Two months after his death at the age of 76, the Tel Aviv Cinematheque is paying their last respects to the legendary film critic through a program showing a selection of his favorite films, with an emphasis on the Hollywood cinema of the 1950s. The retrospective, which will take place between September 27 and October 9, began as a joint project with Klein before the corona epidemic, so he chose to curate films from the cinema he grew up with, the ones that fueled his great love for cinematic magic.
Among the films chosen by Klein, you can watch “Johnny Guitar” by Nicholas Ray, a western starring Joan Crawford; Hitchcock’s film “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, starring Doris Day and James Stewart, and the musical “Shir Ashir Bagram”, which will be screened in a restored and shiny copy on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its release. Klein was supposed to be present at the screenings and present his choices himself, but as mentioned, the program changed slightly after his death.
After the project was interrupted with his death, it was finally completed with the help of his life partner Irma Klein, who chose seven more films from the era in question – ones that he loved and ones that faithfully represent the cinematic work of the 1950s in Hollywood: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” by Don Siegel; Another film by Nicholas Ray, “In a Lonely Place”; “Kiss me to death”, one of the most prominent film noir films of its time; And two Douglas Sirk melodramas – “Imitation of Life” and “All that the sky impresses.”
Uri Klein was a film critic and winner of the Sokolov Prize for Journalism in 2007. In 1979 he began writing film reviews for the newspaper “time”, where he continued to write for about four decades. Yael again, our cinema critic, Tribute to him upon his passing: “His writing was sharp and sometimes merciless, and when he butchered films by Israeli creators it could hurt especially, because his opinion was more important than any other opinion. It was important precisely because it came from a great love for cinema.”
“Uri Klein, in memory of him”, Tel Aviv Cinematheque, 27.9-9.10, for more details and tickets