1950s cinema returns in upcoming Film Forum festival

New York City’s Film Forum is setting its cinematic clock back to the Eisenhower era with “50 from the ’50s,” a four-week festival presenting 50 Hollywood classics and curios.

From Oct. 13 through Nov. 9, “50 from the ’50s” will highlight the dramatic changes that occurred in movies, from the rise of new projection technologies and new styles of acting to the challenges of McCarthy-era blacklisting and the permeation of political allegories into Westerns and science fiction. Many films tackled adult subject matter that was previously taboo while others provided the happy distractions that audiences came to expect from the big screen fare.

The festival will include two special events: A conversation with Maria Cooper, daughter of actor Gary Cooper, and Amanda Foreman, daughter of blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman, following the Oct. 25 screening Fred Zinnemann’s “High Noon,” and a conversation with actress Carroll Baker following the Nov. 2 screening of her star-making performance in Elia Kazan’s “Baby Doll.”

The festival will also include rare screenings of several 3-D films including “House of Wax,” “Man in the Dark,” “Taza, Son of Cochise” and a double-bill of “Creature from the Black Lagoon” with the Three Stooges short “Spooks.”

Photo: Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach in the 1956 “Baby Doll.” Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.