Our film curator, Jeffrey Gorney, has come up with a Valentine’s Double Bill. Twice the romance.

Screening at 6pm: Midnight (1939) Directed by Mitchell Liesen, Written by Billy Wildeer and Chalres Brackett and starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Mary Astor.

Every Cinderella has a midnight!  In this screwball fairytale comedy, down-on-her-luck Bronx showgirl Eve Peabody finds herself stranded in Paris. Trying to ditch a  cab driver who is determined to be Prince Charming, Eve mistakenly wanders into a high society salon, only to be taken under the wing of a distinguished millionaire. But this is a fairy godfather with a plan: he wants Eve to break up his wife’s affair with a gigolo. Deftly skirting censorship restraints of the day, the film sparkles with no-nonsense sophisticated wit, sharp plot twists and a first-rate cast. In 2013 Midnight was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

“Films like Midnight should strike more often.” – NY Times

Screening at 8 pm: Maurice (1987) Directed by James ivory based on the novel by E.M. Forster and starring James Wilby and  Hugh Grant

Set in the rigidity of pre-World War I English society, Maurice tells the story of Maurice and Clive who find themselves falling in love in Cambridge. In a time and place when being gay means imprisonment, the two must cloak their feelings in secrecy. But when a friend is disgraced and jailed for “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks,” Clive abandons his forbidden love to marry a young woman. Maurice, however, keeps struggling with his identity. But all that changes when he is seduced by an appealing and adoring young male servant, an event that will change Maurice’s life and his understanding of the meaning of love.

“A must-see! A candid film whose beauty and importance has only increased with age.”— Guardian

$5 Suggested Donation