The Last Day: 25 April

It was here. The last day of the festival. The day I really didn't want to come, but knew had to come.
On that morning, I felt a vague sense of "oh crud, it's over", but I tried not to let it get me down, because I knew I had three more movies coming my way.
The first one was "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" at Grauman's, introduced by Robert Osborne and Eli Wallach, who played "the ugly" in the film. I remember about ten minutes into the movie, when the drastic violence began, I was thinking, "What am I doing here?" But after there were a few more comic touches, such as funny dialogue from Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach, I decided that this was totally worth my while. At the end, I thought that "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" was an absolutely SUPERB film and congratulated myself for choosing this film.
After G,B&U was over, my mother and I went to Club TCM for a book signing with Tony Curtis, who was selling two books he had written; one was an autobiography, the other was on the making of  "Some Like it Hot". He was also selling various pieces of his artwork, including photographs and posters of himself. It felt strange to see that many pictures of the same guy, who happened to be sitting at a table at the end of the line. Finally, I got to speak to Mr. Curtis. I told him how cool I thought he was as the Great Leslie in "The Great Race" and that every time his teeth shined when he smiled, it always cracked me up. He told me that he had enjoyed playing the part very much, especially the sword fight with the villainous Baron Rolph Von Stuppe.
After spending an entire hour in that crowded and noisy line, we ran off to Grauman's for "The King of Comedy", starring Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis. This was the only film I saw at the festival that I did not like. The movie started out with a desperate wannabe played by De Niro who would do anything to become a famous comedian. In the end, he acquires his fame literally at gun point. He threatens to kill a comedy show host played by Jerry Lewis if he didn't let him on his show. De Niro was arrested and sent to jail. The thing that infuriated me the most is that he got out of his sentence two years early and succeeded as a comedian. It drove me nuts how he did all those horrible things and people ended up loving him in the end.
After "The King of Comedy", we went back to the hotel and took a rest. Soon, however, it was up and at 'em for the closing event of the festival: a restored version of the 1927 German expressionist silent film, "Metropolis". The film, being a "silent" film, even had an orchestra to play along with the picture to add the music. It was really amazing to see this and the orchestra was so good too. I had never seen a silent film before, surprisingly enough, but I was very pleased with what I saw. In fact, this was really the best, most perfect way to see a silent film for the first time--in a historic theater with a real orchestra playing along with the film. Even though this film was in black and white, I could feel the colors of the film. The colors of the urban surroundings and the robot that was constructed in the course of the film. To me, that is important thing one thing that makes a good black and white film. One that can make you feel it's true color just by looking at the subjects. The other thing that was so special about this event was that it was a restored version of the film. When the film was first shown, according to Robert Osborne, who introduced the film, about eight minutes of footage was cut out and apparently lost forever. Luckily, the lost footage was recently found, although it was in very bad shape. The film was sent to the lab where it was worked on and then edited back into the original filmstrip. It was easy to tell which strips were the old ones; they were the ones that were most out of focus, in addition to being encased in a black frame.
When I left Grauman's, I was feeling tired and hungry, but once I had something to eat, I really processed the true majesty of the film I had just seen. The film that was the last--and arguably the best--film shown at the festival.