of Sheep”, Charles Burnett’s 1977 debut feature and landmark American independent masterpiece, will run at Film Forum from Friday, April 18 to Thursday, April 24, in a new 4K restoration.

Stan, employed at a slaughterhouse in the neighborhood of Watts, Los Angeles, is suffering from the emotional side effects of his bloody occupation to such a degree that his entire life unhinges. He seeks out tenderness in the face of unending struggle. Focusing on everyday life in Black communities with ingenuity, heart, and meticulous detail–a manner that had rarely been seen in American cinema–Burnett (acting as director, writer, producer, cinematographer, and editor) combines lyrical elements with a starkly neorealist, documentary-like approach that unfolds with kaleidoscopic intimacy.

On a budget of less than $10,000, Burnett shot KILLER OF SHEEP in roughly a year of weekends, filmed on location with a mostly amateur cast, a gritty documentary-style cinematography and much handheld camera work. The film’s soundtrack, which Burnett envisioned as an aural history of African-American popular music, includes songs by Etta James, Paul Robeson, Little Walter, and Earth, Wind & Fire. The new 4K restoration, which has improved picture and sound, marks the first theatrical release with the Dinah Washington song “Unforgettable” recovered in the ending, as was found in Burnett’s original release of the film, since being replaced in 2007 due to copyright issues.

Largely overlooked for decades following its 1977 release, KILLER OF SHEEP is now celebrated as a pivotal work of the LA Rebellion movement and hailed as a masterpiece that brought Black American lives to the screen with an unparalleled, poignant compassion.

“I come from a working-class environment and I wanted to express what the realities were. People were trying to get jobs, and once they found jobs they were fully concerned with keeping them. And they were confronted with other problems, with serious problems at home for example, which made things much more difficult… “[The] real problems lie within the family, trying to make that work and be a human being. You don’t necessarily win battles; you survive.” – Charles Burnett

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