Following several days of great anticipation among festival attendees, the TCM Classic Film Festival unveiled its final lineup yesterday via its website. Featuring a veritable amalgam of lesser-seen movie classics and fan favorites, this is sure to be a year to remember.
One of the unexpected highlights of this year will be a midnight showing of the 1932 cult classic Freaks, a dark look into the world of circus sideshows and one of my personal favorite films of the early 1930s. Freaks includes a cast comprised almost exclusively of real-life sideshow performers, and is startlingly progressive and forward-thinking in its treatment of people with disabilities and analysis of the sideshow life. I will definitely be attending this film and will be reporting back with a full analysis.
Another highlight for me is the fact that TCM has programmed two Oscar-nominated Barbara Stanwyck films, Double Indemnity (1944) and Stella Dallas (1937), to be shown on Friday and Saturday. Double Indemnity celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, and the screening will be a special 70th anniversary restoration of the film. Both Stella Dallas and Double Indemnity feature some of Barbara Stanwyck’s best work in a career made up of great performances. Watch this heartwrenching scene at the end of Stella Dallas, followed by her turn of evil in Double Indemnity, and you will see why Barbara Stanwyck is considered one of the greatest and most versatile actresses of her time. I very much look forward to seeing both of these movies on the big screen.
Last year TCM paid tribute to filmmaker Albert Maysles, and this year they show one of his seminal works, the classic documentary Grey Gardens, a stark but ultimately endearing examination of aristocracy in decline. Maysles and his brother, David, befriended Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (known as “Big Edie”) and her daughter, Edith (“Little Edie”), aunt and cousin to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and filmed them over the course of several months as they dealt with the consequences of embezzlement of their funds by a corrupt family member. They lived in squalor in Grey Gardens, their formerly glamorous estate in upstate New York, and had essentially become isolated from everyone but each other. It is a beautiful, funny, and sweet examination of what it means to be family, and how to make the most of a negative situation.
I am a huge fan of Grey Gardens. I think Little Edie is one of the greatest characters, real or created, in the history of cinema. Her outlook on life, her unique relationship with her mother, and her outrageous fashion sense (she has a talent for converting clothing items into other clothing accessories) makes for a character that a filmmaker could only dream of. Watch her below, in the famous clip of her describing her “costume for the day.”
As the festival approaches, I will post a complete list of what readers may expect to see on the blog, and my tentative schedule. To see the complete TCM lineup, click here!
See you next time!
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Backlots 
Lara, we’re all excited for you with GREY GARDENS! And of course, you never have to twist my arm to watch DOUBLE INDEMNITY! Looking forward to it all! 😀