Detroit
Movie Palaces
The
Film Programs of the Detroit Film Theatre, Michigan Theater, and
Redford Theatre
The Film Programs of the Detroit Film Theatre, Michigan Theater, and Redford Theatre
Your Guide to Classic Movie Theater Filmgoing!
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Read
about recent events
in the Detroit Movie Palaces blog! |
Explore
theater history Gaylord Carter Plays at Redford (May 1981) |
Look What's Coming!
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Get
a world of laughs at the Alliance
Francaise Comedy Film Shorts Series at the DFT
May 31.
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Learn more about the grieving process in the documentary Transforming
Loss at the Michigan
May 30.
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|
The renovated Redford re-opens with Julie Andrews flying high as Mary Poppins July 12-13. |
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Looking Back
April 1981
Step back in time to see what area movie theaters were presenting in April 1981. Film titles are linked to the Internet Movie Database.
For more information about these theaters, see Cinema Treasures or Water Winter Wonderland.
It's
Easter weekend in 1981 (April 17-19). At the Detroit Film Theatre, you
could have seen the 1980 "Special Edition" of Steven Spielberg's
1977 science fiction classic Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, or the offbeat 1980 American comedy
Imposters.
The Redford presented the 1927 silent film The
King of Kings, with its depiction of the last days of Jesus.
At
the Michigan, the Michigan Community Theatre Foundation hosted a Spring
Show on Good Friday that included organ music, stage performances, and
the movie Quo
Vadis (1951). On Easter Sunday, the foundation presented Judgment
at Nuremburg (1961).
Other
alternative film options on Easter weekend included the Cass City Cinema
(Cass and Forest in Detroit, at the First Unitarian Church), which showed
The Man
Who Laughs (1928) and The
Phantom of the Opera (1925). At the main Detroit Public Library,
the Detroit Film Society presented The
Night of the Hunter (1955) and An
American in Paris (1951). The Merrie Melodie Theatre in Rochester
screened The
Mad Magician (1954), a 3-D film with Vincent Price.
In
April 1981, the DFT also presented Every
Man for Himself, a 1980 film from noted French director Jean-Luc
Godard. Also at the DFT was Gates
of Heaven, the strangely poignant 1980 documentary about pet cemetaries
that returned to the DFT in February 2000 as part of a retrospective on
the film's director, Errol Morris.
The
Classic Film Theatre of the Michigan treated moviegoers to double bills
of films with Orson Welles (Citizen
Kane (1941) and The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942)); Woody Allen (Bananas
(1971) and Sleeper
(1973)); and Sherlock Holmes (The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) and The
Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)).
On
April 11, the Redford hosted theater organist Jerry
Nagano, along with silent comedy films and a trampoline act. At the
Redford on April 3 and 4, the hills of Austria came alive with The
Sound of Music (1965). Julie Andrews also appeared at the Michigan
on April 12 in Mary
Poppins (1964), which was sponsored by the Ann Arbor Film Co-op.
