Clooney, cast mates nostalgic at ‘Good German’ premiere

One blast from the past provided the setting for another. Hollywood’s legendary movie palace, the 84-year-old Egyptian Theatre, hosted Monday night’s world premiere of director Steven Soderbergh’s black-and-white film-noir homage, “The Good German.”

“Well, it’s perfect,” star George Clooney told AP Television on the red carpet. “Especially for a film noir film, to be coming out at the Egyptian,” he continued.

“It’s a beautiful theater. The sound system is amazing. ... It’s fun to see it here.”

“The Good German” is a heavy-duty saga of an American journalist (Clooney) lured into a murder mystery in postwar Berlin. Soderbergh used actual 1940s lenses and a single camera, attempting to replicate both the limitations and technical and artistic triumphs of the era. References to director Michael Curtiz’s classic “Casablanca” abound.

“The thing is, we’ve seen movies in black and white before,” noted co-star Robin Weigert (Calamity Jane in TV’s “Deadwood”). “You know, Woody Allen, George’s movie (“Good Night, and Good Luck”). But this is a whole other type of black-and-white film, that you really haven’t seen. You haven’t seen images like this for 60 years, you know what I mean. And it’s really striking, when you start to watch the movie, how different that look is.”

Co-star Cate Blanchett fit right in with the Egyptian theme, wearing a strapless beige Versace dress with gold metallic trim.

“He’s incredibly collaborative, and enormously generous to other actors,” Blanchett said of Clooney. “He’s really invested in other actors’ careers, and you can see that by the way he casts films that he directs. He’s interested not in what an actor is perceived to do publicly, but he knows what they can do privately. And he does that off-camera.”

“German” marks the continuation of Clooney’s eight-year association with director Soderbergh, with whom he has collaborated on such films as “Out of Sight,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Solaris.”

“I learned a lot about cameras,” Clooney said of working with Soderbergh in “The Good German.” “Watching him work this way, without any long lenses or zoom lenses or anything like that, which is fun because I’m doing a film now that takes place in 1925, where they didn’t have access to that.”

Clooney was referring to “Leatherheads,” a romantic comedy he’s directing that’s set in the world of 1920s football. “The Good German,” which also stars Tobey Maguire, opens in limited release Dec. 15 and then nationwide Dec. 22.