Lady in the Dark
Dir. Mitchell Leisen. 1944, 100 mins. 35mm. With Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland. Ginger Rogers stars as a magazine editor who sees a psychiatrist because she is torn between her attraction to her married publisher, another colleague, and a movie star. In her dream sequences, the film becomes a Technicolor musical. The lush visuals and lavishly designed costumes reflect director Mitchell Leisen’s own experience as a costume and set designer, and the work of Edith Head and Broadway designer Raoul Pene du Bois.
Preceded by Rose Hobart. Dir. Joseph Cornell. 1936, 18 mins. 16mm. Collage artist Joseph Cornell recut the 1929 film East of Borneo, eliminating dialogue, destroying narrative logic, adding footage from scientific films and projecting it through a blue filter, transforming Hollywood schlock into a surrealist reverie. Cornell treats images of Hollywood glamor as if they were styles from the past that he re-cuts for a more contemporary look.