Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back with Billy Dee Williams

Known internationally for her divisive, erotic wartime drama The Night Porter (1974), Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani got her start in biographical television dramas with films about Saint Francis of Assisi and the astronomer Galileo. Her memorable theatrical feature debut is loosely based on Sophocles’s Antigone, a play in which the titular heroine attempts to bury her brother despite laws forbidding it. Set in a totalitarian Milan, The Year of the Cannibals opens on streets strewn with the corpses of rebels, their “dead bodies serv[ing] as an example to prevent more death.” Grieving her brother, whose body lies in front of a bar, Cavani’s modern-day Antigone (Britt Ekland) seeks help to defy the burial ban, finding an ally in a foreigner (Pierre Clémenti). Featuring a score by the incomparable Ennio Morricone and with editing by Sergio Leone regular Nino Baragli, this shocking, no-holds-barred political satire is primed for rediscovery in its newly restored 4K edition.

Programmed and note by K.J. Relth-Miller.

In person: Ashley Clark and director Ngozi Onwurah

Restoration world premiere  

In person: director Ken Kwapis and Debra Spinney

In this 1953 musical comedy adapted from Anita Loos’s searingly funny 1925 novella—which also spawned a now-lost silent film in 1928 and a smash Broadway production in 1949—showgirl Lorelei (Marilyn Monroe) is resplendent in beautiful gowns, most notably in the pink satin dress designed by Travilla during the now-classic number “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Lorelei is seen throughout the picture in jewel tones and literal jewels, carefully selected to play up the lush Technicolor cinematography lensed by Harry J. Wild. Both effervescent and timeless, this witty gem showcases Monroe’s brilliant comic timing as well as her vocal chops. Premiering in the middle of the actress’s career and released the same year as Niagara and How to Marry a Millionaire, Howard Hawks’s film helped to plant Monroe in the hearts of the American public, making her one of the most famous people in the US.  

The pink satin gown worn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is on view in Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon, located on Level 3 in the Rolex Gallery, beginning May 31, 2026.  

Programmed and note by K.J. Relth-Miller.