The Palm Beach Story

AFS Cinema is screening The Palm Beach Story on Tuesday, July 28, as part of its Essential Cinema: Four by Preston Sturges program. It's a 35mm print of the 1942 comedy, which runs an hour and 28 minutes. If you miss the Tuesday night showing, it's back on Saturday, August 1, at 1:30 PM.

Written and directed by Preston Sturges, The Palm Beach Story is a comedy of remarriage starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea. They play a couple unhappy with their lot in life who, while tentatively venturing into other romantic situations, each contrive to make the other partner jealous. The Criterion Collection called it "the diamond bracelet of romantic comedies: glittering, extravagant in feeling and in laughs," and the Austin Chronicle noted Sturges' focus "on the importance of money, sex, and guns — not necessarily in that order," later calling the film "very funny, and romantic in a hard-bitten sort of way."

The screening is part of Essential Cinema: Four by Preston Sturges, a four-film program of comedic masterworks by the writer-director that also includes The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels. AFS Cinema is Austin's only nonprofit art house, run by the Austin Film Society, with one screen for new releases and another devoted to repertory series, restorations and classics.

Tickets are $14 for the evening show and $11.50 for the matinee, which is available Monday through Friday for shows before 5 PM. AFS MAKE and WATCH members get $4 off, and LOVE and Impact Circle members see it for free. AISD educators and local high school and college students can get discounts at the box office with a valid school ID. The Tuesday screening is at 7:30 PM, and the Saturday matinee is at 1:30 PM, both at AFS Cinema, 6406 N I-35 Suite 3100.