100 years of Warner Bros. : The studio’s biggest films should still be seen in theaters

Its water tower is almost as famous as the Hollywood sign that overlooks Hollywood. From the sound revolution of The Jazz Singer (1927) to the visual and narrative slapstick of Christopher Nolan (Inception, Interstellar) or Denis Villeneuve (Dune), Holy Monsters Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood films and DC franchises. Or Harry Potter, Warner Bros. Studio. The century of cinema has passed – and irrevocably marked it. In 2023, the Major will celebrate its centenary with a series of film events.

Warner Bros. 100

In France, this anniversary will be accompanied by the studio in more than 200 cinemas under the “Warner Bros. 100” banner. Thus, eleven major feature films, at a rate of one film per decade, will be rediscovered or revisited on the big screen starting June 7:

• 1920s: Jazz singer

• 1930s: 42nd Street

• 1940s: Casablanca

• 1950s: Rio Bravo

• 1960s: 2001 A Space Odyssey

• 1970s: The Exorcist

• 1980s: The final cut of Blade Runner

• 1990s: Good Friends

• 2000s: Gran Torino

• 2010s: The Beginning

• 2020s: The Joker

UGC Party Warner

UGC cinemas go even further and join forces with this event, offering an outstanding program of 100 studio masterpieces in 20 UGC cinemas across France all summer long, from June 7 to August 29, for €8.50 per seat. or:

• UGC Ciné Cité les Halles: 1 film per day, or 84 films during the summer, and various events and entertainment to accompany this anniversary program.

• UCG Ciné Cité Bercy: special retrospectives around franchises and filmmakers (Lord of the Rings, Christopher Nolan, DC Universe, etc.)

• Dedicated programming in 18 French cinemas on Saturday and Sunday evenings: UGC Ciné Cité Vélizy, UGC Ciné Cité Créteil, UGC Ciné Cité Cergy, UGC Issy les Moulineaux, UGC Ciné Cité La Défense, UGC Ciné Ciné Cité Créteil UGC Ciné Cité Parly, UGC Ciné Cité Noisy -le-Grand, UGC Ciné Cité Part-Dieu (Lyon), UGC Ciné Internationale City (Lyon), UGC Ciné Cité Atlantis (Nantes), UGC Ciné Cité Bordeaux, UGC Ciné Cité Cité Ciné Fleet (Bordeaux), UGC Talence (Bordeaux ), UGC Ciné Cité Lille, UGC Ciné Cité Strasbourg, UGC Nancy.

All programming is included ugc.fr

100 years of Warner Bros. : 5 questions for director Leslie Iwerks

The history of the studio is told by Leslie Iwerks in the excellent documentary series 100 years of Warner Bros., which appeared a few weeks ago at the Cannes Film Festival and will soon be available in France: in four episodes the filmmaker has already taken back. Scenes from the attractions of Pixar, ILM or Disney Parks, we will (re)immerse ourselves in the dream story of Warner Brothers, which has now become an entertainment giant, but also the place of the greatest artists and many narrative innovations, technical and strategic innovations. . For AlloCiné, it deciphers the touch, the magic and the meaning of Warner.

AlloCiné: How do you present Warner to the general public? What is Warner Bros. ?

Leslie Iwerks: This is a studio that is 100 years old. And which I would say has survived, invented and reinvented itself over ten decades and continued to push the boundaries of creativity, storytelling, commerce and innovation, mostly technology. So all of these kinds of themes, intertwined, made it last 100 years.

How do you condense a hundred years into four one-hour episodes? how did you work

I have watched many Warner films already! (Laughs) Once we started developing the series, I spent almost three to four months watching movies! And it was fun. I graduated from cinema. And I felt like I was going back to film school. The hard part was taking all these movies – even though you’ll never see them because there are so many – and watching them in chronological order of production.

With this you begin to see the evolution of cinema, the evolution of acting, sets, storytelling, technology, from black and white, silent films to black and white, color, sound… you see a lot of interesting things when you study all these films. according to the rule. You start seeing reused sets, costumes, or costumes from one movie to the next. At the time, they had to reuse a lot of things for budgetary reasons. So learning the studio like that was pretty fun. And read at the same time.

I read a lot of things, for example the biography of Michael Curtis. There was a lot to take in in a short amount of time. And finally I realized that I was going too far. I had to take a step back and look at the bigger picture rather than delving deep into every topic. First of all, it was necessary to review and identify the turning points and key moments in the life of the studio. Not only from a commercial point of view, but also from an artistic point of view. Which movies made the difference?

When you look at Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), for example, it was a movie that changed the world. They fought the Nazis through this film and took a big risk to make this film. They got death threats after doing it… We had to identify these films whose stories changed the world and had a real impact. I tried to really focus on those stages.

Once we defined those stages, it was about finding a narrative fabric between the two to tell the reason for making a particular film. What in the world was going on while this movie was being made? Why did it have such a cultural impact? Or was it an echo chamber of cultural change? We worked on all those aspects to figure out what four hours would be.

And it’s interesting to see that you haven’t left out the negative stuff like the use of blackface in the early days at the studio, the contract politics, or Jack Warner’s personality… You’re not trying to hide or hide anything. Lowering the water.

For me, it’s about telling a story. You have to put these elements together to make it all come true: Warner hasn’t been a perfect company for 100 years. Many mistakes were made. And I have this approach to every film I make. In The Imagineering Story, this was the first time Disney actually allowed a filmmaker to go behind the scenes and critique their work. It was the same with Pixar. Just being honest about what really happened is the best way to approach these movies. With Warner Bros., there were so many business ups and downs and near-deaths that it made it much more interesting.

Your documentary series opens with footage of the mythical “last” of the Warner studio. What does this place represent to you?

After my first meeting with Warner executives, I wandered around the studios. We were at the end of 2020, in the middle of COVID, so the studio was at a standstill, closed. As I wandered through the stages and sets, something immediately hit me. I could hear the sounds, the sounds that made the history of the studio, the various plays that were filmed there, from the 1920s until everything stopped. I could really hear that ‘action!’, that clapping and the voices of the directors working with the actors… I thought it would be interesting to start our documentary by sharing that feeling.

Especially since Warner Bros. They have preserved their history and heritage very well: not only have they preserved their studios and continue to use them on a daily basis, but they have also created a real department dedicated to archives. They kept the old costumes, the old accessories. And they themselves continue to preserve the films and restore them. And they really believe in preserving history. So the beginning of our documentary leads, in a way, to the beginning of this sense of preserving history.

On June 7, Warner’s great classic will be released in French cinemas. Including ‘The Jazz Singer’, which has an amazing story and which ultimately sums up Warner’s influence on cinema…

This film is an innovation. Clean and simple. and bold risk-taking. It’s the first sound feature and it was a bittersweet film because it was such a big milestone for the industry. Everything should change after this movie. And everything changed. But Sam Warner, who started it and was really the visionary behind it, died the night before the film premiered. This destroyed the brothers, after that their lives changed. But at the same time, they moved and changed the industry…