Restored The Chase Included in Preservation Festival

The UCLA Film and Television Archive presents their annual Festival of Preservation this March, and on the schedule will be The Chase (1947), one of a handful of movies Peter Lorre made after leaving behind his lucrative years at Warner Bros.

The Chase will be shown on Sunday, March 10, 2013, on a double bill with High Tide, another noir movie from 1947. The program begins at 7 pm.

More information on the Festival, as well as a complete schedule, may be found on the UCLA Film and Television Archive website. The Festival of Preservation includes documentaries and television programs, as well as silent and sound movies. Silent movies will be accompanied by live music.

Tickets for The Chase / High Tide double feature are $9 general admission and $8 for non-UCLA students, seniors, and UCLA Alumni Association members. ID is required for students and Alumni Association members. Current UCLA students with ID are eligible for one free ticket to any Archive show.

General admission tickets may also be purchased on-line through the Festival website for $10 each. Tickets may be called for at the Billy Wilder Theater box office, which opens one hour before the first show.

The Festival will be held in the Billy Wilder Theater located at the Courtyard Level of the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, at the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, CA. For more information, please call (310) 206-8013.

Parking is available in the lot under the Billy Wilder Theater. Enter the lot from Westwood Blvd., just north of Wilshire. Parking for the disabled is provided on levels P1 and P3. On Saturdays and Sundays, the fee is a flat rate of $3. More information about parking may be found on the Festival webpage.

The Hammer Museum is also easily reached by public transportation.

Restoration of The Chase was completed by UCLA Film and Television Archive preservationist Nancy Mysel, who passed away in 2012. The print was preserved from various incomplete 35mm nitrate prints and 16mm acetate picture and track negatives.

Billy Wilder, the Hungarian writer and director for whom the venue is named, was 19 when he knew the equally young Peter Lorre in Berlin, where each began his career in theater and film. For Stephen Youngkin’s book The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre (2005), Wilder reminisced about Peter Lorre, their escape from Germany to Paris after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and their journey to America and the film studios of Hollywood.

The popular internet story about Peter and Billy sharing rooms in Hollywood? Just a story with no basis in fact. Peter traveled to California with his wife Celia Lovsky, whom he married in London during a break in filming The Man Who Knew Too Much. The contract Peter held with Columbia Studios enabled the couple to rent a house in Santa Monica soon after their arrival in Los Angeles.