73SSIFF - 19/27 September 2025
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Lillian Hellman
Lillian Hellman
Retrospective
Retrospective
UNITED ARTISTS / Album
© UNITED ARTISTS / Album
Sidney Franklin
USA 
106 min.
Kitty and Alan have been inseparable since childhood. Now adults, they remain madly in love. When Alan is called up, they decide to get married before he leaves. Unable to find somebody to marry them, they seal the wedding in their own way. But when Alan comes home from the war, the relationship will no longer be the same.
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
William Wyler
USA 
93 min.
Recent graduates and close friends Martha and Karen turn the farm left to the latter by her grandfather into a boarding school for girls. But one day, the two teachers and Joe Cardin, the doctor who encouraged them to build the school, are caught up in a scandal when a malicious student cooks up a spiteful lie.
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
William Wyler
USA 
93 min.
The action is set in New York’s East Side, a working class area giving way to dwellings for the rich lured by its picturesque views. Also back in town is the gangster Baby Face Martin, who reunites with his mother and an old girlfriend.
Capi Films - 1937
© Capi Films - 1937
Joris Ivens
USA 
53 min.
Funded with 2,000 dollars and made by Joris Ivens, the documentary portrays the Spanish Civil War conflict from the point of view of the militia and the peasants’ movement. It enjoyed the participation of Lillian Hellman (not credited), Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Orson Welles and Jean Renoir.
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
H.C. Potter
USA 
83 min.
Stretch Willoughby is a coarse but good-hearted cowboy. Despite having nothing in common with her, he ends up falling in love with the wealthy young Mary Smith. She hates anyone telling her what to do. Uncredited participation of Hellman. 
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
William Wyler
USA 
100 min.
A western about the relationship between Cole Harden, an honest cowboy, and Roy Bean, an eccentric character of dubious morality, historically known as the hanging judge. Hellman participated in the screenplay, again uncredited.
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust
William Wyler
USA 
116 min.
In the deep South at the turn of the 20th century, the calculating and heartless Regina Giddens takes on her brothers in a fight-to-the-death bid to get her hands on the family inheritance. Her plans have no place for feelings, not even towards her husband, an honest man who comes home after a serious illness. Amidst the asphyxiating atmosphere created by his wife’s boundless ambition, the only human warmth he can find lies in his daughter’s love.
Lewis Milestone
USA 
101 min.
World War II. In the summer of 1941, the Germans invade the towns along the frontier of Communist Russia. A group of young people leave one of these towns, called The North Star, and embark on a journey that will be fraught with difficulties.
Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
© Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
Herman Shumlin
USA 
114 min.
A German engineer involved in the anti-Nazi resistance, his American wife and their three children move into her family home where they come across a Romanian count sympathetic to the Nazi cause.
William Dieterle
USA 
108 min.
Europe, the 1920s. Always the diplomat, Alex Hazen is slow to take sides. Cassie Bowman wants him to be more decisive and leaves him in Rome just as Mussolini is coming to power. At the end of World War II, Emily, Hazen’s wife, invites Cassie, now a famous journalist, to dinner.
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Universal
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Universal
Michael Gordon
USA 
107 min.
Prequel of The Little Foxes. The story is set two decades prior to the facts narrated in said film and shows the complicated and conflicting relationships of the Hubbard family members. The central figure of The Little Foxes is played here by Ann Blyth, a young girl at loggerheads with her parents for wanting to marry a confederate officer.
The Children’s Hour © 1961 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
© The Children’s Hour © 1961 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
William Wyler
USA 
107 min.
Karen  and Martha are headmistresses at a boarding school for girls. Furious at having been punished, a spiteful student thirsty for revenge overhears something being said and uses it to concoct a lie accusing the teachers of reprehensible behaviour. The scandalous rumours of a romantic relationship between the two teachers spread like wildfire through the school community, with immediate and devastating results.
Toys in the Attic © 1963 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Claude Productions. All Rights Reserved.
© Toys in the Attic © 1963 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Claude Productions. All Rights Reserved.
George Roy Hill
USA 
90 min.
Julian Berniers takes his wife Lily to meet his family in New Orleans. They come bearing lavish gifts for Carrie and Anne, Julian’s sisters, who hope that their brother will help them out with their finances. What they don’t know is that Julian has had to close his factory and that he too has money problems.
The Chase © 1966, renewed 1994 Horizon Management, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
© The Chase © 1966, renewed 1994 Horizon Management, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Arthur Penn
USA 
135 min.
An escaped convict returns to his hometown, but the locals, a debauched bunch, set out to capture him in true witch-hunt style, just for the fun of it. Only the sheriff, an honest and upright man, will try to stop them from lynching him.
Images courtesy of Park Circus/Walt Disney Studios
© Images courtesy of Park Circus/Walt Disney Studios
Fred Zinnemann
USA 
117 min.
In the 20s, the North American writer-to-be Lillian Hellman meets Julia, the daughter of a wealthy Scottish family. The two strike up a close friendship, only to be forced apart. Whilst Julia studies at Oxford and later in Vienna, under such luminaries as Freud, Lillian becomes a celebrated playwright. But she misses Julia’s friendship and decides to visit her in Vienna. In Europe Nazism is at its peak.
Kathy Bates
UK - USA 
95 min.
Recreation of the love affair and artistic relationship shared by writers Dashiell Hammet and Lillian Hellman. Their rocky story is framed within historical events such as the two world wars and the witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
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