As my fellow Morlocks help celebrate 15 years of TCM programming since its April 14, 1994 channel launch, I’d like to tip my hat to TCM for helping another organization whose name is also synonymous with quality film programming: the Telluride Film Festival. I’ve been attending the TFF since 1995, and in just a few months it will be holding its 36th festival. For most of the time that I can remember, TCM has been a TFF sponsor.  TCM was also instrumental in the making of key films that premiered at Telluride, such as the 1999 four-hour “virtual” restoration of Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) and the documentary of Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (Kevin Brownlow, 2000). But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The main reason I think TCM and TFF have a harmonious relationship is this: (Insert movie trailer voice here:) “In a world… where most movies have devolved to their lowest common denominator as they chase the almighty dollar and appeal to younger and younger demographics… here were two entities who stood for something different, … reminding people of another time, … another place, … where stories had nothing to do with product placement, rapid editing, or fart jokes – and the people involved in the making of these movies had passions based on hard-learned experiences.” Obviously you’ll never hear that sentence in a movie trailer (it lacks “zaz”). But you get the gist, both TCM and TFF show people movies that are older and better than much of the stuff out there today. And these films still matter, arguably even more so than ever before.

Unfortunately, I’ve lost many of my Telluride programs, but here are some of the blurbs for TCM sponsored films for those that I can find. They are notable for the people that both helped select the films and write the blurbs:

Solaris (1972) – at TFF in 2001, and “Made possible by a donation from Turner Classic Movies.” This blurb was written by Guest Director for this year, Salman Rushdie:

A man of science comes to a space station circling a great ocean-planet, meets the reincarnation of his dead wife, and is plunged into crisis, forced to question everything he knows about reality, truth and desire. The planet Solaris is a single conscious entity with the power to create phantoms. Andrei Tarkovsky made his film partly in response to the “sterility” of Kubrick’s 2001. His Solaris is a disorienting demonstration of what science fiction does best, exploring the depths of human nature and the nature of the unreliable realities around us. And I’ve remembered its final image vividly for almost 30 years.

A Face in the Crowd (1957) – at TFF in 2003, and part of the sidebar titled “Budd Schulberg: a Contender” which was “Thanks to Turner Classic Movies”:

Okay, this one’s a bit weird because in the program it tells people the blurb is on page 15, but the only films written up there are Dogville (2003) and a new 35mm print of The Battle of Algiers (1966). Granted, there was a lot going on this year, so maybe it got lost in the shuffle. The inside-cover page makes clear that “This festival is dedicated to Stan Brakhage, 1933 – 2003,” and Ted Turner was the recipient of the Special Medallion. (Also, the Guest Director was Stephen Sondheim.) The only blurb given for A Face in the Crowd is to be found in the paragraph devoted to Schulberg (p. 6), which mentions how he “joined and quit the Communist Party, and during World War II, collected evidence for the Nuremberg trials. He wrote the Oscar-winning script for On the Waterfront, testified before the House of Un-American Activities Committee and became one of our greatest boxing writers.” A Face in the Crowd is described as “a prescient examination of the intersection of politics and TV that seems more relevant than ever.” Budd Schulberg was present, alongside Peter Bogdanovich.

Millions Like Us (1943) – at TFF in 2007, and part of a sidebar of films dedicated to Melodramas selected by Edith Kramer (who served more than 20 years as director of the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley). Millions Like Us was “Made possible by a donation from Turner Classic Movies,” and this is what Kramer wrote for it:

The legacy of former Telluride codirector William K. Everson: thousands like us who remain forever his devoted students. In fondest memory, we screen the first directorial effort by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, an already established British writing team (Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich) whose particular forte lay in their fine delineation of character. Begun as a propaganda documentary on the homefront war effort, Millions evolved into a fictional, solidly cast major studio production yet managed to ring true – notably for its refusal to hide entrenched class distinctions. Unusual in its time and unique for its focus on women in the work force, it remains an affecting portrait of British citizens uniting in crises, holding to their sense of humor. We thank the Australian National Film and Sound Archive for this print from the original camera negative.

Nightmare Alley (1947) – at last year’s 2008 TFF, and this one part of a sidebar of “Neglected Noirs” selected by “superstar philosopher” Slavoj Zizek. On Dangerous Ground (1952) and Seconds (1966) were part of this package, but Nightmare Alley is the one that was specifically “Made possible by a donation from Turner Classic Movies,” and here’s what Zizek has to say about it:

In one of the darkest films ever made, Tyrone Power plays Stan, a ruthlessly ambitious con man whose rise and fall form a closed circle of Fate, best rendered by the occurrence of a live-chicken-eating geek at the film’s beginning and end. At first, Power turns away disgusted from this geek, dismissing him as the lowest form of human existence. Then, abandoned and hard drinking, Stan himself has to face an unexpected reality. The film’s happy ending runs totally against the basic Stimmung – it is ridiculously contrived, on a par with the ending of Vertigo (deleted for the film’s distribution) that Hitchcock had to shoot to satisfy the Hayes Code premise that a murder should be punished.

Looking over my Telluride catalogs I get a sense of wonderment as I contemplate all the resources that get pooled together to make this yearly meeting of film enthusiasm possible. Of course, TCM does this every day on its channel. But at Telluride their contributions make it possible for all sorts of film zealots to commune around the collective light of older films and bask in their glow as a communal experience under one big screen. And for that, I’m grateful. So on behalf of those of us that make the yearly pilgrimage to see these cinematic gems, I say thanks – and also beseech TCM, despite these bad economic times, and for the love of cinema; keep the torch burning!