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Looking Back

January 1983

Step back in time to see what our movie palaces were presenting in January 1983. Also included is interesting history about other area movie theaters. Film titles are linked mostly to the Internet Movie Database.

Redford Theatre moviegoers celebrated the New Year on Jan. 1 and 2 with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), starring Zero Mostel and Phil Silvers. Organist John Lauter provided musical entertainment. On Jan. 14 and 15, organist Don Haller warmed the audience up for the words and music of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe in the 1967 musical Camelot (Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave). On Jan. 28 and 29, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart starred in the Warner Brothers crime classic Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). At the Barton organ was Newton Bates.

The Detroit Film Theatre began its newest season on Jan. 14-16 with French director Jean-Pierre Melville's thrilling Bob le Flambeur (1956), which returned to the DFT in Feb. 2002. On Jan. 21-23, Fitzcarraldo tried to build an opera house in the middle of a Peruvian jungle in Werner Herzog's tale of ego and obsession. (Fizcarraldo video courtesy of YouTube)

The DFT ended its month with Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's Moonlighting, "one of the most elegant and convincing—and bitterly funny—movies ever made about the eternal lure of fascism and the universal specter of the bully." (VideoHound's World Cinema, Elliot Wilhelm). The Afternoon Film Theatre continued its tribute to director Tod Browning, with Iron Man (1931), Dracula (1931), Freaks (1932), and Mark of the Vampire (1935).

The Michigan Theatre celebrated its 55th anniversary on Jan. 5 with 50-cent admission for "a rousing theater organ overture" followed by the 1927 Oscar-winning silent film Wings. Audiences enjoyed a double bill of Casablanca (1943) and a movie that it inspired—Woody Allen's comedy Play It Again, Sam (1972).

Other multiple features at the Michigan were French director François Truffaut's Stolen Kisses (1968) and Small Change (1976); and Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, Bad, and the Ugly (1966). Live entertainment included the Sixth Ann Arbor Folk Festival and an Up with People benefit concert for the Michigan Theatre. The Michigan Community Theatre Foundation also raised money with a Las Vegas-style Millionaire's Party at the Ann Arbor Inn.

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