Julius and Philip Epstein Centennial

Brattle Theatre

Screenwriters seldom get credit for auteurship, but twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, who were born 100 years ago on August 22, certainly shaped a personal cinema with their screenplays, which, written separately and together, range from Casablanca (1942) to Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). (They also happen to be the great-uncle and grandfather, respectively, of Red Sox honcho Theo, and the uncle and father of his dad, novelist Leslie - but we digress.) The Brattle Theatre's "Epstein Brothers Centennial" retrospective opens with one of their lesser-known gems, Vincent Sherman's Mr. Skeffington (1944), in which Bette Davis and Claude Rains get married for all the wrong reasons. That's at 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 4:15 + 7 + 9:45 pm | $7.75-$9.75 | 617.876.6837 or http://www.brattlefilm.org.

Filed under: FILM