The Adventures of Tom Sawyer/ The Sultan's Jester

Feb 27th

8pm

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(Norman Taurog, US 1938, 91 min., 35mm)

The Sultan's Jester
(Roy Mack, US 1930, 9 min., 35mm)

Technicolor. The third Hollywood adaptation of the classic Mark Twain novel (and the first in glorious Technicolor!) sees the mischievous boy going through all his iconic pranks: the ingenious fence-whitewashing episode, the courting of Becky Thatcher, rafting down the Mississippi river, attending his own funeral, saving the local drunk from the gallows, and finally a daring escape through a gorgeously designed cave. In all aspects very much a brainchild of its producer, David O. Selznick, the film initially flopped at the box office, but resonates today with a nostalgic blend of naiveté and wickedness lost to contemporary Hollywood. Preceded by The Sultan's Jester, an early Technicolor Vitaphone short that was recently restored by George Eastman House in collaboration with Warner Bros.