The Lady with the Torch was curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht for Locarno Film Festival, in cooperation with Cinémathèque Suisse and Sony Pictures. Eye selected 17 titles from the retrospective.
still The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, US 1947) ©1948, renewed 1975 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Films, Talks & Events
The Lady with the Torch
100 years Columbia Pictures
3 — 30 April 2025
still Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, US 1936)
Idiosyncratic studio Columbia Pictures was a place where art and commerce, the system and the artist, came together in brilliance, and where a relatively free atmosphere prevailed. The logo of the lady with the torch may look very patriotic, but in Columbia’s films American values are regularly dissected and criticised. Sympathies lie firmly with ordinary people struggling to save themselves from the corrupt excesses of the system.
Legendary Hollywood studio Columbia Pictures is celebrating its centenary, and we’re marking the occasion with a rich programme on the company’s glory days. The films, including rediscoveries and surprising, seldom-seen B movies, show that art and commerce need not be mutually exclusive.
still In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, US 1950)
still Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, US 1934)
The programme in Eye presents well-known classics such as Howard Hawks’ screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934) and Orson Welles’ film noir The Lady from Shanghai (1947, with Rita Hayworth) alongside rediscoveries and surprising, seldom-screened B movies, most of which in new, 4K-restored versions.
All the King’s Men (1949) is one such rediscovery. This unjustly forgotten triple Oscar-winner follows an ambitious lawyer who turns into a populist politician – a film that has become highly topical again. Columbia specialised in the western and film noir genres: Gunmen’s Walk (1958) is one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourites, and was a big discovery in Locarno.
still All the King's Men (Robert Rossen, US 1949)
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