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SCREENING

Bell, Book, and Candle

Saturday, Jun 25 at 3:15 pm

Location: Bartos Screening Room

Dir. Richard Quine. 1958, 106 mins. DCP. With Kim Novak, James Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Janice Rule, Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold. A sui generis Hollywood entertainment about a hipster Greenwich Village witch (Novak) who casts a romantic spell on her upstairs neighbor (Stewart), Bell, Book and Candle was released the same year as Stewart-Novak’s other famous pairing, Vertigo. Stewart’s straight-laced, affianced, yet evidently restless book publisher doesn’t stand a chance when confronted by the bewitching Novak in her swanky garden apartment, or by her beatnik brother Jack Lemmon’s spazzy conga-playing. James Wong Howe’s work on the film is atypically stylized, featuring wall-to-wall strong colors, ornate lighting, spectral conjurings and cat’s-eye perspectives. “I had fun photographing that picture, trying out ways of lighting with various colored lights and filters,” he told historian Alain Silver. “So [at times] you do have to get all the bags of tricks out and sort through them and find the right ones. And that only comes from experience.”

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.