Rouben Mamoulian, Lost and Found (André S. Labarthe, 2016)

Rouben Mamoulian, Lost and Found

Free admission screening of the film at Il Cinema Ritrovato, on June 23, 14.30, Sala Scorsese.

When it comes to filmed interviews, Mamoulian is one of the well-documented giants of classical Hollywood. His eloquence and wisdom can be heard in interviews shot for documentaries about his friends (George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey, shown at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021) or horror cinema (The Horror of It All by Gene Feldman and Suzette Winter, 1983). There are films exclusively about him such as Patrick Cazals's Rouben Mamoulian, l’âge d’or de Broadway et Hollywood (2007) which also features brief clips of interviews that Iranian director of Armenian origins, Arby Ovanessian (a guest of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2022) conducted with Mamoulian. Television networks, too, since the revival of his films in the 1960s, have interviewed him as in BBC's Film Extra (1973). However, this French television interview, by one of the fathering figures of television documentaries on cinema, André S. Labarthe, was lost for decades until retrieved and made into the Rouben Mamoulian, Lost and Found. This is the most detailed career interview Mamoulian ever gave on film.

Rouben Mamoulian: A Touch of Desire

Silk Stockings | publicity still

Rouben Mamoulian: A Touch of Desire (1926-1957)

Retrospective at Il Cinema Ritrovato, June 24-July 2, 2023

Known for his ability to encode his vision in light, movement, and later in colour, the Tbilisi-born Armenian Rouben Mamoulian had one of the most consistent bodies of work in American cinema. Rightly celebrated for his invaluable contribution to Hollywood's transition to sound, he both unchained the camera and used dialogue like a work of musical accompaniment. His mobile camera was envied and imitated, and his style is instantly recognisable for its sophistication, humour and erotic undertone. Mamoulian was equally efficient in more sombre types of cinema, serving as a pioneering figure in both gangster and horror genres. This career retrospective showcases Mamoulian's work from his only silent film, to the early sound period, to his final musical, in colour and CinemaScope. Aside from a new digital restoration of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, everything else will be screened in 35mm.

Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, 1935)

Becky Sharp

A restored version of Becky Sharp will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2019. For the screening date, check the Cineteca's website mid-June. -- EK


Becky Sharp, the protagonist of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, is a golden-haired gold digger, a flirt and social climber of early 19th-century England. Mamoulian’s portrayal of Becky in this satire of aristocratic life shows her not as an opportunist but a woman mischievously reversing gender power relations, a bon vivant – with three-strip Technicolor advocating her excessive world. This colour process, previously used only in shorts or for certain sequences in black and white features, was used here for a feature film for the first time. Shooting began with actor and (rather dull) part-time director Lowell Sherman handling the project. When Sherman died during the production Mamoulian was brought on board, starting from scratch. Having made a succession of great films since 1931, the Tbilisi-born Armenian had one of the most consistent bodies of work in post-sound American cinema, known for his ability to encode his vision in light, movement, and now colour. Technicolor wished to seduce the viewer; Mamoulian wanted to tell the story via the colour. The continuity of colour temperature was of no concern. In the ball sequence, a sudden shot from above also marks a shift like that from an oil painting to a watercolour, with colours leaking from the edges of the figures. The palette is dominated by pale blues, tawdry yellows, royal reds and light greys mostly for backgrounds. Critic Tom Milne notes how the colours define Becky's moods with “soft blues for melting ingenuousness, bright yellow for moments of triumph,” or more generally, when in the ball sequence “the blues, greens and yellows are gradually drained away to leave the screen suffused by a crescendo of red.” The initial box office failure and later availability of poor prints only (using the inferior two-colour Cinecolor process) created the impression that Becky Sharp wasn’t worthy of its director’s name. This definitive restoration finally reveals it as one of Mamoulian’s finest works of the ’30s.

Ehsan Khoshbakht

It Happened in Tehran#1

Third Tehran International Film Festival, 1974

From right to left: Rouben Mamoulian, Manouchehr Anvar, Kamran Shirdel, Gillo Pontecorvo, Gabriel Figueroa, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Miklós Jancsó. (two on the far left, unidentified)