DEAD RINGER

USA 2022 - DCP - 102 minutes, in English

Director, Screenplay: Allan Nicholls

Producers: Peter Bray, Randy Ostrow, Ned Dowd, Chrisann Verges Cast: Marvin Lee Aday, Meat Loaf, Josh Mostel, Leah Ayers, Macintyre Dixon, Alan Braunstein

Print Courtesy: Allan Nicholls

Allan Nicholls, an honored guest at several previous MIFFs, returns with one of the rarest screenings of a movie we’ve ever had. DEAD RINGER has only been shown once or twice in the almost 40 years since Nicholls and his crew finished it, despite its undeniable quality and the interest it would have garnered because it centers on Meat Loaf, who had just seen his “Bat Out of Hell” album become a monster zillion-selling phenomenon. DEAD RINGER, the film, is a comical look at the life of a rock star in the ‘80s as he prepares for a world tour in support of his newest album. The star is Meat Loaf. The album is the follow up to “Bat Out of Hell,” itself titled “Dead Ringer.” Why has it gone virtually unseen? Arcane corporate legal issues between Meat Loaf, his record company, and songwriter Jim Steinman, have prevented the film from reaching its audience in the form in which it was made and intended to be seen—except for a couple of screenings of Nicholls’ personal print—until now, when MIFF will be premiering a newly digitized version of the film, supervised by its original editor, Norm Smith. Be there or forever miss paradise by DEAD RINGER’s dashboard light. —Ken Eisen Sponsored by Jim LaLiberty

Saturday, July 9 12:30 P.M. | WOH

Sunday, July 17 12:30 P.M. | WOH

France 1981 - 35mm - 117 minutes, in French with English subtitles

Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix

Screenplay: Jean-Jacques Beineix, Jean Van Hamme

Producer: Irène Silberman

Cast: Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, Frédéric Andrei, Richard Bohringer, Thuy An Luu

Print Courtesy: Rialto Pictures

“It’s about the joy of making movies. Every shot seems designed to delight the audience,” Pauline Kael, the tops in American film reviewing, wrote that about DIVA when it first came out in 1981, and it’s the same 40 years later—maybe truer than ever in this starvedfor-joy era, and in this new 35mm restoration print. What else is DIVA about? Well…young mail carrier, Jules, becomes enraptured with the voice of American diva Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez). She doesn’t believe in being recorded, but Jules secretly tapes her singing on a cassette. His recording gets mixed up with another tape that incriminates a police chief, who turns out to be working with the mob. Jules quickly becomes the target of gangsters, and must find a way to get himself out of the situation alive. “You have only to watch 10 minutes of Diva and you know you are in the hands of a man born to make movies. Sensual, funny, outlandish, this is a movie devoted to strictly to the pleasure principle.”— David Ansen, Newsweek. —Ken Eisen Sponsored by Kathryn Slott