In the 1952 movie Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (2020 Rerelease) Ava Gardner and James Mason star in this grown-up fairy tale as lovers alternately casting or in the clutches of a powerful spell. She’s an otherworldly beauty driving men to distraction (or worse), he’s a 17th-century sea captain doomed to sail the globe for eternity— unless he can find a woman willing to sacrifice her life for love. Set in the fictional Spanish seaside town of Esperanza and boasting a luscious palette photographed by master Technicolor cameraman Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus), Pandora unfurls with dreamlike logic somewhere between the physical and the metaphysical, sometime between modernity and antiquity.
Lovingly restored using Martin Scorsese’s personal 35mm Technicolor print as a color reference, this curio turned classic has never looked so good. (Be on the lookout for a chess set designed by Man Ray, who was also the on-set photographer and portrait painter for Ava Gardner).
