Cornell Cinema is offering a classic summer of celluloid

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck star in Double Indemnity, showing June 29 at Willard Straight Theatre.

What do Jaques Tati, Billy Wilder and Charlie Chaplin have in common? They all have films featured in Cornell Cinema's summer offerings at Willard Straight Theatre. Admission is $4.50; $4 for students, seniors and children under 12.

Jour de Fête, the Jacques Tati classic, will be shown June 29 at 9:30 p.m. and July 3 at 7:30 p.m. Tati, regarded as one of the most inventive filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s, directed and starred in Jour de Fête, a hilarious farce about modernization and small-town life. Tati plays a bicycle-riding postman who tries to speed up deliveries with American know-how after seeing newsreel detailing the mechanized swiftness of the U.S. Postal Service.

Cinema will screen a newly restored color print of the Tati film, which was available only in black-and-white until 1994. The film was to have been released in color, but Kodak would not supply the necessary chemicals. Earlier this decade, Tati's daughter, a film editor, began the process of restoring the film to the colors Tati envisioned.

Four new prints of classic Chaplin films, currently on a tour across the United States, stop in Ithaca this month and next.

Modern Times (1936) is Chaplin's attack on the Industrial Revolution. It will be screened June 27 and 30 at 7:30 p.m. The Circus (1927) has Chaplin joining a troupe of circus performers to escape police, leading to general craziness including confrontations with a tightrope and a hall of mirrors. The film will be shown July 2 at 7:30 p.m. City Lights, called Chaplin's finest work by critic Judith Crist, is the tale of the Tramp falling in love with a blind flower girl. It screens July 9 at 7:30 p.m. Limelight, Chaplin's final film, is the tale of Calvero, an aging English music hall star, now a drunken has-been who befriends a young dancer (Leslie Caron). The film will be shown July 16 at 7 p.m.

"A Wilder Summer: The Films of Billy Wilder" is a series of classic Hollywood flicks written and directed by the six-time Oscar winner. On the bill are Double Indemnity (June 29), Sunset Boulevard (July 6), Sabrina (July 13), The Seven Year Itch (July 20), Some Like It Hot (July 27) and The Apartment (Aug. 3). This celluloid sextet provides movie-goers with an opportunity to see some of Hollywood's greatest stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Lemmon, Fred MacMurray and Humphrey Bogart. Each movie will be shown at 7:15 p.m.