SHERLOCK JR., THE SCARECROW, THE PLAY HOUSE (Through the Looking Glass Family Series) $3 February 3, 2007

$3

Sherlock Jr. (1924/b&w/45 min.) Scr: Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, Joe Mitchell; The Scarecrow (1920/b&w/20 min.) Scr: Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline; The Play House (1921/b&w/20 min.) Scr: Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton; all b&w, silent w/ recorded music; dir: Buster Keaton.

In Sherlock Jr., Buster Keaton's most surreal and conceptually audacious film, Keaton is a projectionist who aspires to become a great detective. Falsely accused of stealing his boss's watch, he dreams that he enters the movie he is projecting, solves the crime, and wins the boss's daughter. In The Scarecrow, nothing is what it seems: a Victrola turns into a stove and tennis racquets double as snowshoes. In The Play House, nine Keatons strut their stuff in a minstrel show.

Through the Looking Glass (and Down the Rabbit Hole...) January 19, 2007–February 24, 2007 "The world is much deeper but also more transparent than we think.... And the magic of film consists in the possibility to express any phenomenon you want. That's why I like it so much. Sometimes you may think that I am out of touch with reality, but in fact I am a part of reality, that's all."—David Lynch Rene Magritte's enigmatic paintings, with their deadpan humor and emphasis on monumental objects, were created during a century that saw the birth of both cinema and psychoanalysis and, in the words of LACMA's senior curator of modern art, Stephanie Barron, continue "to appeal to modern audiences hungry for the puzzling conjunctions of the everyday and the fantastic." Though the concept of parallel realities existed in the Victorian era, it was cinema that could induce a dreamlike state in the viewer and depict the visual landscape of the unconscious. Lewis Carroll's "looking glass" is perhaps our most famous metaphor for the irrational, but it is also an ancient symbol with a variety of meanings: vanity, duplicity, madness, schizophrenia, and hallucination among them. Not surprisingly, many of the films in this series are thrillers, and many depict characters whose obsessions become pathological or self-destructive. For filmmakers like David Lynch, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, and Jacques Rivette, the "looking glass" is the cinema itself, and the silver screen is the mirror through which we, the audience, pass. At its most mythic, death is the unknown land that lies on the other side of the looking glass: in Orphée and Vertigo, the characters journey into the mirror to steal a loved one back from Death itself. Alternatively, films such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz depict imaginary landscapes peopled by delightful and menacing creatures. And in virtually all the films in the series, the audience, like the characters, must ask itself: what is real, and what is fantasy?

Friday	Saturday
January 19 7:30 pm The Lady from Shanghai 1948 9:15 pm Bunny Lake Is Missing 1965	January 20 5:00 pm The Wizard of Oz 1939 Family Series 7:30 pm Mulholland Drive 2001
January 26 7:30 pm The Exterminating Angel 1962 9:20 pm Secret Ceremony 1968	January 27 5:00 pm Alice in Wonderland 1951 Family Series 7:30 pm Rosemary's Baby 1968
February 2 7:30 pm Orphée (Orpheus) 1950 9:20 pm Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes without a Face) 1960	February 3 5:00 pm Sherlock Jr. 1924, The Scarecrow 1920, The Play House 1921; Dir: Buster Keaton Family Series 7:30 pm Céline and Julie Go Boating 1974
February 9 7:30 pm Stairway to Heaven aka A Matter of Life and Death 1946 9:30 pm Pennies from Heaven 1981	February 10 7:30 pm Eyes Wide Shut 1999
February 16 7:30 pm Point Blank 1967 9:15 pm Blow-Up 1966	February 17 7:30 pm Woman in the Dunes 1964
February 23 7:30 pm Don't Look Now 1973 9:30 pm Persona 1966	February 24 7:30 pm Vertigo 1958

Official Website: http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmListing.aspx#bdp