Columbia Pictures 100 Years Celebrated at Locarno Film Festival 2024

From war movies and westerns to noir films, screwball comedies all the way to musicals – Sony-owned Columbia Pictures has had them all over its first 100 years. The 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival is celebrating the centenary in the Swiss town with “a tribute both to beloved classics and unheralded gems produced at the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s,” as organizers highlight online.

The Sony studio had previously had a 100th-anniversary bash at Cannes in May, co-hosted by Tom Rothman, chairman & CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group.

Locarno unveiled its retrospective of 40, mostly black-and-white, titles by emphasizing the importance of the studio for Hollywood history. “In 1924, the relatively small-scale motion picture company Cohn-Brandt-Cohn rebranded itself as Columbia Pictures,” the fest explains on its website. “This new studio would eventually feature, as its masthead, the Lady with a Torch, the Statue of Liberty-like female figure draped in the American flag that has become recognizable to film lovers everywhere. As Columbia Pictures, the studio struck gold, producing a major string of successes and becoming, over the next decade, an integral part of the Hollywood ecosystem.”

And Locarno artistic director Giona Nazzaro highlighted: “It was Columbia that offered the greatest professional opportunities to women and allowed Dorothy Arzner to make her debut behind the camera.”

The festival promises a “large, multi-faceted retrospective,” curated by documentarian, film critic, and film curator Ehsan Khoshbakht, that “will attempt to disentangle the knotty myths that surround Columbia Pictures and present a richer and more complex portrait of a studio worth celebrating.”

Khoshbakht himself vows to showcase “fast-talking career women of screwball comedies, “existentialist cowboys,” “prophetic anti-fascist quickies,” and “unsettling ‘problem pictures’.”

So what Columbia Pictures golden age classics will Locarno77 unspool? The full lineup, including such silver-screen legends as Rock Hudson (Gun Fury, 1953), Spencer Tracy (Man’s Castle, 1933), and William Holden (Picnic, 1955), can be found here.

Below, see a selection of 11 of the titles featured in the retrospective to whet your appetite.

Wall Street
No, this is not the 1987 movie directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, which stars Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Daryl Hannah, and Martin Sheen and was distributed by Fox.

This is the one directed by Roy William Neill and starring Ralph Ince, Aileen Pringle, Philip Strange, Sam De Grasse, and Freddie Burke Frederick from 1929, making it the oldest Columbia Pictures movie in the Locarno homage lineup.

At 68 minutes, it is also shorter than other fare in the tribute program. The story focuses on a steelworker-turned-ruthless tycoon whose tough business methods lead a rival to suicide. The widow believes she can ruin the tycoon and conspires with her husband’s former partner.

Bitter Victory
This war film, starring Richard Burton and Curd Jürgens as two British Army officers sent out on a commando raid in North Africa, will be introduced at Locarno by Haden Guest, the director of the Harvard Film Archive.

Based on the novel of the same name by René Hardy, the French-American co-production also features Ruth Roman and Raymond Pellegrin.

The movie, directed by Nicholas Ray, not only featured foreign lands on screen but also traveled itself, debuting at the Venice Film Festival in 1957.

Address Unknown 
The 1944 film noir drama, directed by William Cameron Menzies, is based on Kressmann Taylor’s 1938 novel of the same name. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté’s creative use of shadows and camera angles has often been lauded.

The 72-minute movie tells the story of two families caught up in the rise of Nazism in Germany before the start of World War II. Its cast includes Paul Lukas, Carl Esmond, Peter van Eyck, Mady Christians, Morris Carnovsky, and K.T. Stevens.

The film screening in Locarno’s Columbia Pictures retrospective received Oscar nominations for best original score and best art direction.

Gunman’s Walk
As the title suggests, this is a Western. The Locarno crowd will be treated to a special introduction from Sony Pictures Entertainment’s film restoration and digital mastering guru Grover Crisp.

Directed by Phil Karlson, this one stars Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathryn Grant, and James Darren. Heflin plays a powerful rancher who always protects his hot-tempered adult son (Hunter) by paying for damages and bribing witnesses – until his crimes become too serious. Grant plays a beautiful half-French, half-Sioux woman toward who the hothead makes unwanted advances.

In a sign of its influence, Quentin Tarantino later said that the film was an inspiration for Tanner, the fictitious movie in his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Gunman’s Walk premiered in 1958, one year before another Western, and the newest film in the Columbia Pictures retrospective at Locarno, Ride Lonesome, directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, and Pernell Roberts.

Craig’s Wife
Based on the eponymous play by George Kelly, this 1936 melodrama is a rare movie from female creators in the retrospective.

Dorothy Arzner, one of just a few women directors who managed to have a long and successful career in Hollywood in its early days and later became a focus for students of film and relationships, directed the film from a screenplay by Mary C. McCall Jr. The introduction at Locarno will come from another female voice, namely freelance writer, critic, and film historian Pamela Hutchinson.

Rosalind Russell, John Boles, Billie Burke, Jane Darwell, and Dorothy Wilson star in the film about Harriet, who has married a man because he is able to provide the kind of posh lifestyle she desires. But when her husband gets a scare involving the police, her way of life is threatened.

You Nazty Spy! 
The 1940 comedy short, directed by Jules White, stars the famous slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard) and was the 44th of the 190 shorts released by Columbia Pictures with the comedians between 1934 and 1959.

The 18-minute film is often recognized as Hollywood’s first anti-Nazi comedy as its release predated that of Charles Chaplin’s The Great Dictator by several months. The title mixes parody of comedian Joe Penner’s catchphrase “You Nasty Man!” with the 1939 Warner Bros. film Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

Here is the plot: Three ammunition manufacturers are unhappy about a profit decline due to King Herman the 6+⁷⁄₈‘s pacifist policies. So they conspire to overthrow him and set up a dictatorship. The unwitting Stooges are wallpaper hangers who get chosen as figureheads for the new regime

The Talk of the Town
Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman star in the romantic comedy/drama, directed by George Stevens, that debuted in 1942.

Grant plays Leopold Dilg who is accused of arson and murder but escapes from jail during his trial and looks to hide in a remote cottage owned by his former schoolmate Nora, on whom he has had a crush for years. Nora rented the cottage to a law professor writing a book (Colman) for the summer. When both Lightcap and Dilg arrive within minutes of each other, Nora hides Dilg in the attic, and things take their course from there.

A couple of the elements of the movie were unusual for the time. One was the use of two leading men. The other was the role of a valet, played by Rex Ingram, which back then was a rare example of a non-stereotypical part for a Black actor.

The Lady From Shanghai
Orson Welles. Rita Hayworth. Everett Sloane. Noir thriller. Do we need to say more?

Well, we could. Welles stars in, directed, and wrote the screenplay for the 1947 movie, based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King. Glenn Anderson and Ted De Corsia also star. Plus, Charles Lawton Jr. handled the cinematography.

The classic is about Michael, an Irish sailor (Welles), who rescues Elsa (Hayworth) when her coach gets waylaid in Central Park and falls for her. But Elsa and her disabled criminal defense attorney husband (Sloane) just arrived in New York City from Shanghai and travel on to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Michael agrees to sign on as a seaman aboard the husband’s yacht.

The Big Heat
This 1953 film noir also packs a punch and star power. Directed by the “Master of Darkness” Fritz Lang, stars Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Jocelyn Brando. 

The story is quickly explained: a cop takes on the crime syndicate that controls his city. The movie begins when a homicide detective is called on to investigate the suicide of a fellow cop.

As far as the story of the production goes, Columbia wanted Marilyn Monroe to star but did not want to pay the amount that 20th Century Fox demanded for loaning a rival their star.

Women’s Prison
The cast list for the 1955 Columbia Pictures classic is full of female power: Ida Lupino, Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter.

Behind the scenes, of course, men were in charge. Lewis Seiler directed the film based on a screenplay from Crane Wilbur and Jack DeWitt.

The plot can partly be guessed from the title. A sadistic prison warden takes out her sexual frustration on her women inmates, while a physician tries to improve the brutal atmosphere in the prison. And a pair of rebellious inmates may take matters into their own hands.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Can’t get enough of Cary Grant and Jean Arthur? Well, here is another romantic comedy/drama, this time from 1936. Plus, it is directed by Frank Capra.

Robert Riskin wrote the screenplay in his fifth collaboration with Capra, based on the short story “Opera Hat” by Clarence Budington Kelland. During early principal photography, the project still used the short story’s title it was renamed based on the winning entry of a contest held by the Columbia Pictures publicity department.

Grant plays an unassuming greeting card poet from a small town who heads to New York City after inheriting a fortune, only to be hounded by people trying to take advantage of him.