Lawrence.com

Lawrence residents will get a rare opportunity to see some of the major classics in foreign film on the big screen during the Footprints Summer Foreign Film Festival at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.

On two consecutive Saturdays — July 2 and July 9 — the Footprints shoe store at 1339 Mass. will screen Akira Kurosawa’s influential Japanese films “Ikiru” and “Seven Samurai,” Louis Malle’s coming-of-age comedy/drama “Murmur of the Heart,” and Marcel Carné’s French masterpiece “Children of Paradise.”

The foreign film celebration is the brainchild of Footprints owner and film fanatic Mick Ranney, and this isn’t his first foray into film exhibition.

“We have produced a couple silent films with small orchestras at the Arts Center Theatre and one sold out and the other nearly so,” says Ranney. “I thought I would test the waters with something other than silent films and the four films we are showing are some of my favorites and I have not been able to see them on the big screen in decades. It is going to be a real treat to see them as they were supposed to be viewed.”

A history major at Kansas University, Ranney took several classes in film history and often dreamed of running his own movie theater, but in his own words: “I got sidetracked when I opened a bicycle store, which evolved into my current shoe store.”

Footprints has been in business for 30 years and has become a locally-owned Lawrence staple, but in 2001, Ranney decided to take a giant leap of faith to make his movie theater dream a reality. After finding out it was up for sale, he seriously underbid on the historic Stella movie theater in Council Grove, Kan. and to his surprise, the offer was accepted.

Built in 1918 by businessman T.W. Whiting and named for his daughter Stella, who was married there, the theater was a venue for live musicals and theater productions and showed daily silent movies. Although its name was eventually changed to the Ritz, it was showing movies up until 1999 and its last production was in 2000.

Ranney’s idea was to restore the Stella to its former glory, but the challenge proved to be too great.

“I spent two or three years pursuing every avenue of how I could get it restored and how I could make it viable and finally realized that without substantial community involvement I could never make it work,” Ranney says.

He found an eager partner in the Lawrence Arts Center, however. Last fall, a screening of Fritz Lang’s newly restored sci-fi silent classic “Metropolis” was a great success, featuring the live accompaniment of the Alloy Orchestra. 

With a burgeoning KU film department and this being an arts-oriented town, Lawrence is more of a natural fit for classic films than most cities in Kansas, and some of the directors who Ranney has chosen are fairly well-known here. But there’s another reason that these movies are screening.

“The films I chose all speak to the issue of what it is to be human, so they are universal and not all that foreign to us. It’s just that we have to read subtitles is all,” says Ranney. “I think it just requires a willingness to try something different.  As Americans, we are incredibly self-absorbed. I just think it is wonderful to get perspectives from different parts of the world.”

The lineup for July 2 is all Kurosawa. The Japanese director’s 1952 “Ikiru” tells the inspirational story of a Tokyo bureaucrat who faces his death by looking for a purpose in his life, while 1954’s “Seven Samurai” is regarded as one of the most influential films ever made. Aside from serving as the template for Western movies like “The Magnificent Seven” and “Star Wars,” it was the single largest undertaking by a Japanese filmmaker at the time and has a timeless, epic quality.

The two films being shown the following week are French classics from very different decades. Malle’s 1971 film “Murmur of the Heart” caused quite a stir at the time of its original release for its frank portrayal of a teen boy’s sexuality, but it earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay and is regarded as one of the finest coming-of-age movies ever made.

“Children of Paradise,” voted the Best French Film Ever in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in 1995, is a grand and beautifully shot romantic film set in the Parisian theater scene of the early to mid-19th Century. Shot under difficult circumstances during World War II and released in 1945, it went on to garner great acclaim for Carné and writer Jacques Prévert, including its own Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.

Ranney hopes that the two-day festival will be a success because nothing matches the excitement of viewing movies like these the way they were intended — on a big screen with an audience.

“I can't imagine watching ‘Seven Samurai’ on an iPad,” he says. “It just seems disrespectful and shortchanges you on the experience.”

Ranney is excited about the prospects of sponsoring more classic film festivals at the Lawrence Arts Center, and mentioned that Alfred Hitchcock and film noirs may be possible upcoming themes.