THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE

USA 1968 - DCP - 130 minutes, in English

Director: Robert Aldrich

Screenplay: Hugo Butler, Jean Rouverol

Producer: Robert Aldrich

Cast: Kim Novak, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine, Gabriele Tinti, Michael Murphy

Print Courtesy: Warner Brothers

Wednesday, July 12 7PM | WOH

In a Hollywood career that embraced everything from film noirs (Kiss Me Deadly) to Westerns (Apache) to war films (The Dirty Dozen) to campy horror (Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?) Robert Aldrich never made anything quite like The Legend Of Lylah Clare—and neither has anyone else! Michael Murphy, MIFF favorite and one of the film’s young supporting actors and Mike Kaplan, MGM publicist for the film at the time of its release, will introduce this deranged masterpiece. Take it from Time Out: “Hollywood picking its own scabs is always a riveting sight, and never more enjoyably so than in Aldrich’s supremely vulgar movie, which feeds glamorously off movie myth and experience to create a vigorously animated Hollywood Babylon where dead stars talk and everyone’s laundry is filthy. Kim Novak stars as the moulded reincarnation of Lylah Clare, whose stellar career ended in mysterious death on the night of her wedding to director Lewis Zarkan (Peter Finch), now attempting a semi-confessional biopic on the subject…Necrophilia, cancer, cripples, French critics, lesbianism, ignorant producers, nepotism, abortion, “Film artists,” Italian studs, and TV are the tasty elements Aldrich ghoulishly (and a little masochistically) juggles into a film fan’s delight, a side-splitting charade of satire, sarcasm and sheer perverse affection.” —KE