Event

CHICAGO

Tuesday, May 24 at 7:30pm Members $9 / Public $13

Live Musical Accompaniment by Ben Model on the Cinema's Miditzer Theater Organ!

THE ORIGINAL 1927 SILENT CLASSIC

Sexy, jazz-loving and dressed to kill, Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver) has a doting, handsome
husband; not to mention a gold-digging affair on the side with Eugene Pallette, who
pays and pays, eventually with his life. Put on trial for murder, Roxie secures lawyer Billy Flynn
(Robert Edeson), equal part mob 'mouthpiece' and publicity agent. When Roxy hits the
headlines, the courtroom theatrics begin. Like the 2002 movie and hit Broadway show, this
original 1927 version is based on the 1926 hit Broadway play by Maurine Watkins. It's a
terrifically entertaining mix of humor and melodrama as well as a pungent critique of trash
journalism. Frank Urson signed Chicago as director, although it is substantially the work of
Cecil B. DeMille (DeMille apparently judged it unseemly to take credit for this cynical and
secular story while his religious spectacle The King of Kings was still in theatres!). Chicago is
silent filmmaking at its peak. Chicago was long believed a lost film, but a perfect print survived in DeMille's private collection.
Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2006, it has since been widely performed to rapturous audiences. USA,
1927, 118 min., b/w, 35mm. This program is partially funded by the Suffolk County Executive's Office and National Endowment for the Arts.

Ben Model, silent film accompanist for MoMA,composes his own scores and performs in a style that evokes the
silent era and reflects a contemporary audience's appreciation of music www.benmodel.com