If you live in New York and you pay attention to the movies (or if you don’t live here but you read about film across the blogosphere, say), then it’s probably safe to assume you are aware of Film Forum’s Breadlines & Champagne series, running now through March 5th. All the films are shown in 35mm, plenty are not available on DVD and every day there’s a new 2-for-1 double bill of 1930s Depression-era cinema. This Saturday, the ever-dreaded (around here, at least) and always-plastic Valentine’s Day offers a delicious dream pairing sure to propel its audience back outside with all the right Hallmark-approved sentiment appropriate to gaudy reds and garish pinks and overpriced (and often terrible) chocolate: Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936) followed by Mitchel Leisen’s Easy Living (1937). Indeed, Film Forum’s program has a David Thomson endorsement that says, “If you paired [Easy Living] with My Man Godfrey, you’d have a beautiful portrait of money in New York—and a happy audience.”
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