One Of Bond's Best Comes To The Pickwick

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 10, 2014 3:20PM

Get ready to indulge in the epitome of 1960s cool, as the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge presents a 50th anniversary screening of Goldfinger on Thursday, Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m.

This third James Bond film is widely considered the movie where all the essential Bond elements fully came together, and many fans still rank it as the best of the series. With the definitive Bond, Sean Connery, in the lead, Goldfinger is notable for adding more of the technological gizmos that became trademarks of the series, upping the ante on the excitement of the pre-credits sequence, adding more winking humor (though not to Roger Moore camp levels), and for Shirley Bassey's dynamic performance of the theme song.

It is also includes the now-legendary exchange where Bond asks his nemesis, "Do you expect me to talk?" only to be told, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." (Spoiler alert for those not aware of the 20 films that followed...he doesn't.)

Presented by Matthew C. Hoffman's Park Ridge Classic Film series, this is a very precise anniversary showing, as it occurs exactly 50 years after the film's 1964 British opening. Though the film starts at 7:30 p.m. you will want to get there earlier, as local theater organist Jay Warren (a.k.a. Silent Film Society of Chicago program director Dennis Wolkowicz) will perform prelude music starting at 7:00 p.m.

Those seeking more Bond on the big screen can look forward to a showing of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) on Tuesday, Oct. 14 at 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. at Classic Cinemas' Elk Grove Theatre. One of the better of Roger Moore's Bond films, it will be presented by the Chicago Film Critics Association, as part of its Critics' Classics series, and introduced by writer and critic Jeffrey Westhoff.