We know all the songs, we want all the costumes, we still join in to watch this classic. To close this year’s Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival in Piazza Maggiore, we are invited to a screening of Grease. When it came out it hit fast and globally, making it the movie musical with the highest box office success to this day. Much like Singing in the Rain, Grease is one of those movies we hear people refer to as “I don’t really like musicals, but…”. Audiences are hopelessly devoted to it. Part of the story is sad to tell, as it deals the conflict many teenagers face when they need to adapt different sides of their personality to fit in. 

Only five years apart, we get two noir movies intertwined with romance. While in In a Lonely Place we get a classic black and white noir, in the projection of Stahl’s fragile print we get to see the first film of the same genre to be shot in technicolor. The first is Leave Her to Heaven, in 1945. Richard and Ellen meet on a train. She’s reading his book and is caught by the man’s resemblance with her beloved father. They later find out that they are headed to the same destination and it only takes a few days for the two to get married. In In a lonely place, the neighbors Dixton and Laurel are the star crossed lovers.