Around the Island

Movies at the Library: Library’s films for spring

The 2012 Movies at the Library series will continue at the Center firehouse with six more great movies, all fairly well-known but a few not often seen.

The series will open at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 27 with a film in honor of Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday this year. It is “A Tale of Two Cities,” one of his most well-known novels in a classic film with Ronald Coleman in the role of Sidney Carton. Made in 1935 and probably seen at least once by every school child in America, it is rarely, if ever, seen on television, which makes it a gem to welcome spring.

On April 10, two days after we celebrate Easter, Irving Berlin’s delightful “Easter Parade” will be shown with a star-studded cast led by Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Ann Miller. It is from 1948, during the years of the grand MGM musicals. Johnny Green won the Oscar for musical scoring and the film includes some of the best known and loved songs in all filmdom.

For a change of pace, “Arsenic and Old Lace” will be shown on April 24. This is a one-of-a-kind that no one has ever dared to remake. This version is too fine in every respect and, for once, Hollywood sensibly left well enough alone. Frank Capra directs Cary Grant and a cast of movie royalty including the inimitable Josephine Hill reprising her stage role as Abby and Jean Adair, also from Broadway, as her sister Martha.

Concluding the spring series will be a trio of truly great films by the multi-faceted Sidney Lumet who passed away in 2011. First on May 8 will be the 1975 movie, “Dog Day Afternoon,” staring Al Pacino. This is an incredible-but-true story of a bank heist gone terribly wrong. It is a quintessential film about New York, the setting for so many of Lumet’s films, and it secured Pacino’s place as an iconic American actor.

“Network,” Paddy Chayefsky’s outrageous satire on television, will be next on May 22. The film shocked some viewers in 1976 but it seems less like fantasy as the years pass. Peter Finch stars in his Oscar-winning role as the patently insane, profanity-shouting TV anchorman Howard Beale. Others in the terrific cast include Faye Dunaway and William Holden.

Continuing the Movies at the Library tradition of a special event to close the year, we will welcome Bob Markel as our guest on June 5. Markel was a close collaborator of Lumet’s and  he was art director for the last film in this series, “12 Angry Men.” He will share his memories of that film, whose distinguished cast is led by Henry Fonda. Do not miss it.

Two of the Lumet films are listed in the anthology “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.” Movies are not chosen on the basis of this anthology but it always interesting to see, once the series has been decided upon, which are included. In this case, they are “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Network.”

Movies at the Library is now in its eighth year and has presented an astonishing selection of films with a range that epitomizes its slogan: “Great movies, known and unknown.” Join other Shelter Island movie lovers this spring at the Center firehouse.