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Warner Bros.

100th Anniversary: Warner Leads a Revolution in Filmmaking

TCM, beginning at 5 p.m.

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies’ monthlong celebration of Warner Bros.’ centennial spotlights productions made during the late 1960s, as the movie industry began a drastic turn away from complete studio control and toward the New Hollywood, when filmmakers and actors began having more independence. Stories were also not as constrained as they had been under the Production Code of previous decades following its dissolution in 1968, allowing for more mature themes and depictions of violence. Before getting into the films, though, TCM is showing a cartoon: Rabbit Fire (1951), director Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes classic starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd and featuring the famous “Duck Season vs. Rabbit Season” argument. The film lineup then begins with the 1996 Best Picture Oscar-nominated Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (pictured), starring Best Actress winner Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It then continues with Best Actor nominee Paul Newman and Best Supporting Actor winner George Kennedy in the prison drama Cool Hand Luke (1967); director Sam Peckinpah’s groundbreaking revisionist Western The Wild Bunch (1969); Petulia (1968), a British-american drama led by Julie Christie, George C. Scott and Richard Chamberlain; and The Fox (1967), an early drama that was able to feature frank depictions of sexuality, including physical relations between two women (played by Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood). — Jeff Pfeiffer

WARNER BROS. PICTURES / PHOTOFEST