Coming Soon

CORONA DEL MAR — Here comes “Dames and Dicks,” a noirish film series to open later this month at the Port Theatre with a reissue of “The Big Sleep” that restores director Howard Hawks’ original version of the moody thriller.

The reissue, which brings back 18 minutes of scenes that had been eliminated from the 1946 Bogart-Bacall picture by Warner Bros. producers, also launches a revamped programming policy at the 900-seat movie house here.

“Our intention is for the Port to become the preeminent art house in Orange County,” said Cary Jones, marketing director for the Los Angeles-based Landmark Theatre Corp., which owns the Port.

The programming until now has consisted of first-run foreign and independent pictures with open-ended engagements. That meant they tended to play “as long as business warranted,” Jones said, and sometimes longer.

The change to what is called “calendar programming” will begin Aug. 22. It enables Landmark to bring in exclusive showings of “everything from film festivals and edgy new movies to classic reissues and nostalgia repertory,” Jones said in a recent telephone interview.

Many but not all the films will have been shown first at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles, an art house also owned by Landmark. For example, “A Centennial Salute to Frank Capra” now at the Nuart will come to the Port in October. And each program, whether a series event or an individual picture, will have a weeklong engagement, he said.

Port manager Mike Peterson added, “The policy change is exciting. I can’t tell you how many times people have complained to me that films stay here too long.”

For example, “Emma” ran for 2 1/2 months last summer. “It was very successful for us, our biggest grosser,” Peterson said. “But the problem was that it kept other films out. And that’s a big problem, because Orange County doesn’t get a lot of interesting independent films, classics or cult cinema.”

As the opening picture in the “Dames and Dicks” series, “The Big Sleep” will play for five days. The series will continue for another nine days with film-noir and not-so-noir pictures from different periods spanning four decades: “The Maltese Falcon,” “Murder My Sweet” and “Out of the Past,” also from the ‘40s; “Kiss Me Deadly” from the ‘50s; “Point Blank” and “Bullitt” from the ‘60s; “Chinatown” and “The Long Goodbye” from the ‘70s; and “Blade Runner” from the ‘80s.

The reissue of “The Big Sleep”--it played the Nuart in May--restores 18 minutes excised by the producers and shows how Hawks wanted the picture to be seen.

What is called “the director’s cut” was screened in 1945 for some audiences before the picture’s commercial release. The reissue runs just two minutes longer than the 1946 picture, however, because the inserted footage substitutes for 16 minutes of footage that Hawks didn’t want in the picture.

The restored version, from UCLA’s film archive, “clarifies some of the tangled plot turns that have baffled viewers over the years,” Jones said. “We’re also going to show a comparison reel of the differences between the director’s cut and the released film.”

Besides “Dames and Dicks” and the salute to Capra, the Port will have such series events as a Hong Kong Festival and an Audrey Hepburn Festival, and both independent and foreign movies such as Carlos Saura’s “Flamenco,” Errol Morris’ “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” Richard Spence’s “Different for Girls,” Olivier Assayas’ “Irma Vep” and Jan Svankmajer’s “Conspirators of Pleasure.”

Peterson said the Port’s main competition for foreign films is the Edwards South Coast Village 3 in Santa Ana. “But there’s nobody I know of showing old classics or independent art films,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Landmark is considering renovations to the 47-year-old Port, Jones said, “but nothing has been decided.” The movie house has had a reputation for being dingy and rundown.

“When it rained outside,” Peterson said, “it used to rain inside too. But that was taken care of almost two years ago. We have a new roof and brand new carpets. We have an updated concession stand. The broken seats have been repaired. The lobby and the exterior have been repainted. The basic condition of the theater is the best it’s been in a long time.”

The old-fashioned seats have not been upgraded, however, and the auditorium is not air-conditioned.

Landmark is a subsidiary of Metro Media, which has 136 screens in 48 theaters nationwide, most of them in California and Oregon.

* The Port Theatre is 2905 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Corona del Mar. (714) 673-6260.