Screening 35mm & 16mm film prints from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.
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Alias Jimmy Valentine
Sunday, June 8 @ 11:30 AM / Music Box Theatre — 3733 N Southport Ave
Tickets: $12 at the door or purchase in advanceALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE
Directed by Maurice Tourneur • 1915
On Christmas Day, 1909, Chicagoans at the Studebaker Theater were the first to see a stage production of Alias Jimmy Valentine, which Paul Armstrong had adapted from O. Henry’s short story “A Retrieved Reformation.” A month later, the play about a debonair safecracker and his tempestuous path to rehabilitation opened on Broadway and became a sensation. The film version would wait until 1915, when New Jersey’s World Film Corporation was bringing stage successes to the screen at the rate of one per week. Robert Warwick starred as Lee Randall, a society swell who moonlights as bank robber Jimmy Valentine because, alas, he is cursed with talent: his sensitive fingertips can detect minute tremulations from combination locks. He repeatedly tries to return to the straight and narrow but finds his efforts foiled by criminal confederates, merciless cops, and the irony of fate. The movie version of Alias Jimmy Valentine had two advantages that the stage rendition lacked. First, from the perspective of verisimilitude and ballyhoo, it boasted scenes actually shot in New York’s Sing Sing Prison. (As a token of appreciation, the film screened at Sing Sing, with an inmate providing piano accompaniment, before opening theatrically.) More significantly, Alias Jimmy Valentine benefited from the extraordinary visual sophistication of director Maurice Tourneur, a French émigré who’d been working in America for less than a year. Finding odd angles and painterly lighting to enliven a familiar story, Tourneur established the contours of the gangster film in high style. (KW)
50 min • World Film Corp. • 35mm from Library of Congress
Preceded by: “The Narrow Road” (D.W. Griffith, 1912) – 17 min – 35mm from Library of CongressLive musical accompaniment by David Drazin
NEXT UP: WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS on Tuesday, June 17 at Music Box
Upcoming screenings:
View all upcoming screenings & venue info →
Sun 6/8 at 11:30 AM at Music Box
Alias Jimmy Valentine • Advance Tickets
Tues 6/17 at 7:00 PM at Music Box
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
• Advance Tickets
Thu 6/26 at 6:00 PM at Film Center
Lightning • Advance Tickets
Sat 7/5 at 11:30 AM at Music Box
A Story of Floating Weeds
Mon 7/14 at 7:00 PM at Music Box
Pierrot le Fou
Thu 7/24 at 6:00 PM at Film Center
Tea and Sympathy
Sun 8/3 at 7:00 PM at Music Box
Earth
Thu 8/7 at 6:00 PM at Film Center
Time and Tide
Wed 8/13 at 8:00 PM at Constellation
Music of the Spheres: Films by Jordan Belson
8/22 – 8/24 at Film Center
Technicolor Weekend

The Chicago Film Society works to promote the exhibition of analog film prints, to preserve the equipment and skills used to create and exhibit them, and to encourage an approach to film history that positions cinema as part of the broader history of technology and society.
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