Telluride Film Festival flashback to 1993: ‘The Piano’ scores, John Alton shines

The bread and butter of film festivals is the unveiling of new movies. And in the case of the  major festivals taking place in the late summer and early fall — Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York — the selections offer a preview of potential Oscar nominees and winners. Remember the eight-minute standing ovation Brendan Fraser received last year at Venice for “The Whale”? It kicked off his comeback and journey to a best Oscar win this year.

And with the 50th annual Telluride Film Festival kicking off August 31 at in the picturesque Colorado mountain burg, let’s take the cinematic time machine back 1993 when the fest was a mere 20 years old. John Boorman of “Deliverance” and “Hope and Glory” fame was the guest director of the festival. Jennifer Jason Leigh, then just 31 and whose latest film was Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” was honored with a tribute as was socialist British director Ken Loach, whose Cannes Jury Prize winner  “Raining Stones screened at Telluride. In a written tribute, Boorman, who introduced Loach, stated: “Like the poor he defends, Loach is always with us.”

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Some 27 different programs were presented over the four-day period including several foreign films making their U.S. debuts such as Jane Campion’s “The Piano” and Kaige Chen’s “Farewell, My Concubine,” which shared the Palme d’or earlier in the year; Mike Leigh’s “Naked,” for which he won best director and star David Thewlis received best actor at Cannes; and Wim Wenders’ “Faraway, So Close!,” his sequel to “Wings of Desire.”

Other titles included Wayne Wang’s “The Joy Luck Club”; Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s “Suture”;  Lodge Kerrigan’s “Clean, Shaven”;  Krysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors: Blue” and the three-hour two-part Canadian TV movie “The Boys of St. Vincent,” which had been banned in some territories, about the orphan boys who had been molested by priests.

But festivals don’t just showcase the present, they also shine the spotlight on cinema’s golden past. The 1993 edition of Telluride had many “I wish I had been there moments” including an in-person tribute to cinematographer John Alton who had won (with Alfred Gilks) the Oscar for his eye-popping Technicolor work on 1951’s Best Picture winner “An American in Paris.” But he was best known for his use of black and white and innovative camera angles in such film noirs as Anthony Mann’s 1947 “T-Men” and 1948’s “Raw Deal.” The Hungarian-born lenser had quit the business after he was fired from 1962’s “Birdman of Alcatraz.” He briefly returned to do shoot the 1966 pilot of the CBS classic “Mission: Impossible.”

But Alton and his wife virtually disappeared as they spent their retirement travelling and living in South American and Europe. He noted: “I stopped because I wanted to live. That was no life, to work at the studio, get up at six every morning and fight the producers. I had enough I looked at my bank book and I said ‘That’s it!’” Telluride had tried for twenty years to lure him to the festival going so far as to scheduling a “Where is John Alton?’ program back in 1984.

So how was he discovered? L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan explained that “after an article in the Times caught the attention of his grandson, Alton was quickly snapped up by the Telluride Festival.” Alton, who was a month shy of his 92nd birthday, “was the picture of affability at the tribute, waving to the crowd and speaking with feeling of his love of the dark. ‘The dark is better for killing. I don’t think people kill in bright light. You all know in your own lives the most interesting things in the world happen in the night.”’ Alton died in 1996 at the age of 95.

There were also several vintage films in the offing at the 20th annual festival including an early Norma Shearer film, 1926’s “Upstage,” which Turan described as “breezy, savvy and thoroughly delightful.” Other rarely seen films included the 1923 German silent “Sylvester,” Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film, “Fear and Desire,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1952 and opened in New York in 1953, and the 1948 Polish drama “The Last Stop,” which was filmed on location in Auschwitz and revolved around the experience of women in the concentration camp.

Thirty years ago, the world was being ravaged by AIDS. And the festival acknowledged those who had died and were suffering from the disease. In fact, the 20th edition was dedicated to Gary Essert who, with his life and work partner  Gary Abrahams (aka the Garys), founded the Los Angeles International Film Exposition (FILMEX) in 1971 and created the American Cinematheque in 1983. Both died within a month of each other of complications of AIDS in 1992. The festival also screened “Blue,” the last film of Derek Jarman who would die of an AIDs-related illness the following February at the age of 52.

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