Saturdays at 8pm ET
Our limited series Two For One continues this fall every Saturday at 8pm. Each night, a different filmmaker joins TCM host Ben Mankiewicz to share a unique and specially curated double feature. The personal and historical significance of each film will be represented in an enjoyable, thoughtful dialogue led by renowned artists and movie fans Spike Lee, Patty Jenkins, Steven Spielberg, Ethan Hawke and David Byrne.
Lee kicks off the series on November 2 with Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) and Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951). Director of such films as Do the Right Thing (1989), Summer of Sam (1999) and Da 5 Bloods (2020), Lee’s double feature zeros in on the manipulation of media. In A Face in the Crowd, Andy Griffith stars as Lonesome Rhodes, a charismatic drifter destined for television stardom after crossing paths with Marcia Jeffries, an intelligent but naïve radio producer played by Patricia Neal. Together they rise to prominence, but Marcia eventually must reckon with the fallout of the monstrous celebrity she helped create. Wilder’s Ace in the Hole sees Kirk Douglas as a cavalier newspaper reporter who will stop at nothing for the perfect scoop, even if it endangers the lives of those around him, particularly a local man trapped in a cave.
Patty Jenkins, director of Monster (2003) and Wonder Woman (2017), presents two films that look at the absurdities of life with New York as their backdrop. In Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King, Jeff Bridges stars as a depressed former radio DJ haunted by a grave mistake in his past. After becoming intertwined with a homeless man (Robin Williams), whose own life has been drastically impacted by the incident, he seeks redemption by helping the man on a fictitious quest to find the Holy Grail. Together the two develop a friendship that brings them both out of their despondent shells. The Fisher King employs many of Gilliam’s trademarks, particularly his penchant for blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, a narrative element used prominently in Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York (2008). Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theater director whose life takes a surreal turn when he begins production on a hyperrealistic play that mirrors his own deteriorating reality.
Pioneering director of The Fablemans (2022), Munich (2005) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), Steven Spielberg calls back to the apex of the double feature in the 1950s with a pair of pictures from 1957. Jailhouse Rock gave Elvis Presley his most iconic role as a convict who becomes a sensation after performing in a nationally broadcast prison revue and must now navigate the shady dealings of the music business. In Samuel Fuller’s 20th Century-Fox Western, Forty Guns, Barbara Stanwyck stars in her final Western feature as a matriarch rancher ruling her territory with an iron fist and 40 hired gunmen to do her bidding. But her control over the territory gets challenged when a trio of brothers come to enforce the law on behalf of the Attorney General.
Ethan Hawke, actor in such films as First Reformed (2017) and Before Sunrise (1995) and director of the docuseries The Last Movie Stars (2022), presents a couple of gunslinger films from 1950. In The Gunfighter, Gregory Peck plays Jimmy Ringo, whose reputation as the fastest gunman in the West leads three scorned brothers in hot pursuit of him looking for revenge. As Jimmy takes quick refuge in a small town hoping to see his estranged wife and son, his past follows him leading to danger for the town. Directed by Henry King, the film marked the second of six collaborations between Peck and King. Guns act as a dangerous aphrodisiac between two outsiders in Gun Crazy, a United Artists production directed by Joseph H. Lewis. John Dall stars as a gun fanatic who falls for a charming carnival shooter played by Peggy Cummins. Their blossoming love gets complicated when a heist goes wrong, revealing the true colors of blood lust among them.
Musician, artist and filmmaker David Byrne, best known for his work with the band Talking Heads, brings us into the ethereal realm of the afterlife for his picks. In the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger production A Matter of Life and Death (1946), David Niven plays Peter, a British WWII fighter pilot meant to die when his plane crashes over the English Channel but instead miraculously survives. When a guide from the Great Beyond visits Peter to correct the mistake and bring the pilot to his rightful place, Peter adamantly pleads to stay as he has fallen in love with his colleague, a radio operator played by Kim Hunter. As his spirit teeters between the physical world and the spiritual realm, Jack Cardiff’s sumptuous cinematography captures the back and forth in stunning color and crisp black-and-white. The angelic realm and the physical world similarly intertwine in Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987) as two angels watch over the daily lives of Berliners in a divided Germany. Of the many people under their gaze is a lonely trapeze artist searching for love, which causes one of the angels to fall for her and renounce immortality to experience life as a human. Henri Alekan captures the film with both black-and-white photography and vibrant color.
FEATURED FILMS & SPECIAL GUESTS
10/5 Martin Scorsese
