The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
The Grand Duke's Finances
When
Wed 23 Nov 2022
Murnau’s uncharacteristic comedy is a realist fantasy full of grace, tension, brightness and charm that is reminiscent of the best of Lubitsch’s German films. The grand duke of a comic-opera duchy, who prefers a life of idleness for himself and his subjects, has his existence threatened by three malcontents and a shady financier who wants to transform his paradise into a much more profitable sulphur mine. Scripted by Thea von Harbou (Metropolis) and shot by Karl Freund (Dracula) and Franz Planer (Letter from an Unknown Woman), it features wonderfully expressive art direction by Rochus Gliese.
Also screening on Wed 23 November
Program
The Brink of Life: F.W. Murnau, Cinematic Visionary
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) – Wed 9 Nov, 7pm
The Last Laugh (1924) – Wed 9 Nov, 8.50pm
Nosferatu (1922) – Wed 16 Nov, 7pm
Faust (1926) – Wed 16 Nov, 8.25pm
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) – Wed 23 Nov, 7pm
The Haunted Castle (1921) – Wed 23 Nov, 8.40pm
The Grand Duke's Finances (1924) – Wed 23 Nov, 9.50pm
About the program
The Brink of Life: F.W. Murnau, Cinematic Visionary
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888–1931) was a perfectionist, an aesthete and, in many ways, a visionary, whose poetic, painterly, literate and highly cinematic sensibilities brought to the golden age of German cinema new concepts of film form based on a synthesis of all the elements then in vogue – from Caligari-like horrors to an expressionist use of actors’ bodies through to a rugged, sometimes optimistic naturalism (especially in his American period).
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
