A Joan Crawford drama that has been kept off screens since 1936 will play in Sag Harbor next weekend. Letty Lynton, pulled from circulation over a copyright dispute and returned to theaters this year in a new 4K restoration, is one of fifteen programs at the sixth annual Martin Scorsese Presents: The Sag Harbor Cinema Festival of Preservation, running Friday, November 6, through Monday, November 9, at Sag Harbor Cinema, 90 Main Street.

The festival is the cinema's own, built around restored films, rarities and rediscoveries, and most screenings come with a guest: archivists, studio library historians, collectors and filmmakers who introduce the films and, in several cases, take questions afterward.

A film that was gone for ninety years

Letty Lynton (1932), directed by Clarence Brown and starring Crawford, Robert Montgomery and Nils Asther, was withdrawn in 1936 after the playwrights Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes successfully argued that it borrowed too heavily from their 1930 play Dishonored Lady. According to the festival's program, the film stayed shelved until 2026, when the play entered the public domain and a restoration became possible. It screens Saturday, November 7, at 6 p.m., introduced over Zoom by George Feltenstein, library historian at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Italy's first woman director, twice

The festival opens Friday at 2:45 p.m. with Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence (2025), Valerio Ciriaci's documentary about the Neapolitan silent filmmaker who was Italy's first woman film director. Of the roughly sixty features she directed, only three are known to survive complete. A question-and-answer session with Notari scholar Giuliana Bruno and cinematographer Isaak Liptzin follows, along with a book signing by Bruno. On Saturday at 1 p.m., Bruno introduces one of those three surviving features, Notari's 1922 melodrama 'A santanotte, presented courtesy of the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome.

The rest of the lineup

  • Friday, November 6: Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth (1950) with Jennifer Jones at 5:30 p.m., introduced by Kevin Schaeffer of The Walt Disney Studios; Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964) with Vincent Price at 9 p.m., introduced by Mary Corman.
  • Saturday, November 7: George Pal's Puppetoons shorts, Program I, at 11 a.m., introduced by Puppetoon historian Arnold Leibovit; Med Hondo's West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979) at 3 p.m., with an introduction, Q&A and book signing by Ashley Clark, curatorial director at the Criterion Collection; Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976) at 9 p.m., introduced by Jake Paltrow, co-director of the documentary De Palma
  • Sunday, November 8: a free Preservation Panel at 11 a.m. with archivists and restoration experts, followed by brunch; Raoul Walsh's Me and My Gal (1932) with Spencer Tracy at 2 p.m., with Bruce Goldstein of Film Forum; Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One: The Reconstruction on 35mm at 4:30 p.m., introduced by Samantha Fuller; Martin Ritt's Paris Blues (1961) with Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and Louis Armstrong at 8:45 p.m.
  • Monday, November 9: Auntie Mame (1958) at 2 p.m.; Alexander Payne's first feature, Citizen Ruth (1996), at 5:30 p.m., introduced over Zoom by Payne; Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949) at 8:15 p.m., introduced by Cassandra Moore of NBCUniversal.

The Puppetoons also run on Sunday and Monday mornings as a shorter Program II, and two of Sunday's features, The Big Red One and Paris Blues, are each paired with a Pal short.

Tickets and passes

Festival passes cover every screening, the special events and a Preservation Party on Saturday, November 7. They cost $65 for Sag Harbor Cinema members and $110 for non-members, at the box office or online. Individual tickets are also sold for each program. The cinema asks pass holders to reserve their seats ahead of time, since seats cannot be guaranteed within ten minutes of showtime.

The full schedule, film notes and a downloadable festival booklet are at sagharborcinema.org/preservation. The box office is at 90 Main Street, Sag Harbor, and can be reached at (631) 725-0010.

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