MOVIES FROM PREVIOUS SEASONS

Season 52: 2018 to 2019

September 9, 2018

The Ox-Bow Incident

USA, 1943, 75 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by William A. Wellman; Starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn

The story of intolerance and mob mentality is more relevant today than it was in the old west. This is a grim picture, but works to provide a chilling example of subtle evil using powerful dramatics throughout. Gil (Fonda) is a drifter futilely trying to secure normality as he returns to claim a lost loved one. He's been caught up in a standoff over murder and angry accusations. Men's lives are on the line as a lynch mob forms. There are exciting tension-packed moments, but the film keeps to a meditative mood, delivering a strong message on the unpredictability of violence and the need to act with logic, not mindless aggression.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): More than 75 years since its release, William A. Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident persists as one of the finest "social problem" films of its era or any era.

The setup couldn't be simpler. Two drifters played by Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan ride into town and enter a saloon where they quickly learn that a local rancher has been murdered by suspected cattle rustlers. A posse forms to hunt down the murderer or murderers and soon finds three men with what are presumed to be stolen cattle. A battle of wills ensues over what should be done with the suspects – should they be lynched on site or taken back to town to stand trial?

The Ox-Bow Incident offers no heroes. Though Fonda is clearly the character we're most meant to identify with, he's ultimately powerless – or unwilling – to do what it takes to see true justice carried out. In truth, Fonda's casting in the role is a stroke of genius. Fresh off his performances as Abe Lincoln and Tom Joad, here he is portrayed as a principled but weak man. It would be his last role before enlisting in the Navy to fight in World War II, and though he would return to heroism as Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946) upon his return, Fonda would come to regard The Ox-Bow Incident and his performance among his favorites. The rest of the film's casting is equally strong, most notably the supporting performances by Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn as two of the suspected murderers.

Wellman, one of the great workhorse directors of the silent and early sound era, was no stranger to films with a social conscience, having directed Wild Boys of the Road and Heroes for Sale for Warner Bros. during the Depression. He was the driving force behind the film's production and proposed the film to 20th Century Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck after reading and loving the book on which it was based. Wellman's direct, no-nonsense approach to the story marries perfectly with the dark subject matter, and at a mere 75 minutes, the story moves relentlessly to its grim conclusion.

Seen today, The Ox-Bow Incident remains a searing indictment of mob violence, one that continues to resonate as a cautionary tale and a warning of the dangers of a justice system where "guilty until proven innocent" is the prevailing sentiment.

Also showing September 9, 2018

Cops

USA, 1922, 18 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Eddie Cline, Buster Keaton; Starring Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline, Virginia Fox

Hailed as perhaps Buster Keaton's greatest two-reel comedy, Cops sees our intrepid Buster trying to woo the girl of his dreams (of course) by becoming a successful businessman. Chaos ensues when he instead finds himself on the run from an army of policemen after getting into scraps with several local officers. Shot during the Fatty Arbuckle rape-and-murder trial and filled with Keaton's trademark escalation of gags and stunts, Cops is a marvel of construction and one of his most cherished classics.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Cops at Great Movies.

Click HERE to view the YouTube episode of Every Frame a Painting called "Buster Keaton – The Art of the Gag". It's only ~8.5 minutes!

October 14, 2018

The Trouble with Harry

USA, 1955, 99 min, Color, PG

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock

The trouble with Harry is that he is dead, and everyone seems to have a different idea of how he died, what their own culpability is, and what should be done with the body. Harry is buried and exhumed several times by various parties, and let's just say that it gets complicated. This character piece is a quirky take on "whodunits" and introduces both Shirley MacLaine and Jerry Mathers (aka Beaver Cleaver). Light comedy and dark humor easily coexist in the Technicolor glories of a New England autumn.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): "Nothing amuses me as much as understatement." - Alfred Hitchcock to Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut.

Harry Worp is about to cause a lot of trouble for the residents of a small Vermont town. The trouble with Harry is that he's dead, and there are way too many people who think that they may be responsible for Harry's demise.

It's a gorgeous fall day in rural Vermont. Three shots ring out over the autumnal hills. A small boy with a toy gun discovers a dead body and runs home to tell his mother. Several townspeople discover the body in turn: an absent-minded physician steps over the body without noticing, a vagrant steals Harry's shoes, and an artist sketches him. The mood is of utter nonchalance in the unexpected presence of a dead body out in the middle of nowhere, and the plot turns not so much on whodunit as it does on what to do with this inconvenient corpse.

The Trouble with Harry is one of Hitchcock's more surreal and subversive films. The Master of Suspense included very little actual suspense in this film, and when it occurs, it's presented as the suspense of avoiding social embarrassment rather than evading danger. These are nice, likable people who conspire in a cold-blood fashion to get themselves out of a spot of trouble.

Hitchcock had two earlier films that revolved around disposal of a body. In Rope, the murderers have to remove a body secreted in an antique chest. In Rear Window, the murderer has dismembered the victim to remove the corpse from an apartment. These are dark and gruesome situations. Here, the Vermonters use good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity to address the issue. They work communally, pool their efforts and resources, and try to figure out the best way to rid themselves of the unfortunately deceased Harry. And they do so on the sunny, autumnal slopes of New England in a landscape devoid of shadows.

The Trouble with Harry is suffused with Americana – the brilliant colors of a New England autumn, the quirky small-town characters, visions of hearth and home – yet at its core, it celebrates Hitchcock's understated British sense of humor. The cast presents Shirley MacLaine in her first screen role, includes John Forsythe, and introduces Jerry Mathers, two years before they both found fame on television - Forsythe in Bachelor Father and Mathers in Leave It to Beaver.

In Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock said that "With Harry I took melodrama out of the pitch-black night and brought it out into the sunshine. It's as if I had set up a murder alongside a rustling brook and spilled a drop of blood into the clear water. These contrasts establish a counterpart; they elevate the commonplace in life to a higher level." Although it was a financial flop in 1955, The Trouble with Harry was one of Hitchcock's personal favorites. This quirky, surreal black comedy has found new respect and gained an audience.

November 11, 2018

Nora's Will

Mexico, 2008, 92 min, Color, Not Rated, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Mariana Chenillo; Starring Fernando Luján, Enrique Arreola, Ari Brickman, Juan Carlos Colombo

Nora is discovered dead on her bed by her ex-husband José. He also discovers a refrigerator full of beautifully prepared dishes - all for the impending Passover seder…the hallmarks of a labor of love. But José sees it as evidence of manipulation. The timing of Nora's death at the beginning of Passover necessitates a delay in burying her. She's put on ice and left in her bedroom until a burial can proceed five days hence. José is an atheist and impatient with the dictates of ceremonial rules. This is a gently-paced movie, sweet-natured with a dry sense of humor and a growing cast of characters including Nora's psychiatrist, her mournful cat, a rabbi, and José's wife and children.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): José divorced his wife Nora years ago, but lives in an apartment building right across from her. One day, he arrives at Nora's apartment with frozen meat packages that the delivery man sent him because she's not at home. José does not know that Nora lies dead in her bed until he checks the bedroom. Seems she committed suicide by swallowing lots of sleeping pills. The process to bury her is complicated. Nora is Jewish and her body can be buried only on Sunday, two days later, because the day before is the Sabbath and Friday evening is the first night of Passover. Jewish law requires to bury her within 24 hours of her death.

Chaos ensues when José learns that Nora prepared a Passover dinner with everything properly labeled in the refrigerator. Soon relatives arrive but, without Nora, it's not going to be a typical Seder.

Writer/director Mariana Chenillo blends tragedy, drama, and comedy with a light touch. Just when you think the plot will delve more into comedy, it turns around and moves back to tragic elements but without dwelling on them. Suspense is added when José discovers new information about Nora.

You'll find many interesting characters and surprises in store so that the film manages to be a quietly engrossing, funny, and thought-provoking tragicomedy boasting many lively personalities.

January 13, 2019

The Magnificent Ambersons

USA, 1942, 88 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Orson Welles, Fred Fleck, Robert Wise; Starring Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt

This is an ancient story, yet forever a timely one. It captures the crumbling facade of the turn of the twentieth century as the old lifestyle surrendered to the new. Isabel Amberson (Costello) is courted by Eugene Morgan (Cotton), but he is rebuffed on account of his whimsical happenstance. She marries Wilbur Manifer instead, and their son, George, is terribly over-indulged. Twenty years later, the spoiled and entitled George returns home, his visit coinciding both with his father's death and Eugene's return to court his mother.

Film Notes (Jenni Elion): The movie starts in a time over a century ago, yet the characters are people we could recognize today. We all know a George Minifer, someone who is so self-centered that we long to see karma deliver a come-uppance. Perhaps we recognize Eugene, spurned by his first love and, when both are single again decades later, trying to rekindle a romance. Or Lucy, a young woman who could probably have her pick of suitors but whose heart is drawn to someone who doesn't deserve her beauty and charm.

Although we can watch the same film stock over and over again, we never see the same movie. New experiences, even the movie itself, make us see it with new eyes every time. As a kid, I was entranced by the clothes and balls. As an adult, I look at Agnes Moorehead's Aunt Fanny, approaching her twilight years with no job skills and no savings, and think of my own mother's concern – no, fear and anxiety are more accurate – that she would outlive her nest egg. How many of us set money aside in a 401k, 403b, or IRA, and pray that a market downturn doesn't wipe it away just when we need it? Or maybe that already happened, and we must work a few more years because we cannot afford not to.

I've always had a special fondness for Ms. Moorehead. She was part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater company, and had appeared in Citizen Kane, released the previous year. But, as a kid in the 70s, my first exposure to her was as the over-the-top Endora in television's Bewitched, which my siblings and I enjoyed after school in syndication. In high school, we watched The Twilight Zone reruns late at night, and we saw her tour-de-force in the "Invaders" episode, where she does not speak. And we heard her in the radio drama "Sorry, Wrong Number", where only her voice conveys character and emotion.

This film also marked something of an introduction for me to the magic of movie-making. The television show may have been a special on Orson Welles (I don't quite recall) and one segment was about the scene in The Magnificent Ambersons where Joseph Cotten's Eugene picks up several characters whose sleigh has overturned and gives them a ride back to town in his car. Something wasn't right with the dailies – the early automobile is supposed to be bouncing on cobblestone streets, but the characters' voices sounded too even. The "making of" clip showed one actress sitting on a plank supported by two sawhorses, dubbing her lines while the film crew bounced the ends of the planks. It was years before I got to see the whole movie, on television thanks to a Netflix DVD. I can't wait to experience it as it was intended – on a big screen with a theater full of people.

January 27, 2019 (Postponed from December 9 due to inclement weather)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed)

Germany, 1926, 81 min, Animated, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch

Prince Achmed accidentally trades his sister to a wicked magician for a flying horse, which takes him to the island of Wak-Wak, where he falls in love with a bird princess named Pari Bann. When demons steal Pari Bann away from Achmed, he turns to Aladdin's magic lantern for help. The film is considered the first animated feature film. This enormously enjoyable fantasy film maintains interest from beginning to end simply from the inventiveness of its ground-breaking animation.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): Lotte (Charlotte) Reiniger (2 June 1899 - 19 June 1981) made animated films in her home by a technique called silhouette animation. She is credited with having made the first full-length animated film in 1926. Walt Disney's first feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, didn't appear until 1934. Walt Disney used cels overlaid on a stationary background and drew cel after cel to achieve motion. Lotte Reiniger also used a stationary background but moved complex cutout cardboard and metal figures frame after frame to create motion. Joints in her figures were sewn together with thread to allow the joints to move. Her husband, Carl Koch, did the photography. Her stationary background was a back-lighted glass plate with immovable scenery.

Lotte Reiniger was quite daring in making this film because no one had considered making a full-length animated film with a story line. Until then, animated shorts were comedy intended to entertain in short attention spans. She is a true pioneer in the history of animation.

The story line of Prince Achmed comes from One Thousand and One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights). There is a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into riding a magical flying horse, with which he flies into various adventures. He falls in love with Princess Pari Banu and must prove his love with a series of battles to win her heart.

(also showing January 27, 2019)

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

Australia, 2005, 26 min, Animated, Not Rated

Directed by Anthony Lucas; Starring Joel Edgerton, Helmut Bakaitis, Tommy Dysart, Jude Beaumont

Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam-powered computers, this Gothic horror-mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself. The chance discovery of an abandoned dirigible leads Jasper through uncharted waters to an island on which lives a terrifying creature that may be the cure for the Plague. The journey back to civilization is filled with horrors but in a shocking climax, Jasper discovers that the greatest greatest horror of all lies within man himself. (Mark Shirrefs, IMDb.com)

Film Notes (Pete Corson): The film is based on Lotte Reiniger's silhouette animation method but greatly enhanced with modern computer-generated software effects. The images are incredibly complex and the story line is a form of science fiction called steampunk. Victorian England period dirigibles drift through the air and computers are steam-driven. Influences from this genre include writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, etc.

The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2006. It has won many awards in short film festivals worldwide.

February 10, 2019

The Bigamist (Members' Choice!)

USA, 1953, 80 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Ida Lupino; Starring Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Edmund Gwenn

The Bigamist has noir overtones. The noir element is of entrapment through moral weakness. O'Brien is a lonely traveling salesman in LA when he meets Lupino, a young waitress on a Hollywood bus tour. A relationship develops and one thing leads to another, but not before O'Brian tries to extricate himself. He has a wife in Frisco. O'Brien, who is morally weak, digs himself deeper into a bind that cannot be broken without tragic consequences. The script is soft on the bigamist, although he is punished. However, there is maturity and sensitivity in a scenario where decent people get themselves into a mess simply because of normal human frailties. The strength of the film is in the lead performances and the screenplay which sensitively deals with extra-marital sex and single motherhood.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): Back in the 1940s, Ida Lupino was the "poor man's Bette Davis". As such, she managed to work with such top directors such as Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh, and Nicolas Ray.

At the end of the 1940s, she became fed up with the studio system and decided to put her talents behind the camera, one of the few women at the time to do so. Lupino focused on serious issues such as rape and adultery.

The Bigamist focuses on traveling salesman Henry Graham (Edmund O'Brien). Henry and his wife of eight years are trying to adopt a child. The adoption agency informs them that during the process, their lives will be subject to deep scrutiny. Henry is unaccountably uncomfortable with this seemingly annoying intrusion and surveillance.

He plans to be cool about it and continue his day-to-day living without further adjustments or thought. The head of the adoption agency has some second thoughts regarding Henry and decides to do some detective work. He trails Henry during one of Henry's business trips and finds him living in a small house that happens to have a baby crying in one of the bedrooms.

Without the common decency or even the dignity to tell either woman about the other, Henry now faces a quagmire. Will he somehow fix the problem he's caused? Will he ruin the lives of everyone involved? Will he join the foreign legion? Keep watching!

March 10, 2019

Breaking Away

USA, 1979, 101 min, Color, PG

Directed by Peter Yates; Starring Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley

Dave (Dennis Christopher) is fresh out of high school and concentrating on his impressive bicycle racing skills. Dave is on an "Italy" kick, talking with an accent and embracing the Italian way of life. Friends Mike, Cyril, and Moocher are adrift in the same boat as Dave, but Dave is a compassionate guy who dreams of something different. The film builds to the big competition: the local kids against the university jocks. There's the prevailing sense that the friends will soon drift away. The film is a paean to the dying embers of youth and the promise of what lies ahead.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): This is a movie about "townies," the local people who perform most of the necessary and thankless functions in college towns and universities that allow entitled college students to live in a clean, controlled environment and to feel superior to those who keep things that way. Some may in fact attend college as commuter students, and while they coexist in classes, they are far outside of the social structure of what we all recognize as "the college experience."

Breaking Away describes the lives of four "townies." In this film, these young men are referred to as "cutters", a derogatory reference to the industry that built the town, a stone quarry which has since been closed. The stonecutters that worked there literally scribed the slabs of granite of which the University is constructed, yet their labors are unrecognized by the student body attending the school and the rich, entitled students continually condescend to the very existence of the cutters.

Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher) is a "cutter." In the summer after his high school graduation, he is struggling to break away from life in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, which is also the home of the University of Indiana. Dave and his friends spend one last listless summer as they prepare to engage in "real life." Dave is a local cycling champion, with many trophies and ribbons to prove it. Dave dreams of joining the Italian cycling team, to the extent that he has adopted a rich fantasy life which requires him to speak with an Italian accent, listen to (and attempt to sing) Italian arias, and to inspire his mother to provide Italian cuisine instead of the burgers and fries that Dave's dad prefers.

Dave and his friends (Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern) watch their friend Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley) make a move toward adulthood as he prepares to marry his high school sweetheart. Moocher is the first to "break away" from their little group, and as the summer passes, the others will have to decide what to do with the rest of their lives and one or more of them may make a break of their own.

This is a sweet, funny, and heartwarming film about a time of life that everyone confronts – the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Breaking Away quite deservedly won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and was nominated for four other Oscars (Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score); it was also awarded Golden Globes for Best Comedy, Best Director, Best New Male Star and Best Screenplay.

April 14, 2019

Ida

Poland, 2013, 82 min, B&W, PG-13, Polish w/subtitles

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski; Starring Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Jerzy Trela

Ida is a novice nun preparing take her vows of chastity. She feels entirely ready but her prioress insists she spend some time in the "real world". Ida is instructed to visit her sister, Wanda Gruz. During this visit she learns her birth parents were Jewish, and were killed during World War II. Ida wants to dig deeper. In this Oscar-winning film, Ida is exposed to a variety of secular behaviors which she has been shielded from in the convent. Wanda smokes, drinks, and indulges in casual sex. She's a troubled woman who wears her feelings on her sleeve as consistently as Ida buries hers. The final act details the emotional fallout both characters experience in the wake of their discovery.

Film Notes (Andrea Mensch): Ida, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is a film that treats profoundly serious themes such as the search for identity, family relationships, religious vocation, and historical trauma with astonishing gentleness and sensitivity. Ida, the titular character, is a young novice who is about to take her vows. However, before becoming a full-fledged nun, the prioress of Ida's convent informs her that she has a surviving family member, an aunt whom she needs to see to gain some important information about her own background. It turns out that Ida's parents were Jews who perished in the Holocaust and that her aunt was a fighter in the communist resistance who later became a renowned judge called "red Wanda." The two women initially appear as complete opposites. Ida is the pure innocent who is governed by Christian principles of agape and Wanda is the disillusioned worldly woman longing to forget her troubled past through alcohol and sex. However, as the two embark on a quest to discover pieces of their past in this Polish road movie, they grow closer both emotionally and philosophically.

The film is superbly photographed in black and white and the carefully-paced editing invites us to contemplate the gradual awakening that Ida experiences. We also experience multiple historical perspectives. Pawlowski, who is himself a child of the post-war generation, shot the film in 2013 after Poland had become a part of the European Union and Westernization had taken place. This sensibility is announced in the use of music in the film especially (perhaps foreboding his most recent academy-nominated film Cold War). The film takes place in 1961 and so we also have a sensitive and multi-layered portrayal of the post-war era in Poland when the country had once again lost its independence. Wanda drives an old Wartburg around the countryside reminiscent of films of the 1960s. Finally, we also have an acknowledgement of Poland's own murderous past during the war and the film's revelatory moment is possibly more thought-provoking than the much touted Sophie's Choice.

Upon the film's initial release David Denby wrote in The New Yorker: "again and again, Ida asks the question, What do you do with the past once you've rediscovered it? Does it enable you, redeem you, kill you, leave you longing for life, longing for escape? The answers are startling."

May 12, 2019

Wadjda

Saudi Arabia, 2012, 98 min, Color, PG, Arabic w/subtitles

Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour; Starring Reem Abdullah, Waad Mohammed, Abdullrahman Al Gohani, Ahd

Wadjda is the first feature film from Saudi Arabia and, equally important, directed by a woman. The film tells of Wadjda growing up in Riyadh and learning the dos and don'ts of being a young girl in a male-controlled Muslim culture. Wadjda admires the bicycle that her friend Abdulla rides. She wants one of her own and embarks on a quest to pay for the bike. She signs up for the school's competition on the teachings of the Koran so that she may win the cash prize. The film's multi-generational story plays like a dedication to the spirit of women of the Kingdom.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): Written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, Wadjda is the first film to be shot in its entirety on location in Saudi Arabia. It is also the first feature from a female Saudi filmmaker. This beautifully crafted film provides fascinating insight into everyday life in the nation's capital, Riyadh.

Wadjda (Mohammed) is not your typical 10-year-old girl. She's intuitive, full of energy and individualism and with the unusual desire of owning a bike. She's a very interesting character. She wears scuffed purple Converse shoes, listens to pop music on her headphones, and consistently avoids covering her face as required. Above all, she wants a bicycle. She continues to defy her mother and headmistress with cheeky abandon.

On the streets, she befriends a local boy, marvels at his bike, and gets herself into many unladylike situations. However, she is so determined to get her own bike that she swindles her classmates for cash by selling bracelets and mix tapes. Eventually she decides to try and win the cash prize offered by the school Quran recitation competition. This devotion to her studies and the arduous task of memorizing the religious verses begins to change people's perspectives of her.

Wadjda's mother, as often as she is concerned for her daughter, begins to understand that her culture is in need of some boundary flexing and becomes more accepting of what makes her daughter happy. It is these beautiful relationships that are more instrumental in making this a rewarding film.

June 9, 2019

Sophie's Choice

USA, 1982, 150 min, Color, R

Directed by Alan J. Pakula; Starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin

On his first night at a Brooklyn boarding house, Stingo witnesses a drunken Nathan berating Sophie in a stairwell. He notices a number tattooed on her arm. Nathan hurls insults at Stingo before huffing off, leaving Stingo to comfort Sophie. The next morning Nathan invites Stingo to a picnic as an apology for his behavior. The trio become good friends. The second half of the film switches gears to depict Sophie's time at Auschwitz and her work as a Nazi officer's servant. This backstory brings us full circle as Sophie's past life explodes in the stories of Nathan and Stingo. Few films have handled gut-punching tragedy, romantic melodrama, and intermittent comedy so skillfully.

Film Notes (Doug Scott): Academy Awards nominations: Screenplay, musical score by Marvin Hamlisch, cinematography, and costume design. Meryl Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1983, her second.

Sophie’s Choice refers to an extremely difficult decision that a woman, Sophie, has to make; neither outcome is preferable over the other because in her case, both decisions are equally undesirable.

During World War II Sophie arrives at Auschwitz where a camp doctor makes her choose which of her two children would die by gassing and which would continue to live at the camp. Sophie chooses to sacrifice her daughter, Eva, who is seven years old. It is a heart-wrenching decision for Sophie and one that leaves her mourning and overcome with grief. Her son soon disappears and is never heard from again.

After the war, Sophie arrives in Brooklyn, New York, where she meets Nathan (Kevin Kline) and because she has no money, moves in with him. They become lovers. Shortly thereafter, Stingo, played by Peter MacNicol, moves to the same boarding house after he is fired from McGraw Hill, a New York publishing house. He has come to Brooklyn to write the great American novel.

Stingo becomes friends with Sophie and Nathan but is especially attracted to Sophie. They develop a close relationship which infuriates Nathan, who is a paranoid schizophrenic, and who, at times, could be delusional, jealous, violent, and abusive.

Stingo proposes marriage to Sophie. Soon they share a night of sexual abandon. He loses his virginity and Sophie fulfills many of his sexual fantasies. Despite their clear affection for each other, Sophie also has deep feelings for Nathan. She has a choice to make: stay with the struggling author Stingo or return to the schizophrenic Nathan. What choice will Sophie make? Her choice will determine the course of the rest of her life. Who will it be: Nathan or Stingo?

July 14, 2019

Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis)

France, 1945, 189 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Marcel Carné; Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Pierre Renoir

Against a backdrop of 19th century Parisian theater life, a great beauty has a lasting effect on the lives of four disparate men: a brilliant mime, who falls debilitatingly in love with her, rendering him unable to accept the love of his own admirer; a womanizing Shakespearean actor, who briefly shacks up with her in a somewhat passionless affair; a rich and powerful count, who saves her from a spurious criminal charge, and subsequently takes her to see the world; and a flamboyant criminal whose mischievous meddling brings to a head all of their various entanglements. The epic sweep of Carné's film is often intoxicating and filled with plenty of enjoyable and engaging moments that are wonderfully entertaining.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "You wanna stop time, that's what you wanna do. You want to live forever… In order to live forever you have to stop time. In order to stop time, you have to exist in the moment, so strong as to stop time and prove your point. So that you have stopped time. And if you succeed in doing that, everyone who comes in contact with what you've done… will catch some of that… That's an heroic feat! …I've never seen a film except one other that has stopped time… Children of Paradise." ~Bob Dylan

"I would give up all my films to have directed Children of Paradise." ~François Truffaut

In these days of sound bites, texts, Twitter, Snapchat and Tumblr, why commit to this three-plus-hour movie created 74 years ago about an even earlier time? Similar to a sumptuous, multi-course meal in a Michelin 3-star restaurant that one savors appreciatively, even ecstatically, Children of Paradise masterfully spins its story of theatre, high and low art, artifice, love, longing, romance, betrayal, life. Created by artists and master storytellers at the height of their powers, the movie consistently remains on any list of greatest French films of all time and often claims the pinnacle.

The Paradise of the title refers to the cheapest of cheap seats in the highest balcony of a theatre where the lowest of the low enjoyed the show. The actors onstage came from that audience; literally, they are the children of Paradise. The rest of the story awaits discovery or rediscovery by those intrepid cinephiles, Francophiles, theatre buffs, and romantics who join us for our screening of this extraordinary film classic.

"Children of Paradise, which Jacques Prévert and Marcel Carné produced and directed in France during the war, is close to perfection of its kind and I very much like its kind – the highest kind of slum-glamour romanticism about theater people and criminals, done with strong poetic feeling, with rich theatricality, with a great delight and proficiency in style, and with a kind of sophistication which merely cleans and curbs, rather than killing or smirking behind the back of its more powerful and vulgar elements. All the characters are a little larger and a good deal more wonderful than life – a mime of genius, a fine florid actor, an egomaniacal criminal, a cold great-gentleman, and the hypnotic gutter-beauty whom they all pursue and, after their varying fashions, possess…

I do suspect that unless you have a considerable weakness for romanticism, which I assume includes a weakness for the best of its ham, this will seem just a very fancy, skillful movie. But if you have that lucky weakness, I think the picture can be guaranteed to make you very happily drunk." ~James Agee

Read Roger Ebert's review of Children of Paradise at Great Movies.

August 11, 2019

Mulholland Drive

France/USA, 2001, 147 min, Color, R

Directed by David Lynch; Starring Naomi Watts, Jeanne Bates, Dan Birnbaum, Laura Harring

This film throws away any notion of traditional linear storytelling. It's Hollywood, and a wide-eyed blonde, Betty (Watts), has arrived at her aunt's place to find a mysterious brunette, Rita (Harring), who was in a car accident and lost her memory. Betty endeavors to aid Rita, putting them on a path where dreams and reality collide. Their story interacts with a film director who was strong-armed into hiring an actress for the lead role of his film. However, his connection to the two women may run deeper. This film is sexy, dark, and exotic, with an unpredictable plot twist that forces you to reinterpret what you've seen. What is reality? That's for you to decide.

Film Notes (Bryan Imes): Following a car accident, a woman named Rita (Laura Harring) is left with amnesia. She befriends a woman named Betty (Naomi Watts) who is newly arrived in Hollywood in search of stardom. Together they explore Los Angeles to find out what happened to Rita.

To describe the plot is an exercise in futility as the film weaves here, there, and back again while constantly making the viewer question what is real and what is a dream. Roger Ebert once wrote about the film, "The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it."

At this point in his career, David Lynch had made such works as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and the surreal masterpiece of television Twin Peaks. Having already established himself as a director whose films envelop you in their bizarrely enchanting tones, Lynch continues the legacy with Mulholland Drive, a fascinating, entertaining, and ethereal journey through Los Angeles. While its vague nature may turn some viewers off, it will undoubtedly get everyone thinking on its many possible interpretations.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Mulholland Drive at Great Movies.

Season 52: 2017 to 2018

September 10, 2017

Niagara

USA, 1953, 92 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Henry Hathaway; Starring Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Max Showalter

Marilyn Monroe had been in previous films, but Niagara turned her into an instant icon. This film is a rare Technicolor noir that crosses honeymoon camp with murder and mental illness. Monroe plays the voluptuous Rose, the unhappily married wife of George Loomis, a PTSD-afflicted Korean war vet. They have come to Niagara Falls to rekindle their marriage, but the embers of love are barely warm. Checking into the cabin next door is the chipper salesman type, Ray Cutler, and his wife, Polly. A love quadrangle seems like the obvious direction, but it takes a different turn when Polly spots Rose with another man and George suddenly disappears. A murder conspiracy emerges out of the mist.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Honeymooners have traditionally been attracted to Niagara Falls, and Ray and Polly Cutler (Showalter and Peters) are no exception. But when they check into their honeymoon bungalow to start their belated honeymoon, they're also drawn into an intrigue: the troubled marriage of another couple, George and Rose (Cotten and Monroe). George and Rose have many troubles: She's younger and gorgeous; he's an older, jealous Korean War veteran who has spent time in an Army mental hospital, ostensibly with mental problems resulting from his war service. Polly begins to suspect the worst when she sees Rose kissing another man, Patrick (Allen). The plot thickens and following some twists and turns, we're treated to the inevitable showdown at the brink of the Falls. But how we get there is the best part!

Niagara is a sumptuous film noir, albeit a film noir shot in vibrant Technicolor. Initially intended as a star vehicle for Jean Peters, the film instead became Marilyn Monroe's after her career trajectory took a sharp turn upward. Co-starring is the always wonderful Joseph Cotten in the type of sinister role that only he could play. Cotten accepted the role after James Mason turned it down, and he brings to the role a sense of tragedy that would have escaped James Mason.

The New York Times 1953 review of this film said, "Seen from any angle, the Falls and Miss Monroe leave little to be desired by any reasonably attentive audience," and that "the producers are making full use of both the grandeur of the Falls and its adjacent areas as well as the grandeur that is Marilyn Monroe. The scenic effects in both cases are superb." Interestingly enough, the Niagara Falls representative to the Ontario government complained that the dark-themed film harmed the reputation of the honeymoon capital.

So sit back and enjoy the view, whether that be the sight of Marilyn Monroe in her prime, or the breathtaking scenic views of the falls.

October 8, 2017

Oldboy (Oldeuboi)

South Korea, 2003, 120 min, Color, R, Korean w/subtitles

Directed by Chan-wook Park; Starring Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yu, Hye-jeong Kang, Dae-han Ji

After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-su is released without explanation. He learns he must find his captor in five days, unravel the mystery and exact revenge. Rage and hate inflate Dae-su's courage and strength, making him a fierce animal bristling with raw energy and power. Oldboy is essentially a character study depicting the way vengeance consumes lives and souls as the film goes from mystery to prophesy to oddity. With its relentless pacing, it becomes increasingly ugly and disturbing, but you can't turn away. At the end, there are no loose ends to unravel.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): When Park Chan-wook's Oldboy premiered in 2003, it sent immediate shockwaves through the world cinema community. The second film in Park's "vengeance trilogy" (following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and preceding Lady Vengeance), the film's brutal violence and operatic meditation on the nature of revenge pulverized audiences around the globe, many of whom didn't know whether they had seen a work of shameless exploitation or deranged genius. Perhaps it was both. Either way, the picture represented an international breakthrough that announced its director as a major new voice on the world scene.

The setup is pure Hitchcock. A misanthropic, morally bankrupt businessman embarks on an all-night bender only to wake up the next morning trapped in a single room with no idea of how or why he got there. He then spends 15 years imprisoned in the same solitary room with nothing but a television, from which he learns that his wife has been murdered and daughter adopted into a family far away. Eventually he is released, with no explanation, and sets out on a quest to find out who imprisoned him and why, and to seek revenge no matter the cost.

Beautifully paced and marked by quick bursts of violence, Oldboy unfurls like a Swiss watch, delivering each new revelation and plot twist with surgical precision. Though criticized by many for its brutality, in truth the film is no more graphic than anything found in Shakespeare or Greek tragedy, both of which it is clearly designed to resemble. Without giving anything away (this is not a film you want spoiled), by the end it's clear that revenge has been exacted, though the viewer is left to ponder whether anyone is left better off for having achieved it.

Upon release, Oldboy received rapturous reviews, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and quickly becoming a cult classic awaiting discovery by any discerning filmgoer willing to seek it out. And like any major international hit, Hollywood studios were quick to jump on its success, leading to an interesting but ultimately pointless American remake in 2013 directed by none other than Spike Lee. Regardless of its legacy, viewers coming to the film today will find a story that retains all of its power, wears its influences proudly on its sleeve and remains a modern classic, as bold and daring as anything released in the post-millennial era.

November 12, 2017

The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena)

Spain, 1973, 95 min, Color, Not Rated, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Víctor Erice; Starring Fernando Fernán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera, Ana Torrent, Isabel Tellería

On the Castilian Plains in 1940, a group of children mob the local distribution truck as it delivers the latest film, Frankenstein. One scene in the movie shows a young girl killed by the monster. Ana, a young village girl, is mesmerized and questions her older sister Isabela for answers about the child's death. Much of the film is spent with Ana trying to understand death and fascinated with the idea that Frankenstein lives on as a spirit. Ana soon heads off to a nearby mountainside to seek out the mystery of death and find that spirit. This film is not only about death, but how important arts can be to the development of a child. An epiphany can take place at any time…in front of a movie screen or in a classroom.

Film Notes (Andrea Mensch): It's no wonder that The Spirit of the Beehive has received accolades as one of the best Spanish films ever made. As a work of cinematic art, it wields equal power on the psychological, the political, and the aesthetic level.

Although our main protagonist is a six-year-old girl and much of the film's complex narrative is presented from her point of view, we ultimately gain some very adult insights on both the emotional ironies and political absurdities of the story. It's this magical layering of perspectives that creates a quasi-spiritual experience by the end of the film.

Young Ana lives in a Castilian village during and shortly after the Spanish Civil War. While there are many things in her world that she cannot understand yet, she is a highly impressionable child. When the film Frankenstein is shown in the village hall one evening, she is deeply affected by the images and the story, in particular the scene where the monster encounters and accidentally kills the little girl in the film. Even though her mischievous and know-it-all older sister assures her that everything in the movies is "fake", Ana can't stop thinking about the monster and begins to merge her own experiences in the "real world" with the ideas derived from the movie.

While we are mostly focused on Ana's child-like perceptions, the director Victor Enrice also presents us with subtle suggestions that all is not well in her overall environment. Her parents seem alienated from each other. It appears that her mother, Teresa, has had an affair with a younger man not unlike the Republican soldier who seeks shelter in the supposed "lair of the monster." We witness Teresa writing letters of nostalgic longing early in the film. Her father, a somewhat disillusioned beekeeper and a "patron" whose status in the village seems ambiguous, teaches his daughters about the dangers of consuming poisonous mushrooms which becomes significant on both the literal and metaphoric level by the end of the film.

Often when cultural shifts occur, particularly towards a more repressive regime, artists tend to react by employing a more metaphor-laden language. The Spirit of the Beehive is certainly a good example of this. Although the film takes place in 1940s Francoist Spain, we can take some of its lessons to heart in contemporary America, even if we just begin by thinking about the endangerment of our very own bee population. Sometimes children see far more than we give them credit for and perhaps by assuming a more innocent mind-set, the world can still find redemption.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Spirit of the Beehive at Great Movies.

December 10, 2017

A New Leaf

USA, 1971, 102 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Elaine May; Starring Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, George Rose

Walter Matthau plays a rich man who knows more about spending money than making it. When he learns he is broke, he sets a scheme in motion to get rich again. His plan is to marry a rich woman who no one will miss, then bump her off. Of course things don't always work according to plan. The rich woman who has been tagged is as smart and naïve as Matthau's character is dim and cunning. She's rather clumsy but also a sweet little thing. As details of her premarital life are gradually revealed, we begin to understand the myriad ways in which every individual in her life has taken advantage of her naivete and charity.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): Henry Graham has only one ambition in life: to continue his indolent life as man about town. Unfortunately, he has been paying more attention to the "carbon on the valves" of his Ferrari than to his bank balance. And he finds himself broke. He must bid farewell to his bespoke suits, his polo ponies, his beautiful apartment, his gentleman's gentleman Harold – unless he finds, woos, and weds a rich wife in six weeks.

Time is running out when he chances upon Henrietta Lowell, a shy, bespectacled, very clumsy botanist who has no mother… no father… no brother… no sister… and is therefore perfect for what Henry plans to be a short married life. He is not above a little uxoricide (wife-icide for the untutored) once he has his hands on her money.

Henrietta is a mess… literally a mess. Henry finds himself brushing her off after meals, cleaning her glasses, and replacing her incompetent, licentious, and dishonest house staff. Finally on their honeymoon, when Henrietta apologizes for being so much trouble, Henry reassures her, "That's okay; it won't be for long."

Will he or won't he? It is so much fun finding out!

This is Elaine May's directing debut (she also wrote the screenplay). Although a critical success, it didn't do well at the box office but is now considered a cult classic.

The supporting cast is superb – James Weston is Henrietta's deceitful, increasingly frustrated lawyer; Doris Roberts is Henrietta's housekeeper who leers and winks at Henry in a misguided attempt to seduce him; and Renee Taylor is one of Henry's bawdiest candidates for marriage.

Callum Marsh of the Village Voice says A New Leaf is "a film of such wit and comic invention that it belongs among the great American comedies."

January 14, 2018

Murder on the Orient Express

UK, 1974, 128 min, Color, PG

Directed by Sidney Lumet; Starring Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman

Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Agatha Christie's celebrated mystery is a nostalgic throwback to the early days of Hollywood when all-star casts routinely graced the screen. However, it is Albert Finney who truly runs the show here as the determined (and occasionally obnoxious) Hercules Poirot. This is not a great whodunit mystery, but this is old fashioned entertainment where the movie stars are on view the entire show. Everyone gets a chance to chew the scenery, show off their beautiful young (or revered old) faces and deliver a dialogue zinger or two. Lauren Bacall has the sauciest lines; Ingrid Bergman plays a repressed Swedish missionary; Sean Connery is a British officer with secrets to hide…you get the idea!

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Before Kenneth Branagh's recent remake of Agatha Christie's famous whodunit, Sidney Lumet had already successfully given it a whirl in 1974.

Hercule Poirot is called on to solve a murder that occurred in his car on the Orient Express the night before. The all-star cast features Albert Finney as Poirot, arguably Dame Christie's most renowned sleuth (although Miss Marple may take issue with that assertion). The cast includes illustrious actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, John Gielgud, Jacqueline Bissett, Sean Connery, and the list goes on and on!

The film was commercially and critically well-received, receiving six nominations at the 47th Academy Awards: Best Actor (Finney), Best Supporting Actress (Bergman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Costume Design. Of these nominations, Bergman was the only winner.

There are red herrings and false leads aplenty, but M. Poirot will put his little grey cells to the test and come up with a solution that will surprise you – unless you've seen the remake or read the book, that is. Nonetheless, Murder on the Orient Express is a fun romp that bears another viewing, or another reading, for that matter.

February 11, 2018

Once

Ireland, 2007, 86 min, Color, R

Directed by John Carney; Starring Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, Hugh Walsh, Gerard Hendrick

Once is a musical more concerned with music than costumes, and a love story more interested in love than sex. Unfolding on the streets of Dublin, the movie follows the fortunes of two people for whom prosperity is only a dream. Nope, they do not have names. Guy, the male lead, is a busker who sings songs on the nighttime streets. Girl, an immigrant Czech maid who relinquished a career as a concert pianist, sells roses on the same sidewalks to help support her mother and daughter. A music store owner allows her to play his pianos. When she takes Guy with her, they discover a powerful musical bond. The film's music is at once ethereal and shattering but also its point. When you watch the film you will expect one outcome. Listen to it and you'll hear quite another.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): It's wonderful to be reminded of just how unlikely a success Once was when it premiered in the summer of 2007. John Carney's tiny, roughshod Irish indie musical, a mostly platonic love story with no real plot and a cast of non-professional actors, featured a production budget of only $150,000 and went on to gross more than $23 million, securing its place in independent cinema lore forever and thoroughly charming any audience lucky enough to discover it.

In many ways, Once arrived at exactly the right time and provided a much-needed course correction for the musical genre. By 2007 the great musical renaissance heralded by the one-two punch of Moulin Rouge! (2001) and the Oscar-winning Chicago (2002) had mostly fizzled, killed off by one too many sterile rote adaptations of Broadway hits (see: Rent (2005), The Producers (also 2005)).

Instead of lavish production numbers and sweeping romance, Carney's film went for intimacy, opting for the simple story of a street musician (known simply as "The Guy") and a flower girl ("The Girl") who meet cute, write and record some songs together, and maybe fall in love. Within the contours of this paper-thin premise ("story" would almost be overstating it), Once becomes a wistful, melancholy celebration of music itself, one that pays homage to the beauty and romance inherent in the simple process of creating.

It's impossible to talk about the movie's charms without mentioning its beguiling lead performances. Hansard and Irglová, both of whom were professional musicians but not actors (Irglová was only 17 at the time of filming), bring an untarnished quality to their roles that remains utterly disarming, with a chemistry that reaches full tilt in their musical performances (their opening duet, the Oscar-winning "Falling Slowly", remains an utterly lovely musical moment). The shared affection, while never blossoming into full-blown romance on-screen, is so palpable that it's not surprising to learn that it led to a brief off-screen relationship (which ended in 2009, though the two remain friends).

Once's success naturally led to a (multiple-Tony-award-winning) Broadway musical that toured internationally, and though no one involved became household names, all have maintained successful careers in the years since (I'd urge anyone who enjoys the film to check out Carney's lovely Sing Street (2016), currently streaming on Netflix). Regardless, the film itself remains a gem of post-millennial cinema, a perfect Valentine that continues to charm in each return viewing.

March 11, 2018

Nine Queens (Nueve reinas)

Argentina, 2000, 114 min, Color, R, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Fabián Bielinsky; Starring Ricardo Darín, Gastón Pauls, Leticia Brédice, María Mercedes Villagra

Nine Queens is a first-class heist movie. Juan is a struggling swindler, stuck cheating convenience stores out of unimpressive amounts of cash. He catches the eye of Marcos, a professional con artist, who coincidentally is in need of a new partner. The two spend a day getting acquainted, demonstrating various small-time cons for each other. They come across a potentially lucrative deal involving a set of forged stamps known as the Nine Queens. It is quite entertaining to watch these guys as they set up an extremely elaborate heist regarding the forged stamps. If you are a viewer who is hard to trick, you'll enjoy trying to figure out the con. It's fun to be fooled./p>

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): This film is about a con within a con within a con. It starts with a chance meeting. A young would-be con man named Juan is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes back with the manager, screaming she was robbed. At this point, Marcos, a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off. Of course Marcos is another con man and lectures Juan on the dangers of excessive greed. He offers to team up with Juan for the day, just to show him some things that might prove useful, and to take advantage of Juan's innocent face which can help the two of them get away with even more outrageous deceptions. Juan tentatively agrees to the partnerships, with no idea how far the day will take him.

The two of them then seemingly happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "Nine Queens", a rare sheet of counterfeit stamps which they learn about when Marcos' sister Valeria berates him because one of his old criminal associates tries to con a client in the hotel where she works. They hope to con an incredibly wealthy stamp collector (who is staying at the hotel) out of a fortune for the set of the fake legendary "Nine Queens".

As Juan and Marcos try to work out their scheme, the fake stamps are stolen. This requires Juan and Marcos to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of the stamps. And so the plot goes on and on, around and around in an elegantly deadpan comedy. These complications accelerate the plot to a stunning conclusion.

Nine Queens is a tense, terse film, too vibrant and tropical to really be noir, but with all the same sensibilities that make a film in that genre sing. The dialogue is slick, polished and eminently entertaining (at least in translation). All the leads pull their roles off admirably, and the chemistry between Juan and Marcos is the stuff screen legends are made of.

April 8, 2018

Losing Ground

USA, 1982, 86 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Kathleen Collins; Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones, Billie Allen

Sara Rogers has reached a crossroads in her life. She's a professional African-American woman, but the film isn't defined by race or sex. Sara is a professor at CCNY. She teaches a course on existentialism, but also pursues a project on "ecstasy," even though confessing that she doesn't know what it means to be transported outside herself. Sara's husband, Victor, is her temperamental opposite: ebullient, effusive, outgoing. New horizons appear for Sara when she is asked to star in a student film. Cast in the role of a deceived lover who shoots her partner in a jealous rage, she finds her own emotions transformed.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): Funny, brilliant, and personal, Losing Ground should have ranked high in the canon of indie cinema. But the early 1980s was not an easy time for women or independent filmmakers, and the film was never broadly released. The director was Kathleen Collins and twenty-five years after her death, her daughter Nina Collins rescued the original negative and created a beautiful new digital master. It is a testament to Kathleen Collins' incredible talent and a lasting treasure of African-American and women's cinema.

Losing Ground tells the story of a marriage of two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives. Sara Rogers, a black professor of philosophy, is embarking on an intellectual quest to understand the "ecstatic" experience just as her painter husband Victor sets off on a more earthly exploration of joy.

Celebrating a recent museum painting sale, Victor decides to rent a country house where he can return to working in realism after years of working as an abstract expressionist. Away from the city, the couple's summer idyll becomes complicated by Sara's research projects and by Victor's involvement with a young model. One of Sara's students, who is also studying film, casts Sara as the woman scorned in a film version of the song "Frankie and Johnny". As she plays the part she experiences a painful emotional awakening and some hard truths about her life. While dealing with strong individuals and feelings, the film is also charming. This work is to be lauded, appreciated, and cherished.

May 13, 2018

The Palm Beach Story

USA, 1942, 88 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Preston Sturges; Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee

Gerry (Claudette Colbert) and Tom (Joel McCrea) have been married for years and are very much in love, but their marriage is falling apart because of financial problems. Gerry finally decides that it's best to get a divorce in Palm Beach and start fresh. The film is full of witty dialogue, outstanding one-liners, razor-sharp satire, fantastic characterizations and a great sense of humor. The magic that makes Sturges' films so entertaining is that they transport the audience to a different place where good things happen to good people and at the end true love always wins.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): The Palm Beach Story is one of the maddest of the seven madcap comedies written and directed by Preston Sturges between 1940 and 1947. The storyline is convoluted and crazy. A married woman, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), leaves her cash-strapped architect husband, Tom (Joel McCrea), and leaves for Palm Beach so she can marry a wealthy suitor and fund her ex-husband's business ventures. When Tom follows Gerry (get the joke – Tom and "Jerry"?), they encounter a marriage-minded millionaire (Rudy Vallee) and his sister (Mary Astor), who is also on the hunt for a spouse. Now that all the triangulations are in place, the fun begins.

Preston Sturges was to this genre what Alfred Hitchcock was to the suspense thriller. While directors such as Howard Hawks and Ernst Lubitsch made these screwball comedies quite successfully, none of them was the auteur that Preston Sturges was. No writer could match his talent for snappy, slang-laden dialog that sounds natural, with characters talking over each other and interrupting each other so often that the dialog seems fresh and effortless. Sturges' voice is so unique and individual that his style can't be mistaken for anyone else's.

Besides writing these films, Sturges was deeply involved in the casting and he also directed the actors himself. His influence in 1940s Hollywood was so great that at one time, Sturges was the third-highest paid person in the United States. The arc of his career was brief but brilliant.

Sturges' films reflect the culture and tone of America in the 1940s, with characters of various ethnicities as part of the mix, and with the colorful characteristics of their way of expressing themselves preserved. The concept of the American melting pot is intact here, and presented in a manner that makes us laugh with self-acceptance rather than ridicule. Not that there isn't a good deal of malarkey present in the dealings of these characters – far from it. But The Palm Beach Story demonstrates that the strength of our nation is derived from the richness of our diversity, and was presented at a time when Europe was fracturing along lines of race, nationality, and ethnicity. Not a bad lesson to be learned at any time, especially when the message is delivered with the style and wit of a master in the fullness of his powers.

June 10, 2018

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

USA, 1971, 120 min, Color, R

Directed by Robert Altman; Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane

The film is brilliantly awkward…or, refreshingly authentic if one does not quite accept the glorious image of the American West the early Westerns portrayed. It's set in a small mining town, a place looking for identity and a leader. The gambling gunslinger, John McCabe (Warren Beatty), believes he can give the town what it needs: a brand new brothel. McCabe runs the brothel as he wants until the classy whore Constance Miller (Julie Christie) arrives and offers him a deal he is forced to consider. Along comes a big mining company wanting to buy him out, but he reluctantly vows to defend his ground.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): It's 1902 in the great snowy Northwest. But the music we hear is from 1960s folk singer Leonard Cohen, a stylistic anachronism that nevertheless fits well with the melancholy loneliness and the softly falling snow.

The story is the old tale of the individual versus Eastern-style organized business interests.

McCabe is the smart-talking, fast-dealing hero with a mean reputation as a gunslinger. His murderous past is a myth and he's too drunk most of the time to make a decent decision. He sees himself as a noble warrior. In reality, he's a pimp and procurer who likes the idea of having three gross prostitutes work for him while he struts around acting like a big businessman.

He is trying to live the "great American dream", to settle down and live a peaceful life with a business. He decides to set up a saloon and brothel for the local miners. This is where we meet a shrewd and no-nonsense madame named Mrs. Miller. She wants to become partners and believes she can improve the place and make more money. McCabe tries to get closer to Mrs. Miller but she keeps everything on a business basis.

Soon McCabe is approached by big businessmen wanting to buy him out. He rejects their offer but later learns the company plans to use "alternative methods". He vows to bravely defend his ground.

The film also has a big mischievous alter ego. For example, next to the well-calculated political jabs, such as how big corporations have been trying to screw the little guys, the film also flips some of the biggest clichés about the tough settlers (men and women) in the West with a very sharp sense of humor.

Read Roger Ebert's review of McCabe & Mrs. Miller at Great Movies.

July 8, 2018

Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom)

Soviet Union, 1929, 68 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Dziga Vertov; Starring Mikhail Kaufman

This silent film demonstrates the director's insistence on skyrocketing the medium away from the theatrical and into a specific cinematic style that makes more use of camera technology. There is no distinctive plot or scenario to this film, no titles, actors or sets. What is to be witnessed is "real". Shot in several Russian cities, this hypnotic gem of a film has two goals in mind: to capture the day-to-day activities of the people and to demonstrate a vast array of camera techniques. The film consists of 1,775 separate shots whose average length is 2.3 seconds…a little like watching life on fast-forward. The audience is challenged to put together these events optically and emotionally to go beyond the common playacting of the time.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): This experimental work aims at creating a truly international language based on its total separation from the language of theater and literature.

Dziga Vertov's cinema verité documentary about life in Moscow remains a groundbreaking, highly experimental, oddly overlooked cornerstone of cinematic history. Vertov experimented wildly with his camera, strapping it to motorcycles and to trains, using multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, still imagery, dissolves, superimposition, and making the camera an obvious participant in what is being filmed. Indeed, pretty much every possible cinematic trick of the day – both with the camera itself and in the editing room – is evident here.

Without any meta-narrative or voiceover, Vertov shows us strategically "representative" snippets of urban Soviet life, from morning to night, inside and out. We see couples getting married and divorced, factory employees hard at work, teeming crowds on streets, trains coming and going, athletes showing off their prowess – even an actual birth in graphic detail (though it comes and goes too quickly for us to feel anything other than the basic recognition). Naturally all of these events didn't actually take place in just one day, or even one city – in truth it took Vertov and his team over four years to gather the extensive footage across Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa.

Meanwhile, Vertov frequently cuts away either to the editing room (where the footage is being manipulated) or to a movie theater where viewers are watching the scenes unfold – thus reminding us continuously about the highly constructed nature of his narrative. It all makes for an invaluable, multi-faceted snapshot of an era and a society, while simultaneously providing an audaciously radical commentary on the very nature of cinematic representation.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Man with a Movie Camera at Great Movies.

August 12, 2018

The Night of the Hunter (Members' Choice!)

USA, 1955, 92 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Charles Laughton; Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason

This film is a nightmarish journey through a surreal landscape. Director Charles Laughton establishes a complex mood, toned by contrasts of innocence and evil, humor and menace, spirituality and hypocrisy. Robert Mitchum poses as a preacher, who cozies up to rich women, kills them, and runs off with their fortunes. He hears about a stash of stolen money from a guy in jail and hunts down the guy's wife and two kids to find it. The kids are quick to see through him. A disturbing sense of foreboding grows as he ingratiates himself with the woman and the townsfolk. The final sequence illustrates the clash of conflicting spiritual principles.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): Charles Laughton, the great British actor, directed only one film: The Night of the Hunter. It was a commercial and critical failure. Today it is regarded by many as one of the greatest American horror films ever made.

The story is set during the Great Depression, and it focuses on the three infamous American obsessions: religion, sex, and money. The great Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, a serial killer on the loose who is arrested for stealing a car and subsequently thrown in jail. His cellmate, also a killer and soon to be hanged, shares a secret with him that he has stolen $10,000 and that only his children know where the money is hidden.

A few days after his cellmate is hanged, Harry is released from jail. Pretending to be a preacher, he heads straight to his cellmate's home where he immediately befriends his widow, Willa, played by Shelley Winters. Harry asks her to marry him and she agrees. The children are quite leery of Harry and sense something is not quite right. Harry presses them to reveal where the money is hidden but they stand fast and refuse. Harry goes berserk; the kids run for their lives and end up in the home of an old, religious, and feisty woman who knows how to use a rifle.

In the film there is a lot of talk about God, love and hate, and there are hidden messages about each that are remarkably bold in tone. Brilliant questions and answers are exchanged in a manner that reveals plenty about those lives corrupted by prejudice and superstition in America in the mid-twentieth-century.

Visually The Night of the Hunter is a marvel. Director of Photography Stanley Cortez treats light and shadow in a way that creates an impressive gothic-noir atmosphere that greatly enhances the narrative.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Night of the Hunter at Great Movies.

Season 51 2016-2017

September 11, 2016

High Noon (Members' Choice!)

USA, 1952, 85 min, B&W, PG

Directed by Fred Zinnemann; Starring Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado

This is the Citizen Kane of Western cinema. It is, simply put, a masterpiece. The acting, the music, the set, the dialogue, the camera work are all perfection. The film is a clear display of how the strong swallowed the weak in small, dirty, western towns where people would panic at the sight of armed bandits. This is the story of a man who would not run away - a man who left his beautiful bride alone - so he can confront four dangerous criminals who had a bone to pick with him. We follow Marshal Will Kane as he searches for men willing to help him fight for his life. It's all very unpredictable.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'…

When you hear those words being sung by Tex Ritter, what images immediately come to mind? A steely man, alone, facing sure death at the hands of an outlaw mob as the townspeople he was sworn to protect desert him in his hour of need. The sun overhead casting no shadows. Stark images of an abandoned Western town. Dust blowing. Gary Cooper – alone on a Western street.

High Noon is an institution in our collective cinematic history. We've all seen it, maybe multiple times. But have you ever thought about what's behind this great film, and what it really says about our society?

High Noon was produced during the height of McCarthyism. Screenwriter Carl Foreman, who also wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai, had recently been blacklisted and retreated to London. It doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to think that the paranoia in the film and the sting of the town's indifference to the travails of an individual may have sprung from Foreman's experiences with the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC).

After all, John Wayne lambasted High Noon as "un-American," which is pretty stiff criticism considering that High Noon stars his friend and colleague, Gary Cooper. Both Wayne and Cooper were conservative Republicans and founders of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group that cooperated with HUAC. Cooper himself testified in Congress at the HUAC hearings although he named no names. Perhaps Mr. Wayne's criticism was purely the result of Carl Forman's involvement in the picture, but perhaps the Duke also perceived that High Noon is in its own way a subversive film that projects an image of middle America that doesn't jibe with the jingoism that the films of Wayne embodied.

What is it about High Noon that could possibly be considered subversive? There's nothing subversive about the setting or the acting. What's subversive about a Western?

High Noon's subversive factor is that the common all-American folk of the mythical town represented here abandon their town to an approaching evil. They save their own skins at the expense of the one man who is brave enough to face the mob. They don't take up arms and join the fight as we are told the Minute Men did during the Revolution. They don't roll up their sleeves and join hands to defeat the bad guys. They don't have a gunfight in the OK Corral. They don't act like "real Americans". Instead, they pack their bags and get on the first train out of town.

Screenwriter Carl Foreman would have been familiar with this behavior because it had played out in recent world events. At the Nuremburg trials, it was apparent that everyday Germans were aware but didn't speak up at the atrocities visited upon their Jewish neighbors. Neville Chamberlain told the British people that there would be "peace in our time" in a desperate attempt to keep his country from confronting a global evil. Here at home, Forman's former friends and colleagues abandoned him and named him to the HUAC, causing him to have to flee his home in the US. Only a few years later, newspaper headlines would scream out a sensational story about a young woman being murdered in New York City while dozens of people cowered in their homes and did nothing.

High Noon is subversive because it shines a light on a reality that goes against an engrained school of thought that prospered in the propaganda films of the 1940s and in the Westerns of the 1950s. High Noon allows us to feel the fear and endless tension of the protagonist as he gets rejected, time and again, in his quest to build a posse to stand up to the bad guys.

So, while you watch this film and feel the tension building, note the constant reminder of the impending violence in the ticking of the clock. And ask yourself what's more shocking – the predictable murderous behavior of the bad guys or the shocking indifference of the good guys?

October 9, 2016

The Vanishing (Spoorlos)

Netherlands, 1988, 107 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by George Sluizer; Starring Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus

When Saskia and Rex, a young Dutch couple, stop at a gas station in France, Saskia goes to the store to buy some drinks. She never returns; she seemingly just disappears. For three years, Rex pursues an extensive search for her. In an unusual deviation early in the film, the likely perpetrator is revealed and time is devoted to examining the stranger's eerily normal family life. At the conclusion of this extraordinary, gripping film, Rex will reach the bottom of the mystery. What he finds will stay with you for a long time.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): It seems like such a common occurrence. You and your family are out on a long drive when you decide to stop for gas and a snack. Then you get back in the car and start to drive away when you suddenly realize that your teenager is not in the car. You find him at a magazine rack reading something that caught his eye. But what if after you searched the store you couldn't find him?

What if he seemed to have vanished?

That would be a rather frightening and perplexing dilemma. And that's how the film The Vanishing gets underway. The original title of this film is Spoorloos, a 1988 Dutch thriller that does several interesting things; among them is that the plot is disjointed, nonlinear, and more existential in nature.

Saskia and Rex touch and look at each other like lovers do. Saskia is the more energetic and impulsive of the two, while Rex is the calmer and more reserved one. At a gas station somewhere in the south of France, Saskia goes into the mart to buy drinks while Rex waits for her in the car. She fails to return and vanishes without a trace. Initially Rex gets angry, then he panics and finally becomes terrified when he realizes that something very bad might have happened to Saskia. Eventually he returns home without her.

The rest of the film focuses on two fascinating character transformations, Rex and Saskia's abductor Raymond. For both of these men, Saskia's vanishing becomes something of a litmus test. Past and present events frequently overlap but they are arranged in a way that makes the film easy to follow.

Rex vows to discover what has happened to Saskia. His determination gradually evolves into an unhealthy obsession that has a dramatic impact on the way he lives his life and communicates with people. Rex's search will take three years. He appears on TV, he blankets the country with posters. He follows leads and at the conclusion of the film he will get to the bottom of the mystery. What he finds will stay with you for a long time.

The second character is Saskia's kidnapper Raymond Lemorne, whose identity is revealed immediately after the vanishing. Thus, the whodunit element is eliminated in favor of something completely different. That something is a terrific character study of the breaking point – that very specific motivation/condition that forces a seemingly normal mind to switch into a different mode and completely change one's identity. Past and present events of the characters are shown which highlight their motivations and conditions influencing their changes.

For Rex and Raymond, the events are different but the manner in which their minds respond is very similar. These responses sum up the message of the film: the mind is a powerful switchboard which can be easily corrupted. And once corrupted, it becomes completely unpredictable.

November 13, 2016

All That Jazz

USA, 1979, 123 min, Color, R

Directed by Bob Fosse; Starring Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Leland Palmer, Ann Reinking

His name is Joe Gideon and he is a movie director and Broadway choreographer. He is successful, wealthy, admired, and feared. He is also an unapologetic cheater who is addicted to amphetamines. He is struggling with a creative block, hates his own work and it's eating him alive. He finally creates a bold new concept for an upcoming show. Shortly after, he collapses and is told that he will die unless he changes his lifestyle. This is a brutally honest movie showing how spectacular and utterly ridiculous life on Broadway can be. Joe's story is essentially Bob Fosse's life story told via a series of magnificently choreographed pieces that rightfully place the movie among the greatest musicals ever filmed.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): When a film opens Christmas week, it is clear that the studio and distributors are confident they have a winner very likely to be an Oscar contender. This movie did not disappoint. The night of the 1980 Academy Awards All That Jazz was up for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and five technical achievements. By evening's end All That Jazz won Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Editing and Best Song. It was otherwise a very good night for Kramer vs. Kramer. And then at the Cannes Film Festival All That Jazz won its highest award – the Palme d'Or for Bob Fosse. The faith placed in this film was richly rewarded, and you will be all the richer for the exciting, entertaining, enjoyment of this beautifully made film.

Stanley Kubrick, writer and director of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Paths of Glory (1957) and many others, remarked this was "the best film I think I've ever seen".

It can be agreed that this film is autobiographical in that Roy Scheider's portrayal of choreographer/writer/director Joe Gideon is virtually congruent to the life of choreographer/writer/director Bob Fosse. This film was an attempt by Fosse to deal with his real-life heart attack in 1974 and within the film, through the character of Joe Gideon, evaluate the meaning of his life, his artistic labors, his many loves, and the relationships with his estranged wife and their daughter.

This film was prophetic in that Bob Fosse did indeed die of a heart attack in Washington, DC, in September 1987, at age 60. He was in a rush to go to the National Theatre for the final preparations of his stage musical Sweet Charity. He was cremated and his ashes scattered into the Atlantic off Quogue, Long Island, by his estranged wife Gwen Verdon and daughter as he had directed.

To fully appreciate the talent and drive of Bob Fosse, his unprecedented achievement in 1974 of the entertainment world's equivalent of horse racing's Triple Crown must be placed in evidence. He won an Oscar for directing Cabaret, a Tony for directing Broadway's Pippin, and an Emmy for directing television's Liza with a Z, all within the same awards season. Never before and not since has one individual achieved such a career hat-trick.

It is always interesting to speculate just how the final product might have differed had another individual been cast instead of the Oscar-nominated Roy Scheider. With the understanding that this would be a production of and by the genius Bob Fosse, casting and talent agents yielded such contenders as Robert Blake, Jack Nicholson, Elliot Gould, George Segal, Alan Bates, Jon Voight, Paul Newman, Alan Alda, Gene Hackman, and Jack Lemmon. The studio wanted Warren Beatty but Fosse did not. Richard Dreyfuss suffered through a few days of production and then quit. All along Fosse wanted Roy Scheider and finally got his way after the exhausted studio heads relented.

A viewer warning is warranted. One dance number in rehearsal contains brief female nudity above the waist. Also drug usage is integral to the lead character. Somewhat disturbing to a few may be the surgical scenes. But in today's climate of all things inappropriate, the amount of smoking alone just might get this wonderful film an X rating.

December 11, 2016

Rififi

France, 1955, 118 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jules Dassin; Starring Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Janine Darcey

Most modern films see the execution of the heist itself as the climax. However, in this film the theft serves as a gateway into the study of both masculinity and the unwritten codes that bind men together. A team of four skilled thieves assemble to pull off a crime that is seemingly impossible and risk everything on a plan that requires utmost precision. The characters are always acutely aware of every detail of their surroundings. This methodical approach allows the tension to build until the actual heist which is presented without dialogue. While the men might be skilled thieves, the film suggests that they are ultimately boys playing a dangerous game that is above their heads.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): Listed by Time magazine as one of the ten best heist films of all time, Rififi combines suspense, jealousy, and the macho posturing of a band of four jewel thieves. They carefully plan their midnight raid on a jewelry shop in the exclusive Rue de Rivoli of Paris. The execution of the crime is a riveting sequence filmed without music or dialogue but with knuckle-whitening tension. Their fictional robbery has come to be imitated by actual criminals around the world!

Director Dassin was blacklisted in the McCarthy era and took his talents to France to much acclaim. He was awarded as Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955. Later he continued to create suspense in the English language film Topkapi with yet another jewel robbery.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Rififi at Great Movies.

January 15, 2017

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Netherlands/UK/France, 1989, 124 min, Color, NC-17

Directed by Peter Greenaway; Starring Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard

On one level you can describe this movie simply in terms of the characters and the lustful and unspeakable things they do to one another. On another level it is a wildly exuberant, bitingly satirical examination of excess, bad taste, and the most basic strengths and weaknesses of the human body. Dark humor and irony pepper nearly every scene. Most of the film takes place inside a fine French restaurant where the chef cares deeply for both the artistry and taste of the food. The restaurant's owner visits nightly to spout absurd discourses on every subject. The acting is superb in this gorgeous, visually rich film that tells the story of a fascinating hedonistic world.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): The milieu of the rich entices us moviegoers.

Think back to films like Gosford Park or The Leopard; when the high and mighty are framed in such lavish yet fragile ways, we catch on quickly that beneath the exterior beauty, something sinister bubbles beneath.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is more interested in the opposite. Take for instance the opening long shots that track the restaurant owner (Michael Gambon) and his wife (Helen Mirren) through the dirty underbelly of the establishment, before travelling up into the opulent dining room.

The film follows the title characters as their lives mingle, interrupt, arouse, and anger one another, all set in an unrealistically gorgeous restaurant. To describe anything further would ruin the fun – and shocks – that come with the film. For a film that is all about appetites, it may spoil some viewers.

However, the film is not as shocking today as it must have been back when it was released. In fact, despite the frank depictions of sex, cannibalism, gluttony, and violence, audiences and critics forgave it due to the caliber of its four lead actors: Helen Mirren, Tim Roth, Michael Gambon, and Richard Bohringer.

So how did director Peter Greenaway get these Shakespearean actors to perform the surprisingly blunt actions they do in the film? Greenaway had a strong reputation within the film community for tasteful filmmaking – The Draughtman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers. So when he approached these actors with a strong script penned by him, they jumped to work with Greenaway.

A dominating factor of why this film is important (and controversial) is that it has been noted to be a satire on Margaret Thatcher's Britain. The excessive amounts of greed, food, and lust that consume (literally) everyone in the film is shockingly modern and perverse, especially given America's political climate today. The morality of all the characters is little to none, and none of them are particularly redeeming, which means evil deeds are heightened to more shocking circumstances. The ending of the film is perhaps the most direct in what the film is saying with its political undertones: a rebellion where the sinner is not consumed by his sins, but must consume them.

The film, though controversial, is praised by many of those who have seen it. I watched the film in an arthouse cinema in New York around two years ago. I was on a date and the person I went with loved Helen Mirren. Nearly twenty minutes in, I noticed my date shifting in their seat at the discomfort of the film. I was laughing at the screen.

As we left the theatre, walking five blocks to the subway, my date kept repeating, "Helen Mirren."

Helen Mirren.

Her performance in this film surpasses any performance of the 1980s (yes, that includes any by Meryl Streep). This is because Mirren owns her beauty, never flaunts it, never undermines it. But it never gets in the way of what she is thinking. Watch closely as she exchanges glances with a man across the room while her husband eats like an oaf. The desire in her look is breathtakingly sensual. And while no words are spoken between them, and their clothes stay on, we know they are making love.

It is a film that gets better with age and is a treat to experience on the big screen. Bon appetit.

February 12, 2017

To Have and Have Not

USA, 1944, 100 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Howard Hawks; Starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall, Dolores Moran

An American running a fishing charter in the Caribbean romances a young lounge singer and reluctantly becomes involved with the French Resistance by agreeing to secretly transport a de Gaulle lieutenant. Based on Hemingway's novel, the story is sleepy and resembles Casablanca. However, the film is largely of note due to the debut of Lauren Bacall and the beginning of her relationship with Bogart. The two sizzle on the screen. Even though we're trained to look at the romance as the central relationship in a movie, it's Harry's (Bogart) caretaking of his first mate Eddie (Brennan) that serves as the film's real message. It's the sticking by the Eddies of the world, even though they cause nothing but trouble, that define a man's character and suggest he does the right thing.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "Polish up the picks, shovels, and pans for the gold mine on the way in Howard Hawks' production of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, which we sneaked last night and which is not only a second Casablanca but two and a half times what Casablanca was. Here is a story of adventure and basic sex appeal the likes of which we have not seen since Morocco and Algiers. Bogart terrific, never was seen like this before. Lauren Bacall, new find of ours playing opposite Bogart, distinct personality who positively will be a star overnight. Nothing like Bacall has been seen on the screen since Garbo and Dietrich. This is one of the biggest and hottest attractions we have ever had. If this sounds like I'm overboard, well I am."

-Interoffice memo, Warners Head of Publicity, Charlie Einfeld

What makes a movie star? Each year countless talented actors make their pilgrimage to mythic Hollywood hoping to find their place in the firmament knowing full well that few find anything but disappointment. Stardust has always been in short supply.

Perhaps that is part of our fascination with stars. We adore and sometimes idolize those rare individuals who beat the odds to soar into the heavens and beam down on us as we sit collectively – or independently these days – in the dark. Movies and television shows are created about the birth, life, decline, death of stars. Magazines launched. Book deals made.

Here is yet another legend of the birth of a star: a woman named "Slim" Hawks picked up the March 1943 Harper's Bazaar and stopped, intrigued at the cover picture of a girl standing outside of a blood bank. Something about the girl grabbed the eye and held it, then held it some more. Slim tossed the magazine to her husband, director-producer Howard Hawks, and soon after the girl was on a train to Hollywood under a seven-year personal contract to him. Born Betty Joan Perske, the girl had already adopted her maternal grandmother's last name, Bacall, adding the second "L" to make pronunciation easier. Hawks rechristened her Lauren. Lauren Bacall.

While well-satisfied with the girl's looks, Hawks changed more than her first name. Preferring low-register female voices, he encouraged her to train hers so that no matter how emotional or excited she became onscreen, her voice would never screech, never grate. Bacall achieved this goal by finding a spot on Mulholland Drive and reading aloud, perhaps all 556 pages of The Robe, lower and louder than normal. This repeated exercise along with the contents of a small mountain of cigarette cartons achieved the desired seductive gravelly result.

Singing lessons began. Perhaps most significantly, Hawks took a shy nice Jewish girl and transformed her into the tough sexy equal – some argue superior – of any man. Hawks asked screenwriter Jules Furthman as he began work on To Have and Have Not: "Do you suppose we could make a girl who is insolent? As insolent as Bogart, who insults people, who grins when she does it, and people like it?" They did. She was. We do.

To Have and Have Not allows us to witness not only the birth of a star and the easy charisma of one of the silver screen's superstars, but the unexpected intervention by Cupid. Soon after shooting began on the film, the 44-year-old Humphrey Bogart and the 19-year-old Lauren Bacall began falling in love in real as well as reel life. Their chemistry is palpable. Leonard Maltin wrote, "It's one of these instances where it's quite possible we are eyewitnesses to an actor or actress failing in love, and while good actors make us believe that all the time, there has to be some extra kick when it's real." Reality and illusion merged seamlessly. Off camera, Bacall and Bogart called each other by their character's names, Slim and Steve. Later, when they married and had their first child, they named him Steve. Two stars united: A Hollywood happy ending indeed.

"You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

March 12, 2017

Flesh and the Devil

USA, 1926, 112 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Clarence Brown; Starring John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent

This is the movie that made Greta Garbo a legend. She glows on the screen and never looked more beautiful. The story is a love triangle between two best friends and a wanton woman. Set in Austria before the first World War, Leo and Ulrich are soldiers and best friends from childhood. Ulrich's sister, Hertha, is in love with Leo. Felicitas (Garbo) plays a completely wicked woman. She seduces Leo but neglects to tell him she's married. Her husband catches them and demands satisfaction in a duel. Leo kills him and is advised to leave the country. When Leo returns years later, he learns that his best friend has married Felicitas. This woman has no shame. You can probably guess where the story goes from here so no more will be said.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): When Garbo spoke, the world reacted with "Oh, finally, but why?"

The power of Garbo finally speaking in a feature-length film was a surprising one – met with a variety of reactions ranging from appalled to even more enamored.

The high hopes that audiences had of Garbo having a voice that fit both their expectations of the femme fatales she portrayed before and what they fantasized in Garbo as the perfect woman were the products of Garbo's performances in silent pictures, most notably Flesh and the Devil.

The film co-stars John Gilbert, Garbo's real-life lover at the time and an actor that equalled Garbo in charisma and power of expression in the silent era. Director Clarence Brown had no need to come between the two actors – their romance was real and it shows onscreen.

To summarize a film like Flesh and the Devil may diminish the film's power to grab its audience even when the plot is very straightforward. Less is more, after all, in these silent films (Here's looking at you, Sunrise).

Garbo plays the married femme fatale, aptly named Felicitas, who seduces Leo (Gilbert) and, much to the dismay of her husband, causes the husband's death through a duel between the two men. Leo is banished to foreign service for three years and upon returning home, he finds Felicitas has married Leo's childhood friend Ulrich.

While the picture is silent, and Garbo never does (or can) utter a word, the expressions on her and the actors' faces speak volumes. It is difficult to put into words the universality the film brings to mind, yet the simplicity in the expressions to display deep emotions evokes films such as L'Atalante.

And the sex.

Well, okay, the 1920s sex. Google "Flesh and the Devil" and you will find four YouTube Videos about Garbo and Gilbert's kiss. That is a mere morsel of the sexual flavor the film portrays. Flesh and the Devil keeps its heat classy, though the communion scene still manages to make viewers blush.

The model of the real-life onscreen romance of Flesh precedes the blockbuster appeal of casting real couples in romantic movies, recently seen in the Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard vehicle Allied. Whether these movies help or harm the relationships, we can only fantasize. But that's what the movies were meant for, after all.

April 9, 2017

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage)

Germany, 2005, 120 min, Color, Not Rated, German w/subtitles

Directed by Marc Rothemund; Starring Julia Jentsch, Alexander Held, Fabian Hinrichs, Johanna Gastdorf

On February 10, 1943, Sophia Scholl and her brother Hans, students at Munich University and part of an underground resistance movement, were arrested for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda on campus. This film uses transcripts and testimonials to recreate those events centered on Sophie's interrogation. A large chunk of the film is devoted to Sophie's questioning by an austere Nazi official over several hours. Filmed like a tennis match it rhythmically builds to crescendos and then calms down creating suspense and intrigue. This movie puts human faces on the casualties of war and reminds us of mistakes we must never make again.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): How fitting to watch a film about the appeals system at a time when we are saying, "And where in the heck is it?"

Whichever current political, athletic, or social figure you feel deserves to stand in front of a blind jury to get what they deserve, our heroine Sophie Scholl had it coming too. From the title alone, we know that the end is near for her. Heck, even from the onset of the film, all of the information is given to us, even the verdict.

Sophie Scholl's claim to fame was her and her brother Hans' resistance of the War through the White Rose, an organization which used pamphlets to protest the War and criticize the German regime. The pamphlets that were made need to be mailed but are instead distributed by the brother-and-sister team on their college campus. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Sophie gets turned in by someone who does not agree with the criticisms, and later becomes a Nazi himself.

What follows in the film is an elongated interrogation of Sophie before those who criticize her. And whether we believe she had it coming or not, we cannot help but be completely enthralled by the poise and intelligence she posesses.

The script of Sophie Scholl was comprised of factual evidence from the trial, taken verbatim from transcripts kept by the Gestapo. This separates Sophie Scholl from other courtroom films. There is no sense of artifice or glamorizing the courtroom in this film – in fact, many of the colors and shades are dark and gray, uninteresting, bland even.

The film however veers away from conventional courtroom film tropes to reveal a factual intriguing portrayal of law under evil. Even when a dictator who feels he is above the law is in power, the law of the land stays true. Scenes in Sophie Scholl may make audience members frustrated or question the law, but in the end, law wins out. Idealism and the attack of idealism is one thing; doing what is right is another.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days received an Oscar nomination as well as 22 wins internationally.

May 14, 2017

Volver

Spain, 2006, 121 min, Color, R, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar; Starring Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo

This is a ghost story that includes lust, incest, rape, and murder. The opening scene is set at a cemetery where Raimunda (Cruz) and her sister Sola (Dueñas) are cleaning the gravestone of their parents who died in a fire. Or did they? For starters, the sisters have an aunt who claims their mom, Irene, has returned from the dead to take care of her. Sola passes off Irene as a Russian and puts her to work in an illegal beauty salon. When Raimunda's teen daughter Paula claims to have stabbed Raimunda's husband when he tried to rape her, Raimunda hides the body in a freezer. Now add a new twist: a neighbor who's dying of cancer. Got that? No matter. Plot is merely Almodovar's way into the souls of his women.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): "Volver" is a Spanish word meaning "to return". The movie centers around two sisters, Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Duenas); Raimunda's daughter Tia Paula; and the reappearing ghost of Irene (Carmen Maura), the mother of Raimunda and Sole, who died in a fire several years before.

The women travel from Madrid to a small village to attend the funeral of Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave). While there, Aunt Paula's neighbor Augustina (Blanca Portillo) tells them that Aunt Paula used to talk to the ghost of Irene. This sets in motion the story we see. When returning to Madrid, Sole discovers that the ghost has stowed away in her car trunk and is intending to stay with her.

This is where the story develops the twists and zaniness that we have come to expect from Almodóvar. If you saw his film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which we screened in Season 50 (2015-16), you will understand his delightful sense of humor. This will actually be the fifth of his films we have shown, because he is the foremost Spanish film director to come along since Luis Buñuel.

A Mother's Day film? It has some violence but not of a gratuitous character; the story line keeps including deaths and references to death; and of course the mother Irene is a ghost. However, when we reach the end of Almodóvar's tale, we find it is not at all about the dead, but about our sense of loss when we lose a parent. It is a beautiful film, and Irene is the beautifully soft mother who looks over her girls until she is satisfied they are ok.

June 11, 2017

The Station Agent

USA, 2003, 89 min, Color, R

Directed by Tom McCarthy; Starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale

When Finn (Peter Dinklage) inherits an old abandoned train station from the man who was his only friend, he moves there to live a life of solitude, inasmuch as his whole life he's had to deal with dwarfism and being treated as an outcast. Only he doesn't find solitude there, instead he meets a chatty hotdog vendor and a troubled woman. An unlikely friendship develops as the three simply deal with life and the complications life brings. What makes this movie genius is that it's so natural and realistic. Peter Dinklage is the glue that holds the pieces of the story together. His subtle expressions set the tone of the movie, moving us to laugh or feel sad.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): "It's really funny how people see me and treat me, since I'm really just a simple, boring person," says Peter Dinklage's Finbar McBride – loner, obsessive railroad enthusiast, and dwarf. Many people find the third descriptor the most interesting, and Fin is so over that response. He inherits a rural New Jersey train depot and sets out for a life of solitude. He doesn't take into account Joe (Bobby Canavale), the nearby hot dog vendor who is as irrepressibly upbeat and chatty as Fin is not.

Completing the trio is Patricia Clarkson's Olivia, a local artist estranged from her husband following the sudden death of their young son two years past. Despite their best efforts to resist Joe, Fin and Olivia slowly and uneasily find themselves connecting with him and each other to form a tribe of lonely souls.

This must have been a dream cast for first-time director Tom McCarthy, himself also an actor who had obviously been paying attention to what goes on behind the cameras. The Station Agent is a small film about what appear to be small lives if you don't look too closely. Not much happens until it does. When it's over, you want to still be hanging out with Fin, Joe, and Olivia as they quietly talk about their daily lives.

Elvis Mitchell says "The movie's writer and director, Tom McCarthy, has such an appreciation for quiet that it occupies the same space as a character in this film, a delicate, thoughtful and often hilarious take on loneliness."

The Station Agent rated 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. McCarthy won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

July 9, 2017

The Mirror (Zerkalo)

Soviet Union, 1975, 107 min, B&W, G, Russian w/subtitles

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky; Starring Margarita Terekhova, Oleg Yankovskiy, Filipp Yankovskiy, Ignat Daniltsev

Mirror is indeed a film that can provide immense satisfaction to a patient, intelligent viewer interested in good cinema, art, classical Western music and Russian literature. This film is a very complex autobiographical film of Tarkovsky (director) reflecting on his memories, good and bad, from childhood to adult life. Mirror does not have a plot, it does not contain any violence or sex, and it does not follow chronologically. Tarkovsy elevated the film to a sublime state of reflection (hence the title) on the importance of family and spiritual life, encouraging the viewer to notice similar visual and aural elements that one might have experienced in one's own life.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): Ingmar Bergman called Andrei Tarkovsky the greatest director. He died in 1986 at only 54 and is considered one of the most influential in the history of the medium. His work often encompassed a particular Russian-flavored tumultuousness on the small scale of a human life reflected against human history, full of tragedy, trauma, and torment. So his films offer plenty of psychological and emotional room to resonate with us today.

Mirror is Tarkovsky's autobiographical – and sometimes abstrusely impressionistic – journey through one man's life, from his carefree childhood "before the war" in an idyllic countryside through the upheaval of the war itself and into the present day, which is fraught with interpersonal conflict. The man is only glimpsed a few times but we are meant to understand that as he lies dying from an unnamed illness, he is remembering his life.

The most obvious and perhaps the most intriguing idea in the film is in the title. Throughout the film, we are treated to shots of mirrors, always with people clearly in the mirror. The mirror suggests a number of ideas. The most literal idea, also to be taken figuratively, is the idea of self-reflection, that the mirror exists as a lens in which to examine oneself.

The mirror also offers a secondary idea of a mirror existence; that the mirror serves as a bridge between two planes of existence and that only through reflection can one begin to notice that existence. Early on, one of the characters comments that people are in such a hurry that they miss out on what truly matters. Therefore, the lingering camera is Tarkofsky's attempt to take that time to stop and reflect; to take in things around it and hope to find the deeper meaning to pierce beyond the physical shroud.

August 13, 2017

Sweet Smell of Success

USA, 1957, 96 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick; Starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner

This film is about scratching (the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" type), and two men without morals. One is a powerful newspaper columnist, who could create stars in minutes, and destroy them just as fast. The other man is a ambitious and manipulative press agent who both admires and fears the columnist. The plot is practically irrelevant. It is the unique dialogue, the one-liners and colorful expressions that fascinate, as well as the atmosphere of chic clubs, bars and influence of powerful politicians, corrupt cops and beautiful women. The movie is a master class in demagoguery and machinations.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): The Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 film noir about a powerful columnist, J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), based on real-life and contemporary gossip columnist Walter Winchell. Hunsecker wields his power without pity and prevails upon slick, unethical press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) – a man who will stoop to any depth to get publicity for his clients – to ruin a romance between Hunsecker's sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and up-and-coming jazz musician Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), a man that Hunsecker feels is an inappropriate match for his sister. Falco takes the bait and puts a false rumor in a rival column, asserting that Steve is a dope addict and a Communist. The plan is for Hunsecker to step in to rescue Steve's reputation, with the idea that the proud and independent Steve will reject the favor and in turn look bad to Susan.

That's the plan and it works – at first. But things quickly become more complicated to the point that even sleazy Sidney wants no part of it. Pretty soon, everything goes awry, and in a big way.

The screenplay was adapted from a novelette by Ernst Lehman. Lehman was initially booked to write the screenplay but due to illness, was replaced at the last minute by Clifford Odets, a Hollywood writer whose reputation was impugned during the McCarthy era. Rather than applying a little polish, Odets started from scratch and rewrote the entire screenplay, sometimes writing dialogue the same day it was filmed. Despite that, he created an acidic and brilliantly crafted script that turned the talky novelette into a fine work of cinema. Lehman went on to establish himself as a Hollywood writer of some distinction, penning scripts for diverse films such as North by Northwest and The Sound of Music.

With sterling performances by Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, a popular comedic actor who was cast against type, British director Alexander MacKendrick captures the time and place of New York in the 1950s. The film was initially panned by the critics but over the years has gained recognition and is now highly acclaimed by film critics, particularly for its screenplay and cinematography by James Wong Howe. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. Add to that a film score by Elmer Bernstein that combines classically-based orchestral music with modern jazz by the Chico Hamilton Quintet and you have a powerful film that you will not soon forget.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Sweet Smell of Success at Great Movies.

Season 50 2015-2016

September 13, 2015

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Inaugural film shown by Cinema, Inc. 1965)

USA, 1927, 94 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by F.W. Murnau; Starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing

Sunrise comes with a subtitle A Song of Two Humans. Interestingly, the characters are not named. At the start, we meet The Woman From the City who takes a vacation at the seashore. She has an affair with The Man who's married to The Wife with whom he is embroiled in marital problems. The Man is tormented by his infidelity but continues his tawdry affair. The Woman encourages The Man to kill The Wife. He gets cold feet and frightens The Wife who runs scared to The City. He chases her to The City where they reunite, culminating in events that settle who The Man ends up with.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): In 2008, prominent Oscar prognosticator Tom O'Neill decided he should take it upon himself to finally watch Sunrise, which shared the first Best Picture Oscar (for "Artistic Quality of Production") with William Wellman's Wings (which won for "Best Production") in order to settle the debate over which was truly 1927's best film. Upon viewing Sunrise, he haughtily declared it to be "paper-thin, hilariously schmaltzy," and found that "All three primary characters are cartoonish clichés and their performances 3-inch slices of honeyed ham." O'Neill concluded that "Wings soars by comparison."

Internet critics and film buffs came out of the woodwork to take O'Neill to task for his ludicrous assertion, and rightly so. Because while most agree that Wings is a towering achievement in itself, knowing cineastes believe Murnau's film to be in a class by itself. Today, as much as ever, Sunrise stands as one of the most lyrical and poetic films ever made and one of the great achievements of the silent era.

Produced at Fox, Sunrise introduced to Hollywood the expressionistic style that had made Murnau a world-renowned talent in Germany on such masterpieces as Faust, The Last Laugh, and the horror classic Nosferatu. The film features a deceptively simple three-act structure yet its story remains constantly surprising, as the dark betrayal of the first act gives way to redemption and hope in the final chapters. And though some viewers might view the emphasis on expressive emotionalism as "schmaltzy," more discerning filmgoers will be surprised to find themselves swept up in the melodrama, guided expertly by a director at the height of his powers using every tool in his cinematic arsenal to perfection.

It's fitting that Sunrise, the first film ever shown by The Cinema, Inc., is the film chosen to usher in our 50th season, because in many ways Murnau's film represents everything the organization stands for – namely, presenting great films that have stood the test of time. Murnau's masterpiece fits this description perfectly, standing as one of the great achievements of the silent era and one whose simple beauty still has the power to shake audiences nearly 90 years after its release.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans at Great Movies.

October 11, 2015

King of Hearts (Le Roi de Coeur)

France/Italy, 1966, 102 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles; English

Directed by Philippe de Broca; Starring Pierre Brasseur, Jean-Claude Brialy, Geneviève Bujold, Adolfo Celi

Set during WWI, the occupying Germans retreat from the town of Marville, France, but not before leaving behind a time bomb. The fleeing townspeople tell the approaching British forces about the hidden explosive. Pvt. Charles Plumpick, a poetry-loving Scotsman, is dispatched to locate the bomb. To avoid the German rear guard, Plumpick ducks into Marville's insane asylum. While trying to defuse the bomb he falls in love with one of the lovely inmates, Coquelicot. The inmates hail him as the King of Hearts before retaking the town and resuming their former lives in a decidedly loony fashion. Those willing to open themselves to a lighthearted treatment of this all-too-serious subject will find it touching and life-affirming.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Has there ever been a screen presence quite as delicate or as fragile as that of the young Genevieve Bujold? The pouting lips, the Gallic beauty, the doll-like qualities that both sexualize her and mark her as an innocent – there is no one quite like her. Bujold's character is Coquelicot, a patient in a mental asylum outside the small village of Marville, France during WWI. When the villagers fled the oncoming Germans, they abandoned the patients who remained cocooned inside the walls of the ancient asylum.

Stumbling into the picture, we find a Scottish soldier, Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates), who has been dispatched to the village of Marville to find and destroy a bomb that is hidden somewhere on the premises, due to detonate at any moment. On his way to the village, he is chased by Germans and takes refuge in the asylum, donning a patient's garb. Delighted to see this addition to their group, the patients instantly adopt him and crown him "the King of Hearts". The Germans abandon the village and Plumpick valiantly tries to lead the patients away from the ticking bomb hidden somewhere in the heart of their village. The patients have another idea, though – they inhabit the town and the abandoned lives of the departed villagers. Plumpick gets a hit to the head and loses his focus on his goal, fixating instead on the divine Coquelicot. And that's where the story begins.

The King of Hearts follows in the tradition of the great anti-war films of the 1960s, ranking right up there with Oh, What a Lovely War and How I Won the War for its portrayal of the utter insanity of war. Dialogue is delivered in English, French and German with subtitles. Broad humor skewers the dogmatic dedication of troops of both persuasions while the village is invaded by waves of mental patients, Allied soldiers, and German troops, in turn. Will Plumpick find the bomb and dismantle it? Or will he while away his time as the King of Hearts, making his last moments count?

Just for the record, "coquelicot" is the name of a color – the distinct shade of red of the wild corn poppy – and a French vernacular term for the flower itself.

November 8, 2015

La Strada

Italy, 1954, 108 min, B&W, Not Rated, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Federico Fellini; Starring Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani

This is one of Fellini's best works. The film centers on two itinerant circus performers on the road. Zampano, the gypsy, a traveling strong-man, "buys" Gelsomina, a simple-minded but pure of heart young woman from her destitute mother and makes her his assistant to the act. However, his abuse of her causes great suffering. Eventually the pair join a tiny circus where she meets Il Matto, a clown and high-wire artist, who treats Gelsomina kindly. When Matto is accidentally killed she is devastated and suffers an emotional breakdown and Zampano abandons her. Years later he realizes his need for her.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): This is Fellini's tale of an itinerant street performer and his assistant in post-war Italy. Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a traveling strong man who entertains people with his ability to bend chains by expanding his chest muscles adds a simple young woman Gelsomina (Guilietta Masina) to his act. His insensitive and harsh treatment of the girl moves a clown, Matteo (Richard Baseheart), to take pity on her but she remains loyal to Zampano. Their travels reveal a poetic parable of mutual dependence and indifference that ultimately ends in loneliness and despair.

La Strada was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film in 1956.

December 13, 2015

Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud)

Denmark, 1987, 102 min, Color, G, Danish/French w/subtitles

Directed by Gabriel Axel; Starring Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle

Two aging sisters, the leaders of a small Danish sect, have devoted their lives to religion, never venturing from their town of birth. Babette, a cook from Paris has been hired to work for the sisters. Babette invites the sisters and a few other townsfolk to share in a feast to celebrate their beloved, late pastor, and ends up performing an amazing act of grace and selflessness. Babette is a maestro. The kitchen is her orchestra. The sisters and the church members agree to eat the food, but not to enjoy or praise it. And then the miracle occurs, when these stern old puritans are transformed by the baba aurhum and the champagne (which is mistaken for lemonade).

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): On the last day of October in 1517, before the doors of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Martin Luther began the doctrinal differences between Catholics and Lutherans.

Three hundred fifty years later, on the cold and bleak Jutland peninsula of Denmark, Catholic widow Babette seeks sanctuary from the riotous Paris Commune of 1871 in return for housekeeping in the home of two Lutheran sisters/spinsters. Thus begins what will end in a struggle of a rich aesthetic to overcome an impoverished asceticism.

For fourteen years this enigmatic Parisian refugee dutifully performs as maid/housekeeper/cook for the sisters, despite a continuing air of estrangement by the villagers. They are the near cult-like sect of austere gruel-eating Puritans living out the hell-on-earth theology of the town's late pastor and father of the two sisters.

Through flashbacks, we learn that the sisters once possessed talents and beauty which attracted very propitious proposals of love and a life which they rejected in deference to their father's domination. But harboring no hard feelings for all that was long ago lost, the sisters give a dinner to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the late pastor's birth. Unknown to the village, Babette has two secrets which will feed the chance for change in all who are open enough to seize the opportunity. First, she was once a renowned chef, and second, a sudden good fortune now gives her the lavish means to a seductive end.

The dinner she prepares for the sisters, their family, and friends (all accustomed to a diet of smoked herring) is every bit as exquisite to sight and smell as to the taste:

* Potage a la Tortue (Turtle Soup)

* Blini Demidoff au Caviar (Buckwheat cakes with caviar)

* Caille en Sarcophage avec Sauce Perigourdine (Quail in Puff Pastry Shell with Foie Gras and Truffle Sauce)

* La Salade (Salad Course)

* Les Fromages (Cheese and Fresh Fruit)

* Baba au Rhum avec les Figues (Rum Cake with Dried Figs)

* and the wine… rare bottles of Clos de Vougeot

To approximate this repast at home, repair to: http://www.karenblixen.com/feasthints.html. This is the Web address of Isak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen, the author of the short story on which this film is based. Best known for her book Out of Africa (1937), Isak was born in 1885 north of Copenhagen, to a wealthy ship owner, activist, Unitarian, and the first woman elected to the Rungsted parish council.

In 1954 she failed to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (awarded to Ernest Hemingway); and again in 1957 when the prize went to Albert Camus. She would have been pleased to know that the film version won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A feast for all your senses, as delicious for your head as for your heart, this is a film, like a great meal, not to be missed.

Ironically, in 1962 Karen Blixen died of malnutrition.

On your way home after this feast on film, you may wish to pick up a copy of the more generally available film Chocolat (2000). Other than providing a second dessert, you will enjoy chewing on the plot parallelisms with Babette's Feast. Just food for thought.

January 10, 2016

Five Easy Pieces

USA, 1970, 98 min, Color, R

Directed by Bob Rafelson; Starring Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg

This is a moody, incisive, thoughtful character study of an alienated, misfit drifter and non-committal drop-out. It's a road trip about a man who had turned his back on his well-to-do upbringing and his musical talent, leading him into a period of self imposed exile, discontent, and emotional emptiness. In a major turning point in the film, this misbehaving red-neck returns to his estranged family's home in Puget Sound for a final reconciling visit. There he finds love with the sophisticated, musical protegé and fiancée of his brother. However, he quickly returns to his discontent and is back on the road again with his dim-witted girlfriend.

Film Notes (Dick Wayne): Five Easy Pieces is a 1970 American drama film by Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce) and Bob Ralfelson, and directed by Rafelson. The film stars Jack Nicolson, with Karen Black, Susan Anspach, Ralph Waite, and Sally Struthers in supporting roles.

Director Bob Rafelson and screenwriter Adrien Joyce used the creative control afforded by the low budget to craft a European-influenced character study, catching a cultural mood of anomie and resentment as it was embodied in Bobby (Jack Nicolson). Neither older generation nor hippie, Bobby fits in nowhere, and his desire for independence conflicts with his emotional emptiness. Nicolson's nuanced performance of simmering frustration resonated with 1970 audiences caught between the "silent majority" and the troubled counterculture.

Despite his obvious fears of commitment, Bobby Dupea remains an enigma throughout the movie, an incredibly intelligent man who chooses to hide in plain sight from those around him. The filmmaker provides just enough information about Bobby for us to get to know him, but not nearly enough to figure him out.

Despite his upper middle class background, classically-trained musician Bobby has drifted to a life far less outwardly glamorous. He toils away on a California oil field and resides with his dim-witted girfriend, Rayette Dipesto (Karen Black), a waitress with dreams of country music stardom. His free time is spent carousing with friend and co-worker Elton (Billy Green Bush), drinking, playing cards, bowling, having flings with other women.

When Rayette becomes pregnant and Elton is arrested for robbery, Bobby quits his job and leaves for LA where his sister is making a recording. He learns that his father is seriously ill and she urges him to return to the family home in Washington where he finds love with his brother's fiancée.

Bobby tries to explain himself to his ill father who never says a word in the entire film. Could it be something simple as the need to please his father that drives him? Five Easy Pieces remains a talked-about classic film: it's loaded with subtext, ambiguity, and it demands good discussion and thought to fully get a handle on. Its themes reach deep into the core of what it means to be a human being with issues, which is to say "to be a human being." Five Easy Pieces is a fascinating character study.

Five Easy Pieces was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Five Easy Pieces at Great Movies.

February 14, 2016

Top Hat

USA, 1935, 101 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Mark Sandrich; Starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes

While the plot is somewhat thin, the comic mix-ups, great songs, and marvelous dance numbers more than make up for it. Astaire plays Jerry Travers, a song-and-dance man brought to London by a big-time impresario, Horace (Edward Everett Horton), to star in one of his shows. Jerry meets Dale Tremont (Rogers), a young fashion model, on his first night in town and instantly falls in love with her. Trouble develops when Dale mistakenly assumes that Jerry is Horace, a married man. As Jerry is doing his best to pursue Dale, Dale is doing her best to avoid a guy she thinks is a cad. This mistaken identity gambit provides a relaxed, unpretentious mood where the stars and the music and the dancing are all that matter.

Film Notes (Britt Crews):

Isn't this a lovely day

To be caught in the rain?

You were going on your way

Now you've got to remain…

Dearest Cinephile,

Fifty glorious years deserves to be celebrated with an appropriately over-the-top valentine! And what better epitomizes our mutual love than Top Hat, an assortment of exquisite sweets all independently delightful, but combining to create a movie feast of screwball indulgence?

Turning on a case of mistaken identity, Top Hat stars the incomparable song-and-dance man Fred Astaire and his beautifully-matched partner Ginger Rogers. Actress Katherine Hepburn generally is credited with describing their palpable chemistry as "Fred gave her class; Ginger gave him sex appeal" but both possessed those qualities on their own. A special alchemy was produced when they worked together. They made pictures that not just move, but dance. No one ever danced like them. No one ever will.

Supported by a dream cast of certifiable scene stealers at the top of their comic game – Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore and Helen Broderick – the pair trade deliciously witty banter, but save their true communication for the dance floor. Dance becomes flirtation, courtship, romance, love. How could it not with songs written expressly for the film by Irving Berlin that now are firmly ensconced in the Great American Songbook?

Completely fantastical and utterly wonderful, the Art Deco-inspired Big White Set, aka BWS, by unit art director Carroll Clark required two adjoining soundstages. The Venetian Lido section alone occupied three levels with red Bakelite floors, winding canals (with black-dyed water to better contrast with the snow-white sets), working gondolas, balconies, sweeping staircases, and a series of bridges. It easily accommodated not just the stars of the show, but hundreds of extras. Equally monumental were the high-gloss interiors with bedrooms the size of entire current-day McMansions. Ginger Rogers later commented on Top Hat's Venice set: "But however beautiful it may have been, it was as about as Italian as Pat O'Brien."

So, please, enjoy this cinematic confection without guilt. Top Hat contains no calories, carbs, gluten, GMOs, or harmful additives. It is simply pure unadulterated fun. After all, who deserves romance and romancing more than you, O, silver screen lover?

A toast to the next fifty years and the enduring magic of the movies!

Love and celluloid dreams,

The Cinema, Inc.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven,

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak;

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven,

And the cares that hang around me thro' the week

Seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak

When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Top Hat at Great Movies.

March 13, 2016

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Spain, 1988, 88 min, Color, R, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar; Starring Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano, María Barranco

This is a funny, energetic, and sexy comedy by a filmmaker who intuitively understands women. In this picture, the women are a mix of strength and vulnerability, of passion and neurosis. Pepa is an actress who learns that her longtime married lover Ivan is breaking up with her. The problem is, she's pregnant and her failed attempts to contact Ivan don't help her state of mind. Complexity grows with the arrival of her hysterical friend Candela who may have caused an international incident by sleeping with a renowned terrorist. In the meantime, Ivan's ex-wife is seeking revenge on Pepa. There is also a cab driver who provides a drug store on wheels, a burning bed, and a pitcher of gazpacho laced with barbiturates. This is a zany comedy with a touch of sex appeal.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a definitive film of 1980s Spain. A worldwide hit, this "Spanish camp" film expresses the hedonistic outlook of its times. This film is a fine example of the flood of creative expression that emerged in Spanish culture following the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975. A newly unrestricted era was ushered in following forty years of repressive dictatorship. The culture rejoiced in the lifting of taboos, and it was rightly reflected in the arts. Films featured formerly unspeakable topics such as sex, drugs, homosexuality, and political critique. This film is no exception and not only features these topics – it blares them and in the bright histrionic color one would expect from Pedro Almodóvar.

Dumped by her caddish lover, a soap actress (Carmen Maura) considers suicide by barbiturate-laced gazpacho. Before she can act, she is distracted first by her ditsy friend (María Barranco), who has recently discovered that her boyfriend is a terrorist; then by her ex-lover's son (Antonio Banderas), who wants to sublease the apartment; and then his crazy mom (Julieta Serrano), just out of the asylum and ready for revenge, not to mention finding the right pair of shoes in which to confront her ex.

This film garnered five 1989 Goyas, including Best Film, as well as the Audience Award at the 1988 Toronto Film Festival. It's a dizzying array of sensations, and it's a ton of fun.

April 10, 2016

The Seventh Seal

Sweden, 1957, 96 min, B&W, Not Rated, Swedish w/subtitles

Directed by Ingmar Bergman; Starring Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max von Sydow

The film is an exploration of life, death, and the existence of God. Set in medieval times, it follows a depressed knight called Antonius Block (von Sydow) and his squire who return from the Crusades to find the land ravaged by the Black Death. After Death shows up to claim Block, Block challenges Death to a game of chess to play for his fate, so he might have time to come to terms with the world. The game takes place at various intervals during the knight's journey home, during which he encounters different characters, always with the threat of doom lurking in the shadows.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): The Seventh Seal is the film that first identified Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) as a director who could powerfully express our deepest experiences. He had been writing and directing films since 1946 and had released Smiles of a Summer Night in 1955, but this film was the one that made people aware that he was an extraordinary director.

The film is set in Sweden during the Black Plague (circa 1350) and tells the story of a knight who has returned from the Crusades. There are two parallel threads to the story: the worldly people whom he meets and the pure innocent family of an actor/juggler. The knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) is disillusioned by the Crusades and desires to find meaning in his life. He meets Death (Bengt Ekerot) in his travels, who has come for him. In an effort to forestall his demise, he challenges Death to a game of chess, thinking his skill can delay the inevitable. At one point the knight goes to Confession and talks to the priest about his chess match, only to discover the priest is Death in disguise and he has given away his strategy.

We see other characters in various vignettes: a corrupt theologian who is interrupted while trying to rape a young girl, a bumbling blacksmith and his earthy wife, and a young girl to be sacrificed to ward off the plague. The knight finally reaches home, and he and his travelers have a last supper, which is interrupted by Death.

In the meantime we see the actor/juggler traveling an innocent path that feels like Paradise on Earth.

This is a Medieval morality play written for the 20th century. The film's title comes from the New Testament's Revelations 8:1, "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour". The 'silence' refers to the "silence of God".

The film's images make us think that the film stock has aged with time, but when I saw the film in 1962 it already felt darker than we would have wanted, so that may have been intentional on Bergman's part. You will see images that have appeared in many subsequent films by other directors. The final scene of Death with his scythe leading the dinner guests up a hill is so striking that others have copied it repeatedly.

The film is good theater; you are drawn inexorably into the story at a visceral level, and every character is drawn very clearly. Bergman continued to make films, including his autobiographical film Fanny and Alexander (1982), until Saraband in 2003. He died in 2007.

The Seventh Seal is a seminal film that belongs in everyone's cinematic vocabulary. If you haven't seen it, you will be surprised by its power; if you have seen it, you will rejoice at seeing it on the big screen again.

Special treat! Enjoy this ~14-minute parody De Düva featuring a very young Madeline Kahn.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Seventh Seal at Great Movies.

May 8, 2016

Dr. Strangelove (Audience choice selection)

USA/UK, 1964, 95 min, B&W, PG

Directed by Stanley Kubrick; Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn

Commanding a wing of the Strategic Air Command, a looney general orders B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. When a military attaché tries to stop him, the general defends his act based on the Commie plot to "taint our water and deplete our precious bodily fluids". He refuses to reveal the code which can recall the bombers. The President learns that the Russians have a doomsday machine set to launch at the US if they're bombed. While this dark comedy of errors has a serious theme, Kubrick manages to inject wicked humor into it, including lots of sexual innuendos.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): Filmed during the first half of 1963, the first screening was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The premiere was changed to January 29, 1964. Just 15 months before (October 22, 1962), President Kennedy explained to a nervous nation that the US stood ready to go nuke for nuke with the Soviet Union if they refused to remove missiles from Cuba.

While 'Duck and Cover' exercises replaced recesses in schools and families forfeited vacations to build fallout shelters, the logic and ethics both personally and nationally of living in a pre-Apocalyptic world was an all-too-real consideration. Remember, if you can, the September 1961 TV episode of The Twilight Zone written by Rod Serling titled "The Shelter" in which neighbor battled neighbor for a place in a basement bunker or the petal-plucking little girl in the explosively controversial political commercial aired but once in September 1964, four months before the opening of Dr. Strangelove. This film led to actual changes in policy to ensure that the events depicted could never really occur in real life.

Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, who believes that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot, is able to deploy a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Buck Turgidson and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers. But he has shut down all communication at Burpelson. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the Pentagon and the President.

This film is a comedy!

A title card at the film's beginning states "…it should be noted that none of the characters portrayed in this film are meant to represent any real persons living or dead." However…

* The character of Dr. Strangelove is based Herman Kahn, an employee of the RAND Corporation who was a military strategist and systems theorist known for analyzing the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommending ways to improve survivability. The plan to regenerate the human race from the people sheltered in mineshafts is a parody of Nelson Rockefeller, Edward Teller, Herman Kahn, and Chet Holifield's 1961 plan to spend billions of dollars on a nationwide network of concrete-lined underground fallout shelters capable of holding millions of people.

* The character of President Merklin Muffley (Peter Sellers) was patterned after Adlai Stevenson II, twice presidential candidate, who at the time this film was made was the ambassador to the United Nations.

* The character of Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) was patterned after Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, renowned for his extreme anti-Communist views and who once stated that he was not afraid to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union if "At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"

* Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) was patterned after LeMay's protégé and successor at the Strategic Air Command.

* The character of Maj. T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) was based on Alvin "Tex" Johnston. Johnston, the chief test pilot for Bell Aircraft and Boeing who flew wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson. He piloted the first flight of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress.

Stanley Kubrick, who read nearly fifty books about nuclear war before making this film, paid Peter Sellers $1 million, 55% of the film's budget for his multiple characters. He quipped "I got three for the price of six." To his credit, Peter Sellers improvised most of his lines and although the film is named for his character of Dr. Strangelove, the doctor has the least amount of screen time of his three roles. Peter Sellers was also cast as Maj. Kong. But when he had trouble developing a Texas accent and then broke his ankle, Stanley Kubrick cast Slim Pickens, who was not told the movie was a comedy. Shown only the script for his scenes, Pickens played the role "straight".

At the 1965 Academy Awards this film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay based on another medium. Peter Sellers was the first actor to be nominated for Best Actor for a film in which he portrayed three different characters in the same film.

Ranked #39 on AFI's list of the 100 Greatest American Films and also the favorite film of critic the late Gene Siskel.

Finally, the end sequence, in which Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" is played over several shots of nuclear explosions, will haunt your dreams for some time to come.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Dr. Strangelove at Great Movies.

June 12, 2016

To Kill a Mockingbird

USA, 1962, 129 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Robert Mulligan; Starring Gregory Peck, John Megna, Frank Overton, Rosemary Murphy

This film nails the essence of childhood, a recreation of the fears, attitudes and preoccupations of kids. Essentially the film is just a string of events that share the underlying theme of prejudice. The children's irrational fear about Boo Radley, whom they've never seen, and the townsfolk's racial intolerance are separate events, but they are about the same thing. Scout, the daughter of Atticus (Gregory Peck), is the movie's narrator and that's perfect because the story works well from a child's perspective. The film doesn't take an easy road. It confronts tough issues along the way and doesn't flinch from unpleasant outcomes.

Film Notes (Blue Greenberg): To Kill A Mockingbird is based on a Pulitzer prize-winning novel written in 1960 by Harper Lee (1926-2016). The movie version came out in 1962. The story takes place in a small Alabama town in the 1930s and is told through the voice of six-year-old Scout Finch (Mary Badham). The background of the movie is a quiet summer when Scout, her brother Jem (Philip Alford), and a new neighbor Dill Harris (John Megna) – a character based loosely on Truman Capote who was a friend of Lee's from childhood – spend the days inventing stories about the man-child Boo Radley (Robert Duvall in his movie debut), who lives on their street although they have never seen him. Against those lazy days Scout's dad, the highly respected and scrupulously honest lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), is pressed into defending Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man accused of raping a white woman.

One of the best scenes of Gregory Peck's movie career is the courtroom scene when he presents his final statement to the jury. No summary of this movie can be written in 2016 without mentioning Lee's second novel Go Set a Watchman, which was written before Mockingbird but not published until 2015. Here she paints a different Atticus; he is a traditional 1930s white southerner with all the prejudices the South was guilty of harboring.

The movie won a number of Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Peck), Best Picture (Alan Pakula), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Badham), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Horton Foote).

The 1960s was a time when America and the American South were changing and, as movie-goers, Atticus was the hero we hoped was there, open-minded and fearless in defending the defenseless. It is a beautifully-written fantasy and is currently listed as the 29th best film of all time.

July 10, 2016

Rashomon

Japan, 1950, 88 min, B&W, Not Rated, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Akira Kurosawa; Starring Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura

This tells the story of the rape of a woman and the murder of a man, presented entirely in flashbacks from the perspectives of four narrators. At the Rashomon gate at Kyoto, several people who witnessed the incident take shelter and discuss the crime. A woodcutter claims to have stumbled upon the scene first. A priest recalls seeing a man and a woman traveling through the woods. A bandit confesses to raping the woman and killing the man. A woman adds more confusion by confessing to the murder. Rashomon isn't about determining a chronology of the event, nor about culpability or innocence. It focuses on how perspective distorts reality and hides the truth.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): You've seen Rashomon. Everyone has. You've seen it. Or have you? Maybe you can't quite remember. Or maybe its details have become vague in your mind. Or maybe you didn't see it after all. Or maybe the film you're about to see is different than the one you remember. Or maybe you've just seen fragments of it. No, you've definitely seen this one. Maybe?

Widely regarded as one of the most influential films in all of Japanese cinema, if not all world cinema, Akira Kurosawa's international masterpiece remains the ultimate meditation on memory, perspective, and the nature of truth. The film sent shockwaves through the cinema world upon its release in 1950 that are still being felt to this day, as its themes continue to permeate countless films and TV shows. Yet Rashomon still retains nearly all of its power, as this simple story of a heinous crime witnessed from multiple perspectives remains so compelling and elemental that it becomes nearly impossible not to become enraptured in it with each fresh viewing.

When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1950, the film made instant international stars of director Kurosawa and star Toshirô Mifune, who had already collaborated on several films and would go on to forge one of cinema's all-time great director-star partnerships. Moreover, Rashomon awakened Western audiences to a thriving and revelatory Japanese cinema, and without its impact it can be argued that the West might never have gotten to enjoy the likes of directors such as Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse. Its acclaim was so great that it became the first picture from the Far East to be awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, receiving the honor just seven years after the Japanese surrender following the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.

Ultimately, Rashomon endures as one of the great movies because its themes of fragmented memory and the varying nature of perspective still matter. At a lean 88 minutes, the film entertains relentlessly, with nary a wasted shot or unconsidered moment. And despite the magnetism of its leading man, the film's star remains Kurosawa, who with Rashomon would gift the moviegoing world an unforgettable masterpiece that would open the door to new forms of cinematic storytelling that continue to resonate today.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Rashomon at Great Movies.

August 14, 2016

Some Like It Hot

USA, 1959, 121 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Billy Wilder; Starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft

Set in Prohibition-era Chicago,the film stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as Joe and Jerry, two jazz musicians who encounter perpetual economic troubles. They land a gig at a speakeasy but lose it when the cops raid the joint. After that, they witness the killing of the informant who ratted on the crime boss "Spats" Colombo (George Raft), so they have to go on the lam. They don women's garb, transforming themselves into "Josephine" and "Daphne" to join an all-girl band for a gig in Florida. Inevitably the crooks catch up with them but not before they run into other crazy and funny complications.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Two down-on-their-luck Chicago jazz musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) become unwilling witnesses to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre while on their way home from an unsuccessful audition. Considering the situation in which they find themselves, they take the next most logical step toward their salvation. They get done up in drag, go to an audition for an "all-girl jazz band", and hit the road under their assumed female identities. Along the way, they lead a surface existence as women while their underlying male personalities fall in love with Marilyn Monroe, dodge the attentions of marriage-minded millionaires, and try to evade the vengeful mob. Simple, right?

This may all make more sense when I say that Some Like It Hot is a comedy directed by Billy Wilder. Some Like It Hot is not only uproariously funny, but is also very literate and even a tad bit subversive. Both Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play dual roles as the male musicians and their female personalities. Curtis amazingly portrays a third character based on Curtis' characterization of Cary Grant. Neither Lemmon nor Curtis perfected the art of walking in short skirts and high heels to remind the audience that they are not at all at home in the situation. The comedy stems from the conflicted state of these heterosexual men trying to pass in female garb. They slip in and out of their female roles throughout the film, with the most laughs occurring when they forget who they are at a given moment.

Tony Curtis spoke at a screening of Some Like It Hot at the TCM Film Festival in 2010. During his remarks, he mentioned how frustrated he and Lemmon were at the number of retakes that Marilyn Monroe required for even the most simple lines. Lemmon and Curtis were extremely uncomfortable in their high heels and they had to stand in place while Monroe repeatedly blew her lines, had anxiety attacks, and caused other crises stemming from her attempts to master Method Acting. In some scenes, the crew had to hold up cue cards for her to read behind the camera or they taped the cue cards on props off screen. Once you know to look for it, you can spot her reading the cue cards during the course of the film. Mr. Curtis had some sly asides about "The Method" and generally delighted the audience with anecdotes until the opening sequence of the movie rolled. He said that his impression of Marilyn changed for the better when he happened to stumble into Wardrobe to catch Marilyn in a man's shirt and no covering on her lower extremities. I think we can all imagine. What a rare privilege to see this film in a historic Hollywood cinema, introduced by the last surviving lead actor.

You might wonder about the derivation of the title Some Like It Hot. The title is a reference to jazz music, specifically to a sub-genre referred to as "Hot Jazz" which happens to be the sort of music played by the band in the film. Hot Jazz emanated from the New Orleans area in the early 20th century, and is also known as Dixieland or traditional jazz, generally performed in the 1920s. It is NOT a reference to those deranged individuals who say that they enjoy a blistering heat wave in the Raleigh, NC, area, such as the one that we have been suffering this year. For those people, one can feel only pity.

Point of note: Most of the filming was done on sound stages at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios, but the exterior scenes were shot on location at the Hotel del Coronado in southern California. Much to the amusement of the Hotel's owners, one critic derided the exterior location shots, saying that the real-life outdoor shots were "the most improbable sets" imaginable, and looked as though they had been poorly constructed on a sound stage. The Hotel del Coronado survived being panned by the critics and still stands in all its Victorian glory today.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Some Like It Hot at Great Movies.

Season 49 2014 – 2015

September 14, 2014

City Lights

USA, 1931, 87 min, B&W, G, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Charles Chaplin; Starring Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers, Al Ernest Garcia

When Chaplin made this picture, although three years into the era of sound, he must have known that "City Lights" might be his last silent film. Although the film has a full musical score (composed by Chaplin) and sound effects, it has no speech. This film would come the closest to representing all the different levels of his genius. It contains the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp, a character to become the most famous image on earth, as he struggles to help a blind flower girl with whom he has fallen in love.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): In 1931, Charles Chaplin was arguably the most famous man on the planet. With a face and figure recognized in movie houses on every continent, the Little Tramp was embraced by audiences like no other character. However, Chaplin was now faced with a challenge – "talkies". When Al Jolson sang "Mammy" on the big screen, audiences' expectations began to change. Yet two years after the first "talkie", Chaplin continued to make silent films. He produced City Lights, which was under production when sound emerged, and Modern Times, two of his most accomplished efforts, both virtually silent and both made after the advent of sound.

Chaplin's decision to produce City Lights as a silent film was largely because he was unsure how the Little Tramp would exist in a cinematic world with sound. Because the Little Fellow never spoke onscreen, his appeal was universal. Simple themes of love and loss sprinkled with a bit of larceny were able to be appreciated by any audience anywhere. City Lights still works – because we understand what is not being said.

City Lights is the story of the Little Tramp and a blind flower girl with whom he falls in love. The Blind Girl mistakes the Tramp for a rich millionaire. The Tramp befriends a real millionaire but the man only recognizes the Tramp when he is in a state of utter intoxication. When sober, he has no memory of the Tramp. Desiring to help the Blind Girl, the Tramp unsuccessfully tries his hand at street sweeping and prize fighting to earn money. He thinks that his luck has changed when the drunken millionaire gives him $1000, a sum that he gives to the girl so she can get her sight restored. And that's when things go wrong.

Because of the availability of sound, City Lights was the first film for which Chaplin himself composed the score, which is featured prominently throughout. City Lights also contains a very noticeable and humorous sound effect in the first scene when Chaplin skewers the sound of the early talkies by superimposing an annoying buzzing sound over the voices of the stuffed shirts making speeches in the opening sequence. Chaplin was giving the talkies a "raspberry."

Chaplin still had films ahead of him, some of them great ones, but City Lights marks the beginning of the end of the silent era for Charles Spencer Chaplin. In Chaplin's next "silent" venture, the Little Tramp would sing. But that all lay ahead of Charles Chaplin and the Little Tramp when they appeared in City Lights. Enjoy.

Read Roger Ebert's review of City Lights at Great Movies.

October 12, 2014

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

UK, 2009, 123 min, Color, PG-13

Directed by Terry Gilliam; Starring Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger

Dr. Parnassus runs a sort of circus troupe with his daughter Valentina and two other compatriots. Their shtick is the hawking of the Imaginarium which supposedly allows those who enter to live out their dream life. Their scheme is not going well and they have money problems. Parnassus makes a bet with the devil who predicts Parnassus would find a man who would be their savior. Their new teammate is adroit at attracting customers and changes Parnassus' life. This is a wonderful fantasy drawn from pure imagination.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): Terry Gilliam's award-winning film Brazil (1985) has twice pleased Cinema Inc. subscribers: seasons 32 (1997-98) and 40 (2005-06). This film followed his incalculable contributions as author of the films by the irrepressible Monty Python troop: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983). One might imagine Gilliam, as a founding member of the Pythons in 1969, is a native Englishman. Au contraire… he was born November 22, 1940, in Minneapolis, but did become a naturalized British citizen in 1968. (He renounced his American citizenship in 2006).

Any consideration of this film is best served by borrowing the Python's catchphrase "…and now for something completely different." The trademark of a Gilliam film, often recognized by the many Oscar nominations and awards, is the amazing visuals that delight and amaze audiences. These marvelous attributes are on full display in this imaginative retelling of the Faustian myth.

Until he played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), Christopher Plummer's acting career was for all practical purposes limited to the small screen. Born December 13, 1929, in Toronto, he became the oldest recipient of an Oscar when, in 2012 at the age of 82, his contribution to Beginners (2010) was rewarded with the Best Actor in a Supporting Role statuette. As Dr. Parnassus in The Imaginarium, he portrays the magical impresario of a troupe of traveling tragedians who purport to fulfill dreams through the powers of their performances. In a Faustian bargain made centuries before, Dr. Parnassus had bargained immortality from the devil Mr. Nick (Tom Waits). Subsequently, he fell in love with a mortal woman for whom he was willing to trade his longevity for the youth and mortality needed to live out his years with his one true love. In his renegotiation with Mr. Nick, he foolishly gave away the soul of his firstborn on her sixteenth birthday. What must he do now to reclaim the soul of his beautiful daughter Valentina (Lily Cole)?

Foremost this is a tale of love; all the various Greek meanings of love – agape, eros, philia and storge. And like the Greek Mount Parnassus, this film is infused with all the legendary attributes associated with this mythic home of the Muses – poetry, music and works of famous painters.

When Heath Ledger, Valentina's lover, died in mid-production in January 2008, work was suspended for months. What to do? The answer will be just one of the many delights awaiting you when you join into the magic of the Imaginarium.

November 9, 2014

The Firemen's Ball (Horí, má panenko)

Czechoslovakia, 1967, 73 min, Color, Not Rated, Czech w/subtitles

Directed by Milos Forman; Starring Jan Vostrcil, Josef Sebánek, Josef Valnoha, Frantisek Debelka

This is the story of a single night at a small-town party organized by the local fire brigade to honor their retiring chairman on his eighty-sixth birthday (they missed honoring him on the more meaningful eighty-fifth, in the first of many fumbles by this incompetent assemblage). From the very beginning Forman sets the scene for the idiocy to come. The firemen accuse each other of stealing the prizes from the night's lottery fund, and set fire to the banner that was to hang above the hall during the ball. The fact that they're unable to put out even a small blaze shows their bungling and sets up the film's surprising poignant climax in this deadpan, hilarious satire.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): This is one of the funniest films you will ever see. It is an early film by Milos Forman, whom we know as the director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, Ragtime, Amadeus, Valmont, and The People vs. Larry Flynt. It comes from another world and another time and shows a side of Forman we never would expect.

Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) on February 18, 1932. This film was his first color film. It is a subtle satire on life in Czechoslovakia in the days leading up to the Prague Spring that began in 1968.

The story is about a party held by the fire department of a small village in Czechoslovakia to honor the ex-fire chief on his 86th birthday. The whole town is invited to the celebration. The firemen want to put on a special event for the fire chief, so they plan a dance with a beauty pageant and a raffle of prizes to liven things up.

What could go wrong? It turns out the planning committee has no idea how to run a beauty pageant, etc. As fate would have it, during the party a house near the fire station catches fire. The firemen, who have been enjoying the beverages of choice during the party, respond as only inebriated firemen can.

No, I won't give anything away. This film is a beautiful example of comedy by surprise and requires a clean mind bereft of expectations. Firemen protested when the film was released because of the image it portrays. Forman says in his filmed introduction to the film, "Well, you know it's not about firemen, it's about society…" and then stops, smiles, and says "But you know what? It really is about firemen."

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Firemen's Ball at Great Movies.

December 14, 2014

The Phantom Carriage (Körkarlen)

Sweden, 1921, 100 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Victor Sjöström; Starring Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, Astrid Holm

This is a horror film in the sense that it wallows in the misery of despair of not only the protagonist's life (Holm) but also of those whose lives he scuttled on his way down. Holm is subjected to a dark, frigid excursion that gives forlorn faces to his sins. He spends his last moments on earth in a graveyard with his drinking buddies, where he relays a folk tale that insists that the last person to die each year is doomed to drive death's carriage for the next twelve months and become a reaper of souls. He is one of the biggest, most unrepentant bastards you'll ever meet. (Note: Director Sjoström, the father of Swedish cinema, inspired Ingmar Bergman to become a film director.)

Film Notes (Blue Greenberg): The Phantom Carriage is generally considered to be one of the central works in the history of Swedish cinema. The film was the most famous of Swedish director Victor Sjöström's pre-Hollywood films. It is based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner, Swedish author Selma Lagerlog and is predicated on an ancient Scandinavian legend. The film opened on New Year's Day 1921.

In the film, David Holm (played by Sjöström) is an unrepentant drunk, wife-beater, and corrupter of others, who spurns the spiritual overtures of Salvation Army Sister Edit. The movie opens on New Year's Eve with Holm regaling his drunken friends about a local legend that the last sinner to die before midnight is sentenced to drive Death's carriage for the following year. Like Dicken's Scrooge, Holm is forced to visit the results of the misery he has caused and ultimately is offered a chance for spiritual redemption.

The Phantom Carriage is probably most famous for its special effects developed by cinematographer Julius Jaenzon. Double exposures, used sparingly before, were improved considerably by Jaenzon with semi-transparent ghost characters walking through the movie in three-dimensional graphic effects. Other technical advances are the use of flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks; the scene where Holm breaks down a door in his house is so riveting we see it again in the 1980 The Shining when Jack Nicholson uses an axe to break through a wooden door.

Murder, mayhem, and redemption come together in this masterpiece of early cinematography.

January 11, 2015

This Is Spinal Tap

USA, 1984, 82 min, Color, R

Directed by Rob Reiner; Starring Rob Reiner, Kimberly Stringer, Chazz Dominguez, Shari Hall

In his directorial debut, Reiner takes the "rockumentary" platform to a whole different level. The film follows the imaginary British rock band Spinal Tap on their brand new American tour. Though the actors play it straight, the effect is pure, unadulterated hilarity, as they go through one absurd situation after another on the road to obscurity. You might think these actors are faking, but you'll be surprised to see them singing and playing.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): It's hard to imagine Rob Reiner knowing that when he made This is Spinal Tap in 1984, he would be making not only one of the funniest films of the 1980s, but one of the most influential of the thirty years that would follow. Reiner's first film, a mockumentary that chronicles the adventures of Spinal Tap (England's loudest band), was not the first of its kind. It was preceded by, among other films, Eric Idle's The Rutles: All You Need is Cash in 1978, and its seeds can be traced as far back as A Hard Day's Night in 1964. Yet the uniqueness of its vision and its commitment to its concept spawned countless imitators, successors, and progeny, and its influence can be felt today in countless films and television shows.

Despite its vast influence, Reiner's film still feels fresher and funnier than almost all of those it inspired. It's one of the few films that can make a viewer laugh harder the twentieth time than the first. The reason is because, like all great comedies, Spinal Tap is about so much more than its gags. The film walks that fine line between, as one character puts it, "clever and stupid," yet it gets its laughs from comic situations that draw upon universal recognizable themes: insecurity, fear of obsolescence, and, ultimately, the fear of death. The plight of the band Spinal Tap is universal in nature – like us, they just want to be loved. And the result is a series of comic setups stemming from their ongoing critical and commercial failure that manage to be hilarious without becoming mean-spirited.

Take, for instance, the classic "Stonehenge" sequence, the details of which won't be spoiled here for the uninitiated. The sequence is funny in itself, but it's made all the funnier because the humiliation band members Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls feel stems from the band's very real struggle with failure and rejection. Anyone who's ever felt any kind of public humiliation can identify with this, and our affection for the characters makes the painfulness of their embarrassment that much greater. We laugh because we relate and, more importantly, because we care.

Ask any comedy fan to name a favorite scene in Spinal Tap, and you'll likely get any number of different responses. That's the mark of a great comedy. Coming in at a brief 82 minutes, the film leaves no room for downtime. Every sequence is a classic, every line is quotable, and each actor is fully committed to the lovable idiocy of their character. And though almost everyone involved with the film would go on to have successful careers, it can be argued that none ever topped the inspired lunacy of Spinal Tap. It's likely that when we watch the film thirty years from now, we'll still view it as the pinnacle of the mockumentary form, and the one that still "goes to 11."

Read Roger Ebert's review of This Is Spinal Tap at Great Movies.

February 8, 2015

Beauty and the Beast (La belle et la bête)

France, 1946, 93 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jean Cocteau, René Clément; Starring Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély, Nane Germon

Disney it ain't, but it is by far the best adaptation of the well-known fairy tale. The movie tells the tale of a girl who wishes for greater things while growing up in a quiet French town. When her father gets off course on his travels to find riches, he wanders into a castle under an enchanted spell and becomes the owner's prisoner. Of course, the loyal daughter offers herself in exchange and ends up under scrutiny since if the Beast can get her to fall in love with him, he can break the spell. The magical castle is crammed full with mysterious living statues and hands holding candelabras and pouring wine. There is little that digital graphics could do to make this film more fanciful. It is far more memorable than anything created by the Disney folks.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): Once upon a time, Jean Cocteau, poet/journalist/dramatist/painter/actor/screenwriter/set designer/filmmaker/magus, brought an ancient fairytale to timeless onscreen life. Cocteau's first full-length feature Beauty and the Beast had been proposed by his longstanding muse and lover, Jean Marais, who would star in the film as not only the Beast, but also Beauty's former beau Avenant and Prince Charming.

Begun four months after the German surrender in August 1945 and initially screened in June 1946, the magic cauldron for this alchemical creation was a mangled and impoverished postwar France that had barely survived Nazi occupation. Most things were in short supply or nonexistent. Sufficient amounts of the still-rare and inordinately expensive color film stock were not available even if the film's meager budget had allowed for such luxury. Black and white stock from at least three different manufacturers was of varying quality. Aged cameras developed tremors, scratched film, jammed, broke. Lenses were flawed. Arc lights blew. Electricity came and went either by planned government outages or without warning.

Studio time was at a premium and highly contested. Location shoots were plagued with rain when they needed sun, sun when the scene required overcast skies, overcast when the script called for sun. If the weather obliged, an airplane or car's backfire might destroy the scene. Something as ostensibly simple as finding a dozen sheets without patches for an early scene became a virtual scavenger hunt. When another key scene called for a deer carcass, props had to resort to the black market when the wholesale game markets went on strike. Costumes were in short supply and often had to be improvised. Beauty's bed curtains were stolen off the set.

Accidents and illnesses plagued the production. Cast and crew passed around the flu. Jean Marais suffered from hideously painful boils. Early on, the horse playing Magnifique threw the actress Mila Parély, portraying one of Beauty's sisters, and then fell on top of her.

Constantly besieged by escalating ill health, Cocteau suffered from numerous ailments including impetigo, abscessed teeth, swollen eyes, bronchitis, eczema, and jaundice. The eczema had so disfigured Cocteau's face that for a while he clipped a piece of black paper to the brim of his hat with clothespins, with holes for his eyes and mouth. He literally embodied the Beast: "My face has become a carapace of cracks, ravines and itches. I must forget this mask and live underneath it as energetically as possible." At one point in the production, Cocteau, near death, had to be hospitalized at the Pasteur Institute.

What could have spelled the death of enchantment became a vehicle for its sublime creation. Cocteau had gathered together a talented group of actors including the extraordinary Josette Day as Beauty and a superb production team. The director, cast, and crew delivered nothing short of magic. Hagop Arakelian's makeup redefined the conception of the Beast. Henri Alekan manipulated the deviations in film stock to produce widely varying atmospheric moods and the exact tone that Cocteau was after: "the soft gleam of hand-polished old silver." Alekan's dazzling old-school camera tricks mesmerize modern eyes jaded with CGI. Christian Bérard created fantastical sets and worked with Marcel Escoffier to devise gorgeous costumes that evoke the fairytale illustrations of Gustave Doré as well as the paintings of Vermeer, de Hooch and Le Nain. Cocteau wrote that Georges Auric's music "is wedded to the film; it impregnates it; exalts it, consummates it."

A fairytale for adults that children might like, Beauty and the Beast is stunningly beautiful, sublimely erotic, utterly entrancing. It will capture your imagination, haunt your dreams and steal your heart. Surrender to its magic.

"Beauty lives in the country with her father, a 17th-century merchant who has lost all his money; her brother, Ludovic, whose only interests are drinking and gambling; and her two sisters, Felicie and Adelaide, who are motivated entirely by spite, selfishness and vanity. Her brother's constant companion, Avenant, is a frequent visitor to the house…"

— Beauty and the Beast Screenplay

Read Roger Ebert's review of Beauty and the Beast at Great Movies.

March 8, 2015

The Wrong Box

UK, 1966, 105 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Bryan Forbes; Starring John Mills, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson

A tontine, or investment pool, is drawn up on behalf of several young British boys for their benefit. The resultant fortune will go to the last surviving member of the tontine. A series of montages depicts the various demises of the heirs. Finally only two brothers are left and one attempts to kill the other with each attempt failing spectacularly. Also standing to benefit from the tontine are the son and nephews of the brothers who get involved in the crime. The farcical complications fly thick and fast in this wacky gigglefest.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): The Finsbury brothers are the last possible heirs to a tontine (a macabre lottery "won" by the last one standing) begun in their youth. The elder Finsbury (an irascible John Mills) will do whatever it takes to insure that he and subsequently his grandson (a very pretty and clueless Michael Caine) inherit the money, even if it means offing his younger brother ("I state facts only – no opinions – and this fascinates everyone I meet" bore-of-the-century Ralph Richardson). Farcical hijinks ensue.

Based on a novel co-authored by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrong Box is filled with the crème de la crème of British actors at their comedic best. Others in the cast are Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Peter Sellers in a very funny cameo, and the dewiest of ingénues Nanette Newman. Wilfrid Lawson steals the movie with his portrayal of a decrepit butler who moves even slower than he speaks, leaving one to wonder if he will answer the door or finish a sentence before he expires.

Bryan Forbes (King Rat and Chaplin) directs this convoluted comedy of errors from a script by Larry Gelbart (Tootsie). It has without a doubt the funniest carriage chase through a funeral cortege you could ever hope to see. That and other sight gags amid mad comedic mayhem will entertain you royally.

April 12, 2015

In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wa)

Hong Kong/China, 2000, 98 min, Color, PG, Cantonese w/subtitles

Directed by Kar-Wai Wong; Starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung

Hong Kong, 1962. Two people move into rented rooms in adjoining apartments on the same day. The lives of Mrs. Chan and a journalist Mr. Chow are about to cross paths as their respective, and possibly cheating, spouses fade into the background. We literally never see their faces. A rapport develops between this lonely pair, bypassing one another on the stairs and the tight hallways. A certain intimacy becomes almost inevitable. Each is trapped in a deeply unsatisfying marriage. They seem to act upon a naturally evolving attraction. But do they ever consummate their love?

Film Notes (Blue Greenberg): His name is Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai). Hers is Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk). It is 1962 Hong Kong and they have rented rooms in next-door apartments. They are not poor; he is a newspaper reporter and she is an executive assistant. They see each other on the stairs and in the rainy streets while Nat King Cole's tunes fill the air, but it is to the swelling notes of Jimmy Dorsey's "Green Eyes," when they figure out why their spouses are always away at the same time - they are having an affair.

As the two try to come to terms with how much the adultery hurts, they seek comfort with each other against the loneliness of the city and their absent partners. Shall they enter into an affair? Shall they confront their spouses? This is not a black-and-white story; the characters have options. Director Wong Kar-wai's camera, guided by his regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle, works its magic; it lurks in doorways, down passages, and through windows using the lushest colors available.

We never see the cheating spouses. The few other characters – mahjong-mad landlady Mrs. Suen, Chow's buffoonish friend Ah Ping and Su's philandering boss – feel abrasive against the lead pair's quiet grace. Cheung and Leung are two of the biggest stars in Asia; they are usually the big winners. Here they are a wounded man and woman who slowly and carefully remind the audience of life's fundamentals. This is a love story; it just does not end neatly packaged.

May 10, 2015

Dreams

Japan/USA, 1990, 119 min, Color, PG, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Ishirô Honda; Starring Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baishô, Toshie Negishi, Mieko Harada

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a most unusual film – it's a collection of eight dream sequences by one of the greatest film visionaries that ever lived. The director claimed that these sequences were actually dreams that he previously experienced over the years. He then turned them into a poetic screenplay that doesn't really run so much as a story as it does as a hauntingly beautiful interweaving of shapes and images. It requires some strong focus to find the macrobiotic structure within the film, but the more you watch, the more you understand…and the more the film speaks to you.

Film Notes (Mark Van Hook): If you were to tell any modern cinema fan (or critic, for that matter) that a director made a film consisting entirely of short vignettes portraying his own dreams, a few of the words you might hear in response would likely be "indulgent," "navel-gazing," and quite possibly "laughable." Now, tell any modern cinema fan that that director was Akira Kurosawa and have them actually sit down and watch the film, and the response would more likely become something akin to "extraordinary," "breathtaking," and possibly "mesmerizing."

Indeed, there are few directors whose legendary stature would allow them to get away with such an inwardly focused concept, but then again, few directors were Kurosawa. By the time Dreams was released in 1990, the filmmaker behind such iconic works as Seven Samurai, Rashomon and Throne of Blood had earned the right to follow his muse wherever it would take him.

This film, the third-to-last of Kurosawa's career, followed five years after Kurosawa's 1985 masterpiece Ran, and to say it was a departure from that film's epic scale would be an understatement. In truth, Dreams is an extraordinarily strange film. It features a sequence of eight short films, all unrelated save for the fact that they a) supposedly come directly from the director's actual dreams and b) thematically speak to man's lost innocence and destructive nature. Yet strange as it may seem, the cumulative effect of Dreams is overwhelming, with beautiful painterly image after image paraded before the viewer's eyes. In all, the film serves as a haunting and singular late-period masterwork from one of the cinema's greatest artists, and few who see it are able to forget it.

June 14, 2015

The Americanization of Emily

USA, 1964, 115 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Arthur Hiller; Starring James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas, James Coburn

This is essentially an anti-war comedy drama. Commander Charlie Madison, an American officer stationed in England during World War II, has purposely managed to keep himself out of the conflict and behind the scenes in the service of an admiral who believes a naval officer should be the first to land at the D-Day beaches. Charlie sees this as a suicide mission. The film is a mixture of genres, blending and lampooning 1940s romance films through comedy, as well as presenting a harsh critique on the glorification of war and US heroism.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): The Saturday a week prior to our Sunday screening of this month's feature is the commemoration of the event which is the centerpiece of this film's story. Three score and eleven years ago, the triumphant retaking of the European continent by the combined forces of the English-speaking nations of the Allied Armies, so often memorialized in films such as The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan, remains an unimaginable high point in all human history's record of heroism and sacrifice.

The world of cinema has a few great creative personalities for whom the attribution of genius applies, such that their contribution to any film merits its viewing. None more so than the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, born in the Bronx on January 29, 1923, 21½ years before D-Day. Most certainly he had vivid memories and held strong feeling about the valor of those who fought for a foothold on the beaches of France that momentous day. He joined the 104 Infantry Division as they moved their way into Germany and received a Purple Heart for an encounter with a land mine.

His screenplay for this month's film is a curious examination of the nature of war and bravery. As with his other masterworks (he won Oscars for screenwriting for Network (1977), The Hospital (1972), and Marty (1956)), his storyline seems to argue with itself over its central themes – the value of destruction and the motivations of its participants. Fascinating and thought provoking… very personal… not-to-be-missed.

James Garner and Julie Andrews team up for the first time (they would co-star again years later in 1982's Victor/Victoria) in an entertaining love/hate relationship typical of the clash-of-cultures created when several hundred thousand fresh and untested Yankees with their loud and brash ways sought shelter among the polite and gentile English already weary from a siege on the homefront since 1939. Particularly galling to the patriotism of the very English Emily Barham (Andrews) is the cynical reluctance of Lt. Cmdr C. E. Madison (Garner) to forgo his comfortable staff duties for a more committed involvement in the victory of virtue over viciousness. A surprising set of circumstances overtakes the Commander's reluctance, compelling dangerous duty well above and beyond his desk-diddling. To tell more would of necessity require a spoiler alert warning.

Thoughts of D-Day never fail to evoke an emotional reaction in lovers of history. This film will complement those sentiments and reward lovers of cinema.

July 12, 2015

The Man in the White Suit

UK, 1951, 85 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick; Starring Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough

A fun, farcical comedy with surprising depth. The movie centers on an eccentric man working in a textile mill who has found a formula to create a fabric which never wears out or gets dirty. While that sounds wonderful, on a wider scale it makes you think about businesses trying to stifle progress to protect profits and workers fearing for their jobs. We not only see him running around in a luminous white suit but various people try to prevent him from getting away and revealing his invention. Wonderfully paced and acted, it will keep you smiling from start to finish.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) works as an obscure inventor in a textile mill. He develops a fabric that never gets dirty and never wears out! What could be better? Nothing doing according to his employers and fellow workers - textile mills will go out of business and workers will lose their jobs. What to do?

Thus begins the farce in true British comedy tradition as only Alec Guinness can give us. The efforts of Sidney to protect himself and his invention – not to mention his dazzling white suit – propel us through this comic chase. Determined to forestall financial ruin and unemployment, management and labor try to suppress this evil fabric while Sydney and his friends struggle to protect him and his suit. While being pursued, the wonderful white suit begins to disintegrate, leaving our hero in his underwear, alas, to begin again.

The Man in the White Suit was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing.

August 9, 2015

Notorious

USA, 1946, 101 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern

Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia, the daughter of a German-American who betrayed the United States by providing financial aid to Germany during the war. She wants nothing to do with politics and is more interested in socializing and carousing. Cary Grant plays an agent for the US government and has the assignment to recruit Alicia as a spy. Her job will be to win her way into the confidence of German agents who might be attempting to restart the war. This is an excellent film noir piece. The excitement and tension comes exclusively from the dialogue and interaction between the characters.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): In the 1930s Greta Garbo ruled. She was mysterious, she was beautiful, she was unattainable, she was Swedish. And what does Hollywood always do when they hit upon something truly unique and incomparable? They try to copy it.

MGM had struck it rich with Garbo, and David O. Selznick wanted to find his own Swedish import. He stumbled upon a beautiful Swede who had just made a hit film entitled Intermezzo. Selznick imported the young ingenue, Ingrid Bergman, in the hopes of creating his own Garbo. By now we all know that he failed – Ingrid Bergman bears no similarity to Greta Garbo in any way other than gender and nationality. Ingrid was beautiful but she was warm and vibrant, and she had an air of vulnerability. But he was right about one thing – she had star quality.

By the time Alfred Hitchcock cast Ingrid to portray Alicia Huberman in Notorious, she was an established bona fide movie star. By 1946, she had already made an indelible impression on movie audiences through her performances in movies such as Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gaslight (for which she won the Oscar) and one other Hitchcock film – Spellbound. Ingrid was able to provide the heart and soul to these films, and we know that Hitchcock was quite smitten with her.

He cast her in this film somewhat against type as a jaded party girl who is throwing all of her efforts toward erasing a guilty conscience – trying to forget that her father was a Nazi sympathizer and spy during the War. And who should approach her to try and manipulate this guilt into an effort to round up Nazis in South America? A G-man of course, this one inhabited by none other than the incomparable Cary Grant. Cary convinces her to use her connections to try and round up a band of former Nazis by making one of them (Claude Rains) fall in love with her, serving as sort of an emotional prostitute. Cary and Ingrid are drawn to each other which makes Ingrid's plan even more complicated and twisted. Just how far will she have to go to help Cary and her country? And then there's Claude Rains' mother. And what do you suppose they're keeping in the wine cellar?

Notorious is a magnum opus with dark underpinnings, familiar Hitchcockian themes, a sympathetic villain, and a masterful MacGuffin. Hitchcock devised a particularly spectacular crane shot in the party scene – look for it – where the camera seems to fly from one character's elevated point of view, floating through the air to a close-up of a key clenched in someone's hand. Also worth noting is the kissing and eating scene between Cary and Ingrid. Hitchcock managed to beat the censors by having the characters kiss only briefly, but they do so repeatedly. And with gusto.

Bergman and Hitchcock worked together only one other time, in the making of the rather insubstantial costume drama Under Capricorn (1949). Soon afterward, her public persona was sadly marred when she became involved with Roberto Rosselini, bearing him a child while still married to her first husband Peter Lindstrom. For years, she stayed in Europe, avoiding the castigation of the US press; however, as time passed, Ingrid's image was redeemed enough to allow her to star in some notable films in the mid-to-late 1950s (Anastasia and Inn of the Sixth Happiness, among others). She ended her career guest-starring in lesser films and with occasional TV appearances, most notably in a mini-series about Golda Meir for which she was lauded and posthumously awarded the Emmy.

Ingrid Bergman was the second most frequently Oscar-nominated actress of Hollywood's Golden Age, bested only by Katharine Hepburn. Ingrid passed away on her 67th birthday, succumbing to lung cancer. It is said that a solo violinist played "As Time Goes By" at her funeral services. A great actress whose talent survived scandal, even when Ingrid herself became notorious.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Notorious at Great Movies.

Season 48 2013 – 2014

September 8, 2013

Cool Hand Luke

USA, 1967, 126 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Stuart Rosenberg; Starring Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Cannon, Lou Antonio

Cool Hand Luke uses a seemingly simple and straightforward story to offer a lot of social commentary. In the post-World War II South, Luke Jackson, a decorated veteran, finds himself bored with life. After a minor act of defiance, he ends up on a chain gang for two years. He soon earns the name Cool Hand Luke for his stubbornness and audaciousness. The prison bosses begin a systematic campaign to break him. Viewed purely on a narrative level, it is nothing more than the story of one man's prison odyssey. Taken to a deeper level, it is a metaphor for the social climate in which it germinated. The bittersweet payoff is successfully orchestrated.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "What we've got here is… failure to communicate." ~The Captain

When Cool Hand Luke opened on November 1, 1967, voices raised in protest in every corner of the globe had become commonplace. Whatever your color or age or background or political persuasion, the world seemed to be falling into disarray, discord, disaffection, disenchantment, discouragement, disenfranchisement, disobedience, and disconnection. In America, the year opened with the swearing-in of sworn segregationist Lester Maddox as governor of Georgia. Ten months later, Thurgood Marshall became the first person of color to sit on the Supreme Court. Four days after Maddox became governor, the Human Be-In gathered in Golden Gate Park where Timothy Leary exhorted the crowd to "turn on, tune in, drop out." The Six-Day War erupted in June in the Middle East while concurrently as many as 100,000 hippies and would-be hippies converged on Haight-Asbury creating the Summer of Love. To the consternation of their parents, countless others fashioned homegrown versions in their town or city.

While for some it was the Summer of Love, for others it was The Long, Hot Summer. Race riots flared in numerous cities including Tampa, Buffalo, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Newark, Plainfield NJ, and Detroit. By year's end an estimated 159 riots had detonated across the country.

America's involvement in what was still being identified on the nightly news as the Vietnam Conflict continued to escalate. In the fall Vietnam protesters marched in/on New York, San Francisco, Washington, and the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

In an age wary of knights in shining armor, Cool Hand Luke delivered the ultimate antihero, Lucas Jackson. Luke is no do-gooder, activist, righter-of-wrongs, fighter for the greater good. His act of drunken defiance against society entailed the beheading of a series of parking meters. For this ultimately petty act he is sentenced to two years on a Southern chain gang. Played to perfection by Paul Newman, Luke remains an outsider, a loner, albeit an astonishingly appealing, even messianic figure. Director Stuart Rosenberg called Luke "the perfect existential hero." Newman saw him as "the ultimate nonconformist and rebel… a free agent."

Paul Newman, in what many believe to be his signature role, imbues Luke with a stubborn, heart-breaking charm. "I had great fun with that part," he said. "I liked that man." Newman is ably supported by a splendid ensemble cast including an Oscar-winning performance by George Kennedy. The script by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson is superb, deftly balancing comedy, drama, pathos, even a bit of soapy, sexy, silly fun. Legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall experimented with the inclusion of imperfections such as lens flares, dirt or sand/smoke clouds to add a sense of heightened reality. Lalo Schrifin's score supports and gently rocks the story forward.

"There's a good smell about this. We're gonna have a good picture," Paul Newman reputedly told a visitor to the film set. He was right.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Cool Hand Luke at Great Movies.

October 13, 2013

House (Hausu)

Japan, 1977, 88 min, Color, Not Rated, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi; Starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba, Ai Matsubara

Horror films seem to be in a constant state of evolution. There's always a new twist on an old plot. The bare bones of the plot of Housesound familiar: a group of teenage girls trapped in a creepy old mansion are being murdered one by one. However, in the hands of a first-time director with a background in art and advertising, it becomes a chaotic and experimental piece of work. Angel, a Japanese schoolgirl and only child, finds out that her widowed father wants to bring his glamorous new girlfriend on their summer vacation. Furious, she decides to take a few classmates to her aunt's mansion in the country. Will the survivors discover the terrifying secret behind the house before it's too late?

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): The date: February 13, 1978. The place: Tokyo, Japan. The occasion: the nation's highest honors for films, the Blue Ribbon Awards… and winner of the year's best new director: Nobuhiko Obayashi. [The best foreign language award was a repeat of the American Oscar for best picture (wait for it): Rocky – victorious over All the President's Men, Bound for Glory, Network, and Taxi Driver.]

Obayashi's inaugural effort House (Hausu in Japanese) was a highly original effort variously described by reviewers as "an incomparably bizarre and experimental horror-parody", "starts out extremely strange… it gradually gets weirder and weirder" and "bizarre fairy tale with a grotesque and ingenious, often macabre and always unique sense of humor."

Twenty-one years earlier, the Japanese film industry had given us Godzilla, King of the Monsters! with Raymond (Perry Mason) Burr taking its cue from the success of the well-received US monster movie Them! (1954) two years prior.

With its laughably obvious 'sandbox' cityscapes and man-in-a-rubber-suit monster, Godzilla was an example of the eclectic mimicry that typified Japanese moviemaking homage to post-war western films. But with House, Obayashi broke new ground. Although Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) both predate House, it was not until Scary Movie (1991) and Scream (1996) that US movies copied the idea of the serial demise of a cabin full of attractive teenage girls.

The style of cinematography and art direction of House is taken directly from the immensely popular comic book industry in Japan then (and now a $6 billion enterprise worldwide). The direct result of post-war US GIs during to occupation, Japanese comic book art called 'manga' (can refer to both comics and animation or 'anime') developed a unique style beginning in the mid-sixties which unmistakable shows itself in House.

The film makes use of an apparition from Japanese folklore called 'Yōkai', a supernatural monster which may appear as an attractive shapeshifter often possessing animal features. Also referenced in the film is the highly recognized likeness of the Noh theatre mask, called the Hannya, generally used to represent a jealous female demon or serpent.

So please accept our offering of this quirky horror spoof as a Halloween trick-or-treat intended to tickle your fancy… an anthropological peek into a distinctly different art form for another time and a distant land.

November 10, 2013

Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux)

France, 2010, 122 min, Color, PG-13, French w/subtitles

Directed by Xavier Beauvois; Starring Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach

In 1966 Algeria, eight Trappist monks are taken hostage by terrorists. The Algerian government had urged the monks to leave. The monks could easily have avoided this fate, but instead chose to maintain their quiet routines: to pray and sing in a little chapel, tend crops, sell honey, treat the sick, and hold community meetings. They live peacefully in a Muslim community. There is deep serenity in their way of life. The film doesn't raise political questions. It focuses on the nobility of the monks in choosing to stay with their vocation and duty in the face of quite probably death. Did they make the right choice?

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): Algeria in the 1990s foundered in a state of terror, with beheadings, throat-slashings and large-scale massacres an almost daily feature of life. These grim circumstances provide the setting for Of Gods and Men, a beautiful, somber, and rigorously intelligent film.

Though it takes place in the recent past, Of Gods and Men has an unmistakably timely resonance, evoking as it does both the messy War on Terror and the rebellions currently convulsing North Africa and the Middle East. And yet while it takes pains to be historically authentic, the film is closely based on the true story of a group of French Cistercian Trappist monks caught up in the violence.

The obliquely told horror story is of a low-level Islamist insurgency that became much more violent after the cancellation of national elections in 1992. The unspoken background struggle is over power, justice, and what it means to be a good Muslim. As in Iraq ten years later, the tide of sympathy for the insurgents turned away when the Islamist GIA (Group Islamique Armé) began butchering innocent civilians, in violation of Islamic principles of warfare.

Particularly offensive to the general Algerian population was the killing of nuns and priests. Dozens of imams were also assassinated for denouncing the terrorists. The Algerian insurgency, led by veterans of the Afghan war against Russia, applied every tactic Americans confronted in Iraq, save suicide bombings.

Viewers conditioned to believe that Muslims hate Christians will be surprised by the respect and love shown towards the monks by the local population, even by the terrorists. In one of the most dramatic scenes of the film, a local emir breaks into the monastery with a handful of men on Christmas Eve 1994. He demands money and medical help only to be confronted by a resolute Father Superior, Christian de Chergé, played by Lambert Wilson. Christian not only refuses his demands, but rebukes him for disturbing their celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The emir apologizes and offers a hand in friendship.

The monks practice brotherly love within the monastery and without, soul doctors for all. The Trappist community had been a presence among Muslims in Algeria since 1938. Theirs was a respectful love that accepted that God speaks to people in different ways. They practiced their faith openly without ulterior motives, ringing their church bells seven times a day in a Muslim country where spreading the Good News is not permitted but living it is.

December 8, 2013

Exit Through the Gift Shop

UK, 2010, 87 min, Color, R

Directed by Banksy; Starring Banksy, Mr. Brainwash, Debora Guetta, Space Invader

A Los Angeles-based Frenchman, Thierry Guetta, wants to film street artists in the process of creating their work. He tells them he is making a documentary, when in reality he has no intention of editing the footage into one cohesive movie. Unaware of this, many street artists from around the world agree to participate. One of the artists is the camera-shy Brit, Banksy, who refuses to be shown on screen unless he is blacked out. Banksy convinces Thierry to use the footage to make a movie, but then decides to make his own film about the project.

Film Notes (Blue Greenberg): Exit Through the Gift Shop is about graffiti artists who generally work at night anonymously and how the genre, associated with punk rock and hip hop, became co-opted by the traditional art gallery scene. Graffiti art is as old as the ancient Greeks; its modern day iteration took it from vandalism to gallery art. Two famous graffiti artists who made it to the big-time art scene were Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Banksy, the director of Exit and one of its stars, is today's hottest graffiti artist. In fact, recently on Comedy Central Stephen Colbert invited Banksy to vandalize a wall of a building he owned because any image by Banksy is worth thousands of dollars. A novice to the street art scene will get a crash course in the medium as it lives today.

The story features Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles who walks his streets with a camera documenting every waking moment. On a visit to France he finds his cousin is Invader, an internationally known street artist. Guetta follows his cousin and his friends around, documenting their every nocturnal move. When Invader comes to Los Angeles, he and Guetta cross the country documenting everything, although Guetta has no intention of making a film. On his travels he meets Banksy and they make a film which becomes an immediate sensation. Guetta sells everything to become a street artist named Mr. Brainwash. In another film as Mr. Brainwash, Guetta becomes an instant star selling over $1 million worth of art. The elusive Banksy (there are no pictures of him and no one knows what he looks like) declares the story is true while most experts in the field say the whole thing is a hoax. Hoax or not, the film has received critical raves.

January 12, 2014

Frozen River

USA, 2008, 97 min, Color, R

Directed by Courtney Hunt; Starring Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe

The film takes place in the days before Christmas near a little-known border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York and Quebec. The lure of fast money from smuggling presents a daily challenge to single mothers who would otherwise be earning minimum wage. Two women – one white, one Mohawk, both faced with desperate circumstances – are drawn into the world of smuggling aliens across the frozen St. Lawrence River. This is the story of two lives in economic emergency, of two women who are brace and resourceful, and the awesome, terrifying beauty in their journeys across the ice.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): Melissa Leo received an Academy Award in 2008 for Best Actress in this independent film written and directed by first-timer Courtney Hunt. Leo portrays a woman beset on all sides by her circumstances who only wants to raise her children halfway decently. When her gambler husband absconds with hard-saved purchase money squirreled away for a "new" doublewide, she is forced to take risks to hold onto her small dreams.

Hunt got the idea for the movie while visiting her husband's family in upstate New York where she heard stories about Mohawks in the nearby reservation smuggling cigarettes by driving across the frozen Saint Lawrence River. Because so few people knew about the situation, she found it hard to get money for the project and ended up making the movie for under a million dollars. Hunt raised the stakes on what was being smuggled to explore how a person decides where the boundaries are between good and evil.

Part of the film's strength is its specificity. Leo is both an everywoman and a very particular character with her own values and ethics that she must decide whether to honor. This is a movie about mothers of varying competencies but all with fierce love for their children. What are they willing to sacrifice to save a child? What line will they not cross? The suspense is integral to the situation and will keep you riveted until the last frame.

Derek Malcolm in the London Evening Standard says "Everything about the film looks and feels authentic, from the desolate landscape dotted with trailers and fast-food joints to the people who populate a borderland that offers none of them much hope." Roger Ebert gave Frozen River four stars (out of four) and called it "one of those rare independent films that knows precisely what it intends, and what the meaning of the story is." Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that "Leo's magnificent portrayal of a woman of indomitable grit and not an iota of self-pity makes Frozen River a compelling study of individual courage."

Frozen River won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

February 9, 2014

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Australia, 1975, 115 min, Color, PG

Directed by Peter Weir; Starring Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child

On a drowsy Valentine's Day in 1900, a party of girls from a strict boarding school in Australia go on a day's outing to Hanging Rock, a geological outcropping not far from their school. Three of the girls and one of their teachers disappear into thin air. One of them is found a week or so later, but can remember almost nothing. Where are the others and will they be found? A film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria, Picnic explores the chasm between settlers from Europe and the ancient mysteries of their new home.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): "To Saint Valentine!" These words are uttered by an angelic blonde girl in Victorian garb, wielding a rather large knife that she plunges squarely into a Valentine's Day cake. An indelible image from Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, this month's featured film. This image is one of dozens that will remain with you after you experience this cryptic, mysterious film on your own terms.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a prime example of Australian New Wave cinema from the 1970s and happens to be one of the first films that I recall being critiqued (and given two thumbs up!) by Siskel and Ebert back when their show was still presented by PBS. Picnic at Hanging Rock presents a story about a group of schoolgirls who picnic on Valentine's Day at the base of Hanging Rock, a massive rock formation in the wilds of Australia. As the afternoon unwinds, a small group of girls leave the picnic grounds to climb the rock. Only one of them returns, and in the ensuing hysteria, one of the teachers also vanishes. The community is shocked and demands answers although no easy answers can be found. The community reels from the loss of these innocent lives, and when the film closes, we are no closer to a solution than we were when the film starts.

The novel Picnic at Hanging Rock was somewhat the Blair Witch Project of its day, whereby a fictional work is presented as truth, and done in such a convincing manner that a large segment of the audience becomes convinced of its veracity. The movie screenplay is a close adaptation of the novel by Joan Lindsay. The ambiguous conclusion of the film is taken directly from the novel, and due to the enormous impact that the film had on the public imagination, a cottage industry sprang up to offer a neat, linear explanation for the story, as would-be detectives published pamphlets and paperbacks to "explain" what "really" happened. Eventually Ms. Lindsay herself released a subsequent book that attempted to tie up all the "clues" offered in Picnic at Hanging Rock. I located copies of both Picnic at Hanging Rock and this second book online, and had them shipped from Australia. After waiting two weeks for their arrival, I immediately regretted reading the "answer" and have steadfastly refused to relay the contents of the book. The plot in the second novel is on a par with Plan Nine from Outer Space for likelihood and literary merit. Its mere existence diminishes the magic and mystery of the original work.

Peter Weir is perhaps the foremost light in the Australian New Wave of cinema. Weir came from a television background in Oz, and led the pack of homegrown directors that transformed the Australian film industry. Weir made a successful transition to Hollywood where he directed many popular and acclaimed films, several of which depict the plight of the outsider in a context of an alien society. This theme presents in Picnic at Hanging Rock where we see the utter incongruity of the British class structure being imposed upon a hostile and mythic landscape. This theme is echoed in diverse films such as The Last Wave, another Australian film from his early years. The outsider also figures in many of his later Hollywood films such as Witness, Mosquito Coast, and Green Card.

As far as appreciating Picnic at Hanging Rock, don't come to this film expecting a 'whodunnit' scenario. That's not what this film is about. What you can expect is a cascade of period images that capture the ethereal nature of young womanhood, the imposition of British society and mores upon native cultures, and a scathing look at the class system in Victorian Australia. Come to this film to experience it – the beauty of the Emperor Concerto which dominates the soundtrack, the bright-eyed loveliness of the doomed schoolgirls, and the reaction of the community to unfathomable loss. The best way to appreciate this film is to let the images and sounds trickle over your psyche as you suspend your logical mind and surrender to the mystical. This is not a neat, buttoned-down, squarely finished film. This is a lovely, poetic, and mysterious film that leaves us wanting more. Instead, let the minutiae and details take on huge significance as your mind tries to balance belief with tangible facts. This inner struggle exemplifies what the characters on the screen are experiencing. Just relax and enjoy the incongruity.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Picnic at Hanging Rock at Great Movies.

March 9, 2014

Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos)

Spain, 2009, 127 min, Color, R, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar; Starring Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez

In this compulsive psychological thriller, Penelope Cruz plays a woman loved and obsessed over, feared, and abused. It is a movie crammed with passion, plot twists, and lies. Every other character clutches a painful past or shameful secret. At the start of the film, the protagonist introduces himself as two people: a sighted film director and a blind screenwriter. How the carefree film director morphed into the disabled screenwriter is the crux of the story that leaps between two time periods and multiple layers of deception.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Broken Embraces is a film about a love affair between a film director and his muse, a passionate affair that has dark import. This film is a veritable valentine to cinema offered by Pedro Almodóvar, a director who is clearly besotted by the movies.

This film presents a tale that reads like the plot of a film noir thriller. Harry Caine, a film director who has lost his sight due to a mishap, has adopted an anonymous, colorless lifestyle. He merely exists this way until one day, the death of a rich and powerful man causes the past and present to collide and the director is forced to confront both his hidden past and his stifled creativity.

Sounds like the plot of a film noir from the 1940s, doesn't it? Can't you picture how the director will use the standard noir techniques – shafts of shadow encroaching from every corner – to convey the sense of helplessness and moral ambiguity that Harry is feeling?

Broken Embraces, however, is a Technicolor film noir – drenched in a riot of vibrant, saturated color. A dizzying kaleidoscope of color and at the center of it all is the vision of Penélope Cruz, remade in the image of screen icons of the stature of Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Audrey Hepburn. She is the stuff that dreams are made of and she is highlighted as never before in this movie as the director's lover and muse and another man's mistress, a woman who inspires obsession, jealousy. and great art.

The story is told through unforgettable imagery and intricate plotting that is exposed through a series of flashbacks. The style is quite unique for Almodóvar whose earlier films relied on frenetic action and a degree of shock value to relay his colorful yet dark tales. Clearly the work of a director who has attained a level of maturity in his film-making, Broken Embraces will make you fall in love with the movies all over again. It is a vivid, vibrant yet tragic story told by a master film-maker, Pedro Almodóvar.

April 13, 2014

I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime)

France/Germany, 2008, 117 min, Color, PG-13, French w/subtitles

Directed by Philippe Claudel; Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill

Thomas has specialized in playing women whose cool facade covers strong emotion. Here she's covering a volcano she can never completely hide. Initially Juliette is seen waiting to be picked up at the airport. We learn she has just been released after 15 years in prison. Her younger sister brings her home to stay with her family. Overall Juliette harbors the hopelessness of someone who knows she can never really be understood and fears she may never be part of the world again. She's in constant conflict. How she resolves the conflict is the essence of the film, along with the film's essential mystery: Why was Juliette imprisoned?

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) has been released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence for killing her six-year-old son. Despite the notoriety of her crime, she is welcomed into the home of her younger sister, Lea (Elsa Zylberstein), who has only a peripheral understanding of what happened and no idea of why it happened. Yet she shelters her older and shattered sister in the home she shares with her husband, a man who questions this decision to house Juliette in this household that includes two young children.

The family approaches the past by doing what most families would do – avoid addressing it directly. Juliette is a worn-out spirit, in a perilous situation as she learns to re-enter society and rebuild her life. Her only true connection is her parole officer (Frederic Pierrot) who understands the ordeal that Juliette has endured while being imprisoned for 15 years. Here she can let down her mask and allow herself to express what can only be hinted at with her family.

Juliette is a woman whose delicate exterior masks the tumult within, a woman whose silence belies the fact that she is haunted by her past. Slowly, slowly, as she learns to trust her sister and her family, she begins to divulge to them (and to the audience) who she is and what drove her to such a desperate act.

Kristin Scott Thomas fully embodies the haunted Juliette and plays the role with unbelievable subtlety and unwavering focus. This is a hopeless character, one that demands nothing from life and expects even less. In the end, her seemingly indefensible act is viewed in a completely different light as the "why" of her act is divulged. As you watch this film, remember that there is no word in any language to describe the status of a parent who has lost a child, and that this nameless grief will be life-altering and endless. This brave performance demands patience as we watch her defenses slowly, slowly fall, allowing us to begin to understand the suffering that Juliette has chosen to stoically endure.

In case you're wondering, the title of this film comes from the lyrics of a French folk song, "A la Claire Fontaine", which Juliette and Lea sing together during the course of the film.

May 11, 2014

El Amor Brujo

Spain, 1986, 100 min, Color, PG, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Carlos Saura; Starring Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos, Laura del Sol, Juan Antonio Jiménez

Like the dance and emotions that inspired it, El Amor Brujo is unrepentantly and passionately theatrical. Skies are not just blue, but purple; sunsets glow vivid pink; bonfires rage blood red. Created by one of the leading visual stylists of dance on film, Carlos Saura, the film explores the gypsy origin of flamenco. Set in a dusty Andalusian village, it is a tale of a woman possessed by the ghost of her unfaithful husband and the man who loves her.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): El Amor Brujo is a flamenco tour de force of music, passion, love, and betrayal. Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos, Laura del Sol, and Juan Antonio Jiménez dance the principal roles and Manuel de Falla's ballet and music provides the springboard that fleshes out the story of a ghostly love.

The plot involves two gypsies, who are united in an arranged marriage. Each loves another, a circumstance that results in a fatal duel. The climax of the ballet involves the girl's torn loyalties between the ghost of her dead husband and her living lover.

This Spanish film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

This is the third film of Carlos Saura's splendid flamenco trilogy (following Blood Wedding and Carmen) and they are well worth viewing.

June 8, 2014

Brick

USA, 2005, 110 min, Color, R

Directed by Rian Johnson; Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Lukas Haas, Noah Fleiss

High school student Brendan finds the dead body of his one-time girlfriend Emily in a drainage ditch. From the mouth of the tunnel comes the sound of her murderer escaping. The victim called him earlier for help. Brendan turns into a classic 1930s gumshoe, tracing her movements back to a high school principal who tries to pull him off the case. True to the genre, the movie has tough and dippy dames, an eccentric crime kingpin, some would-be toughs, and an enigmatic know-it-all. It's a classic Hollywood film noir!

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): Imagine you're a private eye – unlicensed, of course. Your two-timing dame has just been murdered. Everyone's a suspect.

Now imagine it in high school.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt finds himself in just this film noir scenario in Brick, with all the requisite elements – thugs, seductive women, fast cars, drugs, a snitch,and a kingpin. Made by Rian Johnson for under a half million dollars, Brick works because it takes itself as seriously as the situation demands.

Roger Ebert says, "Brick is a movie reportedly made with great determination and not much money by Rian Johnson, who did the editing on his Macintosh… What is impressive is his absolute commitment to his idea of the movie's style. He relates to the classic crime novels and movies, he notes the way their mannered dialogue and behavior elevates the characters into archetypes, and he uses the strategy to make his teenagers into hard-boiled guys and dolls. The actors enter into the spirit; we never catch them winking."

David Denby in the New Yorker says, "Brick is often quick, funny, but not in a campy or condescending way – Johnson never makes the distance from the original models seem laughable. The movie develops its own kind of goofy tensions: Johnson renders the sunlit expanses of a school yard as menacing as the darkened rooms of a Warner Brothers thriller."

One of Gordon-Levitt's first big-screen ventures as an adult (after years as a child star on television's Third Rock from the Sun), the movie serves as an indication of where much of his career was headed – intense and/or quirky independent films such as Manic, The Lookout, (500) Days of Summer, 50/50, and Hesher. In 2012, he worked again with Rian Johnson in the sci-fi Looper. He never plays the same character twice and always brings a depth of restrained emotion to his roles.

Brick received the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

July 13, 2014

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Germany, 2006, 137 min, Color, R, German w/subtitles

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Starring Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed in their lives. He sits in an attic day after day, night after night, spying on the people in the flat below. That angle in itself is unusual: a thriller that follows the villain. This film shows both the right ways and wrong ways to live. Most compelling, it puts a man who has lived his life in a desperately wrong way, as a tormenter of innocents and a government thug, listening to the conversations of a thoroughly decent man.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): On August 13th a powerful new eye-in-the-sky will make obsolete all the technology that has until now so impressed you with satellite images of your backyard from space. An order of magnitude greater than all that has gone before, the launch from Vandenberg AFB, California, will put into orbit WorldView-3 which will completely map the planet ninety times a day. As Al Jolson might have said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Borrowing from Lord Acton, who said "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", this film promoted its overall message with "Where power is absolute, nothing is private." The parents of writer/director von Donnersmarck continued to live in occupied East Berlin after World War II, during which time his visits were infused with the tension and hesitancy to freely act or express oneself on all matters, such as art and politics to name but a few. As you become immersed in this film's story, you too will become painfully aware of the perils to your liberties concomitant with life in a totalitarian state.

So impactful is this story of two artists struggling for freedom of thought and expression while knowingly under the scrutiny of an East German Stasi officer extraordinaire that the audiences and critics rewarded it with countless honors.

Most noteworthy would be:

* 79th Academy Awards — Best Foreign Language Film

* 61st British Academy Film Awards — Best Foreign Language Film

* European Film Awards — Best Film; Best Actor, Ulrich Mühe; and BestScreenwriter, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

* German Film Awards — Best Film; Best Actor; BestSupporting Actor; Best Director; Best Cinematography; BestProduction Design; and Best Screenplay

and it made the top half of thirteen "10 Best of 2007" lists by our most noted film critics.

This film is astonishing in its ability to draw you into the lives of a couple deeply in love, striving to maintain the artistic integrity essential to their being, while an equally committed career officer of the Ministry of Culture sacrifices his personal life to destroy them. If the title of the aforementioned state entity brings to mind thoughts of George Orwell, it is not at all surprising (and the story begins in 1984).

I assure you that the last thirty minutes of this film will linger long and large in your memory.

Seeing this testament to freedom and liberty is all too fitting a way to commemorate the holiday which we celebrate the first week of July.

PS: Within this film is an East German joke. To lighten the mood here are two more:

What would happen if the desert became a socialist country? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage.

A customer orders a Trabant car. The salesman tells him to pick it up in nine years. The customer asks "Shall I come back in the morning or in the evening? I need to know whether the plumber should come at 3pm or not."

August 10, 2014

Saboteur

USA, 1942, 109 min, B&W, PG

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, Otto Kruger, Alan Baxter

After a fire at a Los Angeles aircraft factory, Barry Kane is the number one suspect. Forced to go on the run to clear his name and find the man who is the real saboteur, he travels across the country to New York. Barry finds himself in the company of model Pat Martin who initially wants to turn him in, but slowly believes he is innocent, especially when they discover a fascist group is behind the factory fire and plans additional sabotage. The couple become entangled in a series of difficult situations, including catching a ride with quirky group of circus performers.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): When I grow up,I want to get the job of writing movie blurbs for Time Warner. Somehow, those people manage to encapsulate the plot of a suspenseful and interesting two-hour espionage thriller in a sensationally minimalist fashion. Just think what they could do with Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur: "Wrong Man chases firebug to New York." That pretty much sums up the action line of the story, although it doesn't nearly capture the style of this still very vital film.

Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur is an espionage film that can indeed be counted among the director's "Wrong Man" films. Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is wrongly accused of setting fire to a munitions plant, an act of industrial sabotage that kills his best friend. Barry had encountered the saboteur, Fry (Norman Lloyd), before the act by handing the nervous Fry an envelope that he had dropped. Barry somehow notices both the addressee's name and the return address on the envelope (MacGuffin Alert!). Later, Fry hands Barry a fire extinguisher filled with gasoline which causes a huge explosion, incriminating Barry instead of Fry, who flees the scene.

Afterward, Barry identifies the saboteur to the police. However, when they can't find anyone by that name on the payroll, the police wrongly name the innocent Barry as the prime suspect. In order to clear his name, Barry follows Fry in a mad dash across the country, enlisting the help of Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane), a beautiful Hitchcock Blonde to whom he briefly finds himself handcuffed (Thirty-Nine Steps, anyone?) and with the police doggedly in pursuit. Will Barry catch the saboteur before he can strike again, and can he clear his name at the same time? Eventually, the saboteur and the accused come face to face – atop the Statue of Liberty in a sequence featuring camera work that was completely revolutionary at the time.

This film was a product of its times. Production on the film started only a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor at a moment in history when both patriotism and paranoia were at an all-time high, much as they were after 9/11. The script was created only a few months before the commencement of the Japanese internment camps and reminds us of why Japanese American citizens were so disgracefully interned on their own soil – because of the all-pervasive fear of the "Fifth Column", a group of people who would act traitorously and subversively out of secret sympathy with the Axis powers, sabotage munitions plants and perform acts of treachery from the inside.

Resonating with today's fear of sleeper cells and foreign terrorism, perhaps we can see how this underlying fear of the "Fifth Column" would have been understood and shared by the audiences attending screenings of Saboteur. Los Angeles and its war industries would be crippled if the aqueduct system that supplies the water were sabotaged. The war effort would be set back indefinitely if the production of the munitions plants were disturbed. Loose Lips Sink Ships. These messages were repeated in newspapers, on the radio, in propaganda films and books of the time, and are featured prominently in the story-line of Saboteur.

The most sinister aspect of Saboteur is the fact that the "Fifth Column" as Barry encounters them is peopled with charming, suave, sophisticated and wealthy elites living on both coasts. They hide behind their reputations and their money. They seem to be invincible. The only defense that Barry (and by extension, the rest of us) has against these villains is the good will, common sense, and good-heartedness of the everyday Americans he meets along the way. Saboteur thus celebrates the nobility of the common man, much as a Frank Capra film would, and uses it to build suspense.

Two interesting items worth noting:

Dorothy Parker contributed to the script and was said to have written the patriotic speechifying done by Robert Cummings at key points in the drama. Realizing that Dorothy Parker herself was a celebrity and that she might be recognized by members of the audience, Hitchcock considered using her in his cameo but unfortunately gave up on this idea. Wouldn't we have loved that?!? However, he appears unaccompanied approximately one hour into the action. So keep your eyes peeled.

Secondly, Saboteur marks Norman Lloyd's first work with Alfred Hitchcock, and it spawned a lifelong association. Hitchcock later resuscitated Lloyd's career by featuring him in Spellbound (1945) at a time when Lloyd's reputation was diminished due to the onset of the Hollywood blacklist. Lloyd later produced and directed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Season 47 2012-2013

September 9, 2012

In the Loop

UK, 2009, 106 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Armando Iannucci; Starring Peter Capaldi, Harry Hadden-Paton, Samantha Harrington, Gina McKee

In the Loop is a mordantly funny satire about the political maneuvering behind the run-up to elective war. Both the U.S. President and U.K. Prime Minister fancy the war. American diplomat Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and General Miller (James Gandolfini) do not; nor does British Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). But when Simon accidentally supports military action on TV, he suddenly has a lot of friends across the pond. If Simon can get into the right meeting, if his entourage of one can sleep with the right intern, if either can outwit the Prime Minister's volcanic spin-doctor, Malcolm Tucker (a sublime Peter Capaldi), they may be able to stop the war.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): Here's hoping you like your comedy black! And here's hoping you don't mind dialog that's blue. Very, very blue. With those advisements, hie yourself to the opening of The Cinema, Inc.'s 47th season to see In the Loop, a 2009 British comedy spin-off of the successful BBC series The Thick of It. Full of the kind of English actors with whom we are all besmitten (yes, you are, you know you are) but can probably not name and many equally talented American actors whose faces, if not names, you will recognize – James Gandofini, Mimi Kennedy, David Rasche – this political satire received a 94% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2010.

An unimportant, except to himself, functionary of the British Home Office (Tom Hollander – the Reverend Collins in the latest Pride and Prejudice) pronounces in a BBC interview that war in the Middle East is "unforeseeable." After being soundly berated by the PM's hatchet man, played with zeal by Peter Capaldi (probably first seen in the US in Local Hero), he then steps further into the "poo," as the English would say, by declaring there may be a need in the Middle East to "climb the mountain of conflict."

Saddled with these contradictory, if oblique, statements, he then becomes a pawn between the British Home Office and a visiting American delegation of military and State Department reps. Every character has an agenda, if not two or three. As A. O. Scott says in his New York Times review, "Mr. [Armando] Iannucci maps the queasy interpersonal power games at the heart of any political endeavor. The inhabitants of his universe are in essence well-connected cubicle rats, or junior high school clique members with media access and large standing armies…"

Don't let the idea that they are supposedly all on the same side fool you into believing they have each other's backs. Well, perhaps they do… all the better to stick the knife in. Come, enjoy, and go home thinking "the real world doesn't work like this," you sweet naïve creatures.

October 14, 2012

Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)

Sweden, 2008, 115 min, Color, R, Swedish w/subtitles

Directed by Tomas Alfredson; Starring Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl

Pre-adolescent angst has rarely been as eerie or unsettlingly honest as in this stylish, psychologically complex tale of friendship between a tormented schoolboy (Kåre Hedebrant) and his new neighbor (Lina Leandersson), a reclusive 12-year-old girl who isn't exactly what she seems. Adapted from the popular novel by author John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In is the rare genre film that explores sophisticated issues and themes with an intensity that can be hard to achieve within the bounds of realism. The result is a thoughtfully plotted adult fable that builds quiet momentum toward a thrilling climax.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): In 2012, it seems as though we are bombarded with vampire-related subject matter. Feature films as well as television shows. Sparkly ones (Twilight) to angsty ones (Vampire Diaries) to nymphomaniacs (True Blood). Let The Right One In is a "vampire movie," but it does a wonderful job in transcending that. It is directed by Tomas Alfredson (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and is the original Swedish adaptation of the book with the same title. There was a subsequent American remake titled Let Me In.

A 12-year-old boy, Oskar, meets a strange new neighbor, Eli. It probably won't spoil anything to know that the neighbor turns out to be a vampire. Oskar has a difficult time at school dealing with bullies. Eli, being a vampire, is a bit of a social outcast as well. Not being able to go out in the sun may be a factor. The absence of family support is evident for both characters. Reminiscent of films like Harold and Maude, two offbeat individuals who are isolated by their peers come together and help each other cope with difficult circumstances.

There is a bit of blood and guts in this one, but the execution is very subtle. During one sequence, we see an entire action take place under a distant bridge. The audience is removed from the immediate violence, but it seems a bit more eerie to be watching from a distance. Rather than just show blood squirting everywhere, the level of violence is implied using sound. Much of the violence in the film occurs either out of frame or cleverly placed in the shadows.

Let The Right One In is filled with great performances and beautiful cinematography. The vampire genre, which has been bled dry (although the puns are endless), is not used as a crutch. The interesting aspects of this film have nothing to do with vampires. At first glance, it may seem to exist outside the realm of an individual's presumed tastes, but this is not a film that should be missed by any set of standards.

November 11, 2012

Airplane!

USA, 1980, 88 min, Color, PG

Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker; Starring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Julie Hagerty

This spoof of the Airport disaster movies combined sight gags, deadpan dialogue and a cavalcade of clichés to form a broad comedic style that would dominate Hollywood for the next 20 years. Aerophobic former pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) boards a passenger jet to woo back his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Hagerty). When food poisoning overtakes the crew, Striker must land the plane, aided by a glue-sniffing air traffic controller (Lloyd Bridges) and Striker's former captain (Robert Stack). The trio of directors would go on to make Top Secret! and Ruthless People before launching successful solo careers.

Film Notes (Royster Chamblee): This spoof of the big-budget disaster films of the 1970s has been rated as one of our greatest comedy films. Loosely based on Paramont's 1957 film Zero Hour! (Ted Striker was Ted Stryker in the older film), Airplane! is known for its use of absurd and fast-paced slapstick comedy, with most of the actors playing against type.

The reputation of this wonderful comedy has only increased with time. It was voted tenth funniest American film on AFI's "100 Years… 100 Laughs" list in 2000. It ranked sixth on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies." In a major 2007 survey by "Channel 4" in the United Kingdom, it was judged the second greatest comedy film of all time!

If you want to see some of the gags, the trailer is available on YouTube. But I suggest you wait to see it with us on the big screen (and wait for all the credits at the end). It's a hoot!

December 9, 2012

Mon Oncle

France, 1958, 117 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jacques Tati; Starring Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie, Lucien Frégis, Betty Schneider

Jacques Tati's beloved Monsieur Hulot is a bumbling innocent at sea in the vagaries of the modern world. Like Chaplin and Keaton before him, Tati uses his character's inherent mildness and some wonderfully choreographed slapstick comedy to underscore his commentary on humanity versus the changes of modern life. A film set along the dividing line between Paris' past and its future, Mon Oncle was awarded the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar in 1958, as well as a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): In the 1950s, Paris was busily undergoing a renaissance of sorts. Post-war optimism was expressed in urban renewal programs resulting in tearing down blocks of aged dwellings, and replacing them with modern homes with all the modern conveniences. The labyrinth of antiquated streets was being replaced with neatly drawn developments of sensible houses on tidy plots. Of course, these pockets of modernism were surrounded by the Paris of old and a subtext of tension between the supporters of the new and modern versus the quirky, dilapidated sections of Paris.

Into this milieu strides a lanky, short-panted, gawky dreamer by the name of M. Hulot (Jacques Tati.) Hulot resides in the quirky environs of l'ancienne Paris. Hulot's sister is married to a prosperous man with a corporate job as an efficiency expert. The couple embrace the modernity of their sterile existence in a nightmarishly clean and modern house shared with their son, who happens to adore his misfit uncle. A culture clash is about to arise as the wrinkled raincoat-wearing Hulot brings his eccentricities from the past into this modern world embraced by his sister. Comedy will ensue.

Mon Oncle is a delightful and sprightly film that relies on visual jokes and sound effects more than it does dialogue. Harkening back to the days of the great silent comedies, you will find that there is very little need for reading the subtitles since the actions on the screen are self-explanatory for the most part. There is a notable moment of slapstick involving pedestrians, mischievous boys and a light pole. Very little dialogue at all – the action is purely cinematic and comedic.

Mon Oncle makes use of very minimal sound effects that are expositional and generally transmit information about the scene or a character rather than providing a sonic background for dialogue or action. For example, notice how in the sterile environment of the modern house, we are very aware of the echoing, sharp sounds of footsteps letting us know that the house is sparingly decorated and feels sterile. Contrast that to the more haphazard soundscape juxtaposed on the scenes of the streets of old Paris with its street vendors, dogs, and random activity in the chaos of that particular place in time.

Mon Oncle represents Tati's second of three portrayals of the character of M. Hulot. This film was preceded by Mr. Hulot's Holiday in 1953 with the final installment Playtime released in 1967. Tati was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1954, and upon receiving this honor was offered the traditional panoply of gifts and treats reserved for the winners. In place of these material goods, Tati simply requested to be given the opportunity to visit Stan Laurel, Buster Keaton, and Mack Sennett, a triumvirate of silent film giants who undoubtedly made an impact on Tati in his formative years. It is said that at this visit, Keaton remarked that Tati's work with sound had carried on the true tradition of silent cinema (see Bellos 1999, p 226, The Old World and the New). We'll let you be the judge of that as we present our screening of Mon Oncle.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Mon Oncle at Great Movies.

January 13, 2013

Winter's Bone

USA, 2010, 100 min, Color, R

Directed by Debra Granik; Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Isaiah Stone, Ashlee Thompson, Valerie Richards

Her family home in danger of being repossessed after her meth-cooking dad skips bail and disappears, Ozark teen Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) breaks the local code of conduct by confronting her kin about their conspiracy of silence. If she fails to track down her father, Ree, her younger siblings, and their disabled mother will soon be homeless. A thriller as bleak as its hardscrabble landscape, Winter's Bone earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Lawrence) and Best Supporting Actor (John Hawkes).

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): Winter's Bone is a harrowing journey into rural Southern poverty. Kin and clan mean more than law and order. "We take care of our own" is not much of a social safety net.

The foothills of Missouri are where 17-year-old Ree Dolly learns this hard lesson. Her mother's catatonic and her dad, a meth "chef," is in and out of jail. Only now he's missing. And since he put their mini-farm up as collateral, Ree has to find him to keep the bail bondsman from taking their house and putting her, her mom, and her younger brother and sister out in the cold.

Jennifer Lawrence, who had previously been a regular on The Bill Engvall Show, stars as Ree. A teenager during production, Lawrence delivers a performance of ferocious, fully mature self-possession that recalls a young Jodie Foster. Ree is torn between loyalty to her brother and sister and a desire to escape her ancestral home by joining the Army and making a new life for herself. In scene after scene, she holds her own against a cast of older stand-outs: John Hawkes as an unstable meth-addicted uncle; Kevin Breznahan as a sleazy drug lord; William White as the monstrous head of the family; Dale Dickey as a plain-talking woman who, one might say, redefines kindness.

Aside from the gripping story, Winter's Bone is an interesting window into culture. The world depicted in this film is vastly different from the one most of us inhabit in modern society. Take away someone's smart phone and watch how quickly their world comes unraveled. Try hunting squirrel for dinner. It is a bleak world for these mountain folk. The future looks dismal.

Anxious sympathy for this young woman in peril is the prevailing emotion you are likely to feel when watching Winter's Bone. At 17, barely more than a child herself and forced to respond to challenges that would terrify most adults. You root for her to succeed in fighting for her family but in the end, what does she gain? What is there in her future to strive for?

February 10, 2013

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie)

France, 1972, 102 min, Color, PG, French w/subtitles

Directed by Luis Buñuel; Starring Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Luis Buñuel's surrealist comedy skewers social conventions through the conceit of a dinner party that cannot be consummated. Interweaving flashbacks and dreams-within-dreams, Buñuel interrogates the absurdities of bourgeois ceremony and hypocrisy as two well-heeled couples and their friends are vexed by such obstructions as botched scheduling, sexual desire, a theater audience, an untimely funeral, and armed revolutionaries. Their inability to eat increasingly suggests a manifestation of their innermost fears, but the film resists such straightforward interpretations.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): From Aristotle to Edgar Allen Poe, that twilight on the edge of sleep has held magical moments in the wakened ponderings of the introspective mind. Dreams within dreams, seemingly real but with a large helping of the improbable, etc. constitute what is commonly referred to as the hypnologic state and introduce the everyman to that artistic realm called 'the surrealistic.'

Luis Buñuel (born in 1900 in Spain, died in 1983 in Mexico), co-author and director of Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie, is said to be the father of Surrealistic cinema. His strict Jesuit education notwithstanding, he fell under the influence of and became friends with Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca both artistically and religiously rebellious. The Discreet Charm, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (1973), stands as the best example of Buñuel's fully realized vision of the surreal. (His groundbreaking first entry into the surrealist, 1929's Un Chien Andalou, was a short.)

Like Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exposition, this film uses the idea of six people attempting to have a dinner party as the intermezzo that connects a series of surreal dreamlike interruptions to an otherwise bourgeoisie get-together.

Lovers of legacy will have no difficulty connecting the dots from Buñuel to BlueVelvet (1986) and Twin Peaks (TV, 1991) auteur David Lynch. If the foremost male character Don Rafael Acosta looks at all familiar to you, it's because Fernando Rey was the title character Alain Charnier in The French Connection (1971) and French Connection II (1975).

This film will take you on a journey fanciful and funny and leave you with sights and thoughts new and wondrous which, unlike those of the hypnologic kind, you will find hard to forget.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie at Great Movies.

March 10, 2013

M

Germany, 1931, 99 min, B&W, Not Rated, German w/subtitles

Directed by Fritz Lang; Starring Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke

Inspired by the Dusseldorf child murders, Fritz Lang's classic early talkie was a profound influence on Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles (among others) and a touchstone for 1940s American film noir. In 1931 Berlin, police are rounding up the city's criminals in their search for a child murderer. With the heat threatening their livelihood, underworld leaders decide to take matters into their own hands. Though filmed in Weimar Germany, the technically dazzling M solidified Lang's reputation with American audiences and made an international star out of Peter Lorre.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): During the late 1940s it would have particularly benefited both Fritz Lang and Peter Lorre to work together in the burgeoning genre of film noir, at which they both excelled, and which they had together helped to create with M. The film introduced the modern police procedural to cinema and with its atmospheric realism served as a template for all urban crime thrillers that would follow.

M is set in the everyday life of Weimar-era Berlin, depicting ordinary citizens, criminals, and police and forensics experts at work in their Alexanderplatz headquarters. Lang said that one of the reasons he chose Lorre for the role of Hans Beckert, the serial killer stalking Berlin, was because he fit this world, that he looked like a real everyday person. But obviously no one would choose Lorre to play a man who was not a little out of the ordinary. At age 26, Lorre still had a soft, childish look about him and this gave an uncanny aspect to casting him as a murderer who targets children. It would be natural for little girls to be on their guard if they ran into a big scary man in the street, but if a funny, cute little boy-man came along, they might make friends with him, and if he was very nice and bought them a balloon or a bag of candy, they might agree to a playful suggestion to go into the bushes with him. Lorre plays Hans as an infantile creature whose primal urges are easily read when he makes monster faces at himself in his bedroom mirror or stares at a shop window full of knives after spotting a tempting little girl. His lack of self-control is frightening, and makes the race between law enforcement and the city's criminals to hunt him down all the more urgent. When his criminal avengers finally trap him and confront him with his crimes, he panics like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. We can't help feeling instinctively protective of him, and we believe him when he pleads that he's helpless to stop himself from killing.

M is by far the best film made by the husband-and-wife team of director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea von Harbou, and casting Lorre in it made it legendary. Lang knew this and for years he courted Lorre to work for him again, but Lorre refused because Lang had treated him so abominably during the making of M. While shooting the film's famous trial sequence, Lang had the actors who carried Lorre into the scene throw him around until he was bruised, exhausted, and nearly hysterical, because Lang wanted him that way when he delivered his big speech. Lang's tendency to approach actors like an abusive animal trainer must have been one of the reasons why he never succeeded in establishing himself as an A-list Hollywood director (the Screen Actors Guild for one would have cracked down on him.)

The ingenious dramatic trajectory of M, which at first encourages viewers to fear and hate Hans, then forces them to confront his vulnerable humanity and question their own capacity for compassion, depends entirely on Lorre's presence in the role, and not just because he played his part with great sensitivity and insight, in spite of Lang's beatings. As we watch him in an extreme state of genuine exhaustion and despair, we take his emotional temperature and realize that he couldn't possibly have killed those children. Even though we virtually saw him do it (only virtually, since neither Lang nor any other commercial filmmaker then or now could get away with literally showing a man butchering little girls onscreen), our instincts tell us that he is innocent. The last thing we see of Lorre/Hans as he crouches on the floor is a reassuring hand protectively lowering onto his shoulder, and we are relieved. The final line of the film, in which the mother of one of Hans' victims says that we must all take better care of our children, suggests to us that Hans himself is one of these children.

Read Roger Ebert's review of M at Great Movies.

April 14, 2013

Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jô)

Japan, 1957, 110 min, B&W, Not Rated, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Akira Kurosawa; Starring Toshirô Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo

Kurosawa does Macbeth in medieval Japan. After a military victory, Lords Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and Miki (Akira Kubo) wander lost in the Cobweb Forest, where they meet a mysterious old woman who predicts great things for Washizu and greater things for Miki's descendants. Washizu and Miki are soon promoted by the Emperor. Goaded by his wife, the ambitious Lady Washizu (Isuzu Yamada), Lord Washizu plots to make more of the prophecy come true, even if it means killing the Emperor.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Fate, ambition, and destruction. These are the themes that motivated Macbeth and his malicious wife in the eponymous Shakespearean play Macbeth. These are also the dark forces defining the action in Throne of Blood. In the painterly hands of Akiro Kurosawa, this age-old story assumes epic cinematic proportions, as the tale of treachery unfolds in the days of feudal Japan.

Following a great military victory, two warlords are lost in a mystic forest where they meet an old woman who predicts great things for them both. When they emerge from the forest, one of them is possessed by an ambition to make the prophecy come true, even if it requires killing the Emperor to do so. Encouraged and assisted by his unrelenting evil wife, the dastardly deed is soon done and a tail of moral turpitude ensues, as the characters are tragically consumed by the results of their own actions.

The film employs the use of sound and silence to impart the sudden eruption of violence in the story, and since this is a Kurosawa film, there are treats for the eye everywhere. The mask-like white face of Asaji (Lady Macbeth) seems to make her into a ghost long before she is driven into madness, the sudden invasion of the throne room by a flock of birds, and the slow funeral procession advancing on the castle gates look like prophecies of inevitable doom, and are presented in such a visually arresting style that we can't turn away our gaze, even though we know that these characters are doomed.

To Westerners, Akiro Kurosawa enjoyed a status as the most Western and therefore most comprehensible of Japanese directors. These words, offered as praise by some critics, were also levied as a charge by others. For a time, Kurosawa was not seen by the Japanese as being sufficiently Japanese, and his attempts to make films were stymied. His training in a Western art school and his lifelong admiration for the films of John Ford didn't help this image, either. In fact, Kurosawa's career was so damaged by this assertion that he attempted – but failed – to commit suicide in 1971.

Had he been successful, we would have been deprived of his landmark masterpiece films Kagemusha and Ran. Imagine the loss.

May 12, 2013

Bachelor Mother

USA, 1939, 82 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Garson Kanin; Starring Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson

In one of her great comic roles, Ginger Rogers plays Polly Parish, a salesgirl in a large department store. Single and without a steady beau, the unassuming Polly discovers a foundling and assumes care of the child. Polly's co-workers raise their eyebrows at her new ward, believing the baby is actually hers. The store's owner, J.B. Merlin (Charles Coburn), is likewise taken aback and dispatches his son, David (David Niven), to lead Polly back to the straight-and-narrow.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Imagine for a moment that you are a single shopgirl, living in New York in 1939. Not the 1939 of soup kitchens and "Buddy, can you spare a dime?", but a frothy, madcap New York where people had money to shop for tchotchkes at venerable department stores and a girl could still marry a millionaire. This is the setting of Bachelor Mother.

In Bachelor Mother, Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) is a young, single woman, working at a New York department store for the Christmas season. Her job seems to consist of standing at a counter and winding mechanical Donald Duck toys all day long. Her hopes for continued employment are dashed as she receives her "pink slip" with her paycheck just a few days before Christmas.

Determined to remain on her own in New York, Polly decides to visit a nearby employment agency on her lunch break. On her way, she encounters an older woman leaving a baby on the steps of an adoption agency. Fearing that the baby will be injured, Polly confronts the situation by taking the baby inside. In chatting with the employees, Polly eventually realizes that the case workers believe her to be the unwed mother of the abandoned baby. Despite Polly's ardent protestations, they contact her employer, a carefree bachelor (David Niven) and the son of the owner (Charles Coburn) of the department store where Polly works. When the store is guilted into retaining Polly to allow her to keep her baby, the resulting tug of war between truth and fiction creates a sterling comedy of errors that still holds up today, showcasing Ginger Rogers' warmth and pluckiness and naturally providing her with an excuse to dance.

In 1939, the subject of single motherhood would have been a tricky one, to say the least. The Depression fractured many homes as men left their families to travel and find work, or even abandoned wife and children out of a sense of desperation and shame. Unwed mothers were unmentionable or spoken of only in whispers. To say that this proposed film contained very dicey subject matter is a vast understatement. However, the script written by Norman Krasna and Garson Kanin manages to humanize the comedy and the performances by the adorable Ginger Rogers and a highly flummoxed David Niven are timeless and stellar.

The tone of the film is a familiar one in 1930s cinema – utter escapism. One could consider this a "Depression Denial" film – a movie where the story line hearkens back to happier, more prosperous times and completely denies the fact that no one was entirely untouched by the Depression, and the reality of the situation was that countless people were living on the brink.

However, beneath the fun and the froth of Bachelor Mother is a darker subtext. While this film depicts New York as unscathed by economic failure, the idea of a woman abandoning a baby would have been a stark reality in those desperate days. We don't know why the baby was abandoned; the script never tells us, but the act of abandonment is shown to have been done with deepest regret. There is a great deal of pathos in this scene and audiences then, as now, would have understood the emotional depths only hinted at here.

Bachelor Mother is a remake of the German film Kleine Mutti (Little Mother, 1935) and itself was remade in a musical version called Bundle of Joy in 1956. It was Ginger Rogers' first cinematic venture outside of her association with Fred Astaire after they completed The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Rogers is the heart of this film – an everywoman, so to speak, and we root for her plucky all-American attitude from the first frame to the last. Bachelor Mother was David Niven's first lead role in a romantic comedy and it seems to have informed his performance in The Bishop's Wife (1947).

Bachelor Mother is a fun romp with sparking dialog, career-defining performances, and a wealth of one-liners. Is it any small wonder that it came out of 1939, Hollywood's Golden Year?

June 9, 2013

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin)

West Germany/France, 1987, 128 min, Color/B&W, PG-13, German w/subtitles

Directed by Wim Wenders; Starring Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Peter Falk

In Wim Wenders' lyrical romantic fantasy, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are angels passing unseen through West Berlin, listening to people's thoughts and studying their lives. Though able to make their presence felt in small ways, angels are ultimately observers, unable to interact with people or to experience the joys and suffering of being alive. But when Damiel falls in love with circus acrobat Marion (Solveig Dommartin), he wishes to leave his celestial existence and become human. Wings of Desire features memorable cameos by Peter Falk (as himself) and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "At first it's not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a desire. That's how it begins, making a film, writing a book, painting a picture, composing a tune, generally creating something. You have a wish… The thing I wished for and saw flashing was a film in and about Berlin.

A film that might convey something of the history of the city since 1945. A film that might succeed in capturing what I miss in so many films that are set here, something that seems to be so palpably there when you arrive in Berlin: a feeling in the air and under your feet and in people's faces that makes life in this city so different from life in other cities.

To explain and clarify my wish, I should add: it's the desire of someone who's been away from Germany for a long time, and who could only ever experience 'Germanness' in this one city. I should say I'm no Berliner. Who is nowadays? But for over twenty years now, visits to this city have given me my only genuine experiences of Germany, because the (hi)story that elsewhere in the country is suppressed or denied is physically and emotionally present here.

Of course I didn't want just to make a film about the place, Berlin. What I wanted to make was a film about people – people here in Berlin – that considered the one perennial question: how to live?

And so I have 'Berlin' representing 'the world'." ~Wim Wenders, First Treatment for Wings of Desire, 1986

Angels are among us: Watching, observing, listening to our thoughts, offering comfort when needed. Only children can see them. Without substance, they move through space free of encumbrances both physical and mental. They can be anywhere, but never everywhere at once. Angels cannot change events. They are here solely to bear witness, to write down the individual stories they uncover. Either male or female, they are of indeterminate age and favor overcoats.

Two such celestial observers, Damiel and Cassiel, soar over, around, and through both sides of a still-divided Berlin, less than three years before the Wall falls. Damiel finds himself increasingly drawn towards a lonely and lovely trapeze artist named Marion in a down-at-its-heels circus. For Damiel, immortality, this floating outside of time in a world without color, becomes increasingly unbearable. He craves the weight of a corporeal body. He longs to live in the now, to possess an individual history that is uniquely his own, to experience love, to live moment to moment, breath to breath. Fully understanding the cost, he resolves to fall into human, mortal flesh.

The legendary alchemist cinematographer Henri Alekan, who shot such masterpieces as Marcel Carné's Le Quai des Brumes (1938), René Clément's La Bataille du rail (1946) and Jean Cocteau's Belle et la Bête (1946), employed an old filter from the 1930s devised from one of his grandmother's stockings to achieve the luminescent gray textures in the black and white sequences of Wings of Desire. Utilizing silent movie superimpositions (the placement of one image over another), often with the use of mirrors, Alekan created as many of the special effects as possible in the camera. Sometimes the effect was achieved as simply as turning on and off the lights. Alekan explained: "I always prefer tricks that are invented on the set, manual, of the do-it-yourself variety, rather than tricks that are too calculated, too scientific. This all comes down to a difference of sensibility and emotion. I don't think the special effects we see so perfectly executed in American films touch us as deeply as the simpler effects of the kind we saw in the films of Méliès and which we find enchanting." Director Wim Wenders paid homage to the theatrical magic Alekan achieved throughout his career by naming the circus where Marion performs her trapeze act, Cirque Alekan.

On a more earthbound level, among other numerous nominations and awards, Wings of Desire won Best Director for Wim Wenders at the Cannes Film Festival and the European Film Awards. The Los Angeles Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the National Society of Film Critics, USA, bestowed their Best Cinematography Awards on Henri Alekan.

Wenders singled out three directorial forebears in the closing titles: "Dedicated to all the former angels, but especially to Yasujirō, François and Andrej." Cinephiles will recognize the reference to Yasujirō Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Speaking of angels, let us grant the late, great Roger Ebert the final word(s): "The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation. It doesn't rush headlong into plot, but has the patience of its angels… For me the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions. Some of them are asked in the film: "Why am I me and why not you? Why am I here and why not there? When did time begin and where does space end?"

Read Roger Ebert's review of Wings of Desire at Great Movies.

July 14, 2013

Avalon

USA, 1990, 128 min, Color, PG

Directed by Barry Levinson; Starring Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Leo Fuchs, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lou Jacobi, Joan Plowright

A moving family saga, Avalon is a fitting capstone to Barry Levinson's Baltimore Trilogy. In 1914 Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) emigrates to Baltimore to join his three brothers. Sam's son, Jules (Aidan Quinn), spurns his father's life as a laborer and becomes a salesman, eventually opening Baltimore's first TV store. Mueller-Stahl is a superb embodiment of the immigrant generation, capturing the melancholy of the diaspora of the family from city to suburbs after WWII.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): Avalon is the third of director Barry Levinson's autobiographical Baltimore trilogy, the first two being Diner and Tin Men, and followed by the non-biographical but Baltimore-based Liberty Heights. It received Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen; Best Music, Original Score; Best Cinematography; and Best Costume Design. Levinson's script won the Writer's Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.

It is the early 1950s and much has happened to the family of Polish-Jewish immigrant Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) since he first arrived in America in 1914 and eventually settled in Baltimore, Maryland.

Television is new. Neighborhoods are changing, with more and more families moving to the suburbs. Wallpaper has been Sam's profession, but his son Jules (Aidan Quinn) wants to try his hand at opening a large discount-appliance store with his cousin Izzy (Kevin Pollack). Sam's wife Eva (Joan Plowright) is the matriarch of the family and rules it with a velvet stick. Sam's children have changed their names to be more American. There are the inevitable clashes between the generations as the family is assimilated into America, generation by generation.

So, you say, what's new? Why did The Cinema, Inc. select this film for our series? It presents a remarkably accurate picture of Baltimore in the mid-1950s, and Barry Levinson has created the temper of those times perfectly, not just in the family storyline but also in the recreation of the feel of those times. Barry Levinson and I grew up in Baltimore at the same time and have many of the same memories.

The film is a recreation of post-World War II times in Baltimore in a way that only the director could do out of his own experience. Just as in Diner, the scenes speak a truth that comes out of Levinson's experience. An interesting fact about the family name Krichinsky in the film is that it was his mother's maiden name. We see city landmarks such as Baltimore's Washington Monument, the streetcars that were used in that period, and the Art Deco Senator Theatre where he saw films as a youth. (More about that in a personal postscript following these notes.)

The characters are drawn and acted beautifully. We feel as if they are our neighbors and we participate in their successes and failures. The delightfulness of the film lies in its faithful recreation of all of the details of the ambience of that period and the story line. This is a warm and rewarding film that will stay with you a long time.

Personal Postscript

Baltimore has a love affair with the Senator Theatre. Barry Levinson incorporated a scene in Avalon where the theater just happens to be part of the local scenery, but John Waters, another Baltimore film director, has given his own homage to the Senator Theatre in his films, especially Cecil B. DeMented. Levinson, Waters, and I were all born between 1939 and 1946 and discovered the thrill of films in our early childhood at that theater. Levinson and Waters are at opposite ends of the directorial spectrum. Where Levinson has made films that bring to life the people of an era, Waters' films are satirical cult films such as Hairspray, Polyester, Cecil B. DeMented, and A Dirty Shame, with themes that irreverently poke fun at the weird behavior of people and have characters that rival Fellini's.

In Levinson's scene with the Senator Theatre, a trolley car jumps its tracks and runs across the street in front of the Senator Theatre, causing an accident in the gas station on the other side. The street where we see the trolley next to the theater is the street where I grew up. It is a narrow neighborhood street with parking on one side only, impossible to ever hold trolley car tracks. The street in front of the Senator Theatre is the major north-south street in Baltimore, named York Road, and two hundred years ago it was the connection between York, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore.

How did Levinson accomplish his feat of magic, moving the trolley line to the little side street? The trolley car was built by Levinson of wood, modeled on the one remaining operable trolley car from that era but with rubber tires (watch for them). No overhead wires either. The trolley tracks are painted onto the street surface. The overhead wires actually are on York Road, not the side street with the trolley. When you see the trolley car, watch for the little boy on his tricycle at left. He figures into my story.

Last summer I made a pilgrimage to my row house to see its current state and to take photos of the Senator Theatre. The house owner was working in the yard and I told him I had lived in the house in the 1940s and 1950s. He then told me to watch for the little boy on the tricycle, who is his grown son today and happened to be watching the film crew from his trike. Oh, by the way, there has never been a gas station across from the theater. The whole incident has a peripheral tie to the story line but gives Levinson an opportunity to show us the theater of his childhood.

Baltimore's love affair with the Senator Theatre? The theater, built in 1939, is in a commercial district today and is incompatible with its neighbors. Developers have wanted to tear it down and put in modern shopping space. But various groups have fought to keep the theater in its original form. The theater has passed through a succession of owners and is now owned by the City of Baltimore. It was being renovated once again last year, but Baltimore has made it one of the city's iconic historical sites, and everyone in Baltimore knows of the theater and is proud of its existence. The Baltimore Sun has chronicled the efforts over the last ten years to save the theater and its period Art Deco decor. The theater is nationally famous for its interior and is ranked among the top theaters in the country for viewing films. My photo doesn't do it justice. At night the glass block vertical windows are lit with colored lights that make it majestic and miraculous.

Enjoy our personal connection with this brief moment in a wonderful film.

August 11, 2013

The African Queen

USA/UK, 1951, 105 min, Color, PG

Directed by John Huston; Starring Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley

Gin-soaked and unshaven, Humphrey Bogart plays a river rat who trades cargo on the Congo River during WWI. When Katherine Hepburn's prim middle-class missionary comes into play, the two of them are thrown into a race for their lives, floating down the Congo to escape the German officers who had held them as prisoners of war. One of Hollywood's crown jewels, The African Queen received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay, with Bogart winning the Oscar.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "Two old people going up and down an African river. Who's going to be interested in that?" ~British producer Alexander Korda

Over her 66-year career, Katharine Hepburn appeared in 44 feature films, 8 television movies and 33 plays. Nominated for twelve Academy Awards, Hepburn won four. She played Mary Tyrone, Tracy Lord, Coco Chanel, Jo March, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Sylvia Scarlett, Amanda Wingfield, and a parade of other memorable, indeed indelible characters. Her leading men and directors rivaled her in star wattage and Technicolor personality. Yet only one film during this extraordinary career and life inspired Hepburn to write a book focused entirely on its genesis: The African Queen.

Hepburn's slim volume entitled The Making of The African Queen : Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind was not the only work to come out of the now-legendary cinematic safari to Africa. Peter Viertel, who co-wrote (uncredited) a good chunk of the screenplay with John Huston after the director's original writing collaborator James Agee suffered a heart attack, later penned a scathing fictionalized version of the shoot entitled White Hunter, Black Heart featuring a director more interested in bagging an elephant than finishing his film. The novel also became a movie.

Biographies and autobiographies of the principle players both in front of and behind the camera dedicate at least a chapter to The African Queen. Critics, bloggers, scholars, and fans repeat particularly juicy anecdotes. Instead of the relative comforts of a studio,the Queen's cast and skeleton crew endured poisonous snakes, blood flukes, soldier ants, crocodiles, centipedes, mosquitoes, tsetse flies, black wasps, hippos, oppressive heat and humidity, mildewed apparel, questionable food, contaminated drinking water, negligible sanitation, and subsequent violent stomach ailments. The only ones to escape getting sick were Huston and Bogart who attributed their continued health to copious amounts of Scotch with their water. "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus, and Scotch whiskey," Bogart later recalled. "Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead."

At one point the boat sank. It took three days to pull her out, patch the holes, and get her camera-ready. Rarely has such a classic film possessed such terrific behind-the-scenes stories. Reality rivaled fiction.

The book that originally launched all the subsequent events and stories was the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forrester. Set in Africa at the beginning of World War I, proper English spinster missionary Rose Sayer and Charlie Allnut, a gin-soaked, river-rat captain of a bedraggled steamer, are thrown together when the Germans burn down the village where Rose and her brother maintained a mission. Together, these two polar opposites embark down river on their self-imposed goal to do their bit for God and country.

The rights to The African Queen bounced around Hollywood for over a decade. Columbia proposed it as a vehicle for Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester. In 1946 Warner Bros. picked up the option for a possible pairing of Bette Davis with David Niven. The project again went nowhere. A year later Warner Bros. was eager to unload it for a price. Long a fan of the book, Huston badly wanted it for Horizon Pictures, his independent production company with producer Sam Spiegle. As often happened with a Spiegle enterprise, the problem came down to money – or more specifically the lack of it. Where to find the 50 grand the studio demanded? Spiegle finagled a deal with a sound company to not only use their equipment with a full screen credit, but pay them back if they would front him the option money. Spiegle must have been extraordinarily convincing. They agreed.

Now all Horizon Pictures had to do was find more and more and more money, then make the movie… down a river replete with hippos and crocodiles in what was then the Belgian Congo… using heavy and unwieldy Technicolor equipment… If Huston could shoot an elephant while on location that simply would be an added attraction…

Season 46 – 2011-2012

September 11, 2011

Man on Wire

UK/USA, 2008, 94 min, Color/B&W, PG-13

Directed by James Marsh; Starring Philippe Petit, Jean François Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau, Annie Allix

In 1974 tightrope walker Phillipe Petit and his cohorts masterminded a crime of international renown when they realized Petit's dream of performing a tightrope routine on a line strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This engaging film details the planning and execution of the "artistic crime", recalling a more innocent time and honoring the memory of the Twin Towers as they existed before September 11, 2001. This film won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Film Notes (David Lagos): On August 7, 1974, an impish Frenchman named Philippe Petit performed a 45-minute piece of guerilla performance art in the middle of Manhattan – walking a tightrope 1,350 feet above the ground between the two unfinished towers of the World Trade Center. Thirty-four years later, director James Marsh honored his bravura act by recounting the seven-year story behind the walk in a documentary based on Petit's 2002 memoir To Reach the Clouds. The result, Man on Wire, is an understated masterpiece of the form. It has the feel of a great caper film with a colorful cast of characters, none more enthralling than Petit himself, whose participation in Marsh's project is what gives this obviously freighted subject a disarming buoyancy and elan. A true artiste with an ego to match, Petit can be utterly charming and completely insufferable but is the perfect raconteur of his own epic tale.

By focusing on the back-story of the walk, Marsh allows us to live among Petit's merry band of co-conspirators and to get a sense for their worldview. A ringleader nonpareil, Petit somehow whips a motley hash of countercultural misfits into a workable team, all the while preserving his air of anarchic mischief. Indeed, one of the many emotions evoked by Man on Wire is regret for our lost sense of play. Watching these plotters breach the lax security around the WTC construction site, it seems inconceivable that such a "heist" could be pulled off today – or that it would be met with anything other than grim condemnation. And while a part of our selves circa 2011 might be tempted to condemn, the film reveals to us a Philippe Petit who was no mere hippie prankster but a true genius with a monk-like devotion to his craft. His great triumph, set against the elegiac period footage of the New York skyline, will stay with you. Among its countless honors, Man on Wire earned both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Award for Best World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. We can think of no better way to open the 2011-12 season of The Cinema, Inc.

October 9, 2011

Hidden (Caché)

France, 2005, 11

7 min, Color, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by Michael Haneke; Starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot

Michael Haneke's Caché (Hidden) taps into our primordial fear that we are being watched. When bourgeois couple Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) begin receiving anonymous videotapes of their house and phone calls from strangers asking for Georges, the two begin to question their safety, and their pasts. As the tension builds, Anne comes to believe that Georges is harboring a secret. Directed with Hitchcock-like precision, Haneke presents a mystery with enough camera tricks and tension to keep you thinking about it long after the infamous final shot has faded.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): "It's the same with [Caché] – if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different versions of Caché." ~Michael Haneke

You're walking down the street. You're late to a meeting. A stranger stops you and says, "Your house is being watched." He walks away. What do you do? How do you feel?

This is a scenario similar to the one in Michael Haneke's utterly disturbing thriller Caché, starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil as a bourgeois French couple. Their lives are perfect: they are both professional, respectable people with friends, a son, and plenty of money. Then again, this is cinema, so nothing is perfect.

It begins when they starting receiving anonymous videotapes on their doorstep of their house being recorded from a camera placed across the street from where they live. The tapes reveal that they pass the camera every morning, unaware of its existence. When they go to investigate, they find nothing.

Soon, disturbing childlike pictures begin to accompany the videotapes; the phone rings, they answer and no one is there. Amidst this paranoia, secrets from the past begin to come up and it seems that no one can really be trusted.

This film, which I hold in high regard as one of the most fascinating and deeply disturbing films of all time, is a pinnacle achievement for many reasons. One such is that it provides us the viewer with insightful commentary on post-9/11 anxieties.

Post-9/11 cinema has become a topic of interest for film critics and scholars because films made in the decade after 9/11 reflected a radical change in America. Many films focused on terrorism as the enemy (Babel) and even terrorist attacks (Munich) to show our growing xenophobia of other countries. Even such a film as Transformers takes the idea of Americans fighting terrorism to the next level. Films such as Cloverfield and Haneke's own remake of Funny Games depicted the horrors of outside "invaders" terrorizing normal, white-bread citizens.

Caché, while it is set in France and often alludes to the French-Algerian War, can be viewed as showing post-9/11 fears. Someone you do not know is videotaping your house. This may be cause for alarm if you were to tell someone that. Much like the villains in The Strangers did not initially terrorize but wait in the shadows, watching the couple go about their routine activities. It is a disturbing concept if you were to be told someone was watching you and your family.

Now onto the main reason for these film notes.

I have seen Caché over ten times but will never forget the first time I saw it, and how confused I was. What was happening? What did all of this mean? Is there symbolism? Much like watching Mulholland Drive for the umpteenth time, it helps to have "clues" as to decoding Caché's Vertigo-like puzzle.

I would like to provide you now with a Caché survival guide.

1. Caché exists in a universe of sight and mind and sound. There is no music in Caché and the majority of the film is visual. However, be sure to listen to conversations, taking in not only what they say, but how they say it. Oh, and don't ignore newscasts.

2. Point-Of-View is deceiving. Take this excerpt from an article on the film: "Most troublingly of all, Haneke shows us vital scenes from the point-of-view of this blank, affectless video-avenger; he invites us to share his destructive gaze. It is a casual critical truism when talking about voyeurism in the movies – discussing, say, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom - to say that it implicates the viewer. Until now, I have always felt like replying: speak for yourself, mate. Yet this really does implicate you. You feel like you too are participating in this terrible, remorseless destruction." ~Peter Bradshaw

3. Patience is a virtue. The genius of Caché is that there are long, drawn-out moments where nothing seems to happen, yet there is a foreboding feeling of macabre hanging over the scenes. Be patient.

4. Caché is about denial and guilt.

5. Final Act. *This is especially important in regard to the final scene.* It took my mother and me, when we viewed this movie for the first time, two rewinds to figure out what was so special about the last scene. And one thing stood out. The scene is a mosaic; like the pages of an I-Spy book, it is very difficult to find what you're looking for on the first try. This is where Haneke tricks us. Without giving much away, I can tell you not to look where your eyes want you to. Haneke places MacGuffins around this scene to trick where your eyes go. But if you look close enough, you may be able to find the solution to the mystery that is Caché.

Caché is such a brilliant film. If you are like me, and at the end of the film, the movie's images are burned into your mind, check out Roger Ebert's analysis of the film (link below). Ebert himself is fascinated by this film, and rightfully so.

The film premiered at Cannes in 2005, winning Haneke a prize for Best Director. It was listed first in The Times "Best 100 Films of the Decade", 44th in the Daily Telegraph's equivalent list, and 36th in The Guardian's.

Among many of Caché's admirers is director Martin Scorsese, who plans on remaking Caché with muse Leonardo DeCaprio. What an adventure that would be, indeed.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Hidden at Great Movies.

November 13, 2011

Black Narcissus

UK, 1947, 101 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar, Jean Simmons, Sabu

Anglican nuns attempt to establish a convent at the edge a sheer cliff in the Himalayas. Extreme conditions cause them to question their commitment to their task as they confront their demons in an extremely repressive atmosphere. Shangi-La run amok in a brilliant blaze of Technicolor, under the helm of director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes). Black Narcissus won Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction in 1948.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Is anyone capable of expressing repressed sexuality as well as Deborah Kerr? I would say that until she broke out of this typecast mold by rolling around in the waves with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity, no one actress besides Deborah Kerr epitomized the figure of the repressed female quite as well as she did, although co-star Kathleen Byron does give her a run for her money in this feature.

The story line of Black Narcissus reads like the dark side of James Hilton's Lost Horizon and his legend of Shangri-La. A group of Anglican nuns is stationed at an abandoned monastery that is built at the edge of a sheer cliff in a remote Himalayan village. Far from finding themselves living and thriving in a utopia, the nuns lead an insular existence, one which lends some of them to reflection and others to a sense of complete isolation from the world and, in some cases, from reality. Their existence is teetering on the brink of destruction, both literally and figuratively. Naturally, tensions and isolation merge into a lethal concoction and bring these unwitting people into a collision course with disaster as the potentially tragic story unfolds.

Yet, for me, the spectacularly understated performance of Deborah Kerr and the showier performance by Kathleen Byron are not what make this feature so memorable. It is the combined contribution of legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff and Production Designer Alfred Junge that takes this film from a melodrama to a masterpiece.

Cardiff's color palette is otherworldly and to say that it is vivid is to entirely understate the case. A Technicolor executive later stated that Black Narcissus was the premier example of Technicolor cinematography – ever. Alfred Junge was the mastermind who created the Himalayan scenery, allowing Cardiff to create the sensation of dizzying heights, plunging depths, and rarified air – all within the confines of the studio. Early in the process of making the film, director Michael Powell determined that actual location shots would have been so overpowering that they would have been a distraction from the acting. To keep this from happening, Junge used glass shots and hanging miniatures to create the sense of space that is photographed so realistically in the film. The backdrops were blown-up black and white photographs that were hand colored by the art department and captured in glorious Technicolor by Cardiff's camera.

In fact, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Jack Cardiff with the Academy Award for Cinematography for Black Narcissus. Michael Powell and Jack Cardiff teamed again in 1948's The Red Shoes, and Cardiff went on to more great films, including The African Queen in 1950. The Academy likewise recognized Alfred Junge's achievement by awarding him with the Academy Award for Art Direction for this film. And oh yes, not to be overlooked, Ms. Deborah Kerr took home the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress for this film, an award that preceded her six Oscar nominations, four BAFTA nominations, and one Emmy nomination and her starring roles in From Here to Eternity, The King and I and An Affair to Remember.

So, enjoy your trip to the Himalayas – and watch out for that last step. It's a doozy.

December 11, 2011

The Gold Rush

USA, 1925, 95 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Charles Chaplin; Starring Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Georgia Hale

The well-loved Chaplin classic stars Charlie as "The Lone Prospector" and features the legendary Dance of the Dinner Rolls as Charlie manages to triumph over extreme elements, starvation and unrequited love. This version appears with a voice-over narration added by Chaplin himself in a subsequent release.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): The term "Renaissance Man" describes a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. The prototype for such a person is Leonardo da Vinci, the original "Renaissance Man" who excelled in so many fields that they felt obliged to invent this term to describe him. Charles Spencer Chaplin, director and star of this month's film, might easily be another.

Charlie Chaplin was already a worldwide phenomenon when he wrote, directed, and starred in The Gold Rush. In addition to the aforementioned roles that he filled in this film, Chaplin wrote the musical score for this 1942 reissued version in which he also provided the voice-over that replaced the title cards from the 1925 version. His talent was massive and his perfectionism was legendary. Chaplin possessed an expressive face, a supple physique, and he played the cello quite well.

The Gold Rush is said to be one of Chaplin's least-improvised scripts, as he had worked on the idea for years prior to committing it to film. Chaplin initially conceived it as a means of conveying a supremely dark and tragic story, such as the cannibalistic tale of the doomed Donner party, in a comic fashion. By combining the Donner story line with the strike-it-rich tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, Chaplin effectively merged both story lines and a hit film resulted. Throughout the rest of his life, Chaplin repeatedly asserted that The Gold Rush was the film for which he would like to be remembered.

Here's the scenario: The Little Tramp (Chaplin) finds himself in the midst of the Gold Rush in the Klondike. Bad weather strands him in a remote cabin with a prospector (Mack Swain), who has found a large gold deposit, and an escaped fugitive (Tom Murray). They barely survive starvation, after which they part ways, with the prospector and the fugitive fighting over the prospector's claim, ending with the prospector receiving a blow to the head and the fugitive falling off a cliff to his death. The Tramp eventually finds himself in a gold rush town where he ultimately decides to give up prospecting and falls in love with a lonely saloon girl (Georgia Hale) whom he mistakenly thinks has fallen in love with him. He soon finds himself waylaid by the prospector he met earlier, who has developed amnesia and needs the Tramp to help him find his claim by leading him to the cabin.

The Gold Rush was a huge success in the US and worldwide. It is the fifth-highest grossing silent film in cinema history, taking in more than $4,250,001 at the box office in 1926, and the highest grossing silent comedy. Although it was truly a silent film, this re-released 1942 sound version of The Gold Rush received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Recording. Featuring the Dance of the Dinner Rolls and the shoe-eating sequences, we feel certain that you will strike it rich with this big-screen viewing of a timeless film treasure.

January 8, 2012

Sabotage

UK, 1936, 76 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester

Based on the Joseph Conrad novel The Secret Agent, this 1936 thriller is not to be confused with Hitchcock's other 1936 film Secret Agent, or his 1942 film Saboteur. A man and his wife operate a small cinema in London. Unbeknownst to the wife and her teenaged brother, the husband is part of a gang of foreign saboteurs being hunted by Scotland Yard. Sabotage was produced in England and contains a sequence that Hitchcock later said that he regretted as too distasteful for the audience.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): It's an otherwise uneventful afternoon. A crowded double-decker bus trundles down a busy London street. Stopping, starting, passengers boarding and disembarking. An elderly woman, a young boy, and a dog enjoy the ride, blissfully unaware that there is an improvised explosive device onboard the bus. Disaster lurks at every corner that the bus turns, and no one has any idea that the hand of a terrorist could at any moment alter their lives.

This sounds like a story from today's sensational headlines of terrorism being visited upon Western Europe. In reality, this is part of the story line of this month's feature, Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film Sabotage. In England during the 1920s and 1930s, sabotage was viewed as a clear and present danger by the MI5, the British version of the CIA. The British people were still reeling from the shock of the Soviet overthrow of the Russian monarchy, much as the shadows of 9/11 still haunt our own collective nightmares. To this heady mix, add the not-very-distant memories of the horrors of trench warfare in WWI to the depths of the worldwide depression of the 1930s, and you have a paranoid public, wearily viewing the rise of the Third Reich with a twitching, jaundiced eye. There is a very real fear that the natural order of things could easily break down, without warning and irrevocably.

Alfred Hitchcock eagerly explored this epidemic of fear by translating such books as Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps and Conrad's Secret Agent, the novel upon which this month's feature was based, into successful motion pictures. Sabotage revolves around a German plot to destroy London. An undercover detective is dispatched to survey the situation and disastrous complications occur when his cover is blown and the plot begins to unravel. 1930s audiences would have accepted this "MacGuffin" without question. It was part of the fabric of their lives at the time.

Sabotage is a less frequently viewed Hitchcock gem that incorporates several Hitchcockian mechanisms. Rapid cuts, oblique filming angles, close-ups on facial expressions, wordless sequences – all play a part here. This film also quite successfully exploits the concept of the theatre as a vehicle for bedlam, a device that Hitchcock employed in several films, including The 39 Steps, Torn Curtain, The Man Who Knew Too Much (both American and English versions), and Stage Fright, to name a few. The theme of cinematic depictions of violence stepping out of the realm of film and into reality is also explored here, a plot device that has since been replicated untold times, and was exploited by Quentin Tarantino in his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds.

In retrospect, Alfred Hitchcock said that Sabotage contained the most cold-blooded sequence that he ever filmed, and that he would never again subject an audience to that level of unremitted cruelty. At least not without a sly joke to break up the tension. This month's feature does not contain gratuitous violence, crude language, or frank depictions of sexuality, but it will still have you squirming in your seat from time to time. We promise.

February 12, 2012

The Blue Angel

Germany, 1930, 106 min, B&W, Not Rated, German w/subtitles

Directed by Josef von Sternberg; Starring Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Kurt Gerron, Rosa Valetti

Concerned by his students' fascination with a sultry night club singer, a professor (Emil Jannings) sets out to investigate, becomes seduced by the fascinating Lola (Marlena Dietrich), and causes his own eventual destruction. Featuring Dietrich's iconic performance of "Falling in Love Again," this is a prime example of German Expressionism at its best.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): The Blue Angel is a film about a Professor, Immanuel Rath (Emil Jennings), who leaves his natural habitat for the love of a woman who is not of his class, falling into a chaotic world he does not understand. In abandoning the "pigeonhole" that society has placed him in to try to possess a compelling force of nature, Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich), he loses everything – career, power, home, social standing, self-respect, and is finally destroyed by the choices he has made.

When the film opens, Professor Rath is a strict and humorless schoolmaster who is shocked when he discovers the boys in his class have been spending their time at a sleazy cabaret called The Blue Angel, where an entertainer named Lola keeps the men in thrall and sells suggestive postcards of herself. Rath goes to the club in hopes of catching his students and giving them a severe dressing-down, but he instead finds himself entranced by the carefree atmosphere of the club, and is struck by Lola's earthy, sensual beauty. Rath finds himself strongly attracted to Lola, and she later entertains him in her dressing room. When word of Rath's infatuation with Lola spreads to his students, he is taunted mercilessly, and eventually Rath is dismissed from the school. Although Lola agrees to marry Rath, she shows little affection for him and delights in humiliating him, making him her servant and forcing him to play a clown in her stage show.

The Blue Angel was shot in both German and English language versions and Dietrich introduced what became her theme song, Friedrich Hollaender's "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)". The film is considered to be the first major German sound film and it brought world fame to Dietrich.

March 11, 2012

Inferno (L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot)

France, 2009, 102 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea; Starring Romy Schneider, Bérénice Bejo, Serge Reggiani, Jacques Gamblin

In 1964 French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear, Diabolique) embarked on his most ambitious film to date: L'Enfer. After a frenetic 18 days of shooting he suffered a heart attack, and the production was shut down. More than 40 years later, film archivist Serge Bromberg discovered 185 cans of footage and pre-production tests from L'Enfer and set out to tell the story of Clouzot's unfinished masterwork. Combining interviews with surviving members of the cast and crew with clips of the actual film, Bromberg offers a glimpse into one of cinema's legendary ill-fated productions.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): Henri-Georges Clouzot (August 18, 1907 – January 12, 1977) was one of France's greatest film directors, with Diabolique (1955) and The Wages of Fear (1953) to his credit when he began work on L'Infer in 1964. The film was never completed, but Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea have constructed a fascinating documentary on the shooting of the film. This is the story of a bizarre project that was doomed to failure from the beginning.

You could argue that Clouzot was a Gallic Hitchcock, darker and more intense, and that if things had worked out right, 1964's Inferno might have been his Vertigo — a mature masterpiece.

Instead, the film gave its maker a breakdown and a heart attack. The director of this new documentary – part history, part restoration, all fascinating – is Serge Bromberg, who got hooked when he was stuck in a stalled elevator with a woman who turned out to be Clouzot's widow. She led him to 185 cans of film, remnants of a movie that might have changed the history of cinema.

That sounds like hyperbole until you see the test footage shot by Clouzot and his crew. Inferno was to tell the story of Marcel (Serge Reggiani), a newly-married man consumed with pathological jealousy toward his wife, Odette (Romy Schneider). While the "real-life" scenes were filmed in black and white, Clouzot shot Marcel's inner fantasies in hothouse Technicolor and subjected them to tonal filters, prismatic lenses, swirling lighting schemes – an entire gamut of visual distortions that owed much to then-new movements like Op Art and kinetic art. Even the soundtrack was manipulated via editing and psycho-acoustic music techniques to reflect the hero's fraying mental state.

The results are like nothing you've seen before: Clouzot seemed to be reinventing the medium itself. During pre-production, a group of Hollywood studio executives from Columbia Pictures turned up, looked at the tests, and gave the director unlimited financial backing. That freedom may have ultimately doomed his creative project. When the time came to actually shoot Inferno, Clouzot overloaded the production with three separate camera teams and obsessively reshot the same scenes over and over until Reggiani quit and the crew mutinied. After three weeks, the production was shut down due to cost overruns and the heart attack of Clouzot. This documentary is a tantalizing glimpse of a highly creative and experimental filmmaker at work.

April 8, 2012

My Architect: A Son's Journey

USA, 2003, 116 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Nathaniel Kahn; Starring Edmund Bacon, Edwina Pattison Daniels, Balkrishna Doshi, Frank Gehry

My Architect is filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn's inquiry into the life and work of his father, renowned architect Louis Kahn. Through interviews with Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, and his own mother and two half-sisters, the filmmaker tries to reconcile his father's achievements with his profound personal failings. He also travels the globe to view his father's legacy – the buildings he designed throughout the world.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): It is said the advancement of civilization is punctuated by the advancement of architecture's ability to span a space, e.g. post and lintel, the arch, the vault, the dome, the truss beam, tension and suspension structures.

Good architecture is to the plastic arts what opera is to the performing arts. Opera embraces all the stagecraft of theatre plus the talents of a symphony's musicians, a ballet's dancers, and, of course, the vocal artists themselves. Architecture involves form with function, advanced engineering with the artful use of materials, an aesthetic exploitation of light with textures on the space within and the landscape without.

Great architecture becomes iconic of its time and place, e.g. the Parthenon, Saint Peter's, Notre Dame, the Chrysler Building, and the Sydney Opera. (When your Cinema, Inc. Board of Directors selected the films in December 2010 for this season – our 46th – we had no way of knowing that the Triangle chapter of the American Institute of Architects' North Carolina branch would within a month break ground on Peace Street for the construction of what just last month was voted Raleigh's ugliest building.)

Louis Kahn may be the one great American architect least likely to be listed along with such giants as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. There are three reasons for this oversight: he died unexpectedly with many domestic works undone, his most noteworthy projects were done abroad, and his lasting influence was in large measure the result of his many years as an educator at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.

Born in Estonia 111 years ago, he immigrated to Philadelphia with his family when he was five. His graphic art talents were redirected when he took a compulsory high school course on architecture. After receiving a Bachelor of Architecture degree and working for the city of Philadelphia, he traveled to Europe where he was influenced by medieval walled cities and castles. This shows itself in the monumental scope of his greatest achievements, a bold break from the dominant glass boxes of the International Style making Kahn the American founding father of the oddly named Brutalism movement, an elegant reinterpretation of ancient ruins made best known by the works of France's Le Corbusier.

Kahn's death by heart attack in the men's room of New York's Penn Station in 1974 made public the fact that he in fact had three families… three children by three women only one of which was his wife by a marriage in 1930. Nathaniel was his only son, the child of his last 'affair.' Only eleven when his father died, he had far too few memories of his father to define himself as the son of a great man. In place of a photo album, Nathaniel had his father's projects to flesh out his understanding of the man he barely knew. He traveled the world to find his father's students, colleagues, and contemporaries; to explore his father's works; and to meet his half-sisters and their mothers. Come along and enjoy this Oscar-nominated voyage of discovery.

PS: A North Carolina viewer will feel all the more enlightened to see just how the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (1967–1972) informs the new addition to our state's Museum of Art.

May 13, 2012

Amélie

France/Germany, 2001, 122 min, Color/B&W, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet; Starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta, Dominique Pinon

An irresistible toast to life, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie follows the title character (Audrey Tautou) as she literally change the lives of those around her. When Amélie meets and falls in love with a shy adult-store worker, she realizes that, in helping to change other peoples' lives, she is disregarding her own. Propelled by Yann Tiersen's exhilarating musical score, Bruno Delbonnel's vivid cinematography, and Tautou's irresistible charm, Amélie ranks as one of the cinema's finest odes to life and love, and a refreshing homage to the golden age of Hollywood.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): What a treat when those beautiful French pastries in the bakery window actually taste as splendid as they look! Well, that is just the case with Amélie. This 2001 French confection promises to be grand fun. It is that and more.

Its original title was Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (aka The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain), which gives a fuller sense of the joys that await. It is the droll tale of a little girl with what seems to be karmic power who grows up to be a beautiful but shy mademoiselle searching for the human connection denied her as a child.

Played by Audrey Tautou (sharing more than a first name with a certain Hepburn), the adult Amélie is a waitress in Montmartre who decides to help others mend their lives. She will be a guardian angel or a matchmaker or whatever the situation requires. Her interventions are sometimes poignant, sometimes amusing, but always conducted with the best of intentions. When she is smitten by an equally odd young Nino (Mathieu Kassovitz), who collects discarded pictures from instant-photo booths, will she be able to do more than observe the world from the sidelines? Will she risk mending her own life?

Perhaps you can guess the answer but getting there is all the fun. Paris never looked more appealing. And if you aren't smitten yourself by Tautou by the end of the film, maybe you are missing le cœur. Très triste!

This international production by film companies in France and Germany was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who co-authored it with Guillaume Laurant. It was well received critically and was an international box office success. Amélie won Best Film at the European Film Awards and was nominated for five Academy Awards.

June 10, 2012

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette)

Italy, 1948, 89 min, B&W, Not Rated, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Vittorio De Sica; Starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, Elena Altieri

A definitive work of Italian Neo-Realism, The Bicycle Thief tells the story of Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorana), an unemployed man in post-War Rome who finds a job pasting up posters – work requiring a bicycle. When the bicycle is stolen, Antonio and his young son, Bruno (Enzo Staiola), embark on a desperate search across the city. An indelible portrait of the bond between Antonio and Bruno, The Bicycle Thieves won a special Academy Award as "most outstanding foreign film", seven years before that category existed. In the words of Arthur Miller, "It is as though the soul of man had been filmed."

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): "I've been cursed since the day I was born"

It would seem very unusual to start a reflection about a film so moving as Bicycle Thieves with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but spare me a moment.

About a week ago, I took my friends to see Psycho at a movie theater. This would be their first time experiencing the Hitchcock masterpiece and I was jealous that they were watching that film knowing very little about its history or story for the first time. Upon walking out after the credits rolled, one of my friends, an aspiring filmmaker himself, turned to me and reflectively said, "You know it's funny how the best movies are made around the simplest of concepts." This is why I love my friends.

It is true. Some of the greatest films of all time are the simplest. Renoir's Rules of the Game is merely about servants and their masters engaging in foul play during a weekend in the country. The Wizard of Oz – A Kansas girl follows a yellow brick road to go home. Okay, it's a bit more complicated than that.

But I found this simple concept idea alive when I watched Bicycle Thieves. A man whose job centers around his bicycle must set out to find the object when it is stolen from him.

The story, while simple in concept, does delve into deeper issues and dilemmas. One that I noticed upon a second viewing was the relationship between the father and his son when the bicycle is stolen.

De Sica, the film's director, uses the bicycle to represent the universal feeling of suffering inside all of us. What happens when something we invest all of our time and money into disappears; what are we then left with? Where I think De Sica succeeds is showing the way that the main character of Antonio tries to hide the bike's disappearance from his son Bruno. In one scene, Antonio picks Bruno up from school, taking the bus to arrive there. Bruno asks where the bike is. Antonio replies that it is broken. Is Antonio hiding shame from his son? Afraid his son might think him a failure if he admits the truth? Or is this simply paternal, Antonio trying to hide the realism of life from his son?

This is what makes Bicycle Thieves, in my opinion, one of the greatest films of all time. It is starkly realistic in its portrayal of emotions such as the ones Antonio feels towards Bruno and easily relatable by anyone. It is terribly difficult to not relate to Antonio's situation of loss and suffering.

Bicycle Thieves has been praised over the years for this realism and universality, having been awarded a special Academy Award in 1950. Four years after its release, it was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound magazine. In 2002, it was named the sixth greatest movie ever made by Sight and Sound's director poll and ranked tenth on the British Film Institute's list of fifty films you should see by the age of 14.

It is a film to be cherished, a film to be lauded, a film to be loved. Ask anyoe who has seen it, their face lights up. In Bicycle Thieves we see ourselves on the screen, we see our lives going about in these characters. Like life itself, Bicycle Thieves is a journey we go on, even if it is only for a while. We go down its path and at the end, we arrive at the place we've started and know it for the very first time.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) at Great Movies.

July 8, 2012

The Fallen Idol

UK, 1948, 95 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Carol Reed; Starring Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Bobby Henrey

Eight-year-old Phil (Bobby Henrey) idolizes Baines (Ralph Richardson), the butler to his ambassador father. As the unwitting witness to Baines' tea-room tryst with an embassy staffer, Phil becomes the solemn bearer of a secret. But when an idyllic afternoon at the zoo is followed by a nighttime tragedy, and those soft-spoken police arrive to ask all those polite questions, Phil enters a world of lies that unintentionally implicate his idol in murder. Author/screenwriter Graham Greene's personal favorite of his film adaptations (from his story, The Basement Room), The Fallen Idol was Greene's first collaboration with Carol Reed (followed by The Third Man), and ranks with the director's best work.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): "Little pitchers have big ears." And eyes, let alone the size of their chattering mouths, as it turns out in this month's feature, The Fallen Idol. Based on the Graham Greene short story "The Basement Room", The Fallen Idol depicts the tale of Phillipe (Bobby Henrey), the young son of a French diplomat stationed in London just after WWII. Phillipe rarely sees his mother or father and he forms a bond with the butler, Baines (Sir Ralph Richardson), who also resides at the residence with his wife (Sonia Dresdel). Phillipe idolizes Baines for his invented tales of heroic deeds during the War in Africa, and is peripherally aware of an involvement that Baines has with a younger and more attractive woman, Julie (Michèle Morgan), although he believes Julie to be Baines' niece. When Baines' wife dies from a tragic fall in the residence, Phillipe tells lies to protect his idol from suspicion of what he believes to be a murder. Tensions rise as Phillipe is drawn into this web of scandal and deceit as his misinterpretation of adults' activities cause him to complicate matters further, making Baines appear guilty not of adultery but of murder. When Phillipe finally decides to tell the truth, no one believes him anymore.

Carol Reed directed this film in 1947. Although it could be considered a film noir, it is also a character study and a psychological drama. The film is steeped in post-War angst and features scenes of a stark, post-War London landscape. Boundaries and mores seem to have gone by the wayside and the characters seem to be adrift in many ways. Phillipe is an isolated child who longs for a parent figure, a cinematic reflection of the reality experienced by so many orphaned children in the years following the War. He is an outsider in a strange country, observing corrupt adult behavior being conducted by someone that he idolizes. All of these elements combine to create a psychological thriller worthy of its two Academy Award nominations and its BAFTA and Golden Globe wins. Carol Reed went on to direct The Third Man in 1948, bringing to life another film that features the effects of the war on society and the plight that an innocent outsider faces in confronting a changed and changing post-war era.

The actor at the center of it all is Bobby Henrey, an untrained and untutored actor making his first film appearance here. Reed extensively observed Henrey in candid off-screen moments and directed him in a completely unstudied performance, making full use of the boy's own gestures that he would naturally employ in place of standard cinematic "business". Reed did not divulge the entire plot of the movie to the underage Henrey and the adult aspects of the film were also kept from him. This approach coupled with innovative directing skills would land Reed in good stead years later when he directed Oliver!, with another highly lauded juvenile cast, a film for which he finally won an Academy Award in 1968.

August 12, 2012

Draughtsman's Contract

UK, 1982, 108 min, Color, R

Directed by Peter Greenaway; Starring Anthony Higgins, Janet Suzman, Anne-Louise Lambert, Hugh Fraser

Set in 17th-century England, this erotically charged film features an aristocratic wife (Janet Suzman) who commissions a young draughtsman (Anthony Higgins) to sketch her husband's property. As the draughtsman becomes entangled in the devious scheming in the idyllic estate, details emerge in his drawings that may reveal a murder. A feast of intricate wordplay, extravagant costumes and opulent photography, The Draughtman's Contract weaves a mystery around the maxim "draw what you see, not what you know."

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "There are only two subject matters, one is sex and the other is death." ~Peter Greenaway

It is hot. It has been hot. It will remain hot until deep into September. If all your fevered brain can handle at this point is a nice escapist movie, then The Draughtsman's Contract is not for you. While it contains a mystery in an English country house and grounds, if you are anticipating a nice, comfy whodunit with a satisfying denouement that neatly wraps up all the loose ends, then The Draughtsman's Contract is not for you. In these lazy days of summer, if you require loud action-packed pictures with plenty of jump cuts and close-ups to stay awake, The Draughtsman's Contract is not for you. If you feel uncomfortable viewing onscreen nudity, sex, or indeed murder, The Draughtsman's Contract is not for you. If you prefer your heroes heroic, your heroines pristine and your plotlines straightforward, The Draughtsman's Contract is not for you.

On the other hand, if you are intrigued by a film that demands your active participation and undivided attention as you peruse every corner and aspect of the onscreen imagery for hints to its meaning, carefully noting how the scene is framed, mentally sifting through conversational red herrings, double entendres and bon mots, searching for tenuous clues and patterns, then do not miss The Draughtsman's Contract. If you are unafraid of ambiguity and stimulated by cinema that is open to multivalent meanings depending on your background and interests, then do not miss The Draughtsman's Contract. If you enjoy brain teasers, intellectual games, and sheer outright visual splendor, do not miss The Draughtsman's Contract.

For the undaunted and adventurous cinephile, a little background on the final presentation of this Cinema, Inc. season: Peter Greenaway deliberately set The Draughtsman's Contract in 1694 because it is "the year when the Bank of England was founded. The Catholic Stuart dynasty has just been ousted, and a new Protestant mercantile ethos was just settling in." He argues, "The 17th century has created the modern world. Here begins, especially in a British perspective, the institution of monarchy, democracy, the collapse of religion, the beginnings of empirical thought and the scientific revolution."

Amongst all this progressive march towards modernity, it bears mentioning that the 17th century is also a time when married women could not own property; in fact, married women were property. According to the daughter of Mr. Herbert, the landowner in the film, her father prizes his possessions in the following order of importance: "a house, a garden, a horse, a wife…"

Seems Mr. Herbert has scheduled a fortnight trip. While he is away, his wife wishes to hire a draughtsman to draw a series of a dozen views of the Herberts' estate, ostensibly to present to her husband upon his return. After much negotiation, a most remarkable contract is crafted.

It is hot. It has been hot. It will remain hot until deep into September. Perhaps you might care to join us in a stimulating dip into the verdant baroque world of The Draughtsman's Contract.

Season 45 2010 – 2011

September 12, 2010

Don Juan DeMarco

USA, 1994, 97 min, Color, PG-13

Directed by Jeremy Leven; Starring Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway

In a wonderful late-career performance, Marlon Brando plays Dr. Jack Mickler, a clinical psychiatrist on the brink of retirement from a New York mental hospital. He is assigned to care for a dashing but suicidal young man, John R. DeMarco (Johnny Depp), who wears a mask and cape and claims to be the great lover, Don Juan. The avowed seducer of more than a thousand women has been brought low at the hands of his one true, but unobtainable, love. With just ten days to cure "Don Juan" of his delusion, Mickler has him relate his fantastical life story. As their sessions unfold, the passionate youth exerts a powerful effect on the hospital staff and on Mickler's own relationship with his wife, Marilyn (Faye Dunaway). The world-weary doctor starts to believe that his patient might really be Don Juan after all.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love." ~Don Juan DeMarco

Once upon a time, Johnny Depp, an actor known for playing offbeat roles, dating starlets and supermodels, destroying a hotel room and his 21 Jump Street teen idol status, read a script by first-time director Jeremy Leven. Leven, a clinical psychologist who also founded, wrote, and directed The Proposition, a satirical political revue that ran off-Broadway for ten years and launched Jane Curtin's career, had refused as much as $2 million for the script. He was still in recovery from a previous cinematic misadventure with the Weinstein brothers who not only co-directed, but so heavily rewrote his screenplay Playing for Keeps that Bob and Harvey Weinstein are credited as the first and second writers on the film with Leven limping in at third. The movie flopped resoundingly, making Leven even more determined to direct his latest script himself.

Leven envisioned Johnny Depp as Don Juan DeMarco. Depp purportedly loved the character, but threatened to walk away from the project if he was not granted one wish: Marlon Brando. If Leven could sign the actor that Depp most admired – the elusive and reclusive Brando – to the role of psychiatrist Dr. Jack Mickler, Johnny Depp would play the title role. Much to the surprise and amazement of all, Leven did. Along the way, he also enticed Faye Dunaway to play Mickler's wife of 32 years. They had a movie…

And what a movie! A beautiful young man believes he is the greatest lover of all time. Dressed in a cape and mask and sporting a suspicious Spanish accent, he could be considered a joke or a caricature, perhaps even crazy. Yet women indeed do find him irresistible. All except one. The one. His one true love. Despondent, he contemplates ending his life.

Enter Dr. Jack Mickler, ten days away from retirement, who takes on this final challenge. Worn out, empty, beaten down, and feeling unutterably old, depleted and tired, Mickler discovers something magical in Don Juan DeMarco. Who is curing whom? Like Mickler, the willing viewer of Don Juan DeMarco can be enticed into throwing off cynicism, suspending disbelief in romantic love and the soul's ability to transcend itself for another, and – for at least 97 minutes – be transported to a secret, inner, romantic room lit by candles and scented with flowers where one still believes in love and life and redemption.

Surrender. Allow yourself to be seduced by this true romantics' romantic comedy. You could live happily ever after.

"When I say that all my women are dazzling beauties, they object. The nose of this one is too large; the hips of another, they are too wide; perhaps the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are… glorious, radiant, spectacular, and perfect, because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me the way that they do, Don Octavio, because they sense that I search out the beauty that dwells within until it overwhelms everything else." ~Don Juan DeMarco

October 10, 2010

Mafioso

Italy, 1962, 105 min, B&W, Not Rated, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Alberto Lattuada; Starring Alberto Sordi, Norma Bengell, Gabriella Conti, Ugo Attanasio

A dark comedy with strong neo-realist influences, Mafioso was one of the first Italian features to address the subject of Cosa Nostra. Alberto Sordi stars as Antonio, a Sicilian working in a gleaming, modern Fiat factory in Milan. As the movie opens, Antonio prepares to take his lovely blonde wife, Marta (Norma Bengell), and their daughters to see his hometown of Calamo, Sicily. Before leaving, he agrees to deliver a gift from his boss to Don Vincenzo (Ugo Attanasio) in Calamo. On the ferry, Antonio beams with pride as the isle of his birth comes into view. His delight grows as he introduces his bride and children to his eccentric relations. Antonio's holiday comes to a sudden end, however, when Don Vincenzo asks him for a favor. Leaving his family (ostensibly on a hunting trip), Antonio embarks on an unexpected journey. Viewed through the lens of later American movies such as The Godfather trilogy, Mafioso offers a counterpoint to our voyeuristic fascination with the Mob. This forgotten gem was re-released to raves in 2007.

Film Notes (David Lagos): Director Alberto Lattuado's Mafioso ranks with the finest Italian cinema of the 1960s, on par artistically with Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Antonioni's L'Avventura. Though set in Sicily and addressing the topic of Cosa Nostra, Mafioso is not a "mob movie" – or not primarily so. It is at once a story about the return of the local boy made good, a comedic fish out of water tale, and a tragic meditation on a society governed by a pre-modern code of honor. (Viewers interested in the film's sociological aspect will find a closer-to-home parallel to many of the dynamics explored by Lattuado in Richard E. Nesbit and Dov Cohen's seminal study Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Westview Press, 1996)). Mafioso is also a director's lovingly satirical portrait of his country's regional character, indulging every conceivable cliché about the industrious, chic, but bloodless Northern Italians and their voluble, coarse, and lazy countrymen in the South. Though tagged as black comedy, Lattuado's masterpiece constantly modulates its tone – from broad comedy of manners, to pastoral idyll, to family melodrama, to ruminative character study, to neo-realist travelogue, to bleak existential tragedy – without sacrificing any of its narrative power.

What makes Mafioso's protean mood so exhilarating, rather than disorienting, is the virtuoso performance of its star, the iconic Italian actor Alberto Sordi (1920-2003). Sordi plays Antonio Badalamenti, a successful if somewhat simple-minded executive in Milan who is planning to return home to Calamo, Sicily, for a two-week family vacation. When we meet Antonio, he is the very picture of modern technical efficiency, striding the factory floor in a white lab coat, clipboard in hand. When an intimidated employee hastens his pace of his work, the precise Antonio consults a stopwatch and chides the man for performing the task too quickly. Before leaving, Antonio stops to visit his boss, who asks him to deliver a gift to Don Vincenzo in Calamo. We learn that this will be Antonio's first trip back to Sicily since coming to work on the mainland. It will also be the first opportunity for his extended family to meet his blond Milanese wife, Marta (Brazilian actress Norma Bengell), and two young daughters. By the time the ferry deposits him and his new family on the isle of his birth, Antonio has shed his polished corporate veneer and is positively beaming with excitement. Sordi finds great pathos in his character's swings from the pure joy of homecoming to the fretful anxiety over the yawning gulf between his chic urban wife and his provincial and less-than-welcoming family – particularly his mother, whose sullen tightlipped glares speak volumes. The détente orchestrated by Marta is both a humorous high point of the movie and an inspiration to all who struggle to win over their in-laws.

Although Antonio receives a hero's welcome in Calamo, his story takes a darker turn when he takes his new family to pay his respects and deliver his boss's gift to Don Vincenzo (Ugo Attanasio). Nino's sense of identity and familial loyalty are put to the test in a way that elevates Mafioso to an almost surreal level of dramatic potency. As you watch the film's final third, bear in mind that it prefigures Francis Ford Coppola's more famous Godfather trilogy by more than a decade. By presenting a mirror image of Vito Corleone's return to Sicily in The Godfather II, Lattuado's Mafioso manages to retroactively heighten and enrich our experience of Coppola's work. (For fans of The Sopranos, it also provides a similar counterpoint to Tony Soprano's trip to Naples in Season 2).

Because the food of Sicily plays such an important role in Mafioso, it is fitting to conclude these notes with a recipe inspired by "The Island of the Sun":

Sicilian Almond & Dried Tomato Pesto

Makes about 1 pint

* 1-1/2 cups oven- or sun-dried tomatoes (see Note)

* 1-1/3 cups whole raw almonds (about 7 ounces)

* 1/4 cup (packed) fresh mint leaves (about half a regular-size bunch)

* 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chile flakes, to taste

* 2 large garlic cloves

* 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

* 1-1/3 cups hot water

* Kosher salt, to taste

Instructions: Roughly chop dried tomatoes (not in oil), and rehydrate with hot water. If using oil-packed dried tomatoes, drain them well, discard oil and chop. Combine tomatoes, almonds, mint, chile flakes, garlic, oil, and hot water in the bowl of the food processor. Pulse until it forms a coarse paste. Add salt to taste. If not planning on using the pesto immediately, place in a tall, narrow glass jar, cover with a thin layer of olive oil, and store in the refrigerator.

Note: Dry the tomatoes by halving them, spreading them cut side-up on a foil-lined baking sheet, and drying them in a 200° oven several hours or overnight.

Buon Appetito!

November 14, 2010

Why We Fight

France/UK/Canada, 2005, 98 min, Color/B&W, PG-13

Directed by Eugene Jarecki; Starring Ken Adelman, John Ashcroft, Osama bin Laden, George Bush

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, Eugene Jarecki's documentary is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine. Weaving personal vignettes with commentary by John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle and others, Why We Fight mounts a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the apparatus decried by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the "military industrial complex." This film digs beneath the headlines about American military operations to explore the political, economic, and ideological forces that drive us to wage perpetual war against an ever-changing enemy. Inspired by Frank Capra's film series that explored the reasons for entering World War II, Jarecki's Why We Fight raises questions that have particular resonance today: Why are we doing what we're doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?

Film Notes (Ian Krabacher): Why We Fight is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a "who's who" of military and beltway insiders. Directed by Eugene Jarecki, it won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Featuring interviews with John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle, and many others, Why We Fight launches a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex and the rise of the American Empire.

Inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's legendary farewell speech (in which he coined the phrase "military industrial complex"), filmmaker Jarecki surveys the scorched landscape of a half-century's military adventures, asking how – and telling why – a nation of, by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant war.

The film moves beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the deeper questions of why – why does America fight? What are the forces – political, economic, ideological – that drive us to fight against an ever-changing enemy?

"Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called Why We Fight that explored America's reasons for entering the war," Jarecki notes. "Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?'"

Prior film projects for Jarecki include The Trials of Henry Kissinger, which was released theatrically to critical acclaim in 130 US cities. Winner of the 2002 Amnesty International Award, the film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and has been broadcast in over thirty countries. In 2002, The Trials of Henry Kissinger was selected to launch the Sundance Channel's DOCday venture as well as BBC's prestigious digital channel BBC4.

Recently, Jarecki has just completed co-directing a new documentary entitled Freakonomics, based on the book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. Jarecki directed the "It's Not Always a Wonderful Life" segment.

In addition to his work in film, Jarecki is also the founder and Executive Director of The Eisenhower Project, an academic public policy group dedicated, in the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower, to studying the forces that shape American foreign policy.

Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2005, exactly forty-four years after Eisenhower's farewell address. Despite the film's critical acclaim and success at Sundance, it received only a limited public cinema release on January 20, 2005, and was then released on DVD on June 27, 2005, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Cinema Inc is pleased to bring Why We Fight back to the big screen November 14th, 2010.

Question & Answers with Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki:

Q: What is the film Why We Fight about?

A: The perils of empire. I think the film is ultimately about where America is today, how we got here, and where we are going. For many people, the war in Iraq and the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war seem like a frightening new chapter in the history of US foreign policy. But what I learned in making the film is that where we are today is as much an extension of the past as a departure from it. Since World War II, America has been on a path toward empire. Eisenhower and Washington before him warned us that to build and protect an empire requires standing armies – a permanent military establishment – and that these come to threaten democracy itself. Eisenhower warned of "destroying from within that which you are trying to protect from without."

Q: What compelled you to make the film?

A: Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. In his 1961 Farewell Address as President, Dwight Eisenhower surprised everyone when he warned America that a "military-industrial complex" was acquiring national influence that could threaten democracy on a global scale. At a time of exploding defense profits and when an unprecedented number of people inside the government hail from former posts at defense contractors, I wanted to investigate whether Eisenhower's fears have come to pass.

Q: Why We Fight was actually the title of a series of films made by Frank Capra during World War II. Why did you borrow the title?

A: To connect past and present. After Pearl Harbor, Frank Capra was asked to make a series of films examining America's reasons for entering World War II. Back then, the reasons were clear – fascism, genocide, oppression. Today, if you ask people why we are fighting in Iraq, I think the reasons are far less clear. So much has changed about how Americans see themselves and our role in the world. If Frank Capra asked his question today, I wondered, what would they look like? PS – We didn't just borrow Capra's title. In some cases we also borrowed beautiful images from his films to portray America from that time.

Q: There are a number of people whose stories are told in the film. Who are they and what interested you about them?

A: They are part of America's military family. People are the victims of war, but they are also its perpetrators. At every level, from the White House to the defense factory to the front line, it is people that make wars happen. So looking at why America fights would be incomplete without portraying the stories of people whose lives are interwoven in the American war machine – from its dreamers to its disillusioned. There are a handful of characters in the film and, without giving the surprises in their stories, I can say that each of them had a unique twist that drew me to them – something I didn't expect that made me rethink my preconceptions.

Q: What do you most want people to take away from the film?

A: A sense of urgency. Americans today are at a crossroads. With the public deeply divided over the Iraq war and a number of domestic issues, people across the political spectrum are examining more closely than ever America's identity at home and abroad. These people – what Eisenhower called an "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" – have more in common than they think. Real change is not made or broken by who wins a given election or scores short-term points. Rather, it comes when people look closely at how they are governed and what their society represents.

Q: What was the greatest challenge in making the film?

A: After making my last film The Trials of Henry Kissinger, I traveled to theaters across the country to talk to audiences and answer questions. I was surprised how much people wanted to talk about Henry Kissinger the man rather than the system he represents.

This time, I wanted to make a film that would not offer a simple villain, but instead invite viewers to look more broadly at the system itself. Why America is systemically geared to fight wars is a far deeper issue than the particular actions of any one person.

But it is a real challenge – as I discovered – to make a film without a villain. People like to have someone they can love to hate. But the problem is that too often the villain you choose is really a proxy for a system that itself needs repair. Stopping at the villain – whether it's Henry Kissinger, George Bush or anyone – is stopping short. It may feel satisfying. But it is politically impotent.

Q: The film covers a number of highly sensitive subjects. How did you get access?

A: Early on in the process, we were given approval by the Department of Defense to interview people up and down the chain of command. Once we got access, we discovered – no surprise – that people want to tell their story. At times, I found the people we spoke to in the military wonderfully candid. Sometimes people who see the film ask me, "Did you tell people what the movie was about?" I say I always did when asked, but often, the military personnel didn't ask too many questions. I think many in the military feel they are fighting for freedom – including the freedom of a documentary-maker to explore a sensitive subject of his choice. So in a way, if they would have to ask me what I am doing, then what are they fighting for?

Q: The film's title asks a question. Do you answer it?

A: Yes and no. My first goal was to ask the question. When you ask Americans why we fight they give reasons that are understandable to them – freedom, democracy, national security. But inside the Pentagon, you discover forces driving the war machine that are so much more textured. This gap between perception and reality is at the heart of Why We Fight. Of course, there can't be one right answer to a complex question, but my hope was at least to close the gap a bit.

Q: Why do you think we are fighting in Iraq?

A: Many reasons. There have been so many reasons given for why we are in Iraq – from WMDs to oil, from a democratic crusade to the desire by influential geostrategists to reassert American global power in the wake of 9/11. None of these answers alone is comprehensive. Rather, I think they're all partially true. The war seems to have been of shared service to a range of interests – a coming together of imperial thinkers, global petroleum concerns, and a culture of militarism that tilts toward/requires war to self-perpetuate. After 9/11, all of these came together to create the almost unexplainable momentum that pushed the country to war.

December 12, 2010

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg)

France/West Germany, 1964, 91 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jacques Demy; Starring Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel

Jacques Demy's masterpiece of music and romance, which won the Grand Prize at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, propelled 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve to international stardom. A pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director's own description, a film in song, this simple romantic tragedy begins with Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, falling in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery (Deneuve), who works in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel). Considered one of the most beautiful color films ever made, Umbrellas of Cherbourg was restored to its former glory and re-released in 1992 under the supervision of Demy's widow, Agnès Varda.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): The first notes heard in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are those of a solo flute playing the notes of the central melody "I Will Wait for You." A French horn then echoes this melody, adding harmony. More instruments come into play in a quasi-canon of the melody. The orchestra plays in unison as the main titles appear in front of a line of brightly colored umbrellas. The music is haunting, romantic, and has a hypnotic sound to it. We hear it and immediately we are in love.

And so begins the film: a beautifully acted and executed film where all of the dialogue is sung and the actors move with such fluidity, they seem to dance rather than move. A film where the most ordinary of images seems about as beautiful as rose petals.

This is the work of Jacques Demy, whose intention of making this movie was to bring to the silver screen something different and unique. Sure enough, he succeeded.

The film's plot is rather simple: Gas station attendant Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and umbrella shop clerk Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) are truly, madly, deeply in love. They fantasize about married life, do not seem to care for arguments with one another, and they both feel as though they are complete when the other is with them. When Guy is drafted, Geneviève must come to terms with the fact that she may never see Guy again. Her mother wants her to forget about Guy and marry a man solely for the purpose of financial security. Geneviève finds that hard to do, seeing as she is carrying Guy's child.

Umbrellas' plot may seem to be one you would find in a bargain-rack novelette, though Demy creates a unique and magical cinematic experience through his use of color, music, and images. An umbrella shop filled with purple wallpaper, a gas station covered with snow, all of these images are exhilarating to watch on the screen, big or small. Yet when it was first released, Demy was nervous about the quality of the colors on the film's negatives. Demy shot Umbrellas on Eastman negative stock which ultimately faded rapidly and was nearly unusable. After being circulated so much around theaters in the 1960s, the colors on the negatives began to fade, meaning audiences could not see the rich colors Demy intended.

In response, he made black-and-white copies of the original in a process similar to that of the Technicolor process called "three color bands." Fortunately for Demy, these prints had a greater longevity and in the 1990s, Demy's wife helped fund a project to create a color print from the black-and-white copies.

The result? The film as we know it today.

The film has a long history also with its composer and leading lady. Because of this film, Michael Legrand enjoyed enormous acclaim and success in Hollywood and quickly established himself as a composer of great passion, emotion, and originality. The score was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Original Score and Best Scoring-Adaptation or Treatment.

Umbrellas' most famous song "I Will Wait for You" was nominated for Best Original Song and has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to the London Philharmonic. Tony Bennett recorded the song "Watch What Happens," using the theme from "Cassard's Story" in the film with new English lyrics.

The film also launched the career of its leading lady, Catherine Deneuve. Audiences saw her raw emotional power in Geneviève and immediately knew that many great things would come of her. Over one year after Umbrellas was released, an up-and-coming director by the name of Roman Polanski would direct Deneuve in a disturbing and claustrophobic movie called Repulsion, which would establish Deneuve as an actress who could play and own any role given to her.

Umbrellas has a way of dazzling the senses of its audience. The colors on the screen combined with Michael Legrand's continuous musical score make for a truly magical cinematic experience. Critics and viewers throughout the ages have all but criticized this film; it is a rare gem of a movie that, from the get-go, captures our interest and emotions and keeps them close, never letting go.

Even if you are not a fan of subtitled movies, operas, or musicals, Umbrellas will surely change your mind, if only for just for a second. We live in the movie, we feel all of the characters' emotions in each frame which makes the ending of the film even more riveting than the last screening.

January 9, 2011

Ivan's Childhood (Ivanovo detstvo)

Soviet Union, 1962, 84 min, B&W, Not Rated, Russian w/subtitles

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Eduard Abalov; Starring Nikolay Burlyaev, Valentin Zubkov, Evgeniy Zharikov, Stepan Krylov

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky created a style of filmmaking he called "sculpting in time," characterized by Christian and metaphysical themes, extremely long takes, and indelible images of extraordinary beauty. Hints of his poetic sensibility and deliberate pacing are already on display in his debut feature, Ivan's Childhood. In this World War II drama, 12-year-old Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev) is orphaned after his village is overrun by the invading Nazi army. He escapes from a prison camp and is adopted by Captain Kholin (Valentin Zubkov). Although Kholin intends to send the boy to school, Ivan is determined to help the Russian army. He begins to spy on the Germans, passing freely back and forth behind enemy lines – for awhile. This remarkable film won the Golden Lion Award at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and the Grand Prize at the 1962 San Francisco Film Festival.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): A controversy emerged in Russia in the early 1990s when it was alleged that Tarkovsky did not die of natural causes, but was assassinated by the KGB. Evidence for this hypothesis includes several testimonies by former KGB agents, who claim that Viktor Chebrikov gave the order to eradicate Tarkovsky to prevent what the Soviet government and the KGB saw as anti-Soviet propaganda by Tarkovsky. However, Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa Tarkovskaya and actor Anatoli Solonitsyn all died from the very same type of lung cancer. Vladimir Sharun, his sound designer in Stalker, is convinced that they were all poisoned when shooting the film near a chemical plant. Tarkovsky's films include Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker. He directed the first five of his seven feature films in the Soviet Union; his last two films were produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. They are characterized by spirituality and metaphysical themes, long takes, lack of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and distinctively authored use of cinematography.

Film directors who Tarkovsky said influenced him were Buñuel, Mizoguchi, Bergman, Bresson, Kurosawa, and Antiononi. Ingmar Bergman said of him: "Tarkovsky for me is the greatest director, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream".

It is difficult to find his films on celluloid today and we feel fortunate to have located a print of tonight's film. Ivan's Childhood is Tarkovsky's first film. In this World War II drama, 12-year-old Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev) is orphaned after his village is overrun by the Nazi army. He escapes a prison camp and is adopted by Captain Kholin (Valentin Zubkov), who intends to send the boy away to school. Determined to help the Russian army, Ivan begins to spy on the Germans and is able to pass freely back and forth behind enemy lines – for awhile. This remarkable film won the Golden Lion Award at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and the Grand Prize at the 1962 San Francisco Film Festival. Thus began the film directing career of perhaps Russia's greatest director of the sound era in cinematic history.

February 13, 2011

To Catch a Thief

USA, 1955, 106 min, Color, PG

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams, Brigette Auber

John Robie (Cary Grant) is a reformed jewel thief who is falsely accused of a string of daring cat burglaries among the rich tourists in the South of France. In order to clear his name, Robie decides that only someone with his particular set of skills can catch the real thief. In the course of his quest, he meets Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly), a spoiled and jaded member of the nouveau riche family, and her mother (Jessie Royce Landis), a comically down-to-earth society matron. There is romance, plenty of double entendres, dazzling scenery, scenes of seduction, an over-the-top fancy dress ball and eventually a captured thief. While this film is not regarded as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces, it is an eminently enjoyable romp and equally memorable to his critically acclaimed work.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): "It takes a thief to catch a thief."

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, this saying means that only a dishonest person can anticipate the thoughts and actions of another dishonest person. This is the premise of this month's feature, Alfred Hitchcock's classic whodunit To Catch a Thief. As an example of Hitchcock's "wrong man" themed films, To Catch a Thief is a crisply paced romantic romp through the French Riviera. Filmed in glorious Technicolor, this film garnered the Oscar for Best Color Cinematography in 1956. Its effervescent story line features romance, a bit of suspense, and a great deal of charm and humor through star turns by Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

The story line goes as follows: John Robie (Cary Grant) is a reformed jewel thief who is falsely accused of a string of daring cat burglaries amongst the rich tourists in the South of France. To clear his name, Robie decides that only someone with his particular set of skills can catch the real thief. In the course of his quest, he meets Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly), a spoiled and jaded member of a nouveau riche family, and her mother (Jessie Royce Landis), a comedically down-to-earth society matron. Frances decides that (a) Robie really is the thief, and (b) she wants to catch Robie herself, in the way of a landing a husband. Eventually, Frances decides that Robie is innocent and pitches in to help him restore his respectability. There is romance, a plentitude of double entendres, dazzling scenery, scenes of seduction, an over-the-top fancy dress ball, and eventually, a captured thief, whether that phrase refers to the actual cat burglar or to the soon-to-be-domesticated John Robie.

While this film is not regarded as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces, it is an eminently enjoyable romp. In the renowned book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock himself referred to this film as a "lightweight story." At the time of the film's production, the careers of the two stars were in retrograde, with Kelly's career on a steep upward trajectory and Grant's career stalling as the newly popular style of Method Acting came into vogue with American audiences. This successful collaboration between Hitchcock and his stars served to revive Cary Grant's career with many notable films yet to be made, including An Affair to Remember, House Boat, Father Goose, North by Northwest and (of course) Charade.

However, despite her sudden ascent to stardom, To Catch a Thief represented the final film collaboration between Grace Kelly and Hitchcock. Within two years, she was married to Prince Rainier and had permanently relocated to the Riviera as the Princess of Monaco, never again to star in a Hitchcock film despite their mutual desires for a cinematic collaboration.

To Catch a Thief is a sumptuous Valentine of a film. We hope you enjoy it!

March 13, 2011

Ajami

Israel/Germany, 2009, 124 min, Color, Not Rated, Arab/Hebrew w/subtitles

Directed by Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani; Starring Fouad Habash, Nisrine Rihan, Elias Saba, Youssef Sahwani

Winner of Best Picture at the Israeli Ophir Awards and an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Ajami is a multi-layered crime drama set in the streets of Jaffa-Tel Aviv, Israel – a melting pot of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Characters include a young Israeli (Shahir Kabaha) fighting a criminal vendetta against his family; a Palestinian (Ibrahim Frege) working illegally to finance a life-saving surgery; a Jewish police detective (Eran Naim) obsessed with finding his missing brother; and an affluent Palestinian (Scandar Copti) dreaming of a future with his Jewish girlfriend. As their stories intersect and the film shifts back and forth in time, we witness the tragic consequences of enemies living as neighbors. Co-written and directed by a Jaffa-born Arab and an Israeli, and starring a local, nonprofessional cast, Ajami is a vivid portrayal of a multi-ethnic Israeli community's response to a violent act of vengeance.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, the neighborhood of Ajami sits. It looks much like Mexico City or even San Francisco, minus cable cars and high-rise buildings. The houses are close together, one right next to the other, giving it a congested look. However, the story of the film Ajami, let alone the story of the city, is not on its exteriors but its interiors.

The film Ajami follows five story lines which at times intertwine though a mainly non-linear narrative structure. The first story line that is presented to the viewer follows Omar, an Israeli Arab who struggles to protect his family from possible elimination by a gang after his uncle wounded one of its members. At the same time, he attempts to court a Christian girl, Hadi, though marriage is merely an idea and far from being a reality. Other story lines involve other Ajami citizens. Malek, an illegal Palestinian worker who tries to find money to pay for his mother's operation. Dando, a cop, attempts to trace his brother's disappearance to a group of Palestinians whom he presumes to be the murderers. Three boys mix with an Israeli girl and as a result, suffer from rejection by their community.

No matter what the plot line is, each character encounters some form of violence amidst their "journey." The violence in Ajami is extremely stark and in-your-face. Copti and Shani sort of go against the Scorsese/Tarantino-esque glorification of violence, and instead present it with so much realism and punch, it's as if you are watching the film on a news channel. Copti and Shani hide nothing, they do not cut away when showing a shooting, and the camera stays in its place. I am thinking of one of the opening scenes where the camera captures a motorcycle as it enters in from camera right; a boy is changing a tire in the background. As the motorcycle moves past, one of the men pulls out a gun and kills the boy. The camera is locked down as the motorcycle drives away, sitting on the unsettling situation that just occurred. This scene is powerful, riveting almost because we are taken by surprise, though the filmmakers do not make us think that this is a rare occurrence. For a moment at least, only dogs bark, police cars do not drive over to investigate. Only the people on the streets come out. It's as if violence like this happens all the time, perhaps not every day, but enough to where policemen do not have to investigate. This is the power of Ajami's violence – that it is real and honest.

Ajami was made for only $1 million. It won the Camera d'Or at Cannes, Best Full-Length Feature at the Jerusalem Film Festival, five Ophir awards, and was nominated in 2009 for an Oscar for Best Foreign language Film. Most of the actors in Ajami are non-professional; in fact, most come from the actual neighborhood of Ajami. As I mentioned before, much of Ajami's power comes from its realistic violence; in an even broader view, it presents a realistic view of Ajami and of the modern world today. Religions interact, social classes react, there are conflicts between both and it is hard to resolve these. But that is where Ajami wins, in showing that no matter our labels, we are all human and we all suffer equally in our lives.

April 10, 2011

Wordplay

USA, 2006, 94 min, Color, PG

Directed by Patrick Creadon; Starring Will Shortz, Merl Reagle, Tyler Hinman, Trip Payne

Crossword puzzlers everywhere rejoiced at Patrick Creadon's lively and oddly exhilarating love letter to the English language and the people who revere it. Centering on New York Times Crossword editor and puzzle master Will Shortz, Wordplay spotlights a number of highly skilled crossword pros competing at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut, whose sharp wits and endearing eccentricities shine. Also interviewed are a bevy of celebrity crossword fanatics – including Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, the Indigo Girls, Jon Stewart, Ken Burns, and Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina – each of whom sings the praises of the form.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): Director Patrick Creadon turns crossword puzzling into a spectator sport and possibly addictive pastime. His documentary film provides an in-depth look at The New York Times crossword puzzle, its editor Will Shortz, and the wonderfully unique and loyal fan base Shortz has built and nurtured during his twelve-year tenure at the paper.

You will see the likes of Bill Clinton, Ken Burns, and Jon Stewart hunched, brows furrowed, over a folded newspaper, a pen(!) or pencil in hand as they attempt to complete the crossword puzzle. (This may even describe you.)

This ingeniously edited documentary introduces viewers to some of the more dedicated fans of this solitary pastime, none more well-known than puzzle editor for the New York Times, Will Shortz. The world of puzzles and their solvers is like an alternate universe and this film offers you a window into it. This underground world provides a surprising amount of crowd-pleasing entertainment and suspense, especially at the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. (Didn't know there was one, did you?)

Wordplay will give you a new respect for the intelligence of those who solve these mind-bending diversions, and admiration for their creators.

May 8, 2011

Flight of the Red Balloon (Le voyage du ballon rouge)

France/Taiwan, 2007, 115 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Hsiao-Hsien Hou; Starring Juliette Binoche, Hippolyte Girardot, Simon Iteanu, Song Fang

Hou Hsiao-Hsien transforms the details of everyday life into poetry in his tribute to Albert Lamorisse's 1956 classic short, The Red Balloon. Juliette Binoche stars as a Parisian mother overwhelmed by the complications of modern life. She hires Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese film student, to babysit her son, Simon (Simon Iteanu). As Simon and Song explore the city, they create an imaginary world where a mysterious red balloon follows them wherever they go. Borrowing Lamorisse's conceit of a red balloon tracking a lonely boy through the City of Lights, Hou weaves an extended meditation on urban isolation. The New York Times called this "A flawless tribute to Paris, to the spirit of childhood and to the ability of art to compensate for some of the painful imperfections of life."

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): For Mother's Day, The Cinema, Inc. presents a cautionary tale about the importance of mothers.

Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) is trapped. She is the single mother and sole support of a pre-teen named Simon (Simon Iteanu). Her son aside, her life is complicated by her duties as a landlord with doggy tenants and a 'career' as the proprietor of and performance artist for a puppet theatre. Given as she is to entertaining children with her all-consuming career, she is left with very little time for Simon. To her credit she employs a sitter for Simon named Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese photographer… the alter ego of the director Hsiao-hsien Hou.

Together Song and Simon explore Paris in a way which will delight the eye and thrill the sprit of any viewer wishing to experience 'the City of Lights' not as a tourist but as a newly arrived resident of arguably Europe's greatest capital. Song's surrogate mothering notwithstanding, Simon needs a playmate more suitable for a seven-year-old seeking to come to terms with his inner self… even if the 'playmate' is imaginary, even if it is a red balloon.

Simon certainly can't find the needed path to nascent adulthood among his mother and her friends like the freeloading Marc (Hippolyte Girardot). The personification of the red balloon imbued as it seems to be with supernatural powers becomes the constant companion for a small and lonely soul adrift in a large and impersonal world.

In 1957 a 34-minute French fantasy found its place as filler along with full-length feature films in art houses across the country. Its conspicuous acceptance was the result of a most unexpected victory at that year's Academy Awards. Despite being the shortest film ever to do so, despite having very little dialogue and against such competition as The Ladykillers from England and La Strada from Italy, Le ballon rouge (The Red Balloon) won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for its writer/director Albert Lamorisse. This lyrical meditation on a young boy's tour through Paris accompanied by a magical balloon was the inspiration for Hou's homage fifty years later. Without reservation Hou builds this little masterpiece into his film as the would-be filmmaker and nanny Song photographs Simon's adventures.

For Mother's Day treat yourself to a French flight of fancy… this Flight of the Red Balloon.

June 12, 2011

Harold and Maude

USA, 1971, 91 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Hal Ashby; Starring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack

A young man with a death wish and a 79-year-old high on life find love in this cult classic. Deadpan rich kid Harold (Bud Cort) stages elaborate suicide tableaux in a vain attempt to win the attention of his mother (Vivian Pickles), who is too busy planning for his brilliant future. The death-obsessed Harold spooks blind dates and modifies his sports car to look like a hearse. He also attends funerals, where he meets the spirited Maude (Ruth Gordon). Eccentric to the bone, Maude lives exactly as she pleases, with avid collecting and nude modeling among her many pursuits. To the chagrin of his relatives and the befuddlement of his shrink, Harold falls in love. As lilting Cat Stevens tunes play on the soundtrack, Maude teaches Harold a valuable lesson about making the most of his time on earth.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Some loves are meant to last forever. While this may not be true for the subjects of this month's film selection, it certainly is when it comes to my regard for Harold and Maude. It may not be the best film that I ever saw and it certainly is not the worst. But it did inspire a deep affection – dare I say 'love' – that has spanned the time from when I related to the Harold character until now, when I can better relate to Maude. Harold and Maude speaks to me now as vibrantly as it did then.

I first saw this film when I was 19 years old and attending college. Our university screened films every Friday and Saturday evening, allowing me to see everything from Kurasawa to John Waters and back again, and at a price range that I could afford – for FREE. I had no idea what this film was about when I set out to see it, but from the very first scene with its beautiful natural lighting, the subdued sound effects, the perfect fusion of the visual with the Cat Stevens soundtrack, I was entranced, hooked, completely smitten.

Everyone has a bare bones idea of what this film is about – a depressive young man fakes suicide attempts for the 'benefit' of his self-absorbed mother. His obsession with death allows him to meet octogenarian Maude who, like Harold, attends funerals for fun. The difference is that Harold is morbidly fixated on death and Maude sees death as part of life, which she lives to its fullest. Their inevitable love affair is a true 'yin and yang' situation, as the wayward Maude serves to counterbalance the messages of conformity that Harold's mother attempts to pass on to Harold. Harold gains enlightenment and grows to embrace a more seasoned and fuller concept of life at the end of his journey with Maude.

Harold and Maude is an expression of post-60s society – a society that has gotten past the major convulsions of the anti-war protests and the sexual revolution and is trying to come to terms with what it all means. In effect, it describes the failure of the counter-culture to attain its lofty goals. The powers that be are still the powers that be and class distinctions still exist in this film.

The characters of Harold's mother, uncle, and priest represent the influence of society stifling the spirit of a rebellious young man who, unlike the street activists of a few years before, internalizes his revolution and acts out his discontent by staging mock suicides for the benefit of his mother. Harold is stultified by privilege and while he wants to live a free life, he can't bring himself to strike out on his own and give up the comforts of an upper class existence. Thus he remains a depressed and repressed adolescent even though chronologically he has become a young man.

While Harold and Maude is a film about self and personal revolution, it also criticizes some of the messages of the counter-culture. Maude's personal philosophy aligns with pop-cultural messages of the 70s – live and love freely, don't be tied to possessions, stand up for the big issues. But the fact that these messages are coming from an 80-year-old character in fact subverts the "wisdom" of 60s youth culture since not that long before, young people had been exhorted not to trust anyone over 30.

Despite all these heavy messages, Harold and Maude is ranked 45 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Funniest Movies of All Time, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1997 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." This is quite an accomplishment for a film that was a commercial flop in its original release, and received extremely mixed critical reception. However, it has since developed into a much loved film with a cult following.

So be prepared to find yourself in this film, whether you are the suppressed Harold or the free-spirited Maude. And be prepared to fall in love.

July 10, 2011

Manhattan Murder Mystery

USA, 1993, 104 min, Color, PG

Directed by Woody Allen; Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston

Woody Allen's reunion with Diane Keaton, two decades after their comedic heyday, is an absolute delight. Allen plays Alvi Singer Larry Lipton, a nebbish-y editor married to the free-spirited Annie Hall Carol (Keaton). When it appears that a neighbor has killed his wife, Carol is eager to investigate. Larry dismisses Carol's suspicions, but their friend Ted (Alan Alda) is all too willing to help her. Marcia Fox (Anjelica Huston), a stylish, seductive writer whose book Larry is editing, also signs on as amateur sleuth. Wary of Ted and Carol's budding relationship, Larry reluctantly comes along for the ride. Though Allen winks and nods to genre conventions – there's a murder to solve, after all – he steers the film toward his usual subjects: romance and neurosis on the Upper West Side. Manhattan Murder Mystery covers familiar terrain, but in a winning way that recalls the transcendent Allen/Keaton comedies of the 1970's. Watch for the director's homage to Orson Welles' bravura hall of mirrors scene in The Lady from Shanghai.

Film Notes (Jackson Cooper): What a treat this movie is to watch. At the same time, it is a murder mystery, a romantic comedy, an in-depth analysis of New York life, and a profile of bored, anxious people looking for adventure in their lives.

The story of Manhattan Murder Mystery is simple. The film's protagonists are a New York couple, Larry and Carol Lipton (played by Allen and Keaton). They live in a nice apartment, Larry has a nice job as a book editor, their son is off to college, they attend hockey games and operas by Wagner, yet they can't escape the fact that their lives are turning into a bore. "We're not turning into a pair of comfortable shoes, are we?" Carol asks her spouse.

The foundation of their boring life cracks wide open when their next-door neighbor's wife suddenly falls over dead. Her husband, days later, does not seem to be showing any grief. Carol suspects murder, but Larry agrees with the coroner that it was a natural death. No one but arrogant playwright Ted (Alan Alda in a hilariously obnoxious performance) will side with Carol. Things get complicated when Carol sees the deceased woman riding on a bus in Manhattan. And after that… well, I'd be giving away too much if I told you any more.

This film is one of Allen's brighter and less-serious films. It came at a rough time in Allen's life. The film was made and released during his battle with Mia Farrow over the custody of their children and was largely overshadowed at the box office because of this. The film deserves more attention than it was given. It does not delve into philosophical or metaphysical topics, nor does it try hard to be serious. From start to finish, the film is a comedy; romance and mystery emerge out of the comedy.

As such, nothing in the film seems forced. Keaton and Allen have perfect chemistry; in fact, Allen wrote the part for Mia Farrow but when the custody battle and scandal erupted, he needed someone else. When he approached Keaton with the script, she immediately jumped at the opportunity. And good thing she did. The two actors' on-screen chemistry is so wonderfully poised and hilarious, we long to have been a fly on the wall when they filmed their scenes together. Both feed off one another, especially Keaton feeding off Allen's character's neurotic ways. It would not be surprising if we learned that much of their dialogue was improvised. The banter they exchange reminds us of watching two old friends who have not seen one another for years talking about a variety of topics in a small restaurant. Their chemistry is reminiscent of earlier Allen comedies such as Sleeper and Love and Death. This chemistry and charm is where the film gains much of its charm.

The film is not the "typical Woody Allen film." Sure, it has a neurotic main character, it does take place in Manhattan, and some of the focus of the film is on the lives of New Yorkers. But the film does not lose sight of the mystery these characters are involved in. Allen spices up his film with clever references to cinema's finest works, everything from Casablanca to Last Year at Marienbad. The director pays homage to The Thin Man films, with their blend of romantic comedy and mystery, and The Lady From Shanghai's climactic mirror scene. It truly is a feast for a movie lover.

One of the greatest joys of watching a Woody Allen film, whether you like him or not, is watching the stellar performances he gets out from all of the actors in the film, both lead and supporting roles. Whether it's the heart-wrenching performance of Max Von Sydow in Hannah and Her Sisters or Gena Rowlands' watershed role in Another Woman, Allen knows how to get the best performance out of any actor. And he certainly gets the best out of all his characters in this film.

One who particurly succeeds above all is Anjelica Huston. Looking ten years younger than she actually was during the making of this film (she was 42 in 1993), Huston gives a performance that is both sexy and intriguing. She gives off an air of mystery about her character that makes us want to know more about her character and her past, and want to see her in another scene. The true success of an actor is when he or she does not give a character that everyone knows, but instead presents one which makes the audience want to learn more. And she has never looked more beautiful in a film.

Manhattan Murder Mystery is a cinematic treat for any audience member. It delivers laughs, warm-hearted romance, and, yes, plenty of suspense. It offers electric performances by all of the cast members, including a young Zach Braff (of Garden State and Scrubs fame) in his first starring role as Larry and Carol's son.

The charm of this film is something Allen had trouble resurrecting after this film was made. I personally think he finally found it again in a sweet little film called Midnight in Paris. And for that film, like he did with Manhattan Murder Mystery, he succeeded in this charm.

August 14, 2011

Pandora's Box (with live musical accompaniment)

Germany, 1929, 109 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst; Starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Götz

German filmmaker G.W. Pabst's late-silent classic, Pandora's Box, stars the hauntingly beautiful Louise Brooks as libertine dancer Lulu, an amoral vamp who wanders through a decadent Berlin innocently destroying everyone she meets. Ever out for the "main chance," Lulu persuades her wealthy lover Dr. Schön (Fritz Kortner) to marry her. But in a fit of jealous rage, he pulls a gun, a scuffle ensues, and she shoots him. Escaping to London with the doctor's moonstruck son, Alwa (Francis Lederer), Lulu takes up residence with her "adopted" father Schigolch (Carl Götz), where she is reduced to walking the streets. Regarded now as a masterpiece, Pandora's Box received surprisingly scathing reviews, with most of the critical broadsides aimed at Brooks. We are delighted to present Pandora's Box with live piano by David Drazin, a music and movie archivist nationally renowned for his improvised accompaniments to silent films.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): "Toward the end of the afternoon they stopped, at Czernobog's request, on the outskirts of Cherryvale, Kansas… Even thirty years after they forced my people into hiding, this land, this very land, gave us the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was. 'Judy Garland?' asked Shadow. Czernobog shook his head curtly. 'He's talking about Louise Brooks,' said Mr. Nancy. Shadow decided not to ask who Louise Brooks was." ~Neil Gaiman, American Gods, 2001

Yes, indeed – who exactly was Louise Brooks? Louise Brooks is an enigma, a Kansas girl who graced the screen in German Expressionist films such as this month's feature Pandora's Box. She was the ultimate flapper and she exuded a clean cut and forthright sexuality that was not easily categorized in her time. She is the girl with the black bob haircut who posed against a black backdrop, wearing a plain black dress and string of pearls in a 1920s photograph. All we can see of her is her starkly white skin and the waist-length string of pearls. Louise Brooks' transcendent beauty suited the androgyny of the Cabaret years and helped her find fame in Weimar-era Germany. However, Hollywood frankly didn't know what to do with her, and she quickly fell from our view, ending her career in bit parts in B Westerns.

This month's film is probably her most renowned feature, in which Ms. Brooks embodies the character Lulu, a carefree flapper who has no inkling of the effect that her magnetic sexual appeal has on innocent people that she encounters. She destroys the life of an older man who is fool enough to marry her and at the wedding, she seduces a Countess. True to the social mores of the day, Lulu cannot survive her hedonism and falls prey to a serial killer à la Jack the Ripper at the climax of the drama. However, isn't she really the innocent here – an example of Eve before the fall, a woman whose very freedom inspires others to plunge into libertine acts that almost seem to surprise Lulu herself. The character of Lulu is famous in German literature and was featured in Alan Berg's opera (titled Lulu) and in a play by the same name prior to this silent film treatment in Pandora's Box.

Since this feature is silent, accompaniment for the feature will be performed live by David Drazin. Pianist and composer David Drazin is a music and motion picture archivist who has acquired a national reputation for his piano improvisations accompanying silent films. Among silent movie screenings for which he has performed are Cinevent Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio; the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (staff accompanist since 1985); Silent Film Society of Chicago; Argonne National Laboratory; LaSalle Bank Theatre; North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh; the Cleveland Museum of Art; and the Cleveland Cinematheque, as well as at many universities, libraries and churches.

He is notable among contemporary film accompanists for his use of the 1920s-era jazz and blues, rather than classic ragtime, in playing for silent comedies. His improvisational ballet and dance accompaniment skills serve him well in developing music for dramas, such as the films in the Fritz Lang film series recently shown at the Art Institute.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Pandora's Box at Great Movies.

Season 44 2009 - 2010

September 13, 2009

Network

USA, 1976, 121 min, Color, R

Directed by Sidney Lumet; Starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall

Fired after 25 years of service, network TV anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has an on-air meltdown culminating in the cri de coeur "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Ratings soar. Programming executive Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) decides to retain Beale, recasting him as "The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves" and providing him a platform for his increasingly unhinged rantings. A biting satire of our sensationalized mass media circa 1976, Network now seems oddly prophetic in anticipating "reality" television and today's overheated cable news shows. The film won Oscars for Best Screenplay (Paddy Chayefsky), Best Actor (Finch), Best Actress (Dunaway), and Best Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight).

Film Notes (Britt Crews): "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air's unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it should be…" ~Howard Beale

Sound eerily familiar? Welcome to the volcanic, visceral, visionary world of Network where television news, entertainment, ratings, and profits are conflated.

Depicting a world of facades and fakery, Network is the real deal, a movie made by professionals at the top of their game. The legendary Paddy Chayefsky earned his third Oscar for the screenplay. To this day and most likely forever more, fledging screenwriters are taught how to write by studying the script of this blacker than black comedy.

Director Sidney Lumet and Chayefsky went back a long way together to the early days of CBS television. Both men's careers were launched and their talents honed by the small screen. In fact Lumet scored one of his first successes directing a television adaptation by Chayefsky of a Nelson Algren short story. Lumet was completing Serpico when Chayefsky called him about an idea he was tossing around for a screenplay about the industry. A little over a year later the spec script arrived.

Watch how Lumet subtly manipulates the lighting as the film increasingly moves from the natural to the artificial world of, and created by, television. Natural lighting gradually disappears. As do middle and far distances. The look becomes more and more that of a television commercial, carefully polished and crafted by lighting technicians, set decorators, and stylists to sell product. Lumet later stated his intention to "corrupt the camera." He said: "That's what Network is about, corruption. So we began the movie in absolutely naturalistic style with Bill Holden and Peter Finch. By the end of the movie, where Faye and the rest of the executives are sitting in Bob Duvall's office, it looks like a Ford commercial. That was done gradually. And only Bill Holden's character was kept in naturalistic light."

And then, of course, there is the extraordinary ensemble of actors. Five were nominated and three won Academy Awards. Ned Beatty's cameo as a smarmy chairman of the board ("It's because you're on television, dummy.") grabbed a nomination. William Holden in his last great role gives a subtle, vanity-free, pitch-perfect performance as the aging studio news director Max Schumacher. Holden lost to Peter Finch, who earned a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for his network newscaster Howard Beale, sliding inexorably in the ratings until he is reborn after an on-air meltdown as the "mad prophet of the airways." Faye Dunaway took home the Best Actress statuette for her soulless, yet so sexy personification of the great goddess of television, Diana Christensen. Beatrice Straight walked away with the Best Supporting Actress award for her portrayal of Louise Schumacher on the basis of one short scene and an extraordinary monologue in which her loyal yet discarded wife refuses to compromise.

Network, too, refuses to compromise. Sidney Lumet noted: "Everybody keeps saying, oh, God, what a brilliant satire. Paddy and I keep saying, what satire? It's sheer reportage…"

"…I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!"

Read Roger Ebert's review of Network at Great Movies.

October 11, 2009

Umberto D

Italy, 1952, 89 min, B&W, Not Rated, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Vittorio De Sica; Starring Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Ileana Simova

The Italian classic Umberto D, from director Vittorio De Sica, offers a realistic character sketch of an elderly man, Umberto D. (Carlo Battisti), who is determined to retain his dignity in spite of a meager pension. Umberto attempts and fails to sell his meager belongings when he falls ill. After he returns from hospitalization for the illness, he makes an effort to beg on the street, but is foiled by his own pride. Hitting rock bottom, Umberto decides to kill himself as soon as he can find a new home for his beloved dog, Flag. In Umberto D, De Sica depicts the bleakness of life with unparalleled subtlety and craftsmanship. Deep focus photography details Umberto's isolation, while pointing out that countless other elderly poor people live in similar conditions. De Sica uses sound and music deftly to portray Umberto's subjective feelings and decisions. While many of De Sica's films achieved enormous critical acclaim, Umberto D is often considered the director's finest work.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): Umberto Domenico Ferrari is a man who is determined to lead the last few years of his life with dignity, but who is assailed by a society that, if not hostile, is at best, uncaring. While he scrambles to find a way to avoid being evicted from his one-room suite, we observe how difficult it is for a man in such a trying situation to retain dignity and hope. He appears to have neither friends nor family, neither work nor money, and soon he will no longer have a home. Consequently, it makes perverse sense that even his name is downsized; he is no longer Umberto Domenico Ferrari, but simply Umberto D. The end of Umberto's diminishing life is set in contrast to and direct conflict with his landlady, a woman whose upwardly-mobile ambitions result in her forcing Umberto out of his suite. For her to rise, he must fall. She's a member of the same social class as he, but has pretensions of grander things. While the film toys with Marxist dialectics, it does so in an interesting way, pitting members of same social class against each other; just as contemporary urban ghetto dwellers kill each other at alarming rates, the figures in this story end up at each other's throats. There is elegance to the film's choreography that is reminiscent of movies from the silent era, particularly during a sequence when Umberto roams the streets contemplating whether or not to debase himself by begging for money. It is exactly this point – determining when we've stepped over the line where desperation strips of us all dignity – that marks what is most profound about Umberto D.

Shot on a very small scale, with a tiny rostrum of mostly unnamed characters (man in hospital, landlady, sister, voice of light), it's the sad but ever-hopeful story of a destitute retiree whose only claim in this world is his dog. Umberto D. is often cited as the last film produced in the post-war Italian neo-realist style. Director Vittoria de Sica (The Bicycle Thieves) has crafted something akin to a "found film" in that the actors are almost exclusively amateurs, the sets whatever was available on the streets of Rome, with large portions of the story dedicated to simply observing the daily routines of the characters who inhabit this film. For long stretches of the film we simply observe people walking down streets, playing in parks, working in the kitchen, and witness how they sometimes can be ground down by life. Umberto is no exception, as everything in his life has been, as we might say in modern parlance, downsized. Carlo Battisti, a retired university professor, plays Umberto with an unaffected charm and dignified determination that is terribly touching, while de Sica underscores these qualities with a score that is stirring without being maudlin, and by employing quiet and gentle editing rhythms that allow us to sink into the reality of this character and the world he finds himself struggling through.

Like David Lynch's The Straight Story, a brilliant evocation of an aged man trying to come to peace with his life in the broad open air of middle America, de Sica's film is one that may find itself embraced by members of a rapidly graying boomer generation who discover that they can identify all too well with the main character's marginalization and dehumanization in a society that finds his sort little better than parasites thrashing madly in its bloodstream. Umberto D. courageously and magnificently champions the life of an apparently insignificant man in a difficult time.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Umberto D at Great Movies.

November 8, 2009

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

USA, 2003, 107 min, Color/B&W, PG-13

Directed by Errol Morris; Starring Robert McNamara

The Fog of War is a fascinating portrait of former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara by esteemed documentarian Errol Morris. Morris structures his film around "11 Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara", drawn from 20 hours of interviews with the 85-year-old McNamara, who commands the screen with his brilliance and intensity. By turns candid and evasive, impassioned and detached, sympathetic and monstrous, McNamara reflects on his role in bringing seatbelts to the Ford Motor Company, planning the firebombing of Japan in World War II, and escalating the war in Vietnam. Enriched by archival footage, photographs, and music from composer Phillip Glass, The Fog of War raises timeless (and timely) questions about war, human nature, and the uses and limits of power.

December 13, 2009

Travelers and Magicians

Bhutan, 2003, 108 min, Color, Not Rated, Dzongkha w/subtitles

Directed by Khyentse Norbu; Starring Tshewang Dendup, Sonam Lhamo, Lhakpa Dorji, Deki Yangzom

The first feature ever filmed in the kingdom of Bhutan, Travelers and Magicians weaves two parallel, fable-like tales about men seeking to escape their mundane lives. Dondup (Tshewang Dendup), a young government official, dreams of moving to America while stuck in a beautiful but isolated village. At his first chance, he heads for town and an awaiting visa, but things don't go quite as planned. Missing the bus, he hitchhikes with an elderly apple seller, a sage young monk, and an old man traveling with his beautiful daughter, Sonam. The monk tells Dondup a story of another young man, Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji), who sought a land far away: a tale of lust, jealousy and murder that holds up a mirror to the restless Dondup and his blossoming attraction to the innocent Sonam. This film is a magical mixture of rustic road movie and mystical fable – a potpourri of desire and its consequences set in a breathtaking landscape.

Film Notes: Where? Yes, Bhutan – nestled in the heart of the high Himalaya mountain range, landlocked and wedged between Tibet and the jungle gateway southward into India. This tiny kingdom's religious culture embraces an ancient form of Buddhism that continues to permeate all strands of secular life in Bhutan villages and cities. Since transportation options are a bit spotty, it's not unusual to encounter groups of unrelated wayfarers trekking their way to religious events. Waiting for cars or buses can take days and this trip is no exception.

The first feature movie filmed entirely in the Kingdom of Bhutan, Travelers and Magicians weaves two parallel, fable-like tales about men seeking to escape their mundane lives. Dondup (Tshewang Dendup), a young civil servant lured by a pirated song of the West, dreams of moving to America but is stuck in a beautiful but isolated village. He gets permission from work to attend a religious festival in the capital city but his real goal is getting a visa and taking off to America. But things don't go quite as planned. Missing the bus, he hitchhikes with an elderly apple seller, a young monk, and an old man traveling with his beautiful daughter, Sonam, who remarks that "people in the US don't even know where Bhutan is." To pass the time, the mischievous monk tells a story of another young man, Tashi (Lhakpa Dorji), who is an unfocused student of magic. Like Dondup, he dreams of escaping village life. The monk weaves a tale of lust, jealousy, and murder that holds up a mirror to the restless Dondup and his blossoming attraction to the innocent Sonam. These tales entwine familiar Buddhist tensions in forms of wanting and having, soft and loud, here and there, boombox and damnyen. This film is a magical mixture of a rustic road movie and mystical fable — a potpourri of desire and its consequences set in a breathtaking landscape in a story that reminds us of the oft-quoted dilemma, "Is the grass greener on the other side?" Just where is the happiness to be found? High in the Himalayas or in the flatlands of America's dreams of glory. Enjoy the journey.

In keeping with the production of Norbu's previous movie The Cup, except for Dendup, no professional actors were used. The cast is a collection of farmers and schoolchildren, as well as employees of the Bhutan Broadcasting Service, Government of Bhutan, and the Royal Bodyguard. Many production decisions, including casting and fixing the date of release were chosen using "Mo" – an ancient Buddhist method of divination for discovering future events or unknown things.

January 10, 2010

Zelig

USA, 1983, 79 min, B&W, PG

Directed by Woody Allen; Starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Patrick Horgan, John Buckwalter

Before Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump, there was Leonard Zelig. In this groundbreaking "mockumentary," writer-director Woody Allen plays Zelig, a chameleon-like cipher whose neuroses allow him to assimilate completely into his surroundings. Psychologist Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) studies Zelig and seeks to protect him from his would-be exploiters. Combining voice-over, real and fake newsreels, and interviews with the likes of Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow, Zelig uses the conventions of documentary to weave its protagonist into the fabric of 20th-century history. The results are as technically impressive as they are funny.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Picture for a moment the cinematic world of 1983. It is decades before the dawn of digital filmmaking. No one has yet heard the term "photoshopping." A photographic image might be airbrushed but it did not quite seem possible that an image could be substantively altered, at least not in a way that would defy detection. Into this milieu comes a small film by the name of Zelig, directed by Woody Allen.

In the film, Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) is an everyman/no-man character who has an uncanny ability to morph his appearance and blend in with any imaginable group of people. Zelig is a completely anonymous and nondescript being whose one goal in life is to avoid being noticed. Thus, when surrounded by a group of Scots in kilts, he not only appears to be one of them, he becomes Scottish. In fact, as if he were a 'human chameleon', Zelig can blend his appearance with any ethnic group. His overwhelming desire to assimilate causes him to be completely consumed by the great American melting pot because he completely lacks an identity of his own. That is, until he meets and is treated by Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow), who hypnotizes Leonard to discover the roots of his unique personality disorder. Naturally, they fall in love as Leonard's nascent personality begins to unfold. His story and Dr. Fletcher's revolutionary treatment become public, affording the chameleon man some celebrity and an unavoidable backlash of public opinion. The story line is explored through a traditional documentary format with all the bells and whistles: pompous sounding narrator, film clips, and expert commentary. And did we mention that it's funny?

Zelig is an early example of a 'mockumentary' – a feature film that poses as a documentary. Woody Allen had dabbled in this form previously in Take the Money and Run (1969), yet Zelig takes the form to a whole new level by literally placing his character into newsreels from the 20s and 30s. Through the use of blue screen technology, the image of Leonard Zelig is inserted into newsreels to appear alongside historical figures such as Herbert Hoover, Al Capone, Charles Lindbergh and (of course) Adolph Hitler.

In order to blend the old and new footage and to preserve the authenticity of Zelig, Allen and cinematographer Gordon Willis obtained actual film cameras and lenses dating from the depicted time periods to record their original footage. Their efforts included simulating age and damage to the new film, with scratches and other defects effectively blending the old footage with the new. This process was so time-consuming that the prolific Allen was able to complete two other feature films (Broadway Danny Rose and The Purple Rose of Cairo) during the time that it took to finish the special effects in Zelig. You may be thinking that you have seen the same types of effects in other movies, particularly Forrest Gump. What makes Allen's technical achievement so stunning is that it was done 11 years prior to Forrest Gump's adoption of similar effects, and without the advantage of the digital technology that was developed during the interim.

Adding to this established note of realism, Zelig contains contemporary 'interviews' with celebrity academics and social critics, heightening both the realism and the comic effect. When noted intellectuals such as Susan Sontag or Saul Bellow appear to analyze the social impact of Leonard Zelig in his pseudo-historical context, they effectively meld together divergent types of film narrative – comedy, drama, romance and documentary. Plus they're funny.

Zelig received multiple nominations for the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, and the BAFTAs. It drew upon the tradition of Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds radio broadcast and is the precursor to many renowned mockumentaries that followed, including This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, The Blair Witch Project and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and on television, HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Zelig is a comedy that is an at once audacious, stunning, and romantic film that garnered critical acclaim at the time of its release. And you know, it's funny.

February 14, 2010

Sullivan's Travels

USA, 1941, 90 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Preston Sturges; Starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, William Demarest, Eric Blore

Preston Sturgis' masterpiece tells the story of John "Sully" Sullivan (Joel McRea), director of such Hollywood trifles as Hey Hey in the Hayloft. Disillusioned by his comedic successes, Sullivan hits the road as a penniless hobo, seeking insight into the lives of the poor in order to make a socially conscious film, Oh Brother, Where art Thou? With his studio bosses' lackeys in hot pursuit, Sullivan meets a failed actress credited as the Girl (Veronica Lake), who joins him on his journey. Dedicated to "those who made us laugh: the motley mountebanks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little," Sullivan's Travels celebrates the value of laughter in our lives.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): Preston Sturgis was a veritable Renaissance man in the early days of Hollywood. Screenwriter, director, producer – he excelled at all of these roles. To this day, he still enjoys a reputation as one of the finest screenwriters and finest dialog writers in the history of American cinema. In 1941, when he wrote and directed Sullivan's Travels, he was at the start of his directorial career and was already well renowned as a snappy dialogist from popular screwball comedies of the day.

At the Oscars ceremony in 1941, President Roosevelt dealt a death blow to screwball comedy as an art form when he made a radio address to the audience, exhorting them to represent the voice of Democracy to those people of the world who were already embroiled in World War II. As a direct result, popular directors such as Frank Capra changed the tenor of their films and began to make more socially conscious and earnest films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe. And nearly overnight, screwball comedies – a staple of film-going fare in the 30s – were viewed as frivolous and out of date while the new genre emerged.

Sullivan's Travels engages this call for filmmakers to create more 'meaningful' works. The film starts out in a highly comedic vein as we meet John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrae), highly successful director of lightweight and popular movies such as Hey Hey in the Hay Loft. Sullivan is very successful – but unfulfilled. Indeed, his one desire is to make a film that exposes all the hard realities of "real life", whatever that means. He even has a name picked out for this epic: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? This ambition does not impress the studio executives as they point out a key fact to Sullivan – that he has no idea of the harsh side of existence. He is a pampered, wealthy film maker who has lived a charmed life. He has worked hard to attain this lifestyle, has earned it, and should revel in it. They insist that Sullivan should remain faithful to the form at which he excels (and at which they make a fortune) – comedy.

Sullivan, determined to gain the knowledge and experience that will allow him the moral authority to make his masterpiece, sets out on a journey to chronicle the hardships of the everyday man, a journey that will engage, amuse, and surprise you as the tone of the film unexpectedly turns from screwball comedy to dark drama. Along the way he makes the acquaintance of The Girl (Veronica Lake), gets into some very serious trouble, overcomes difficulties and finds his way to self-acceptance. This film is happy at heart, warm at its core and positively celebrates the redemptive power of laughter. It manages to combine the fun and rapid fire dialog of the screwball comedies with the heart of the Capra films, and does so a bit subversively. It was just the antidote to the dark days immediately following Pearl Harbor and it will also serve us well in these stormy economic times in which we find ourselves today.

March 14, 2010

Band of Outsiders (Bande à part)

France, 1964, 95 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard; Starring Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey, Anna Karina, Daniele Girard

The story follows two friends with a fondness for old Hollywood B-movies, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), who are searching for a way to make a big score. When Franz meets the beautiful Odile (Anna Karina) and she informs him of a large chunk of cash her aunt keeps hidden in her house, the duo are convinced that this is their lucky break. Odile is a sensitive young woman who, out of fear and guilt, opposes their plan, but Arthur and Franz, who mimic America movie tough guys, coax her to go along with the idea. When the time comes to pull off the heist, a miscalculation delays the seemingly perfect plan, resulting in a confrontation that has dire consequences.

Film Notes: Often referred to as Godard's most accessible film, Bande à part is an adaption of the novel Fool's Gold (Doubleday Crime Club, 1958) by author Dolores Hitchens and was released in North America under the title Band of Outsiders. The film's French title derives from the phrase "faire bande à part", which means "to do something apart from the group." Bande à part belongs to the French New Wave movement and, in his own words, Godard described it as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka."

Released in 1964, the film has over time been lauded by many critics, including Pauline Kael who described it as "a reverie of a gangster movie" and "perhaps Godard's most delicately charming film." Amy Taubin of the Village Voice called it "a Godard film for people who don't much care for Godard." Ultimately, the accessibility of Bande à part has endeared the film to a broader audience and has inspired several subsequent films and filmmakers. For example, it was the only Godard film selected for Time magazine's All-TIME 100 movies and enjoys an impressive 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The story follows two friends with a fondness for old Hollywood B-movies, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), who are searching for a way to make a big score. When Franz meets the beautiful Odile (Anna Karina) and she informs him of a large chunk of cash her aunt keeps hidden in her house, the duo are convinced that this is their lucky break. Odile is a sensitive young woman who, out of fear and guilt, opposes their plan, but Arthur and Franz, who mimic American movie tough guys, coax her to go along with the idea. When the time comes to pull off the heist, a miscalculation delays the seemingly perfect plan, resulting in a confrontation that has dire consequences.

Stylistically Bande à part is a free-spirited romp in the same vein as the director's breakthrough smash Breathless. More traditional than Breathless in its technical execution, Bande à part sparkles with freshness and originality – it uses comical, poetic narration by Godard himself, and has a bouncy musical score by Michel Legrand. The performances from Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey, and especially Anna Karina combine satirical melodrama, overflowing hipness, and moving sincerity, giving the film plenty of heart. An irreplaceable contribution to 1960s film, this movie is much more than a mere genre reworking.

In particular, there are two well-known memorable and influential scenes in Bande à part. One sets the three main characters Arthur, Franz, and Odile in a crowded café where they decide to observe a minute of silence. As they do the film's soundtrack is plunged into complete silence. The silence actually only lasts 36 seconds and is finally interrupted by Franz, who says "Enough of that."

Another famous scene, often referenced as "The Madison Scene," starts when Odile and Arthur decide to dance. Franz joins them as they perform a routine whereby they turn to different positions. The music is soul music composed for the film by Michel Legrand, but actress Anna Karina said the actors called it "the Madison dance." The charm of this scene influenced a scene in Hal Hartley's Simple Men and notably the dance scene in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, when Uma Thurman and John Travolta famously romance each other on the dance floor. A further connection between Bande à part and Tarantino is in the name of his production company, A Band Apart.

Godard was born in Paris, the son of Franco-Swiss parents Odile (née Monod) and Paul Godard, a physician. He attended school in Nyon, Switzerland, and at the Lycée Rohmer, and the University of Paris. During his time at the Sorbonne, he became involved with the young group of filmmakers and film theorists that gave birth to the New Wave, a movement known for the rejection of classical cinematic form, a youthful iconoclasm, and often tied to social/political upheavals of the day. Godard is often considered the most extreme or radical of the New Wave filmmakers. His films express his political ideologies as well as his knowledge of film history. In addition, Godard's films often cite existential and Marxist philosophy.

April 11, 2010

Bright Leaves

USA, 2003, 107 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Ross McElwee; Starring Allan Gurganus, Paula Larke, Marilyn Levine, Emily Madison

Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) is an autobiographical filmmaker and North Carolina native. His great-grandfather was a tobacco baron who invented the formula for Bull Durham tobacco but ultimately lost his fortune and ended in bankruptcy. Inspired by the 1950 movie, Bright Leaf, which was loosely based on his great-grandfather's rivalry with Washington Duke (and starred Gary Cooper and Lauren Bacall), McElwee produced Bright Leaves in Durham, North Carolina, to explore his family's complicated relationship with tobacco. Through conversations with family members, cancer patients, friends in the tobacco industry, and the film historian Vlada Petric, McElwee undertakes a deeply personal examination of the culture that arose from the cultivation of bright leaf tobacco in North Carolina after the end of the Civil War.

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): A hitherto unbeknown second cousin introduced Ross McElwee to Michael Curtiz's Bright Leaf, the 1950 melodrama starring Gary Cooper, Donald Crisp, and Patricia Neal about the early days of the tobacco industry in North Carolina. The movie's plot of rivalry over the nascent cigarette industry may have been based on a feud between McElwee's great-grandfather and James "Buck" Duke over the formula for Bull Durham tobacco. Buck Duke won the battle and became a multimillionaire. Bull Durham tobacco became known as "the cheapest luxury in the world." And the McElwees became doctors and lawyers and one documentarian who observes the world through amused eyes.

McElwee uses the earlier film as a touchstone in this 2004 exploration of his family's heritage. He explains the origin of Bright Leaves: "Being from North Carolina, I've known for a long time that I should probably try to make a film that in some way dealt with tobacco and smoking, since North Carolina grows more tobacco than any other state. I mean, my home state is utterly awash in tobacco. Some of my earliest memories are sitting for hours in a stifling station wagon, driving past endless acres of the vivid green leaves, on the way to our family reunion on the Carolina coast. The further east we drove, the more the tobacco took over the landscape. The leaves were bright green and huge – like elephant ears – and shimmered in the hypnotic heat of Carolina's summer. Along that route to the beach, tobacco grew better there than anywhere else in North America."

Along the way, McElwee introduces his audience to Patricia Neal, who shares that Gary Cooper was the great love of her life; Charleen Swansea who deserves a film all her own, and cousin John McElwee, whose passion for collecting movies matches Ross's enthusiasm for using film to explore his life. Be sure to look for the scene with a yippy little dog and another with a curious rodent to see how successfully McElwee lets his camera find the funny. Bright Leaves was nominated for Best Documentary of 2004 by both the Director's Guild of America and the Writer's Guild of America.

Roger Ebert says, "Bright Leaves is not a documentary about anything in particular. That is its charm. It's a meandering visit by a curious man with a quiet sense of humor, who pokes here and there in his family history, and the history of tobacco. The title refers to the particular beauty of tobacco leaves, both in the fields and after they have been cured, and perhaps also to the leaves of his family's history."

If you enjoy this film, you might also appreciate Godfrey Cheshire's Moving Midway, using a somewhat similar concept. In Midway, Cheshire examines his own family's "Southernness" as the "home house" can be saved only by its displacement from its land. More sober in tone, but equally entertaining.

May 9, 2010

The Land (Al-ard)

Egypt, 1969, 130 min, Color, Not Rated, Arabic w/subtitles

Directed by Youssef Chahine; Starring Hamdy Ahmed, Yehia Chahine, Ezzat El Alaili, Tawfik El Deken

Egyptian director Youssef Chahine won a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. His feudal epic, The Land, has been hailed as the greatest Egyptian film ever made. Set in the cotton-growing region along the Nile, the film portrays the struggle between a peasant village and a local landowner, who connives to appropriate the land that has sustained life in the Nile Valley for millennia. Against this backdrop, two men – the peasant Abdel Hadi (Ezzat El Alaili) and the educated Mohammed Effendi (Hamdi Ahmad) – vie for the hand of a beautiful peasant girl, Wassifa (Nagwa Ibrahim). Eight years in the making, The Land is a moving tribute to the people's resistance against the forces of privilege and corruption.

Film Notes (Andrea Mensch): When renowned Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine died on July 27, 2008, at 82, six weeks after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, the critic Richard Corliss wrote the following lines as his Time magazine tribute:

"It's a shame Chahine's work isn't familiar in this benighted part of the movie world. He was no minimalist Sphinx; he believed less was never enough. Embracing a splashy masala of styles, he threw everything — ideas, people, whole nations and regions — up in the air for the viewer to try to catch. And beyond his movies' entertainment value, it wouldn't hurt for Americans to see the visions of a cosmopolitan filmmaker from the Arab world, who speaks for himself but reflects the dreams and fears of a people whose popular culture is nearly unknown in the US."

Indeed, in trying to find a copy of The Land to preview for our Cinema, Inc. screening, I was surprised to find that very few of Chahine's films are available on DVD in this country and I had to resort to watching a rather inferior VHS copy. However, even after that somewhat frustrating aesthetic experience, I was moved and inspired to watch more of his films and I am certainly looking forward to seeing The Land on the big screen in its proper aspect ratio and resolution.

Chahine certainly did have an illustrious career. Born into a Christian household to a Lebanese father and a Greek mother who had made the city of Alexandria their home, he received an elite education in Egypt before moving to Los Angeles where he studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. When he returned to Egypt in the 1950s, he became a significant figure in the development of his country's film industry. He has been credited with introducing the young Omar Sharif to the screen in his film The Blazing Sun (1954), but, perhaps more significantly, his films did have a universal appeal which led to more attention being paid to African films at the most prestigious international film festivals. Having made more than 40 films, Chahine was honored with the lifetime achievement award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

Starting as early as the 1940s there was a revival in the Egyptian film industry which involved the participation of intellectuals and writers such as the future Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. Chahine's 1969 film The Land is based on Abdel Rahman Al-Sharqawi's first novel The Earth, published in book form in 1954 (after being serialized in an Egyptian magazine during 1953). The novel, which expressed the social struggle between feudalism and Egyptian peasants prior to the 1952 Revolution, was the first embodiment of literary "Realism" in Egypt. Similarly, Chahine's adaptation was hailed as an example of the Egyptian equivalent of Italian Neo-realism, but that is arguable given the film's use of color, music, and its quilt like narrative structure.

To create a film out of the sprawling novel, Chahine and his screenwriter Hasan Fuad Chahine reduced the number of characters, although keeping up with a dozen cinematic characters keeps the viewer quite alert. While the issues emerging from the film's narrative are what gives it universal appeal, it might be worth familiarizing oneself with the plot ahead of time. What follows is a synopsis of the film written by Chale Nafus:

To provide a moral center, the director wisely keeps returning to his principal protagonist Abou Swelem, a good man, proud of his daughter Wassifa, proud of his land and cotton, and proud of his past. It is revealed through dialogue that during World War I he fought in Palestine, participated in the successful Egyptian Revolution of 1919 (along with two other villagers), and became a respected Chief Guard in his village until the government of Isma'il Sidqi came to power in 1930. Even in his reduced circumstances, he is admired by the majority of the other villagers - and not just because he has a beautiful daughter that all the bachelors want to marry.

Most importantly for the narrative, Abou Swelem is a proud man. When he vows to go on watering his land up to the usual ten days, rather than the new, more restrictive five days, he is joined by others. Swelem does not care what the mayor and the "government" say. Together the villagers swear that "not even the British army will be able to touch their water." But while continuing to water, they decide to send a petition to the central government in Cairo outlining their complaints over water rights.

Mohamed Effendi, the very bombastic teacher, offers to write the petition, but he insists on literary Arabic over everyday speech. Because of his monthly income in cash (a rare commodity in the village), he is more respected than perhaps his character should be. When he adds to the petition that the peasants will be homeless if not allowed to irrigate for a longer period, he unwittingly forecasts the future but for the wrong reason. Mohamed Effendi is not strong enough to stand up to the Bey who turns him from being an educated representative of the people into a colluding stooge. To his credit, Mohamed Effendi struggles verbally, but he is no match for the power held by the aristocracy and the government.

Still, as a teacher, he holds a certain amount of charm for some of the younger women. Swelem's daughter Wassifa and a friend talk about marrying gentlemen or peasants. Obviously the former is more attractive. But Wassifa is so beautiful and beguiling that she dares dream of greater marital alliances. She truly wants to live in Cairo, a fabled place she has never visited, but one which she imagines to be like something found in The Arabian Nights. She is so desperate for her dream to come true that she "seduces" a 12-year-old boy, who has returned from Cairo with his father, Sheikh Hassouna. He has lived in the capital for five years and has just received his elementary school diploma, so even though he is younger than Wassifa, he seems to be her only chance to get out of town. She could also bank on the fact that their fathers are good friends. But soon her sights will drift over to a more likely candidate for husband, Abdel Hadi.

Abdel Hadi, a fierce warrior who has no place to exercise his martial skills except in dueling games, is the only man in the village that embodies something of the fighting spirit of the earlier generation that wrested a limited independence from Britain. But although strong, he is still just a fellah. Wassifa will not make it easy for him to get her hand in marriage.

Contrasted with Wassifa (the virgin) is the inevitable whore, Khadra. Perhaps worse than her "profession" is the fact that she has no land, no family, no one to protect her other than her sarcastic tongue. Still, she seems to be accepted by most of the town, perhaps because she provides the young bachelors with something they might otherwise take by force from a "decent girl." Khadra is even willing to barter her body in exchange for cucumbers. Despite her toxic repartee, she is ultimately a tragic figure. Her dreams of Abdel Hadi and her competition with Wassifa are totally misplaced. Her end can almost be foreseen.

Sheikh Hassouna is Mohamed Effendi's uncle, who lives part of the time in the village and the rest of the time in Cairo. He seems to be the most powerful friend of the villagers, but even he has a price. Despite his brotherhood-in-arms with Abou Swelem in the 1910s, he eventually sees that he must ally himself with the powerful.

The rich and conniving Mahmoud Bey is presented as a rather effete, Westernized, selfish man with power. He has a poodle and a lot of garish furniture and easily gives orders, which he fully expects to be followed. He is willing to mislead the representatives of the village into believing that he is submitting their petition, but he substitutes his own request for the road along with a page of signatures of the villagers "in support of his request."

Perhaps the most sinister character is the religious charlatan, Shaban, who seems to suggest a wandering holy man. But beneath his pseudo-Sufi chanting he is truly evil and contemptible. We eventually discover that he is even capable of murder. For Chahine he doubtlessly embodies much that the director dislikes about religion.

Under the leadership of Swelem, the villagers go on irrigating their land without official permission. Inevitably the mayor has them arrested and taken to prison, where some are tortured with beatings and water dunking. Revealing so many fears about the lines between masculinity and femininity, the guards torture Abdel Hadi and try to make him scream, "I'm a woman." They obviously don't know the man. Swelem's torture is through beatings, but then the ultimate emasculation is achieved by simply shaving off his moustache, the visual sign of masculinity. When he returns to the village, Abou Swelem is a broken man, who hides the lower half of his face with his headscarf.

After Swelem's wife tells Sheikh Hassouna that her husband spends all his time sitting out in his field, the old friend goes out to try to lift his spirits. He reminds Swelem that "most of Egypt's greatest men have been jailed at one time or another." He repeats that the two of them were jailed together during the Revolution of 1919 and adds, "That was for country. This time for the land." Swelem responds, "What's left when that is lost?" But their memories of their third comrade, Sheikh Youssef, the storekeeper, begin to crack them up. When he appears, they can't stop laughing. Youssef seems to be the most changed of the three, now very greedily charging and over-charging the villagers since his is the only store in town.

But later in the film Swelem turns those memories of earlier heroism around. He berates all of them, himself included, for talking and talking and doing nothing. They were heroes when younger, but now… Hassouna embraces Swelem and says he will stay in the village by their side until they get their water rights back and secure their land. But his absence the next day reveals who he has become.

By emphasizing solidarity, Chahine indicates what he considers the only way the fellahin have a chance at getting their rights. But their unity keeps fragmenting in new ways. Still, a new ally can seemingly arise at any time. The Camel Corps soldiers, who ride into the village to enforce the water laws and land grab, are initially ruthless, but Sgt. Abdallah begins to really hear what Swelem is saying about the fellahin and the need for unity. His subsequent action seems to hint at the eventual military coup of 1952 which brought Nasser to power and promised (some would say falsely) that the people of the cities and countryside would now benefit from a government working for them.

The possibilities of solidarity are shown near the end of the film when the road gang join the farmers to pick Swelem's cotton before the road covers his field. The music rises and faces seem to be smiling with the joy of working together for a common cause. But then the government is once more present in the form of more troops, who begin shooting, beating, and chasing the villagers. Even as Swelem is dragged away by a soldier on horseback, he clutches at the plants and finally at the bare earth. His fingers are like a plow making narrow furrows into which new seeds could be planted. Finally his blood and land are truly mixed together. The ending reminds us of what Sheikh Hassouna said about Swelem at the beginning, "Abou Swelem is digging his grave with his own hands."

June 13, 2010

My Darling Clementine

USA, 1946, 97 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by John Ford; Starring Henry Fonda, Walter Brennan, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Cathy Downs

In this genre-defining western from director John Ford, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his three brothers stop outside Tombstone, Arizona, on the way to sell their cattle in California. After they refuse an offer for the stock from Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his son, Ike (Grant Withers), their cattle are stolen and the youngest brother is killed. Wyatt agrees to serve as Tombstone's marshal and soon meets Doc Holliday (Victor Mature). The wary friendship between the marshal and the consumptive, gun-slinging gambler is complicated by the arrival of Doc's former love, Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs). Although it features the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, My Darling Clementine is more concerned with the creation of a community, the rule of law, and the civilizing influence of women in the Wild West.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): What – a John Ford western without John Wayne? Yup, it does exist and as such is the subject of our June feature My Darling Clementine. This picture is a kinder and gentler Western that revolves around a burgeoning love story between Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and Clementine (Cathy Downs), shown in the context of the legendary showdown at the OK Corral.

Director John Ford was the undisputed king of the Western. His list of films in this genre includes the prestigious Stagecoach, along with other crowd pleasers such as Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. A man's man, Ford directed films that embrace a shared sense of unambiguous morality which serves to tell us the story of American history – albeit an American history as we wish it were. Westerns promulgate the Great American Myth. They serve up a sense of right and wrong that was undeniably understood and embraced by the audiences of their time. We all speak this language without a thought – the bad guy wears the black hat, the good guy wears the white hat, etc. This simple structure in its time informed everyone's appreciation of the Western and the moral code that these films engender.

What distinguishes My Darling Clementine from traditional Westerns is the attention that director John Ford paid to day-to-day events in the paced build-up to the climactic scenes at the infamous OK Corral. The actual shoot-out at the OK Corral did not exist in a vacuum and this film takes the time to establish the sense of place and time necessary for us to appreciate the later breakout of violence. As Roger Ebert puts it in a 1997 review, "My Darling Clementine builds up to the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, but it is more about everyday things – haircuts, romance, friendship, poker and illness."

Maybe it is for this reason that Ford cast Henry Fonda, who had earlier starred in Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, instead of using the ubiquitous presence of John Wayne. When John Wayne appears on the screen, the audience understands that the Western Code exists in full force with all of its intrinsic messages about right and wrong. The measured and thought-provoking screen presence of Henry Fonda allows a more subtle and shaded characterization while staying within the parameters of the assigned moral structure.

My Darling Clementine is a definitive American Western – spectacular cinematography and scenery, lots of action. At the end of the day, it may still be a simple story about right and wrong and getting the girl – but at heart, it is not as simplistic as it would seem.

Read Roger Ebert's review of My Darling Clementine at Great Movies.

July 11, 2010

Three Colors: Blue (Trois couleurs: Bleu)

France, 1993, 98 min, Color, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski; Starring Juliette Binoche, Benoît Régent, Florence Pernel, Charlotte Véry

Set in Paris at the dawn of the European Union, Blue is the first film in director Krysztof Kieslowski's "three colors" trilogy, based on the French flag and national motto "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." After surviving a car accident that claims her husband and daughter, Julie (Juliette Binoche) destroys all vestiges of her former life and withdraws into isolation. Determined to live her new life alone, Julie ultimately finds that she cannot rid herself of human connections. The film follows Julie through her grief as she emerges from her devastating loss and reenters the world as a vital, creative being. Music is central to Blue; Kieslowski's frequent collaborator, Zbigniew Preisner, composed the score prior to shooting, so that the film's action could follow its rhythms. The director's deft use of color as metaphor brings an additional layer of emotional depth to the story as it unfolds on the screen.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): There is a magic to works of art grouped in threes. From gold-encrusted medieval altar pieces called triptychs to the silver screen trilogies of cinema today, the special nature of things in threes holds a compelling power over artists, filmmakers, and audiences alike.

Unlike tightly connected threesomes such as The Godfather series (1972, 1974, and 1990) or the Star Wars saga (an as yet to be completed trilogy of trilogies, 1977 to 2008), Blue is the first of three loosely-associated films. They take their titles from the French drapeau tricolore. From the staff outward, the flag is blue, white and red… so it is with these three films by writer/director Krysztof Kieslowski.

Released in September 1993, the full art house title Trois couleurs: Bleu was followed the next year by Trois couleurs: Blanc and Trois couleurs: Rouge. Remarking on the overarching artistic vision that makes this French masterpiece a whole, Julius Caesar might well have said it was of necessity "in tres partes divisa est".

Woven into any one of these three films is the seemingly insignificant reappearance of one or more characters from the other two. But very much like the thrill that comes with the multi-plot resolution at the end of the 2004 Best Film Oscar winner Crash, an unexpected goosebump ending in the last film, Rouge, makes affirmation of the Gestalt maxim, "the whole is greater than the sum of these parts."

Drawing its theme from the first of the three-word motto of the French revolution, "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity", Blue tells of a young woman's struggle to shed herself of the depression that follows a great tragedy. There is no description better than the one from our brochure for this season:

After surviving a car accident that claims her husband and daughter, Julie (Juliette Binoche) destroys all vestiges of her former life and withdraws into isolation. Determined to live her new life alone, Julie ultimately finds that she cannot rid herself of human connections. The film follows Julie through her grief as she emerges from her devastating loss and reenters the world as a vital, creative being. Music is central to Blue; Kieslowski's frequent collaborator, Zbigniew Preisner, composed the score prior to shooting, so that the film's action could follow its rhythms. The director's deft use of color as metaphor brings an additional layer of emotional depth to the story as it unfolds on the screen.

If life holds any hope that you may someday soon be so lucky as to feast on the remaining two films of this terrific three course delight, you must not miss this month's appetizer… a total satisfaction unto itself.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Three Colors: Blue at Great Movies.

August 8, 2010

Happy Times (Xingfu shiguang)

China, 2000, 102 min, Color, PG, Mandarin w/subtitles

Directed by Yimou Zhang; Starring Benshan Zhao, Jie Dong, Lifan Dong, Biao Fu

Yimou Zhang co-directed and choreographed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics. His second film set in a modern city, Happy Times is a bittersweet comedy about Zhao (Benshan Zhao), a retired factory worker who hopes to marry a rotund divorcee. To win over his prospective bride, Zhao creates the impression that he is a man of means. He enlists the aid of his best friend Li, who devises a plan to raise the 50,000 yuan Zhao needs for a suitable wedding. The two men refurbish an abandoned bus, dub it the Happy Times Hotel, and rent it out to young couples in need of privacy. Their business suffers when the upright Zhao can't bring himself to close the door to the "hotel" while it is occupied. Hoping to impress his betrothed with his position as a hotel manager, Zhao offers to employ her blind stepdaughter, Wu Ying (Jie Dong), as a masseuse. As he goes to increasingly absurd lengths to deceive Wu, they develop a deep if accidental bond that redeems his enterprise.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): Yimou Zhang (the Chinese would reverse his name and put his family name first) is China's best-known film director. In addition to our current film, he has directed and produced Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, House of Flying Daggers, etc. Zhang was born on November 14, 1951, in Xi'an, China, home of the archaeological treasure Terra Cotta Warriors. His films are always visually striking, and he was the lead director for the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He is best known for his epics, but we have chosen a film that is often funny, touching in its portrayal of the characters, and inspiring in its view of the meaning of life.

Zhao (Benshan Zhao) is an aging bachelor who hasn't been lucky in love. Thinking he has finally met the woman of his dreams, Zhao leads her to believe he is wealthy and agrees to a wedding far beyond his means. Zhao's best friend Li hatches the idea to raise the money by refurbishing an abandoned bus, which they will rent out by the hour – the Happy Times Hotel – to young couples starved for privacy. Unfortunately, this plan goes awry because Zhao is too old-fashioned to allow the couples to leave the bus door closed.

Meanwhile, Zhao's fiancée introduces him to her spoiled son and beautiful blind stepdaughter Wu Ying (Jie Dong), whom she sees as a burden. To be rid of the girl, she insists that Zhao take her to the Happy Times Hotel and give her a job. Zhao reluctantly agrees, then creates a series of deceptions to keep the girl occupied, including setting her up as a masseuse and enlisting his friends to pretend to be her customers. Everything that is happening between Zhao and Wu is superficially about trickery, but gradually a very real empathy grows between the young woman and the old man.

This film does not have a Hollywood formula ending. At heart, it is a delicate and simple story about two people brought together by humorous circumstances and human nature. We see here a side of Yimou Zhang that he does not often share, and we are enriched by his story-telling.

Season 43 2008 – 2009

September 14, 2008

Godzilla (Gojira)

Japan, 1954, 96 min, B&W, Not Rated, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Ishirô Honda; Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura

Godzilla is a notorious film, one that paved the way for many giant-monster-movie imitators. But there is a larger subtext to Godzilla that is often overlooked or forgotten. The movie was made in Japan less than ten years after the nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities. Considering this viewpoint, the film has a melancholy core, one in which the Japanese contemplate their destruction by unstoppable external forces. The notion of a giant irradiated sea monster was more than just a cartoonish thrill in 1954 Japan, and many scenes in the film are surprisingly powerful. That said, Godzilla is still campy and entertaining fun at its best. Some of the acting is ham-handed and lost in translation. The special effects are primitive by today's standards, with a man in a 220-pound rubber suit stomping on a realistic miniature city, but they come together to create an effective illusion. Watching the monster smash its way through Tokyo still has a certain visceral appeal fifty years later. Don't forget the popcorn!

Film Notes (Britt Crews): Embedded somewhere in America's collective unconscious is a campy black and white film starring Raymond Burr and some guy in a dinosaur suit stomping on Tokyo. Some of us remember Godzilla as childish silliness that we long ago outgrew; others remain lifelong fans. Many of us might be wondering: Why this picture to open Cinema Inc.'s 43rd season?

Few have had the opportunity to see more than the isolated pieces of this film that survived American intervention. The original movie from Japan was eviscerated by its American distributors. Only its legendary monster survived. Forty minutes – almost half the picture – were hacked out of it completely. Slapped onto it were twenty minutes of a pointless and witless subplot involving Raymond Burr as a crusading journalist who just happened to be in Japan in time to cover the story of the century. What little remained of the original picture was recut and rearranged. Two actors (both Chinese-Americans) overdubbed all the remaining original Japanese parts in one five-hour session with no effort made to match the dialogue to the original performers' lip movements. Even the monster's name changed, anglicized by Toho Studio's foreign sales department when the film was offered to the Americans.

The original Gojira, on the other hand, is a thing of dark beauty, a great, morally complex film by sci-fi master Ishiro Honda. In Japan it is regarded as a masterpiece, consistently rated as one of the finest films ever produced in that country of Kurasawa, Ozu, Oshima, Mizoguchi, Miyazaki and Imamura.

Created nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the firebombing of Tokyo that preceded them, Gojira, like its monster namesake, is a direct result of H-bomb testing as tensions continued to escalate during the Korean War. On March 1, 1954, near the Bikini Atoll, the United States detonated a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb with 750 times the explosive power of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Described as a "routine atomic test" by the Atomic Energy Commission, the bomb, code-named Operation Bravo, proved far more powerful than expected, vaporizing a large chunk of Bikini and sending highly radioactive debris floating over a 7000-square-mile area of the Pacific Ocean. About 110 miles east of Bikini, the 23-member crew of a small Japanese fishing trawler ironically named Lucky Dragon were showered with a white sticky radioactive ash. Within hours several became sick and within months they began to die. Understandably in Japan the Lucky Dragon tragedy reawakened and ignited fear, panic, and outrage over nuclear testing. By August 1955, 32 million Japanese signatures had been collected on petitions to ban the bomb.

Armed with newspaper clippings of the Lucky Dragon, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka convinced Toho Studio to green-light his idea for a monster mutated by atomic testing, a monster that would be a living, breathing metaphor for the bomb. Gojira, known to the world as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, was born.

October 12, 2008

Ed Wood

USA, 1994, 127 min, B&W, R

Directed by Tim Burton; Starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette

Ed Wood is in part a biopic about Edward D. Wood, Jr., the notorious B-movie director of the 1950s. It is also an homage to those movies and one of their great stars, Bela Lugosi (played by Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for his performance). Lugosi was a big star in the 1930s and 40s, but in the 50s he was an aging man fighting obscurity and addiction. Ed Wood worshiped Lugosi, befriended him, and put him in his quickly and poorly made movies. Lugosi came to depend on this friendship. Although Wood frequently dressed in women's clothing, surrounded himself with oddball characters, and was a terrible director, his likability and warmth shine through in the capable hands of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Ed Wood celebrates the eccentric rather than lampooning it.

Film Notes (Ian Krabacher): Movies were his passion. Women were his inspiration. Angora sweaters were his weakness.

Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedic biopic directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the cross-dressing cult movie maker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film, shot in black and white, was based in large part on Rudolph Grey's quasi-biography Nightmare of Ecstasy. Ed Wood concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films and also focuses on his legendary relationship with actor Béla Lugosi, played by Martin Landau.

The film was the brainchild of screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who originally planned to make it with college classmate Michael Lehmann. A lifelong fan of Wood's films, Burton decided to direct the biopic after his plans for Mary Reilly fell through. He immediately contacted Depp and asked him to star in the film as Wood and the actor agreed. Depp decided to draw inspiration for his performance from Andy Hardy, Ronald Reagan, Casey Kasem, and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. Martin Landau, to prepare for portraying Lugosi, watched 25 of the man's films and worked closely with legendary makeup artist Rick Baker.

Burton admits to having always been a fan of Ed Wood, which is why the biopic is filmed with an aggrandizing bias borne of his admiration rather than derision of Wood's work. Burton acknowledged that he probably portrayed Wood and his crew in an exaggeratedly sympathetic way, stating he did not want to ridicule people who had already been ridiculed for a good deal of their life. Burton decided not to depict the darker side of Wood's life because his letters never alluded to this aspect and remained upbeat.

To this end, Burton wanted to make the film through Wood's eyes. He said in an interview, "I've never seen anything like them, the kind of bad poetry and redundancy – saying in, like, five sentences what it would take most normal people one… Yet still there is a sincerity to them that is very unusual, and I always found that somewhat touching; it gives them a surreal, weirdly heartfelt feeling."

Burton's respect for Wood is also hinted at in his film Edward Scissorhands – the director has stated that he named the lead character in the film Edward because that's Wood's full first name. The relationship between Wood and Lugosi in the script echoes closely Burton's relationship with his own idol and two-time colleague Vincent Price. He said in an interview, "Meeting Vincent had an incredible impact on me, the same impact Ed must have felt meeting and working with his idol."

The film was originally in development with Columbia Pictures but when Burton wanted to shoot it in black and white, the studio wasn't going to back it unless they had a first-look deal because they claimed it would be a hard sell in foreign markets and on video. The director insisted on total control and a month before shooting was scheduled to start, Columbia put the film in turnaround. Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox became interested in optioning the film, but Burton went with Disney because they gave him total creative control on the condition that he work for scale.

Ed Wood gave Burton the opportunity to make a film that was more character-driven as opposed to style-driven. He said in an interview, "On a picture like this, I find you don't need to storyboard. You're working mainly with actors, and there's no effects going on, so it's best to be more spontaneous." Shooting began in August 1993 and lasted 72 days.

The film had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1994. Though a box office failure at the time of its release, grossing only $5.8 million in North America against a production budget of roughly $18 million, Ed Wood was critically hailed and, despite the film being a commercial disaster, Burton is very proud of the movie. He said, "I love the movie… It's just that no one came. I guess if I was like everybody else, I would just blame a bad marketing campaign. But that's too easy."

Martin Landau in particular was widely praised for his performance, earning top honors from the Screen Actors Guild, the National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and winning a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. Make-up artist Rick Baker, who worked to transform Landau into Lugosi, also won an Academy Award for Best Make-Up.

November 9, 2008

Fail-Safe

USA, 1964, 112 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Sidney Lumet; Starring Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman, Daniel O'Herlihy, Fritz Weaver

An off-course airplane triggers the US nuclear defense system. After the error is recognized, a single US bomber that is past the fail-safe point terminates radio transmissions and heads for Moscow. The US president gets on the phone with his Russian counterpart and tries to avert catastrophe. While this film has many parallels with the black comedy Dr. Strangelove, it is not a comedy but a tense drama that realistically portrays the nuclear fears of the 1950s and 60s. A rich ensemble cast gives great performances, capped by an against-type, scene-stealing turn by Walter Matthau.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): Released October 7, 1964, Fail Safe met with critical acclaim but poor box office following as it did by nine months the well-received and thematically similar Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. But Fail Safe stands apart from the comedy Dr. Strangelove because of its stark dramatic style. Just two years earlier (October 22, 1962), President Kennedy explained to a nervous nation that the US stood ready to go nuke-for-nuke with the Soviet Union if they refused to remove missiles from Cuba.

While 'Duck and Cover' exercises replaced recesses in schools and families forfeited vacations to build fallout shelters, the logic and ethics both personally and nationally of living in a pre-Apocalyptic world was an all too real consideration. Remember, if you can, the September 1961 television episode of The Twilight Zone written by Rod Serling titled "The Shelter" in which neighbor battled neighbor for a place in a basement bunker or the petal-plucking little girl in the explosively controversial political commercial aired but once in September 1964, exactly one month before the opening of Fail Safe.

Giving renewed interpretation to the Greek theme of individual hubris as the certain path to total destruction, Fail Safe makes the case for the collective hubris by governments, military organizations, and the scientific community resulting in a precarious dance on the jagged edge of worldwide emulation… Götterdämmerung. The combined failure of machines and the mistakes of men position the world on a precipice, the escape from which is every bit as unthinkable as the predicament itself. As the President, Henry Fonda must attempt the defeat of a US Strategic Air Command mission and persuade the Soviet government and military of our very deepest regret should Moscow be destroyed. Contrapuntal to the efforts of the President, a civilian consultant to the Defense Department (Walter Matthau) argues in favor of the persuasive power of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) in bringing the USSR to acquiesce to the inevitable. This consultant, like the Greek chorus within the drama, explains to all the irrepressible 'logic' of the inevitable escalations naturally subsumed within a cold war with hot nukes.

This compelling character, Prof. Groeteschele, like his counterpart Dr. Strangelove, is based on a real player in the panoply of Pentagon heavyweights circa 1960. Herman Kahn, an employee of the RAND Corporation, was a military strategist and systems theorist known for analyzing the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommending ways to improve survivability. His thinking was very influential in high places.

Unless and until men are always angelic and all our machines are benign and never falter, this film presents issues worth our continuing consideration, as important today as 44 years ago… the cold war is now in the microwave.

December 14, 2008

The Last Klezmer

USA, 1994, 85 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Yale Strom; Starring Leopold Kozlowski

In this documentary, filmmaker Yale Strom goes to Poland in search of one of the last known klezmer musicians. Poland was once the heart of traditional klezmer music, but this peculiarly Jewish music was virtually wiped out by the Nazi occupation during WWII. This film puts a human face on the grim statistics of the Holocaust through the charismatic and entertaining Leopold Kozlowski. Kozlowski is the last living klezmer musician to have grown up in Eastern European Jewish culture before the Holocaust. At the time of the making of the film, Kozlowski was still living, teaching, and making klezmer music in Poland. The music is lively, beautiful, and moving; Kozlowski is a man you won't soon forget.

Film Notes: The word klezmer, which means "instruments of song" in Hebrew, refers to both a practitioner and a style of festive Jewish band music, rooted in prewar Eastern Europe. By the 19th century, klezmer musicians had carved out a musical niche for themselves, playing folk tunes, waltzes, mazurkas, and other dance music at weddings, parades, and fairs for Jewish (and often Gentile) audiences. Klezmer music is based on Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian folk tunes and the Jewish musical repertoire of freylekhs, sher, and khosidl or dance tunes.

The Last Klezmer is a portrait of a remarkable man, Leopold Kozlowski of Krakow, the last active klezmer trained in the original prewar tradition. Kozlowski is no relic, but a robust, rotund, Falstaffian character, brimming with energy and enthusiasm. The filmmakers accompany him on an emotional visit to the village where he was raised in a close-knit family of musicians, to the sites where his family was murdered, and to the forests where he fought with the partisans.

Director Strom, who is a violinist as well as a filmmaker, found Kozlowski while researching another film, At the Crossroads: Jews in Eastern Europe Today. "I knew at the time that I had to do a film with him," Strom said. "There were 5,000 or 6,000 Jewish musicians in Poland in 1934. There was one Jewish traditional musician in 1994. That's pretty heavy. You better capture it." Strom was not the only director to have sought out the musician. "Spielberg, when he was doing Schindler's List, came up to Kozlowski, not the other way around," Strom said. "He made him the music consultant for camp scenes. He's the only survivor in the film who had a speaking line and still lived in Poland."

For The Last Klezmer, Strom visited Kozlowski in Poland, where he conducted at the Yiddish theater and taught private lessons. Strom captured him leaning over a pianist and saying, "The Jewish twist, from here, in your heart," and singing a sobbing phrase. There are also scenes of Kozlowski leading the cast of Fiddler on the Roof in a rehearsal of "Sunrise, Sunset." But Strom's film is most affecting when Kozlowski is at home and on the road. While chopping in the kitchen, the conductor says, "A Jew without garlic, you know what this is? A sin."

"He's a great musician, but no way could you have 90 minutes of klezmer," Strom said. "I wasn't interested in doing a movie just on the revival of klezmer. If I had just shown the interview, that would have not really given the full perspective of what made this man – why he plays the way he does, why he jokes and why he cries." Kozlowski's tears flow freely when he returns to the place he grew up, Przemlyany, the Ukranian town he left when he emigrated to Poland a half-century before. His mother, father, and brother – a virtuoso violinist – were killed during the German occupation. He places candles in the vicinity of their unmarked graves, and takes a handful of dirt from each.

Just as moving are his stories of a nearly extinct musical culture. Kozlowski was born Kleinman, at a time when klezmer bands flourished. Tailors, butchers, and other tradesmen would gather after work to rehearse. As Kozlowski spins tales of players like Hershele Dudelsack, Strom pans across faded pictures of the handsome, happy, lost musicians. Kozlowski's troubles did not end when the war did. In Poland he became music director of the Polish Army Symphony Orchestra, only to be fired in a 1960s antisemitic purge. He was still wary. While traveling on a bus in Ukraine, a fellow passenger sees the camera and asks him what he's filming. He says it will be a documentary about Ukranian folk music. "I can understand why he does that," Strom said. "He will the rest of his years have this sense of fear, looking behind his back. We're riding to JFK airport and we're speaking in Yiddish about politics, and he turns and starts whispering and cupping his mouth. And I said, "Leopold, the guy speaks Spanish. He's Puerto Rican."

The film also has joyous moments. Kozlowski is reunited with a friend he hadn't seen since he left for Poland. And he is amazed to discover, upon arriving in Ukraine, a television broadcast of a klezmer concert.

If you are interested in learning more about klezmer, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill has published The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music, from the Old World to the Jazz Age to the Downtown Avant-Garde by Seth Rogovoy.

There are also several klezmer bands in the area. One is the Magnolia Klezmer Band.

January 11, 2009

Killer of Sheep

USA, 1978, 80 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Charles Burnett; Starring Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett

Think of the film Killer of Sheep as poetry - quintessentially American urban poetry - in the vein of Langston Hughes or Richard Wright. The elements of traditional narrative are missing, but there is just enough story and realism to make the bold visual images and diverse soundtrack come alive. Charles Burnett was a UCLA graduate student in 1977 when he shot this film on a budget of $5000, using untrained actors and real locations in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. In 2006, Burnett restored and remixed his film, adding music that cost many times the original budget. Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips said, "…Burnett's blues poem can be experienced simply (as one family's story) or more expansively (as the chronicle of a neighborhood). It is a small wonder containing multitudes."

Film Notes (Ian Krabacher): Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life – sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.

Killer of Sheep was shot on location in Watts over a series of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000, most of which was grant money. Finished in 1975 and shown sporadically after 1977, its reputation grew and grew until it won the Critic's Award at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival. In 1990, the Library of Congress declared it a national treasure and placed it among the first 50 films entered in the National Film Registry for its historical significance. In 2002, the National Society of Film Critics selected the film as one of the 100 Essential Films of all time.

Despite its international and domestic critical acclaim, Killer of Sheep had really only been seen by audiences on poor quality 16mm prints at few and far between museum and festival showings. At the time of its completion in 1975, the film could not be released to general audiences because the filmmakers had not secured rights to the music used in the film (including songs by Etta James, Dinah Washington, Gershwin, Rachmaninov, Paul Robeson, and Earth, Wind & Fire).

Originally, writer/director Charles Burnett submitted Killer of Sheep as his thesis for his MFA in film at UCLA. With a mostly amateur cast (consisting of Burnett's friends and acquaintances), much handheld camera work, episodic narrative, and gritty documentary-style cinematography, Killer of Sheep has been compared by film critics and scholars to Italian neorealist films like Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thieves and Roberto Rossellini's Paisan. However, Burnett cites Basil Wright's Songs of Ceylon and Night Mail and Jean Renoir's The Southerner as his main influences.

However, thirty years after Killer of Sheep's 1977 highly limited release, the music rights for the film were purchased outright in 2007 at a cost of $150,000. The film was then brilliantly restored and enlarged by UCLA Film & Television Archive to 35-mm (with financial support from Milestone Films and well-known film director Steven Soderbergh). Milestone Films went on to premiere the restored print at the 2007 Berlinale Film Festival.

On March 30, 2007, Killer of Sheep opened in select theaters in the United States and Canada and was released on DVD on November 13, 2007, as part of a deluxe box set with a director's cut of Burnett's sophomore feature My Brother's Wedding, and three Burnett shorts: Several Friends (a 1969 aesthetic precursor to Killer of Sheep), The Horse (an "allegory of the South" in Burnett's words), and When It Rains (praised as one of the greatest short films of all time by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum).

On January 21, 2008 (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day), Turner Classic Movies presented the world broadcast premiere of the movie as part of a night-long marathon of Burnett's movies. Burnett was interviewed before and after the movie by TCM's Prime Time host Robert Osborne.

Since his early work on Killer of Sheep, Burnett has been active and has enjoyed success working on several other film projects over the years. In 1988, Burnett was awarded the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the "genius grant"), which helped him support his young family and concentrate on his newest script To Sleep With Anger. This film garnered Burnett many awards, including Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay. The National Society of Film Critics also honored Burnett for best screenplay, making him the first African American to win in this category in the group's 25-year history. While the Los Angeles Times reported that Burnett's movie reminded viewers of Anton Chekov, Time magazine wrote: "If Spike Lee's films are the equivalent of rap music – urgent, explosive, profane, then Burnett's movie is good, old urban blues."

Today, Burnett lives west of Watts with his wife, costume designer Gaye Burnett. They have two sons. Burnett commented, "I don't think I'm capable of answering problems that have been here for many years. But I think the best I can do is present them in a way where one wants to solve these problems."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Killer of Sheep at Great Movies.

February 8, 2009

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

USA, 2004, 108 min, Color, R

Directed by Michel Gondry; Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson

This film follows a couple, Clementine (Winslet) and Joel (Carrey), who meet, fall in love, and break up. This simple premise has been used many times before, but in the hands of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who also wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), it is re-worked into something more impenetrable. When it is then passed through music-video veteran director Michel Gondry's hands, it becomes lunacy bordering on genius. After the breakup, the despondent Clementine contacts Lacuna, Inc., a firm that can remove unwanted memories from the brain, and has her memories of Joel removed. Joel finds out. In retaliation, he has his memories of her removed as well. However, mid-procedure, he has a change of heart, and tries to hide memories of her deep in his psyche, away from the Lacuna "doctors". Gondry and Kaufman use the story to explore the nature of thought, reality, and love. The film moves freely back and forth in time and displays a breathtaking creativity unlike any film before it.

Film Notes (Andrea Mensch): A somewhat unconventional introduction to an unconventional narrative…

As I get older, I increasingly appreciate the complex function of memory in our lives. (Senior moments, anyone?) Not only is memory an important aspect of identity formation, but it can also provide a wonderful kind of escape from the difficulties of contemporary living, a kind of metaphoric time travel, if you will. As the work of the 2000 Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel demonstrates, memory can also be traced physiologically in the brain. His recent scientific memoir In Search of Memory (2007) explains in lay terms how memory can be observed at the cellular level and also how important emotional conditions and even certain hormones are in the formation of memories.

In French director Michel Gondry's 2004 film The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, these ideas are explored with great visual flamboyance and an appropriately audacious narrative structure. Gondry initially achieved artistic acclaim directing music videos for rock stars like Björk, The Rolling Stones, and Sinead O'Connor, and he brings much of this sensibility to his films. He uses both traditional special effects, such as paintings and carefully designed miniature models for props and sets, as well as digital manipulation to create his magical effects.

Eternal Sunshine is Gondry's second collaboration with the writer Charlie Kaufman. Their first was the film Human Nature (2001), which also concerned itself with the topic of human consciousness albeit in the different context of civilization versus savagery. Kaufman is a highly idiosyncratic writer whose work has been termed surrealist. His themes often concern themselves with the problematic role of fiction in the age of postmodernism as well as the nature of consciousness itself. His recent directorial debut Synecdoche New York (2008) also testifies to this. Although Eternal Sunshine challenges the paradigm of the linear narrative, it is perhaps more accessible than Kaufman's other work because it is also a quirky postmodern romantic comedy. One of its postmodern features is its important intertextual reference to Alexander Pope's 1717 lengthy poem "Eloise to Abelard." The poem is an articulation of Eloise's continuing passion for her former teacher, lover, and secret husband despite the fact that the two have been separated forever by an unforgiving society after Abelard has been castrated for having despoiled Eloise, the virgin from an upper class family. The title of our film is derived from the following section of the poem where Eloise envies the innocence of the sexually untouched nuns who surround her:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

In many ways Eloise resembles Clementine Kruczynski, the female protagonist of Gondry's film in her reckless passion for her much more cerebral male partner. And in a 21st century twist on the original idea of the spurned lover's feelings of revenge, Clementine decides to have the memories of her love affair conveniently erased to spare herself the continuing pain. However, both lovers underestimate the necessity of painful memories particularly in a romantic world view. As Eloise might have told them:

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,

Far other raptures, of unholy joy:

When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,

Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,

Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,

All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.

Alexander Pope perhaps identified somewhat with Eloise, too, and he took some comfort in the hope that the story of this complicated love might be told over and over again in a future age when he ends the poem with the following lines:

And sure, if fate some future bard shall join

In sad similitude of griefs to mine,

Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,

And image charms he must behold no more;

Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;

Let him our sad, our tender story tell;

The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;

He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

Gondry and Kaufman give us one more instance of this telling and retelling of a never-ending love story with their poetic "imaging."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at Great Movies.

March 8, 2009

Monsieur Ibrahim (Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran)

France, 2003, 95 min, Color, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by François Dupeyron; Starring Omar Sharif, Pierre Boulanger, Gilbert Melki, Isabelle Renauld, Isabelle Adjani

A coming-of-age story of a Jewish teenager in a lower-class Paris neighborhood, Monsieur Ibrahim is also a story of father-and-son relationships. When the teen Momo (Boulanger) has trouble connecting with his depressed father, he seeks inspiration in the streets. He is befriended by the local shopkeeper, Ibrahim (Sharif), who dispenses the wisdom and guidance that Momo's father should. And although it never becomes the focus of the film, religion and ethnicity play a strong role in the story, underscoring French attitudes about immigrants in the 1960s (and echoing current French-Muslim difficulties). While there are opportunities for the film to devolve into bleak realism, the story remains touching, humorous, and complex.

Film Notes (Toni Meyer): Monsieur Ibrahim has a deceptively neat and actually ironic coda that suggests it is worthy to set modest goals for oneself in a world that seems to demand an ever-increasingly competitive spirit to survive. The film insists that what is important is the interior life of the individual, the cultivation of a deep spirituality. Surely there is room in the movies for a small film with an unabashed, even old-fashioned but timeless humanist spirit – and a triumphant portrayal by a veteran star that is likely to be regarded as one of the year's best.

At 71, Sharif has returned to the screen with one of his best performances in one of the richest parts of his 50-year career. It is the title role of the heartfelt French film Monsieur Ibrahim, which is as intimate as the films that made him famous are epic. Eschewing vanity, Sharif appears his age, as a grizzled, white-haired grocer in a Paris working-class neighborhood in the 1960s. Despite the grocer's nondescript, unstylish look and the paunch Sharif takes no pains to hide, he is as charismatic as ever. The fire in those dark eyes has not gone out, and he seems irreducibly, indestructibly a romantic figure. The great skill and judgment he brings to his nuanced playing of Ibrahim, a Turkish-born Muslim, lies in his ability to allow his own personality to inform rather than overwhelm this grocer, an unpretentious man rich in spirit rather than material wealth, a lover of women as much as of the Koran, which he constantly quotes.

The film initially focuses, however, not on Ibrahim but on Momo (Pierre Boulanger), a Jewish teenager who lives nearby in a small apartment with his dour intellectual father (Gilbert Melki, in an admirably uncompromising portrayal), who has not recovered from his wife's departure years earlier and who takes out his misery on his son. As a result, a father-son bond grows between Ibrahim and Momo as his relationship with his actual father deteriorates.

Meanwhile, the fact that Momo lives on a street, the Rue Bleue, that is a popular hookers' stroll, allows him to come of age with some notably attractive and considerate streetwalkers. That Momo is movie-star handsome does not hurt his cause and helps keep the working girls from sliding into the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold stereotype. The filmmakers' sense of humor helps here, as it does in the film's more serious and emotional moments.

Ibrahim takes a worldly, positive view of Momo's sexual initiation yet deftly balances this key experience for Momo with a fervent but not preachy spirituality. He conveys to Momo that the wisdom of the Koran can be an enthralling discovery. The friendship between the lonely boy and the lonely longtime widower flowers, yet Momo still has time to begin courting the redheaded girl (Lola Naymark) who lives across the street. Plot developments, however, send Momo and Ibrahim off on an unexpected journey to Turkey.

What a minefield director François Dupeyron and his co-writer, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, have created for themselves in adapting Schmitt's play – and by and large they manage artfully to skirt it. Dupeyron's direction of Sharif and Boulanger is sensitive yet firm; in Sharif there is always a crucial sense of what's being held in reserve, and in Boulanger a sense of Momo's gradual awakening to life's possibilities.

The foray into Turkey takes the film on a dangerously sentimental swerve, yet again the filmmakers' and their stars' discipline stand fast, enabling Monsieur Ibrahim to express an ecumenical spirit in a most understated way at a time in which such a sentiment could scarcely be more welcome.

April 12, 2009

Harvey

USA, 1950, 104 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Henry Koster; Starring James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Cecil Kellaway

The classic stage hit gets the Hollywood treatment in the story of Elwood P. Dowd, who makes friends with a pookah taking the form of a human-sized rabbit named Harvey that only he sees (and a few privileged others on occasion also). After his sister tries to commit him to a mental institution, a comedy of errors ensues. Elwood and Harvey become the catalysts for a family mending its wounds and for romance blossoming in unexpected places.

Film Notes (Royster Chamblee): This classic comedy, from Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, involves a drunk (Edward P. Dowd) and his imaginary friend, a six-foot rabbit ("Pooka") named Harvey. Dowd's sister wants to have him committed. Her part is played by the unforgettable Josephine Hull, who won an Academy Award for her performance.

Jimmy Stewart played many film roles and a few on Broadway. One of these was Harvey, where he performed with Josephine Hull.

Josephine Hull was a character actress, best known for her Broadway roles. She appeared rarely in films and TV, most notably this film and Arsenic and Old Lace. Her 5'2" stature, craggy face, and quivery voice made her ideal for these roles. She died in 1957.

Henry Koster, the director, was a refugee from Germany who made his first American film knowing very little English. Besides Harvey, his best-known film was The Robe, the first motion picture made in CinemaScope.

Mary Chase, journalist and playwright, had her greatest success with the play Harvey, which ran for five years on Broadway. (Trivia: I saw the play at the old State Theater in Raleigh, probably in 1950. The part of Edward P. Dowd was played by Joe E. Brown, whose famous satchel mouth was perfect for enunciating "Haaaarvy".) This film was ranked #35 on AFI's 100 Years… 100 Laughs. In June 2008, AFI revealed its "Ten Top Ten" – the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres – after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Harvey was acknowledged as the seventh best film in the fantasy genre.

May 10, 2009

The Celebration (Festen)

Denmark, 1998, 105 min, Color, R, Danish/German w/subtitles

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg; Starring Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Paprika Steen

Dogme 95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started by directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg which eschews the use of conventional Hollywood moviemaking techniques such as props, special effects, soundtracks, special lighting, or camera techniques. Vinterberg's contribution to the Dogme 95 collective, The Celebration, is an electrifying achievement driven by powerhouse acting and handheld digital camera work so realistic it is easy to forget that this is a feature film. Friends and family gather to pay tribute to Helge on his sixtieth birthday. When it's time for the eldest son Christian (Thomsen) to give the opening toast, the fireworks begin. At times hysterical, at times tragic and heartbreaking, this is a film that has the ability to single-handedly reaffirm one's faith in cinema. Inspiring and brilliant, it won the Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

Film Notes (Pete Corson): If you have wondered where Ingmar Bergman's legacy lies, The Celebration is surely a leading candidate. The story is based on a hoax from a Danish radio show, in which a young man made up a story about his twin sister and himself being subjected to sexual abuse by his father. The talk show host believed the story and ran the interview. Thomas Vinterberg heard the program and proceeded to develop his film based on the story line. The Celebration has been adapted for stage in fourteen different languages at last count, and the film has won twenty-four awards and another fifteen nominations including a Golden Globe nomination. The style of the film comes from a movement known as Dogme 95 and is the first in that style.

Dogme 95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started by directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg which eschews the use of conventional Hollywood moviemaking techniques such as props, special effects, soundtracks, special lighting, or camera techniques. The camera leaves the viewer with the impression that someone with a handheld camera was present at the proceedings and managed to record the various activities which make up the story.

The film tells the story of a family gathering at their family-run hotel to celebrate the 60th birthday of the family patriarch Helge (Henning MoritZen). Gathered for the occasion are his wife Elsa (Birthe Neumann), his daughter Helene (Paprika Steen), his sons Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen) and Christian (Ulrich Thomsen), and other guests. Christian's twin sister Linda had recently killed herself at the hotel. During the dinner, Christian makes a speech accusing his father of molesting him and his sister. No one believes him until support comes from a hidden source. The film has one twist after another but it would be unfair to reveal the end.

Why would anyone want to see a film like this, exploring one of the darkest topics known to us? The film is in the finest Bergman tradition, challenging us to experience the emotions of the characters as they reveal their deepest secrets. It is by turns comedic and startling. It is a powerful film that will return to your thoughts for days afterward. I found it haunting and recommend it to you as one of the finest films of the 1990s.

June 14, 2009

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud)

France, 1958, 91 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Louis Malle; Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin

Louis Malle's directorial debut Elevator to the Gallows is an unusual film noir crime story. Florence (Moreau) and her lover Julien (Ronet) engineer the murder of Florence's husband. But when Julien attempts to tie up a loose end, he becomes trapped in an elevator with precious minutes ticking away before the police discover the victim's body. While he is stuck in the elevator, a young couple steals his car and Florence wanders Paris in search of her lover. But there is another facet to this film that elevates it above other noir thrillers. In the words of Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter, "What turns it fabulous, indeed mythical, is the presence of another entity: Paris at night in the 50s, to the tune of Miles Davis' score as realized in the dappled hues of Henri Decae's gorgeous poetic cinematography." Elevator to the Gallows won the Prix Delluc, France's most prestigious film award, and launched Malle on an illustrious career that made him a directing icon.

Film Notes (Richard Shirk): The title of this film, if properly translated from the French Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, should be Elevator to the Scaffold. Originally released in the United States as Frantic, the film was then re-released here in 1958 as Elevator to the Gallows. And that's the title that has stuck.

This was Louis Malle's debut as a feature film director, and he was only 24 at the time. He had recently completed a three-year internship with Jacques Cousteau, co-directing and photographing The Silent World (1957). Later in his career, while speaking of his debut film, Malle was quoted as saying "It was my first film with real actors. All I'd ever directed before were fish!"

His other films include The Lovers (1958), The Fire Within (1963), Murmur of the Heart (1971), Lacombe Lucien (1974), Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1981), My Dinner with Andre (1981), and Au revoir les enfants (1987). Although he is often associated with France's New Wave movement ("nouvelle vague"), he was actually out of the gate before any of the others – Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Chabrol, Rohmer and others. In fact, Truffaut made his first feature film nine months after Malle made his. An article in Wikipedia points out that just as his earlier films (such as Elevator to the Gallows and The Lovers) helped popularize French films in the United States, his My Dinner with Andre was at the forefront of the rise of American independent cinema in the 1980s.

Elevator to the Gallows is a taut, black and white thriller involving a murder-gone-awry. Inclusion of plot details here would involve spoilers; suffice to say that Maurice Ronet's character (Julien Tavernier) is implicated in three murders, two of which he couldn't possibly have committed. And although the movie is basically a love story, the two lovers – Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau's character) and Julian Tavernier – are kept apart throughout the film. It opens with them speaking on the phone and ends, in a surprising plot twist, with photographs of them together. But they never actually appear together on the screen.

In addition to the love story and crime element, there's a political context to the drama. Julien Tavernier is a disgruntled ex-paratrooper who has served in Indochina and Algeria. He's now disgusted by his millionaire industrialist boss, Simon Carala, who has profited greatly from these colonial adventures without risking his own life. Julien asks him, "How many billions did the Indochina War bring you? And now Algeria. How much?"

In a 1993 interview at the Cannes Film Festival, director Malle stated, "What really made the film was Jeanne Moreau strolling along the Champs-Elysees, shot with a camera in a baby carriage, lit only by shop windows. After a few days of shooting, people from the film lab complained to the producer, 'He has no right to film Jeanne Moreau that way.' It's true that no one had shot in black and white at night without additional lighting before. This was ahead of the times." Roger Ebert, in his 2005 review of the Rialto's restored 35-mm print, commented that "the film works as a reminder: black and white doesn't subtract something from a film, but adds it."

Trivia note: there's a motel in the film, supposedly just outside Paris. But in 1957 there was only one motel in France, and it was near a beach 125 miles from Paris. That was the only motel in France, so that's where filming occurred. As for the building with the elevator, at the time there were only five such buildings in all of Paris; they were still very rare. As the director later said, "The film shows a very modern Paris, very modern buildings, freeways. It's Paris as it would be ten years later. I did that on purpose. I was fed up with the atmosphere in French films of old bistros, of old-fashioned taxi drivers in their caps. I wanted to move on to something else. This Paris was a bit imaginary, one that didn't really exist yet."

No discussion of this film would be complete without mention of Miles Davis' improvised score, which still remains the most famous of all jazz film scores. In the words of critic and Davis biographer Gary Giddins: "The thing I think is interesting about the score, when you consider how little music is actually involved, is how important it turned out to be in the development of Miles' music, and therefore in the development of jazz, because where Miles went, jazz went. Louis Malle was a jazz enthusiast, and he used jazz in other films as well. But he didn't want Miles to go home and write a score. He wanted Miles to do what jazz musicians can do – which is to improvise the score while looking at the images on the screen. Miles recorded 40-50 minutes with his combo during a nighttime session lasting several hours. Then Malle was able to cut it up and use it as he wanted. It's especially noteworthy when you realize the way the score is used. The film is 88 minutes long, and the music plays for less than 20. Malle was smart enough to know how to use it well."

Giddins then goes on to say, "It's important to remember that Jeanne Moreau had been around for awhile, but this is what made her a star, and one of the reasons it made her a star is because she's photographed in such a way that you totally fall in love with her face. The use of the music – the mood and tone it creates – is what helps to make this happen."

The film was an enormous success both critically and commercially, winning the 1957 Prix Louis Drelluc, one of France's most prestigious awards, and catapulting Jeanne Moreau into international stardom. Not bad for a low-budget debut film!

July 12, 2009

The Postman (Il Postino)

Italy, 1994, 108 min, Color, PG, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Michael Radford; Starring Massimo Troisi, Philippe Noiret, Maria Grazia Cucinotta

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Noiret) has been exiled from his native land and is now residing on one of Italy's small and charming islands. It is there that he meets Mario (Troisi), a simple man with a simple mind, whom Pablo hires as his personal mailman. Although Pablo is initially cold towards Mario, the two eventually develop a friendship, with Pablo teaching the eager Mario the joys of poetry. When Mario falls for sexy barmaid Beatrice (Cucinotta), Pablo even helps him win her heart via poetic love letters. Although the British Michael Radford directed the movie, Massimo Troisi was the co-writer and guiding force behind the film. Troisi so believed in the material and the title character that he postponed heart surgery to complete the film, dying the day after production finished. His understated but powerful performance turns this good-hearted little film into a quiet meditation on fate, tact, and poetry.

Film Notes (Royster Chamblee): This is a charming film about Mario (Troisi), a shy villager who winds up being the personal postman of poet Pablo Neruda (Noiret), who was exiled from Chile in 1952, granted asylum by the Italian government, and ends up living in the tiny community of Isla Negra. The tongue-tied Mario has fallen in love with barmaid Beatrice (Cucinotta) and asks the poet's help in wooing the dark-eyed beauty, thus striking up an unlikely friendship with the worldly Neruda.

Writer/star Massimo Troisi postponed heart surgery so that he could complete the film. The day after filming completed, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. The film's score, composed by Luis Enríquez Bacalov, won the Academy Award for Original Music Score. The film was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Massimo Troisi); Best Director; Best Picture; and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Whereas the novel and the 1983 film were set in Chile, with Neruda living in his home at Isla Negra around 1970, Il Postino moves the setting to Italy in about 1950. The film is set and was partially filmed on the island of Salina, of the volcanic Aeolian Island chain off the north coast of Sicily. One unfortunate victim of the film's popularity has been Pollara Beach on the island, which has suffered erosion from motorboats and vandalism from tourists since the film was produced.

(Film notes freely plagiarized from Video Hound and Wikipedia.)

August 9, 2009

The 39 Steps

UK, 1935, 86 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle

Richard Hannay (Donat) is a Canadian rancher on vacation in London who sees a vaudeville act at the Palladium. When a shot rings out in the theater, a frightened young woman (Mannheim) approaches Hannay and asks for his help. The woman claims that foreign spies who plan to smuggle valuable military secrets out of the country are after her. When she is later killed, Hannay finds himself both framed as the man responsible for her death as well as the next potential victim of the spy ring. Traversing through rural Scotland on the run from both the police and the spies, Hannay finds himself attached to a cool but reluctant blonde. Together they have to figure out the meaning of the woman's last words and bring down the spy ring before the precious military secrets are smuggled abroad. The 39 Steps established Hitchcock as a thriller director early in his career and introduced many themes that became trademarks: the chase, dangerous adventure, a mysterious murder, and of course, the MacGuffin.

Film Notes (Karen Bender): In 1935, Alfred Hitchcock was a successful British director, his career enjoying a rather meteoric rise from a start designing title cards in silent films to working for esteemed producer Michael Balcon at the Gaumont Film Company to eventually earning the opportunity to direct films on his own. But as popular as Hitch's films had become in England, he was still relatively unknown in the more highly esteemed and significantly more highly compensated film community in Hollywood. The 39 Steps, along with The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Lady Vanishes, arguably Hitchcock's finest films of his British period, represents the ripening of Hitch's art while all the while he was hoping for his chance to make films in America.

Richard Hannay (Donat) is a Canadian rancher on vacation in London who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hannay attends a performance in a vaudeville theater when a shooting occurs. Afterward, a stranger asks him for help, telling him that she is a secret agent who is spying for England. When she is murdered, Hannay simultaneously finds himself wrongly accused of the murder and on the run from the police through rural England and Scotland while he tries to track down a ring of spies called The 39 Steps. Along the way, he encounters a Hitchcock blonde, assumes and discards identities, and tries to establish his own innocence even as he builds and loses trust in others.

The 39 Steps is an early work of a burgeoning master. Loosely based on a popular novel by John Buchan, the film incorporates the basic story line, adding a love interest that was not present in the book itself. The 39 Steps bears witness to its recent silent forebears in its moments of "pure cinema". Watch the subtlety of the acting, conveyed primarily through facial expressions, between Robert Donat and Peggy Ashcroft, who portrays the young wife of a rather austere Scottish farmer. During the dinner scene, there is little dialogue between the two characters but through acting alone, suspense is built as the audience gains an understanding of the characters' intents.

The 39 Steps introduces or exemplifies many of Hitchcock's trademark techniques that grew so recognizable in his mature work, among them the notion of "the wrong man" that was later successfully exploited both in Saboteur and North by Northwest. Another common Hitchcockian device that was developed in this film and used in subsequent works is the theme of the innocent bystander randomly ensnared in a web of espionage. This theme had previously been used in the British version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and appeared again in the American version (1956). Also present and accounted for in this entertaining and suspenseful film are Hitchcock's patented humor and pacing, the concept of the icy hot blonde, and the motivating plot device that Hitch always referred to as "The MacGuffin."

Season 42 2007 – 2008

September 9, 2007

Manhattan

USA, 1979, 96 min, B&W, R

Directed by Woody Allen; Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Mariel Hemingway

Woody Allen finished his first decade of filmmaking with one of his most deliberately artistic films, a love song to his home, Manhattan. Although the acting and writing is some of the sharpest of Allen's career, what is truly memorable about Manhattan is its romantic view of New York City. Allen and his longtime cinematographer Gordon Willis decided to shoot the film in black and white and in a wide-screen format to aesthetically accentuate iconic images of the city. Allen added a soundtrack consisting of classic George Gershwin songs that add grandeur and sweep to the film. Roger Ebert called Manhattan "one of the best-photographed movies ever made," and it is a movie that begs to be seen on a big screen.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Manhattan at Great Movies.

October 14, 2007

Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser

USA, 1988, 90 min, Color, PG-13

Directed by Charlotte Zwerin; Starring Jimmy Cleveland, Harry Colomby, John Coltrane, Ray Copeland

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser, produced by jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood, is an intelligent portrait of Thelonious Monk centered on lost footage that was rediscovered in the 1980s. The footage was shot by cinematographers Michael and Christian Blackwood during six months in 1967-68, and reveals a lot about Monk's personality, including his dramatic mood swings, eccentric behavior, and keen sense of humor. The Blackwoods followed Monk "behind the scenes" in the studio and on tour in Europe. The generous video catalogue of Monk songs is alone worth watching, but the film is rounded out with interviews with Monk's friends, family, and fellow musicians, giving us a glimpse at the private life of a legendary jazz artist.

Film Notes (Gerry Folden): It's not often, if ever, that The Cinema, Inc. can present a documentary about a man for whom an asteroid is named. Additionally, as we come together to celebrate the genius of this man from Rocky Mount, we do so just four days past his 90th birthday. Monk's family moved to New York when he was five. By the age of 13, he had won the amateur contest at the Apollo Theater so often he was barred from entering. When only 19, Monk joined the house band at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem. There, along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he developed the style of jazz known as bebop.

In 1947, he married his long-time love Nellie Smith. They had two children, Thelonious, Jr. and Barbara. In 1964, Monk became only the fourth jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine. By the early 1970s, he limited himself to rare performances at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Newport Jazz Festival.

Produced by jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood, this film makes use of long-lost footage rediscovered in the 1980s, shot during six months in 1967-68. It shows Monk's dramatic mood swings, eccentric behavior, and keen sense of humor. Most enjoyable are the behind-the-scenes shots in the studio and on tour in Europe. Also featured are interviews with Monk's friends, family, and fellow musicians.

Born Thelonious Sphere Monk, it was alway easier to refer to him by one of his many nicknames: Melodious, The High Priest of Bebop, The Mad Monk, The Genius of Modern Music. To call Monk a 'genius' is no misrepresentation. He was likely the most cerebral of jazz musicians. Giving his fellow musicians the credit he thought they deserved, he is quoted as saying "All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians." In contrast but entirely as a put-on to a jazz critic who asked what he thought of polls, Monk answered "I have a lot of respect for the Polish people, especially the way they can drink vodka."

Last September 18, the world's greatest jazz musicians filled the stage of the Kennedy Center to culminate in a weekend of festivities paying tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Founded two years after Monk's death in 1984, the Institute is the world's leading organization for jazz education. The celebration began with the President hosting a White House dinner and concert (later broadcast by PBS).

The archive of his music is at the Smithsonian and a postage stamp immortalized his contribution to music. Inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1980, Monk remained a man of the people, never removing his name from the Manhattan telephone directory. Despite living all but his first five years in New York, his son said he continued to think of himself as a North Carolinian.

On the occasion of his 90th birthday, the importance of Monk to North Carolina was not lost on jazz enthusiasts at Duke University. Currently ongoing and ending October 28, events too numerous to list here will celebrate the man who had an indelible impact on jazz everywhere.

Please don't miss Monk.

November 11, 2007

The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri)

Algeria/Italy, 1966, 121 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo; Starring Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Brahim Hadjadj, Tommaso Neri

Exploring the Algerian people's struggle to liberate themselves from France between 1954 and 1962, many themes of this film have relevance to the current day. The Boston Globe said of The Battle of Algiers, "The chafing, mutually uncomprehending collision of Western occupiers and Muslim-occupied has never been captured with such dispassionate, thrilling clarity." Director Gillo Pontecorvo creates a stunning illusion of realism by combining actual newsreel footage with staged sequences featuring amateur and professional actors playing characters based on real people. The film's depiction of violence, political torture, insurgency and counter-insurgency was revolutionary at the time, and just as startling today as 40 years ago.

Film Notes: In 1962, after more than 130 years of French colonial rule, Algeria became independent. Gillo Pontecorvo's Algiers shows the decade leading to that liberation in a powerful story about Muslims asserting their rights through violence, hiding, and plotting in the Kasbah, a demiworld of narrow, winding, seemingly endless alleys that are the only protection the rebels have from the eyes of the French. The re-release of the 1965 black and white film is a convincing story of a people who do not want to be occupied and will give their lives so their families can one day be free.

The story centers on a couple of Muslim leaders, the charismatic colonel of the French forces, and the bombings and shootouts that at one point averaged just over four per day. The film's sympathy is with the Muslims, but the Colonel has moments of reflection that could be sympathetic, especially with the revelation that he was a member of the resistance in WWII and may have suffered in a concentration camp. The director shows the influence of Italian neo-realists such as Roberto Rossellini (Paisan) by shooting in documentary style on location, using non-actors (except for the Colonel), and generally avoiding an agitprop angle.

But the film's sympathy in the end belongs to the occupied people. When three rebel women change appearance to look French, infiltrate, and plant bombs, the irony obvious to American audiences in their current struggle is a tribute to the strength of the narration and characterization and the universal dislike of occupation and subjugation.

The torture of the Muslim prisoners is the most poignant relevance to the recent scandal in Iraq. The Colonel's justification for the practice to gain life-saving information is classic 'ends-justify-the-means' logic still being used by great nations. In fact, the Pentagon reportedly had seen this film during the first days of the second Iraq War; some say they learned nothing from the film, which is an unforgettable study of occupation and defeat.

A film review by Roger Ebert, May 30, 1968

At the height of the street fighting in Algiers, the French stage a press conference for a captured FLN leader. "Tell me, general," a Parisian journalist asks the revolutionary, "do you not consider it cowardly to send your women carrying bombs in their handbags, to blow up civilians?" The rebel replies in a flat tone of voice, "And do you not think it cowardly to bomb our people with napalm?" A pause. "Give us your airplanes and we will give you our women and their handbags."

The Battle of Algiers, a great film by the young Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, exists at this level of bitter reality. It may be a deeper film experience than many audiences can withstand: too cynical, too true, too cruel and too heartbreaking. It is about the Algerian war, but those not interested in Algeria may substitute another war; The Battle of Algiers has a universal frame of reference. Pontecorvo announces at the outset that there is "not one foot" of documentary or newsreel footage in his two hours of film. The announcement is necessary, because the film looks, feels, and tastes as real as Peter Watkins' The War Game. Pontecorvo used available light, newsreel film stock, and actual locations to reconstruct the events in Algiers. He is after actuality, the feeling that you are there, and he succeeds magnificently; the film won the Venice Film Festival and nine other festivals, and was chosen to open the New York Film Festival last November.

Some mental quirk reminded me of The Lost Command, Mark Robson's dreadful 1965 film in which George Segal was the Algerian rebel and Anthony Quinn somehow won for the French. Compared to The Battle of Algiers, that film and all Hollywood "war movies" are empty, gaudy balloons.

Pontecorvo has taken his stance somewhere between the FLN and the French, although his sympathies are on the side of the Nationalists. He is aware that innocent civilians die and are tortured on both sides, that bombs cannot choose their victims, that both armies have heroes and that everyone fighting a war can supply rational arguments to prove he is on the side of morality.

His protagonists are a French colonel (Jean Martin) who respects his opponents but believes (correctly, no doubt) that ruthless methods are necessary, and Ali (Brahim Haggiag), a petty criminal who becomes an FLN leader. But there are other characters: an old man beaten by soldiers; a small Arab boy attacked by French civilians who have narrowly escaped bombing; a cool young Arab girl who plants a bomb in a cafe and then looks compassionately at her victims, and many more.

The strength of the film, I think, comes because it is both passionate and neutral, concerned with both sides. The French colonel, himself a veteran of the anti-Nazi resistance, learns that Sartre supports the FLN. "Why are the liberals always on the other side?" he asks. "Why don't they believe France belongs in Algeria?" But there was a time when he did not need to ask himself why the Nazis did not belong in France.

A film review by Jules Brenner, Copyright © 2004 Filmcritic.com

In 1965 Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo made this film tracing the efforts of the native population in Algeria, the second largest nation in Africa, to rise up and liberate themselves after their French colonialist masters reneged on a promise to cut them loose. As much for its style as its even-handedness, his film raised a stir, received recognition, honors and condemnation, and went on to influence cinematic story-telling technique. Its re-creation of how terrorist movements grow and how they might be eliminated is, apparently, applicable enough to the current resistance in Iraq for the Pentagon to screen it privately for its military personnel.

Because of that relevance, new prints from the original negative have been struck for theatrical re-release, that we might all judge and reconsider its instructions and its messages. One of these is that the battle for hearts and minds can't be won so easily by a rebellious people when sympathetic observers can taste the malice behind the deaths they cause, no matter what the political context.

In a prologue, French military interrogators apply pressure to an old Algerian nationalist until he reveals the hiding place of the last remaining guerrilla leader, Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag). When his hideout is efficiently surrounded, La Pointe hides in a blind behind a wall, which is quickly discovered. He's given a choice to come out or die. As he contemplates his options, we flash back three years, to the point of origin of the conflict, when the National Liberation Front, the NLF (aka FLN), issued a proclamation calling the population to unite in a struggle for independence.

Soon thereafter, the strutting heroic figure of French Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin), a character based on Jacques Massu, the actual commander of the French forces, arrives with his elite force of French paratroopers to deal with the problem. In a strategy virtually paralleling the one that Colonel James Hickey used in Iraq to find Saddam Hussein, Mathieu outlines for his troops the cleverly compartmentalized structure of the Algerian NLF's command and charges his men to find the foot soldiers of the rebellion. Through coercion and torture, they will force these lower level terrorists to identify the leader of their cell and his location amidst the native sympathizers.

In this way, the French troops gradually expose the hierarchy of tactical cells and eliminate them one by one, though not without some loss to themselves. When the story leads back to the last of them, La Pointe chooses death over surrender and The Battle of Algiers ends. While this squashing of a persistent enemy force represented a victory for the French, the cause of the revolution didn't die. The complaints of inequality and suppression remained, and the roots of rebellion sprouted again three years later leading, finally, to Algeria's independence in 1962.

Pontecorvo's characters are political figures first and foremost. While they tend to be two-dimensional archetypes, they serve to concentrate our interest and arouse complex sympathies. The balance of viewpoints is the most stunning accomplishment of Pontevorvo's film, elevating its effect far more than if it had told the story from only one side.

High-speed cutting; amateur actors culled from the environment; extraordinary coverage in the streets, back alleys, and safe houses of Algiers' Casbah; details of the grassroots movement as it grows into a well organized instrument of mortal danger – all of these elements lend the film the aura of a documentary and the sense of historical accuracy. The drama it develops tends to overcome what might appear to a modern eye as awkward formality in the characterizations.

Underlying the film's insights is the fact that some of the actors were actually involved in the Algerian struggle, most notably, producer Yacef Saadi's part of El-hadi Jaffar, which is based on his real-life role as a general in the NLF. It was Saadi's original treatment for the film – written in an Algerian jail after capture by the French – which provided the basis for Pontecorvo's and co-writer Franco Solinas' screenplay. The tense score was composed by Ennio Morricone.

This lesson in modern warfare is not only instructive to the Pentagon's military but is of considerable value to any generation's fascination with law, order, anarchic behavior, and classic storytelling technique.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Battle of Algiers at Great Movies.

December 9, 2007

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi)

Japan, 2001, 125 min, Animated, PG, English (dubbed)

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Kirk Wise; Voices of Daveigh Chase, Lauren Holly, Michael Chiklis, Jason Marsden, Suzanne Pleshette

Spirited Away is the animated tale of Chihiro, a young girl who embarks on a strange adventure while moving with her parents to a new home in an unfamiliar town. Reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Spirited Away's stunningly beautiful handcrafted animation reveals a cast of fascinating characters and surreal settings that follow a bizarre yet engaging logic. In 2002, Spirited Away overtook Princess Mononoke, also directed by Hayao Miyazaki, to become the most successful film in Japanese cinema history.

Film Notes (Ian Krabacher): Spirited Away is a critically acclaimed film by the Japanese amine studio Studio Ghibli and is written and directed by famed animator Hayao Miyazaki. The film has received many awards, including a 2001 Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture, the 2002 Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and a Golden Bear award (First Prize) at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival. From its opening in 2001, Spirited Away has become the biggest Japanese release in history. It is available in North America, both dubbed and subtitled, the dub being produced by Disney.

The film is the story of a young girl named Chihiro. She and her family are on their way to their new house in the suburbs when her father decides to take a shortcut along a lonely-looking dirt road. After getting out of the car and walking along a path for a while, they discover an open-air restaurant filled with food but with no workers or customers present. Mom and Dad don't hesitate to sit down and dig in, but Chihiro senses danger and refuses. As night falls, she is terrified to see the area fill with faceless spirits, but when she runs to find her parents, she discovers that they have been turned into pigs. She is found by a mysterious boy named Haku, who promises to help her. He gets her a job working in a nearby building, which turns out to be a bathhouse for the thousands of Japan's gods and spirits. Though the work is hard and the people strange, she does as well as she can. Her parents, however, are still waiting in the hotel's stockyard, and Chihiro must find a way to break the spell on them before they end up as the main course of some guest's dinner.

Spirited Away, like many of Miyazaki's films, is powerful in its signature imagery and in its mastery in creating a dream world complete of every twisted, whimsical detail. A few of Miyazaki's characteristic fixations feature prominently: his fascination with flight, ecology, elaborate buildings, strong girl protagonists, weary gods, overbuilt machinery, and empowering labor. Some suggest that the film is an allegory on the progression from childhood to maturity and the risk of losing one's nature in the process. The main character Chihiro could be seen as a sullen, spoiled, and very modern Japanese ten-year-old being forced to grow up when faced with more traditional Japanese culture and manners. Miyazaki himself has said that there is an element of nostalgia for an older Japan in the film. The film also offers thematic comments on the ill of human greed and advocates an environmental awareness.

Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to make this film after meeting the daughter of a friend, on whom the main character is based. Miyazaki had remained largely unknown to the West, outside of animation communities, until Miramax released his 1997 Princess Mononoke. By that time, his films had already enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan and East Asia. Spirited Away, by becoming the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, further solidified Miyazaki's name within the filmmaking world.

Miyazaki's films have generally been financially successful, and this success combined with his 1985 co-founding of Studio Ghibli has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney. However, Miyazaki does not see himself as a person building an animation empire, but as an animator fortunate enough to have been able to make films with complete creative control.

In 2005, Miyazaki received an award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. In 2006, Time magazine voted Miyazaki as one of the most influential Asian people of the past 60 years. Other Miyazaki-directed animated films that have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award have been Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). It has been reported that Miyazaki's next and final film project will be I Lost My Little Boy, based on a Chinese children's book.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Spirited Away at Great Movies.

January 13, 2008

To Be and To Have (Être et avoir)

France, 2002, 104 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Nicolas Philibert; Starring Georges Lopez, Alizé, Axel Thouvenin, Guillaume

To Be and To Have is a beautiful and inspirational film concerning a dedicated and gifted teacher whose world is a one-room schoolhouse in the French countryside. It charts the teacher, George Lopez, and his class over the course of one academic year, and takes a warm and serene look at the primary education process at its best. Director Nicolas Philibert's camera is a casual observer, choosing to capture, in an unfettered manner, Lopez's special way with the students – whether teaching math or mediating shoving matches. To Be and To Have is ultimately a stirring and bittersweet portrait of Lopez, a 20-year teaching veteran on the verge of retirement. Critic Andrew Sarris said that the film "contains some of the most stirring footage I have ever seen on the act and art of teaching children."

Film Notes (Katherine Reynolds): Être (to be) and avoir (to have) are two verbs that all French students must learn to conjugate. The documentary film Être et Avoir is one that all teachers and anyone who has ever been a student should see.

Nicolas Philibert and his crew of three capture the spirit of the students, ages four through eleven, and teacher George Lopez in their tiny rural French schoolhouse, revealing a simpler, more humanistic approach to education than in these days of No Child Left Behind.

Philibert spent seven months (and shot over 600 hours of film) with the students and Monsieur Lopez and managed to make the children oblivious to the camera so the audience can be the proverbial fly on the wall watching the routines of the school day. He takes the camera into the homes of some of the students and on several field trips. One of the field trips is to a middle school where the older students will go the next year, a frightening place without the strict but compassionate teacher they are used to.

This wonderful documentary received the Jury Award at the 2003 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham and the 2004 Best Documentary Award from the National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA among other well deserved awards and recognitions.

In his New York Times review, A. O. Scott says, "The film is as quiet, patient, and tenacious as Mr. Lopez himself, who approaches his difficult, endless work with remarkable serenity and discipline."

Give yourself a New Year's treat and join The Cinema, Inc. for this beautiful, funny, and poignant look at what the artist as filmmaker and the artist as teacher have created.

February 10, 2008

Delicatessen

France, 1991, 99 min, Color, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet; Starring Pascal Benezech, Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus

Both directors Caro and Jeunet were successful TV commercial and music video directors before their feature-film debut of Delicatessen. Their flair for visual communication and humor shows through in this bizarre, dark comedy. The story is of a post-apocalyptic society where food is so valuable it is used as currency, and people sometimes turn to cannibalism. Louison, a sweet-natured clown, moves into a run-down apartment building with a deli on the ground floor, and falls in love with the butcher's daughter Julie. When it turns out that Julie's father is butchering human beings and selling the meat to the tenants of the building, Julie must decide if she will remain loyal to her father's business or save Louison from becoming the next victim. Director Jeunet continued his very visual style in other somewhat more conventional movies, most notably 2001's Amèlie, but Delicatessen was his most influential, spawning a wave of directorial imitators (see the visual styles of Like Water for Chocolate or Death Becomes Her).

Film Notes (Ian Krabacher): In Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro present a dilapidated apartment building in a rural post-apocalyptic setting reminiscent of 1950s France. Food is in short supply, grain is used as currency, and animal populations are dwindling, having been hunted to extinction. At the foot of the apartment building is a butcher shop, run by the landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) who posts job opportunities in the local paper as a means to lure victims to the building, whom he murders and butchers as a cheap source of meat.

Following the departure of the last building worker, unemployed circus clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) arrives to apply for the vacant position. During his maintenance routine, he gradually befriends Julie Clapet (Marie-Laure Dougnac), a relationship that slowly blossoms into romance. Aware of her father's motives and Louison's imminent murder, Julie descends into the sewers to make contact with the feared Troglodytes, a vegetarian sub-group of French rebels, whom she convinces to help rescue Louison.

Delicatessen is a feast of hilarious vignettes, slapstick gags, and sweetly eccentric characters, including a man in a swampy room full of frogs, a woman doggedly determined to commit suicide (she never gets it right), and a pair of brothers who make toy sound boxes that "moo" like cows. It doesn't amount to much as a story, but that hardly matters. This is the kind of comedy that springs from a unique wellspring of imagination and inspiration, and it's handled with such visual virtuosity that you can't help but be mesmerized. Upon Delicatessen's release, it was celebrated by critics for its production design, editing, and writing. Consequently, it was nominated for over 20 international awards and won a total of 12, including 4 French Cesars, a Gold Award from the Tokyo International Festival, and a European Film Award.

The title credit for Delicatessen reads "Presented by Terry Gilliam," and it's easy to understand why the director of Brazil was so supportive of this outrageously black French comedy from 1991. Like Gilliam, French co-directors Jeunet and Caro have wildly inventive imaginations that gravitate to the darker absurdities of human behavior, and their visual extravagance is matched by impressive technical skill.

In a manner somewhat atypical of North American cinema, the original American trailer for Delicatessen simply presented the comic "squeaky spring" sequence in full. The sequence depicts a montage of the butcher/landlord making love to his mistress on a noisy bed, while the rest of the building's tenants perform activities (painting ceilings, knitting, playing the cello, assembling animal calls) at an increasing pace, with the squeaks from the bedsprings dictating the tempo. The trailer ended with the butcher climaxing, each tenant's activity ending (rather violently), and then a sudden cut to the title logo and the 'swinging pig' emblem from the film's opening credits.

About the Filmmakers: Jean-Pierre Jeunet was born in Roanne, Loire, France. He bought his first camera at the age of 17 and made short films while studying animation at Cinémation Studios. He befriended Marc Caro, a designer and comic book artist who became Jeunet's longtime collaborator and co-director. Together, Jeunet and Caro directed award-winning animations. Their first live action film was The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981), a short film about soldiers in a bleak futuristic world. Jeunet also directed numerous commercials and music videos and the tandem had each enjoyed considerable success before their feature debut, Delicatessen (1991). The richly textured black comedy set in a famine-plagued post-apocalyptic world impressed audiences and propelled their careers to even higher regard.

March 9, 2008

Moolaadé

Senegal, 2004, 124 min, Color, Not Rated, Bambara/French w/subtitles

Directed by Ousmane Sembene; Starring Fatoumata Coulibaly, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Salimata Traoré, Dominique Zeïda

Washington Post film critic Desson Thomas wrote, "In Moolaadé, six African girls refuse to undergo ritual clitoridectomy and unwittingly cause a revolution in their village. In Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene's hands, what could have been merely exotic spectacle becomes something astonishing, timely and deeply moving." Sembene is thought of as the father of African cinema, and Moolaadé is his crown jewel. He filmed it at the age of 81, and he imbued it with the strong feminist consciousness that marks his other works, most notably Faat Kine in 2001. While the subject matter of Moolaadémay repel squeamish viewers, skipping it would be a missed opportunity to experience the embracing, affirming, world-changing potential of humanist cinema at its finest.

Film Notes (Andrea Mensch): You may well ask yourself why you should see an African film dealing with the controversial and painful subject of female circumcision. As I am writing this, prominent members of the US administration are on a trip through a number of African nations and while gestures of paternalistic goodwill and financial generosity have been made, there is still a great deal that we Westerners don't understand about the many diverse and complex cultures in this part of the world. (According to his wife, the president intends to take his daughters on a safari to the "dark continent" after his term is over.) Ousmane Sembene's 2004 film Moolaadé provides us with a deeply moving and aesthetically rewarding way of encountering Senegalese culture that challenges Eurocentric notions and the touristic impulse for adventure, while presenting ethical questions that transcend individual cultures. It is a film that contains much visual beauty and inspiring examples of how ordinary people can act heroically. Having won a number of prestigious international awards, it is also the most widely seen film of one of the world's greatest directors and has been acknowledged as an important moment in the history of world cinema.

Ousmane Sembene began his career as a novelist and by the 1960s he had risen to considerable prominence as one of Africa 's leading intellectual figures. His commitment to reaching larger audiences beyond the verbally literate motivated him to start making films at the age of 40. His narratives La Noire (1966), Xala (1975), and Faat Kine (2000) have examined the problems of postcolonial hybridized cultures by looking at the role of women both at home and abroad, the difficulties presented by old and new hierarchies of village life, and the power of money and religion. In the medium of film, he was able to create memorable characters and stunningly beautiful imagery. Moolaadé was intended as the second film of a trilogy presenting strong female characters engaging in the many cultural changes that are occurring in West Africa, but Sembene's much-lamented death on June 9, 2007, made this his last film.

In the Senegalese village depicted in Moolaadé, six girls refuse to subject themselves to the "purification" ritual of clitorectomy. Two run away to an uncertain fate and the remaining four seek shelter with Colle Gallo Ardo Sy (Fatoumata Coulibaly), a woman who is thought to have mystical powers and has given the four girls the "moolaadé", the spell of protection. She ties a rope across the entrance of her home and all are forbidden to cross it until she releases the spell by uttering the correct words. We find out that Colle previously refused to have her daughter Amasatou (Salimata Traoré) submit to the "cutting" and Amasatou is called a "bilakoro", a woman who is unclean and whose prospects for marriage are very unlikely. Nevertheless, Amasatou is planning on marrying the son of the tribal chief, Ibrahima (Moussa Theophile Sowie), a financially successful Westernized African who is due to return from Paris.

Colle's moolaadé provokes the anger of the Salidana, a group of crones dressed in red gowns who perform the ritual. She is also forced to stand up to the intimidation of her husband, his brother, and the male elders in the village who see her as a threat to their values. In an attempt to maintain control, the men confiscate the women's radios, their main source of contact with the world outside of the village. Vehemently defending their traditions, they also turn against an itinerant merchant they call Mercenaire (Dominique Zeida) who, in an unexpected act of moral courage, comes to the aid of Colle. As the conflict intensifies, more and more women begin to side with Colle, whose determination in the face of apparently overwhelming opposition is of heroic proportions.

Moolaadé is not simply a feminist polemic against so-called barbaric practices. As one reviewer put it: "The film is multi-layered and the characters are complex individuals who are much more than symbols of right and wrong. According to Dr. Nahld Toubia, a physician from Sudan, 'It is only a matter of time before all forms of female circumcision in children will be made illegal in Western countries and, eventually, in Africa.' Moolaadé shows us the way and few will leave the theater unmoved."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Moolaadé at Great Movies.

April 13, 2008

Gallipoli

Australia, 1981, 110 min, Color, PG

Directed by Peter Weir; Starring Mark Lee, Bill Kerr, Harold Hopkins, Mel Gibson

The films of Peter Weir are often studies of male bonding, men in danger, and anxiety over the violence that those men commit against one another. Witness, Master and Commander, The Year of Living Dangerously, and, especially, Gallipoli, illustrates these points. Gallipoli relates the events surrounding the ill-fated World War I battle of the same name, in which Australian and New Zealand troops set out to capture Istanbul. We follow the characters of Archy and Frank before the war and during the battle that becomes a disaster for the Allies. Gallipoli's depiction of the horror, senselessness, and confusion of war (not to mention its movie poster) makes one believe that the film was very influential to other war movies, such as Oliver Stone's Platoon.

Film Notes (Michael Theil/Karen Bender): Gallipoli is the story of two young enlisted men in the Australian Army who find themselves thrust into an ill-fated battle against the Turkish Army at Gallipoli during World War I. As such, Gallipoli manages to convey both an anti-war sentiment along with a true reverence for the sacrifices made by the brave men who suffered and died in this tragic battle. Featuring a very early performance by Mel Gibson, the film is directed by Peter Weir, one of the pioneers of the "Australian New Wave" in the 1970s and 80s. Gallipoli was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and netted Australian Film Institute awards for both Gibson (Best Actor) and Weir (Best Director), along with awards for Cinematography and Screenplay and additional nominations in acting and technical categories. This film could be a companion piece to the perhaps more familiar Breaker Morant, which was also produced during this singular period of history in Australian cinema.

Director Peter Weir chose to focus his film on a few of the young men who participated in the bloody campaign. Only a few minutes of the film deal with actual combat. The rest deals with the coming of age of Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) and Archie Hamilton (Mark Lee), their friendship, their loss of innocence, and their participation in what many regard as a senseless campaign. Both Archie and Frank are runners, Archie the more committed athlete. Weir emphasizes the athleticism and ideals of these young men. He juxtaposes sport with war, noting both similarities and contrasts between the athletic life and that of a warrior. Archie's running, initially so purely physical, transmogrifies into a race against death.

The actual fighting occurred over an eight-month period, during which the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) forces unsuccessfully attempted to roust the Turkish artillery that was preventing easy access for the Allied forces to the Black Sea. The plan, initiated by Winston Churchill, was adopted and resulted in severe casualties on both sides. Allied cemeteries near the shore of the peninsula now testify to the heavy price that the ANZAC troops paid in the futile attempt, one which eventually led to Churchill's loss of his Admiralty position. Whether justified or not, many consider the Allies' campaign a compounding of some of the greatest known military blunders.

Weir is not intent on giving a historically accurate account of the campaign. He introduces historical inaccuracies and fictional characters within the command echelons. His main intent is apparently to celebrate the Gallipoli campaign and ANZAC day (April 25), one of the most important national occasions of Australia and New Zealand. In 2005, a documentary titled Gelibolu (Gallipoli) was issued by the Turkish filmmaker Tolga Örnek. It is said to be well done and for the most part an accurate portrayal of the battle.

In passing, we note that a company owned in part by Rupert Murdoch produced the 1981 film. His father Keith Murdoch was a journalist during World War I. He visited Gallipoli briefly in September 1915 and became a vocal opponent to the British conduct of the campaign.

May 11, 2008

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom)

South Korea, 2003, 103 min, Color, R, Korean w/subtitles

Directed by Ki-duk Kim; Starring Yeong-su Oh, Ki-duk Kim, Young-min Kim, Jae-kyeong Seo

This exquisitely simple movie was filmed at a single location – a remote and picturesque mountain lake in a South Korea wilderness preserve. In five sharp, concise vignettes that correspond to the seasons of the title, director Kim Ki-duk manages to isolate something essential about human nature. The narrative of the film concentrates on the relationship between a Buddhist monk and his young protégé, characters whose names are never spoken. Critic A. O. Scott said, "The subject of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring is spiritual discipline, which the older monk distills into a set of lessons that are, like the film, self-evident and enigmatic. They also reflect aspects of Buddhism not always sufficiently appreciated in the West, often witty and occasionally harsh." The beautiful cinematography and attention to visual detail (such as using a different animal as a motif for each segment) complement the patient and gentle pace of the screenplay, creating a very original yet universal story of human nature.

Film Notes (Pamela Winfield): Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring narrates the growing pains and life lessons of a young Buddhist monk who comes of age in an isolated temple in the Korean mountains. His secluded temple is set upon a platform which floats lazily along the surface of a mountain lake – a literal "floating world" that automatically invokes the Buddhist metaphor for life's impermanence and illusion.

Under the watchful eye of his elderly master (Oh Yeoung-su), the young monk learns firsthand how Buddhism strives to overcome the three root delusions of ignorance, lust, and hatred. As a boy, he ventures out in Spring to play with nature's creatures. Out of sheer ignorance, he ties stones to their backs and gleefully watches them struggle, only to awake the next morning to struggle himself under a stone that his master has calmly tied to his back. In Summer, as a growing teenager, the young monk discovers the power of lust and attachment when a beautiful young woman comes to the temple seeking a cure. The old master calmly observes that their love-making among the cliffs has obviously provided her with the right medicine, but warns them of the dangers that extreme attachment can lead to. The two teenagers leave the temple, until one Fall day the now-thirtysomething novice returns. He has killed her out of jealousy, hatred, and anger for having cheated on him, and seeks sanctuary from the law. The old master calmly instructs him to carve out his anger by literally engraving the Heart Sutra on the temple's platform floor, but hands him over to the police so that he can experience and thereby purify the inevitable karmic consequences of his actions. In Winter the old master dies, the now-middle-aged man returns from prison, and the cycle begins again – but not without an inspiring final act of repentance and karmic payback in Spring.

With minimal dialogue, stunning natural imagery, and award-winning cinematography, writer/director Kim Ki-Duk has created a visual meditation on impermanence, karma, and the power of redemption through self-cultivation. He alters traditional Buddhist symbolism slightly in his choice of animals to depict each delusion (ignorance=fish; lust=hen, and anger=cat), but to one attuned to their appearance on screen, such details carry this rich and rewarding morality tale along and teach the simple yet perennially profound lesson of the golden rule. Highly recommended.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring at Great Movies.

June 8, 2008

The Trial (Le Proces)

France, 1962, 119 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Orson Welles; Starring Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Orson Welles, Akim Tamiroff

Based on the Franz Kafka novel of the same name, The Trial follows the story of Joseph K., who wakes one morning and finds the police in his room. He is arrested and put on trial, but no one will tell him what he is accused of. Director Orson Welles provides the opening voice-over for the film, intoning, "It has been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream, of a nightmare…" It is the nightmare quality that Welles is emphasizing. Filmed in shadowy black and white, with angled close-ups, film noir-like compositions, cluttered and surreal interiors, and a plot that involves sinister authority figures and instruments of torture, The Trial is undeniably vivid and scary.

Film Notes (Richard Shirk): Mention Orson Welles' name in a cinematic context and most movie-goers immediately think of Citizen Kane, his 1941 masterpiece – considered by many to be the finest film ever made. However, Kane was not Welles' favorite film, and in fact Roger Ebert once reported that Welles told him "he had made a great many films other than Kane and was tired of talking about it."

Few of Welles' later films were commercial successes when first released, and The Trial was no exception. It opened in New York in February 1963, to generally poor reviews; critic Pauline Kael labeled it "an honorable try with some effective passages," while Bosley Crowther, in his New York Times review, wrote, "At best, it is another demonstration of the camera versatility of Mr. Welles; at worst, a further Kafka demonstration extending to the demanding medium of the screen." (Other than that, what didn't you like about the play, Mrs. Lincoln?) Today The Trial is an almost forgotten film, yet interestingly, by most accounts Welles considered it his favorite. And for his efforts, he received the 1964 Critics Award for best film from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

The story concerns Joseph K (Anthony Perkins), an office clerk who wakes up one morning to find he has been accused of, and arrested for, an unknown offense, although he claims he has committed no crime. Determined to vindicate himself, K appears before a magistrate who will not even explain the nature of the charges. Then, in a baroque, dreamlike setting, K seeks the help of a bed-ridden advocate (Orson Welles). After many strange encounters and bizarre landscapes, K is apprehended by his executioners, whom he defies to the inevitable end. As in Kafka's 1925 existential novel of paranoia, despair, and frustration, The Trial is nightmarish and surreal, yet strictly logical. In fact, in a prologue, Welles describes the film as having the logic of a nightmare – a world in which nothing can be mastered.

A number of exterior scenes were shot in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. But then, learning that production funding had ceased, Welles ordered cast and crew back to Paris. There, unable to rent studio space, he moved into the large old abandoned Gare d'Orsay, the train station on the Left Bank that would later become the famous Paris museum, the Musée d'Orsay. It was there that he created the surreal dream landscapes of Joseph K's world. And where, in the words of noted Welles historian Richard France, "economic circumstances necessitated creating a style which otherwise might not have manifested itself. The combination of modernist architecture, interlaced and juxtaposed with highly baroque settings, adds to the overall abstract quality of Kafka's original work and credits Welles' talent as a true cinematic innovator."

As Roger Ebert noted in his 2000 review, "the black and white photography shows Welles' love of shadows, extreme camera angles, and spectacular sets… The Trial is above all a visual achievement, an exuberant use of camera placement and movement and inventive lighting." (Note: Ebert gave the film a 4-star rating.)

For many years the only known negative for the film was thought to be lost, and available prints of the film were truncated and in very poor condition. But after film historian David Pierce discovered the negative in a New York office building, the film was restored in 1995 and has since been released (twice) on DVD.

In describing The Trial, Newsweek magazine stated, "to the theme and spirit of the novel, to its atmosphere of frustration and absurd complexity, Orson Welles' film version is entirely, wonderfully faithful." For this reason, it's not a picture that can be absorbed and appreciated with a single viewing. Every time you see it, you see something new.

July 13, 2008

Rope

USA, 1948, 80 min, Color, PG

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Starring James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Joan Chandler, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick

Rope marked a number of landmarks for Alfred Hitchcock: it was his first film in color, it featured two obviously gay lead characters, and of all his films it was his personal favorite. But these characteristics only scratch the surface of a unique Hitchcock masterpiece. Loosely based on a true story, two rich young men murder a colleague for the sake of the intellectual challenge of committing the perfect crime. To add to the amusement, they hide the body in a trunk that will serve as the dinner table for a party honoring the deceased. The film uses very long takes with no close-ups that both draw the viewer in to the dinner party and draw out the suspense. Rope was an experiment to Hitchcock, who was trying to find the cinematic equivalent of a play. That he could turn out brilliance while he considered himself to be merely playing around is a testament to Hitchcock's genius.

Film Notes (Britt Crews): Cut from the opening credit sequence, an exterior shot of Brandon Shaw's (John Dall) Sutton Place apartment building including reportedly a brief but ubiquitous appearance of a certain rotund director, to a medium close-up of David Kentley's (Dick Hogan) face as he is strangled by a rope. Continuing over the next eighty minutes with a mere four additional dissolves and five cuts, Rope tightens around the viewer's neck as each of us remains trapped in that apartment with two killers and a corpse at a deliciously macabre and perverse dinner party. Only the two affluent homosexual lovers, Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan – and the audience – know what has occurred just before the guests arrive. This knowledge makes the viewer a virtual accomplice in the crime. There is no question whodunit, only the suspense of when and how the perpetrators will be caught.

"The stage drama was played out in the actual time of the story; the action is continuous from the moment the curtain goes up until it comes down again. I asked myself whether it was technically possible to film it in the same way. The only way to achieve that, I found, would be to handle the shooting in the same continuous action, with no break in the telling of a story that began at seven-thirty and ends at nine-fifteen," Alfred Hitchcock later explained to Francois Truffaut.

To achieve this illusion of a film unreeling in real time (actually the timeframe was slightly compressed) proved an enormous technical challenge. Hitchcock described Rope as being "precut." In a brilliantly choreographed dance uniting camera motion, actor position, set pieces, and composition, Hitchcock draws the viewer's attention to key plot and character points. The positioning of the behemoth Technicolor cameras as well as the actors was carefully blocked and rehearsed. Every piece of the set moved. The walls broke apart and slid out of the way on rollers; chairs disappeared moments after the actors rose from their seats. Thick cables snaked across the floor and had to be carefully negotiated. Rather than "opening up" the single-set stage play, Alfred Hitchcock believed "that the basic quality of any play is precisely its confinement within the proscenium… this is where the filmmakers often go wrong, and what they get is simply some dull footage that's been added to the play artificially." A film magazine only held about ten minutes of film so each of the continuous takes are about eight to nine minutes in duration. When the film magazine needed to be reloaded, often a character would pass in front of the camera. For instance, Hitchcock would end one shot on a close-up of a jacket with the next reel beginning precisely at the same point.

Francois Truffaut pronounced Rope "a milestone" in Hitchcock's career for its technical achievement as well as marking the point when Hitchcock began producing as well as directing. Rope is Hitch's initial foray into color and James Stewart's first collaboration with the auteur.

No one delivers murder and suspense better than Alfred Hitchcock. Over his cinematic career, the bodies, chills, thrills, and gallows humor made a splendid funeral pyre. Rupert Cadell, James Stewart's character in Rope, easily could have been describing Hitchcock when he noted: "After all, murder is – or should be – an art. Not one of the 'seven lively' perhaps, but an art nevertheless. And as such, the privilege of committing it should be reserved for those few who are really superior individuals."

August 10, 2008

Memento

USA, 2000, 113 min, Color, R

Directed by Christopher Nolan; Starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Jorja Fox

The plot is straightforward enough: Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator, is trying to find the man who killed his wife. Complicating matters is the fact that Leonard suffers from short-term memory loss due to a head trauma. He knows everything up to the point of his brain injury, but can only remember everything after his injury for a few moments. Further complicating the story is the tour-de-force narrative style director Christopher Nolan brings to the movie: The story is told backwards. We see segments of the film in reverse chronological order, so that, like Leonard, we don't know the events that have preceded what is currently happening, and must figure things out on the spot. This unique movie will have you guessing until the surprising ending that is, in fact, the beginning.

Film Notes (Jeff Shoup): At the age of 28, little-known director Christopher Nolan showed his film Following at the 1999 Hong Kong Film Festival. He made the film a year earlier in his native London, on an ultra-low budget of $6000. Following is a modern film noir concerning a struggling writer who follows random strangers around London to see where they go and what they do. The film is short at 69 minutes, has no recognizable names in it, and was filmed over the course of a year on weekends because everyone involved had day jobs. But the film had been getting some notice at film festivals, mainly because of Nolan's direction and writing. The film has a definite atmosphere to it, a gritty and chilly quality that evokes the best noir, and the plot has some intriguing and thought-provoking twists to it. Since his film was resonating with audiences, Nolan made the bold decision in Hong Kong that after showing Following he would ask the audience to contribute money to his next film. His request resulted in major funding, albeit from a studio, for the film that became Memento.

The screenplay for Memento was written by Nolan, based on a short story by his brother Jonathan. It revolves around the story of Leonard, a man who has a condition that makes it impossible to form new memories. He remembers his entire life up to the point of his wife's brutal murder, but since then, all new memories fade after a few minutes. Despite this enormous handicap, Leonard is determined to avenge his wife's death. Based on this convoluted premise, Nolan devised an ingenious method of telling the story of Memento. The story is essentially told backwards so that we, the audience, experience some of Leonard's trouble in that we don't know the events that precede each scene.

The plot and the unusual telling of it, while thrilling and disturbing, becomes a method for Nolan to delve into the nature of memory and perception. In order to mitigate his handicap, Leonard comes up with interesting ways to help himself and his quest. He takes Polaroid pictures of anything or anyone he considers important, and he tattoos essential facts on his arms and torso. But given his memory problem, Leonard must constantly re-discover information, and leads a lonely existence of impossible friendship and the haunting memory of his wife's death.

One criticism of Memento has been that Leonard's memory handicap presents plot problems, most notably that if the last thing Leonard remembers is his wife dying, then how does he remember that he suffers from short-term memory loss? Perhaps Nolan attempts to answer this problem during the course of the movie. Part of the way through the movie, Leonard reveals that he used to be an insurance investigator and his job was to determine if medical claims were real or fraudulent. He relates the story of Sammy Jankis, a man who apparently suffered from the same condition that now afflicts Leonard. Leonard was attempting to discover whether Sammy's condition was real or if he was faking it. The story of Sammy Jankis seems to beg the question: is Leonard's condition real? Without giving away too much, the last time Leonard sees Sammy, there is a crucial shot that adds a layer to the question. It only lasts about two seconds, so watch carefully.

Nolan's career was cemented with Memento. The film was so successful, both financially and critically, that Nolan became a sought-after Hollywood director. He directed Al Pacino and Hilary Swank in his next film, Insomnia, and then went on to reinvigorate the Batman franchise with Batman Begins.

Season 41 2006 – 2007

September 10, 2006

Buena Vista Social Club

Germany/USA/UK/France/Cuba, 1999, 105 min, Color, G, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Wim Wenders; Starring Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Ry Cooder, Joachim Cooder

In 1996, American guitarist Ry Cooder gathered together some of the greatest names from the history of Cuban music to collaborate on the best-selling Grammy-winning album "Buena Vista Social Club". This ground-breaking documentary, inspired by the album, includes appearances by many renowned Cuban musicians. Documentary filmmaker Wim Wenders traveled to Havana to chronicle the cooperation and camaraderie between the musicians, as well as their dazzling sell-out concerts in Amsterdam and New York's Carnegie Hall in 1998. The rediscovery of these musicians came late in life for many of them; some of them were in their nineties when the film was made.

October 8, 2006

Roma

Italy, 1972, 120 min, Color, R, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Federico Fellini; Starring Peter Gonzales Falcon, Fiona Florence, Britta Barnes, Pia De Doses

"A story of a city" to quote Federico Fellini. Fellini strings together a series of images of Rome, and it is through his eyes that this special city becomes a living, breathing organism. It is Fellini's personal encounter with Rome. It is not a documentary, although it feels like one at times, and contains autobiographical themes from Fellini's life.

November 12, 2006

Belle de Jour

France/Italy, 1967, 100 min, Color, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by Luis Buñuel; Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Geneviève Page

Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) is a beautiful young woman married to a doctor. She loves her husband dearly, but cannot bring herself to be physically intimate with him. She indulges instead in vivid, erotic fantasies to entertain her sexual desires. Roger Ebert said of Belle de Jour "It is possibly the best-known erotic film of modern times, perhaps the best." That is because it understands eroticism from the inside-out – understands how it exists not in sweat and skin, but in the imagination.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Belle de Jour at Great Movies.

December 10, 2006

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

UK/France/USA, 2000, 107 min, Color, PG-13

Directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen; Starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman

In the Depression-era deep South, we meet three escapees from a Mississippi prison chain gang: Everett Ulysses McGill (George Clooney), sweet and simple Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson), and the perpetually angry Pete (John Turturro). Still in shackles, they make a hasty run for their lives and end up on an incredible journey filled with challenging experiences and colorful characters in this modern-day spin on Homer's The Odyssey. The Coen brothers teamed with music producer T-Bone Burnett to put together a stellar soundtrack of traditional American songs that is as much a star of the movie as the excellent cast.

January 14, 2007

State of the Union

USA, 1948, 124 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Frank Capra; Starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Van Johnson, Angela Lansbury

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, State of the Union examines the impact of hard political reality on idealistic industrialist Grant Matthews (Spencer Tracy), who is drafted to run for the presidency. As a candidate, he is caught between the ruthless ambition of newspaper magnate Kay Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury), who pulls the strings of his campaign, and the integrity of his wife (Katherine Hepburn), who believes in the man behind the political facade. Capra presents a memorable menagerie of handshaking, backstabbing party professionals who turn the election into an elaborate political sideshow.

February 11, 2007

Holiday

USA, 1938, 95 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by George Cukor; Starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres

Free-thinking Johnny Case (Cary Grant) finds himself betrothed to a millionaire's daughter. When her family wants Johnny to settle down to big business, he rebels, wishing instead to spend the early years of his life on "holiday". With the help of his friends, he makes up his mind as to which is the better course, and the better mate. Film critic Nick Davis said Holiday is "spellbinding without being a mystery, ravishing without being ornate, heart-achy despite being a lovely comedy, and full of surprise gestures and unexpected flights of feeling."

March 11, 2007

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Átame!)

Spain, 1989, 101 min, Color, NC-17, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar; Starring Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas, Loles León, Julieta Serrano

A disturbed young man named Ricky (Antonio Banderas) decides to give an actress the opportunity to know him fully and to love him. Her name is Marina (Victoria Abril), and she is a bad actress with a background in pornography, but to Ricky she is a perfect angel, and that is why he kidnaps her and ties her to the bed while he attempts to convince her to love him. The film is presented as a dark comedy and a love story rather than horror, which gives it an unusual emotional hook.

April 8, 2007

The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man

Italy, 1981, 116 min, Color, PG, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci; Starring Ugo Tognazzi, Anouk Aimée, Laura Morante, Victor Cavallo

Bertolucci's comic character study focuses on "ridiculous man" Primo Spaggieri (Ugo Tognazzi), the amiably grizzled owner of a cheese factory in Parma. When his son, Giovanni, is kidnapped, Primo realizes that he will have to sell his business to pay the ransom. The idea of throwing away his life's work gives him pause, however. Primo finds out much about his wife, son, and workers that he did not expect as the plot takes surprising twists. Primo's only real crime is his dubiousness toward the many voices who ask him to give his soul to their causes.

May 13, 2007

Sex, Lies, and Videotape

USA, 1989, 100 min, Color, R

Directed by Steven Soderbergh; Starring James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo

This revolutionary Sundance and Cannes Film Festival winner revolves around something as old-fashioned as the romantic triangle. However, the handling by writer/director Steven Soderbergh brings a fresh, new dimension to a frequently covered subject. Roger Ebert said of the writing that "it is never boring, and there are moments when it reminds us of how sexy the movies used to be, back in the days when speech was an erogenous zone." Sex, Lies, and Videotape is often credited with launching the rise of the independent film industry.

June 10, 2007

The Wedding Banquet

Taiwan/USA, 1993, 106 min, Color, R, Mandarin w/subtitles and English

Directed by Ang Lee; Starring Ah-Lei Gua, Sihung Lung, May Chin, Winston Chao

A gay Taiwanese-American man is in a happy long-term relationship in Manhattan, but his parents in Taiwan are always pressuring him to marry. His tenant, a young Chinese girl, needs to marry an American citizen to obtain her green card, so a deal is made. Complications arise when the joyous parents arrive for the wedding and a huge cross-cultural banquet is arranged to celebrate.

July 8, 2007

Do the Right Thing

USA, 1989, 120 min, Color, R

Directed by Spike Lee; Starring Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson

Producer/writer/director/star Spike Lee combines humor, drama and music in a technique used to again expose the absurdity of racism. Do the Right Thing moves its cast of characters through a minefield of sensations over the course of the hottest day of the year, on one block in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. This blood-boiling, 24-hour period will change the lives of its residents forever. Desson Thomson of the Washington Post says "This is radical filmmaking at its best; it'll have you arguing - and laughing - all the way home."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Do the Right Thing at Great Movies.

August 12, 2007

Bullets Over Broadway

USA, 1994, 98 min, Color, R

Directed by Woody Allen; Starring John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri

Woody Allen directs John Cusack as ambitious 1920s playwright David Shayne in this Prohibition-era comedy. Right off the bat, as David's agent arranges for financing, he knows he's in trouble. His benefactor is a local gangster, who freely provides funds - with one hitch. His ditsy girlfriend Olive (Jennifer Tilly) has to have a prominent role. Over his own protests, David casts her as a psychiatrist, a word she can hardly pronounce. Eventually, David must decide whether art or life is more important.

Season 40 2005 – 2006

For our 40th anniversary season we have picked twelve of the best films from our previous 39 seasons!

September 11, 2005

Sunset Blvd. (First screened during our 1979-80 season)

USA, 1950, 110 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Billy Wilder; Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson

The legendary Hollywood drama about faded silent screen star Norma Desmond (Swanson) living in the past with her butler, who shelters her from the present. Joe Gillis (Holden), a bankrupt screenwriter, hides from car repossessors in the garage of Desmond's mansion. Desmond discovers him and takes Joe in, in exchange for rewriting her hopeless "comeback" screenplay. This bitter, funny and fascinating film won Oscars for Best Screenplay and Best Score. Roger Ebert said Sunset Boulevard "remains the best drama ever made about movies because it sees through the illusions, even if Norma doesn't."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Sunset Blvd. at Great Movies.

October 9, 2005

Diabolique (Les diaboliques) (Screened during our 1968-69 and 1985-86 seasons)

France, 1955, 117 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot; Starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel

The wife and mistress of a sadistic boarding school headmaster plot to kill him. They drown him, dumping the body in the school's filthy swimming pool. But when the pool is drained, the body is no longer there. This classic thriller builds slowly with almost unbearable suspense to its dramatic conclusion. Charles Vanel's portrayal of Inspector Richet was said to have inspired Peter Falk's Columbo.

November 13, 2005

Kagemusha (First screened during our 1981-82 season)

Japan/USA, 1980, 162 min, Color, PG, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Akira Kurosawa; Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ken'ichi Hagiwara, Jinpachi Nezu

When a powerful warlord in 16th-century Japan dies, a poor thief is recruited to secretly impersonate the deceased ruler, whose throne is coveted by others. Although promised that he will be spared execution, the thief finds difficulty in living up to his role, and clashes with the spirit of the warlord during turbulent times in the kingdom.

December 11, 2005

The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) (Screened during our 1966-67 and 1985-86 seasons)

France, 1939, 110 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Jean Renoir; Starring Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Odette Talazac

Aviator Andre Jurieux (Roland Toutain) has just completed a record-setting flight, but when he is greeted by an admiring crowd, all that he can say to them is how miserable he is that the woman he loves did not come to meet him. This is the prelude to an exploration of a tangled knot of love that is unraveled for us during an aristocratic hunting party in a country manor. Rules of the Game is a sublime comedy-drama contrasting the affaires d'amour of aristocrats and servants. It is poignant, funny, and endlessly imitated but rarely equaled.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Rules of the Game at Great Movies.

January 8, 2006

The Third Man (First screened during our 1974-75 season)

UK, 1949, 93 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Carol Reed; Starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard

An out-of-work pulp fiction novelist (Cotten) arrives in a post-WWII Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious Allies. He came at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime (Welles), who has offered him a job. He soon discovers that Lime recently died in a mysterious car accident. Through talking to Lime's friends and associates, he becomes embroiled in a mystery involving the black market, multinational police, and a beautiful Czech woman. Andrew Sarris wrote "Seen today, The Third Man… can be appreciated as a prophetic statement on the eventual moral bankruptcy of the one-world euphoria that clouded men's minds immediately after the second war to end all wars."

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Third Man at Great Movies.

February 12, 2006

King of Hearts (Le Roi de Coeur) (First screened during our 1974-75 season)

France/Italy, 1966, 102 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles; English

Directed by Philippe de Broca; Starring Pierre Brasseur, Jean-Claude Brialy, Geneviève Bujold, Adolfo Celi

Private Charles Plumpick (Bates) is tasked with disconnecting a bomb that the German army has planted in the French town of Marville during World War I. His attempt is foiled, however, when the Germans discover him and he ends up in a local insane asylum. There, Charles befriends the other inmates and determines to free them in a mass breakout. Aware of the still-lurking threat of the bomb, Charles returns to his original mission - disabling the bomb - with redoubled meaning, as he tries not only to do his job, but to save his new friends.

March 12, 2006

Europa Europa (First screened during our 1995-96 season)

Germany/France/Poland, 1990, 112 min, Color, R, German/Russian/Polish w/subtitles

Directed by Agnieszka Holland; Starring Solomon Perel, Marco Hofschneider, René Hofschneider, Piotr Kozlowski

Europa, Europa "accomplishes what every film about the Holocaust seeks to achieve: it brings new immediacy to the outrage by locating specific, wrenching details that transcend cliché." So wrote critic Janet Maslin upon her first viewing of this moving film. The plot, based on a true story, concerns a Jewish teenage boy who is separated from his family in the early days of WWII, conceals his identity, and poses as an orphan. He is taken into the heart of the Nazi world and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth. The film is both harrowing and humorous, deftly blending horrific images with black comedy to depict the growing pains of a boy becoming a man amidst a world in chaos.

April 9, 2006

The Thin Blue Line (First screened during our 1989-90 season)

USA, 1988, 101 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Errol Morris; Starring Randall Adams, David Harris, Gus Rose, Jackie Johnson

Roger Ebert describes Errol Morris as "one of America's strangest and most brilliant documentary filmmakers, who sometimes jokes that he is not a 'producer-director' but a 'detective-director'." Morris puts that talent to use in this unique documentary that dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a Dallas police officer's murder in 1976. The film, while based on Morris's interpretation of the events surrounding that murder, was so totally convincing that after the film's premiere, the case was re-opened and the defendant exonerated. The film also features an acclaimed score by Philip Glass.

May 14, 2006

Brazil (First screened during our 1997-98 season)

UK, 1985, 132 min, Color, R

Directed by Terry Gilliam; Starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm

Film critic Wesley Morris summed up Brazil as "a glimmering hunk of fractured brilliance riddled with Orwellian paranoia encased in a production design seemingly pieced together from the shared dreams of Franz Kafka and Salvador Dali." In Gilliam's Orwellian future, the populace are completely controlled by the state, but technology remains almost as it was in the 1970s. Sam Lowry (Pryce) is a civil servant dreaming of breaking free of his oppressive society, but in the struggle he becomes more deeply and tragically enmeshed.

June 11, 2006

Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud) (First screened during our 1989-90 season)

Denmark, 1987, 102 min, Color, G, Danish/French w/subtitles

Directed by Gabriel Axel; Starring Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle

Two aging sisters, the leaders of a small Danish sect, have devoted their lives to religion, never venturing from their town of birth. Babette, a cook from Paris has been hired to work for the sisters. Babette invites the sisters and a few other townsfolk to share in a feast to celebrate their beloved late pastor, and ends up performing an amazing act of grace and selflessness. Babette is a maestro. The kitchen is her orchestra. The sisters and the church members agree to eat the food, but not to enjoy or praise it. And then the miracle occurs, when these stern old puritans are transformed by the baba aurhum and the champagne (which is mistaken for lemonade).

July 9, 2006

Z (First screened during our 1987-88 season)

France/Algeria, 1969, 127 min, Color, PG, French w/subtitles

Directed by Costa-Gavras; Starring Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintignant, François Périer

Roger Ebert wrote about Z, "There are some things that refuse to be covered over. It would be more convenient, yes, and easier if the official version were believed. But then the facts begin to trip over one another, and contradictions emerge, and an 'accident' is revealed as a crime. Z is about how even moral victories are corrupted. It will make you weep and make you angry." Z is the story of the overthrow of the democratic government in Greece, and has been hailed as one of the greatest political thrillers ever made, with superb performances by a fantastic international cast. Because events in the movie were too close to real-life scandals, the film's director and writer were banned in Greece after the film was shown in 1969.

August 13, 2006

The Manchurian Candidate (First screened during our 1988-89 season)

USA, 1962, 126 min, B&W, PG-13

Directed by John Frankenheimer; Starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury

Kept out of release from 1964 to 1988 due to financial disputes, The Manchurian Candidate is a tingling political paranoia thriller. Desson Thomson, of the Washington Post, wrote that "its story of Cold War intrigue, murky East-West dealings, assassination, brainwashing - and the idea of a glorified cue-card reader playing president - resonates today like never before." The story centers around Raymond Shaw (Harvey), who returns from the Korean War as a decorated hero. Two of the soldiers cannot remember what Shaw did to earn his medals, and one (Sinatra) begins asking questions that unravel a web of secrets and anticommunist hysteria that vividly evokes the dark days of McCarthyism. Sinatra characterized the film as the high point of his acting career.

Read Roger Ebert's review of The Manchurian Candidate at Great Movies.

Season 39 2004 – 2005

September 12, 2004

Duck Soup

USA, 1933, 68 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Leo McCarey; Starring The Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx

In this madcap Marx Brothers comedy, Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont star as Rufus T. Firefly, the would-be dictator of a destitute European duchy, and Mrs. Teasdale, a wealthy dowager whom Firefly woos for her money. Cinebooks' Motion Picture Guide gives this comic masterpiece five stars (its highest rating) and writes, "Duck Soup is perhaps the best, and funniest, depiction of the absurdities of war ever committed to celluloid. The Marxes' depiction of two-bit dictators destroying their own countries was a slap at the rising fascists, so much so that Mussolini considered it a direct insult and banned the film in Italy." British film critic Patrick McCray adds, "As an absurdist essay on politics and warfare, Duck Soup can stand alongside (or even above) the works of Beckett and Ionesco."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Duck Soup at Great Movies.

October 10, 2004

Repulsion

UK, 1965, 105 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Roman Polanski; Starring Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Yvonne Furneaux

American movie critic Leonard Maltin awards Repulsion four stars (his highest rating) and calls the film an "excellent psychological shocker depicting [the] mental deterioration of [a] sexually repressed girl left alone in her sister's apartment for several days." Maltin claims, "[Repulsion] hasn't lost a bit of its impact; [it] will leave you feeling uneasy for days afterward."

November 14, 2004

Richard III

UK/USA, 1995, 110 min, Color, R

Directed by Richard Loncraine; Starring Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent

American critic Roger Ebert says, "The movie is set in the kind of England that might have resulted if Edward VIII, instead of abdicating, had been able to indulge his fascist fantasies, summon Oswald Mosley to lead a government, and lead his people into an accommodation with Hitler." Cinebooks adds, "From its explosive intro to its surprisingly giddy finale (think White Heat), this glossy adaptation is arch, nasty fun. Based on Ian McKellen's acclaimed [1990] stage production, the screenplay updates the story to the 1930s, re-inventing Richard III (McKellen) as a homegrown Nazi who charms and slaughters his way to the British throne."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Richard III at Great Movies.

December 12, 2004

Slums of Beverly Hills

USA, 1998, 91 min, Color, R

Directed by Tamara Jenkins; Starring Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, Bryna Weiss, Marisa Tomei

"Uneven but filled with flashes of painful insight into the pitfalls awaiting adolescent girls — particularly girls adrift in floundering families — this darkly comic look at life on the fringes of California's most glamorous ZIP code boasts a phenomenal performance from youthful Natasha Lyonne," claims Cinebooks. Roger Ebert adds, "Slums of Beverly Hills [is] about a poor Jewish family [which] moves by night from one sleazy apartment to another, jumping the rent but always staying within Beverly Hills to take advantage of the educational system. Every move brings them into range of a fresh supply of wacky supporting characters."

January 9, 2005

Jazz on a Summer's Day

USA, 1959, 85 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Bert Stern; Starring Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington, Anita O'Day, Big Maybelle, Thelonious Monk

Named to the National Film Registry in 1999, Jazz on a Summer's Day is a "candid, enjoyable filmed record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival [and] a must for jazz aficionados," declares Leonard Maltin. Pauline Kael adds, "Bert Stern's camera style infectiously conveys the festival's happy, lazy-day atmosphere; the America's Cup observation trials, which are also going on, are an unstressed part of the film's visual texture. In the evening, when Mahalia Jackson, with her majestic chest tones, sings the word 'soul,' she defines it for all time. This is one of the most pleasurable of all concert films."

February 13, 2005

Stormy Weather

USA, 1943, 78 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Andrew L. Stone; Starring Lena Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra

Stormy Weather, which was named to the National Film Registry in 2001, is a fictionalized show-business biography of a premier song-and-dance man played by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Hal Erickson of All Movie Guide writes, "Built around the premise of a Big Stage Show, Stormy Weather affords rare 'mainstream' leading roles to some of the era's greatest African-American entertainers: Lena Horne, [Robinson], Dooley Wilson, Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats Waller, and the Nicholas Brothers. The thinnish plotline — dancer Robinson has an on-again/off-again romance with Horne — is simply an excuse for fourteen lively, well-staged performances that include Horne's memorable rendition of the title song, artfully staged by director Andrew L. Stone."

March 13, 2005

The Grey Fox

Canada, 1982, 110 min, Color, PG

Directed by Phillip Borsos; Starring Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burroughs, Ken Pogue, Wayne Robson

Pauline Kael says Phillip Borsos' first feature film is "The [true] story of a legendary gentleman bandit, Bill Miner (Richard Farnsworth), who served 33 years in San Quentin for robbing stagecoaches and then, when he got out, took up robbing trains. There may never have been photographs of trains more exultant than the shots here of the old Northern Pacific steaming through mountain forests." Kael also praises British cinematographer Frank Tidy's spectacular camerawork. Cinebooks writes, "An ex-stuntman and character actor who was suggested for the part by Francis Ford Coppola, Farnsworth is dignified and charismatic in his first starring role."

April 10, 2005

Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim)

France, 1962, 105 min, B&W, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by François Truffaut; Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre, Vanna Urbino

Leonard Maltin gives four stars to "Truffaut's memorable tale of three people in love, and how the years affect their interrelationships," and calls Jules and Jim "a film of rare beauty and charm." New York Times critic Bosley Crowther says, "Taking his cue from a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, who was in his seventies when he wrote it and therefore should have known whereof he wrote, Truffaut is endeavoring to express (and presumably let us know) what it's like when two happy fellows fall in love with one whimsical girl. To put it quickly and crisply, it is charming, exciting, and sad."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Jules and Jim at Great Movies.

May 8, 2005

Antonia's Line (Antonia)

Netherlands/Belgium/UK/France, 1995, 102 min, Color, R, Dutch w/subtitles

Directed by Marleen Gorris; Starring Willeke van Ammelrooy, Els Dottermans, Dora van der Groen, Veerle van Overloop

Antonia's Line, which won the 1996 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, is a "disarmingly unpredictable comedy-drama [that] is a treat from start to finish," says Leonard Maltin. He adds, "[A] spirited woman returns to her provincial Dutch village after WWII and takes up residence there with her daughter. Then, over a span of years, she raises not only her own child but an extended family which comes under the shelter (and aura) of this unusual woman who defies convention." New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin calls Antonia's Line "a work of magical feminism."

June 12, 2005

My Life in Pink (Ma Vie En Rose)

Belgium/France/UK, 1997, 88 min, Color, R, French w/subtitles

Directed by Alain Berliner; Starring Michèle Laroque, Jean-Philippe Écoffey, Hélène Vincent, Georges Du Fresne

New York Times critic Stephen Holden says, Ma Vie en Rose is "the story, told with irresistible good humor and minimal psychologizing, of the far-reaching consequences of [7-year-old] Ludovic's [childhood transvestism]. By the end of the film, Ludovic's fondness for dresses and lipstick and his stubbornly-held dream of one day marrying the little boy next door has nearly torn apart his parents' marriage, cost his father his job, and forced his family to move out of a buttoned-down French suburb where they have become pariahs." This film won 1998 Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Film.

July 10, 2005

Silent Running

USA, 1972, 89 min, Color, Not Rated

Directed by Douglas Trumbull; Starring Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint

Douglas Trumbull's directorial debut, which was nominated for the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, is a classic science-fiction film. Hal Erickson of All Movie Guide says, "Bruce Dern stars as the caretaker of a greenhouse located on a group of space stations that are sent into orbit. The Earth has been stripped clean of foliage, and the greenhouse contains the last remaining greenery from the planet. Dern's staff includes three human beings and a brace of endearing robots named Huey, Dewey, and Louie. When word arrives from the Powers That Be that the greenhouse is to be destroyed (the space station is more valuable to man when hauling cargo and not 'preserving the ecology of the universe'), Dern decides to ignore the order."

August 14, 2005

Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neng shao)

China, 1999, 106 min, Color, G, Mandarin w/subtitles

Directed by Yimou Zhang; Starring Minzhi Wei, Huike Zhang, Zhenda Tian, Enman Gao

A. O. Scott of The New York Times writes, "At the center of Not One Less is Wei (Wei Minzhi), a 13-year-old primary school graduate who has been pressed into service as a substitute teacher in the Shuiquan Primary School. She stands a few inches taller than her charges, and it is hard not to hear more than a trace of irony in their voices when they address her, according to the dictates of courtesy and custom, as 'Teacher Wei'. Her main qualifications, other than the fact that no one else wants the job, are an innate, unsmiling bossiness, neat handwriting, and her ability to perform, in a tentative, quavering voice, one song about Chairman Mao." Not One Less won the Golden Lion and three other awards at the 1999 Venice Film Festival.

Season 38 2003 – 2004

September 14, 2003

Run Lola Run (Lola rennt)

Germany, 1998, 80 min, Color, R, German w/subtitles

Directed by Tom Tykwer; Starring Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri

The highest grossing film in German history, this rapid-fire outlaw-couple romance combines MTV razzle-dazzle, film-noir fatalism, and post-Tarantino plot twisting. Lola (Franka Potente) and her boyfriend have exactly 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 marks of mislaid drug money. With breakneck pace and unflagging inventiveness, the film provides three versions of Lola's mad dash: three alternative destinies that transpire when split-second differences in timing trigger major variations in the chain of cause and effect.

October 12, 2003

Nosferatu (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens)

Germany, 1922, 81 min, B&W w/tints, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by F.W. Murnau; Starring Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Georg H. Schnell

The grandaddy of all vampire films, Nosferererereratutututu is an unauthorized and unorthodox adaption of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Legendary director F. W. Murnau presents Dracula not as a debonair count, but as a hideously ugly ghoul with misshapen head and taloned claws. Actor (or was he?) Max Schreck gives a once in a lifetime performance as the monster that rages the expressionist sets, devouring terrified townspeople. Even after 80 years, Nosferatu remains one of the scariest and most disturbing films ever made.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Nosferatu at Great Movies.

November 9, 2003

Point of Order!

USA, 1964, 97 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Emile de Antonio; Starring Roy M. Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, John L. McClellan, Karl E. Mundt

Culled from 188 hours of television kinescopes on the actual 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings and presented without commentary, this classic documentary combines suspense, humor, humiliation, lies, and instinctive media performers into a package as exciting and entertaining as any fictional courtroom drama. The film is an essential document of the Cold War 50s, but the continuing influence of media on politics makes it anything but nostalgic today.

December 14, 2003

Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shi nan nu)

Taiwan/USA, 1994, 124 min, Color, Not Rated, Mandarin/French w/subtitles

Directed by Ang Lee; Starring Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang, Chien-Lien Wu, Kuei-Mei Yang

This quietly moving tale is about the importance of strong bonds, especially between generations. Sihung Lung stars as Chu, a renowned chef and widowed father of three grown daughters who must deal with each on an individual basis while strengthening the family ties that bind them all. Helped along by superior cinematography and an excellent musical score, Eat Drink Man Woman is sure to be a pleasurable experience.

January 11, 2004

The Champagne Murders (Le Scandale)

France, 1967, 105 min, Color, Not Rated, French w/subtitles

Directed by Claude Chabrol; Starring Anthony Perkins, Maurice Ronet, Yvonne Furneaux, Stéphane Audran

Sale of champagne company to U.S. conglomerate manipulated by various weird, competing types, complicated by murders which point to playboy (Ronet). Murder mystery narrative backdrop for odd psychological drama.

February 8, 2004

Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos)

Spain/France/Italy, 1997, 117 min, Color, R, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar; Starring Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Chete Lera, Fele Martínez

A handsome young man falls in love, but his jealous former girlfriend deals him a cruel blow. He is telling his story, as a flashback, to a psychiatrist. His name is Cesar, he is an orphan but he had inherited a fortune from his parents and used to live in a luxurious house of his own. Murky psychological thriller bounces from present-day reality to a nightmarish vision of the past and present.

March 14, 2004

The Ox-Bow Incident

USA, 1943, 75 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by William A. Wellman; Starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn

The irony and terror of mob rule are vividly depicted in this unforgettable drama about a lynch mob taking the law into its own hands, despite protests of some level-headed onlookers. One of the finest Westerns ever made, this thought-provoking drama stars Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan as a pair of drifters who try to stop the lynching of three men who may be innocent. Based on Walter Van Tilburg Clark's book. Superb script by Lamar Trotti.

April 11, 2004

Being There

USA/West Germany, 1979, 130 min, Color, PG

Directed by Hal Ashby; Starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden

A childlike man (Sellers) chances to meet important, powerful people who interpret his bewildered silence as brilliance. Low-keyed black humor, full of savagely witty comments on American life in the television age. The film's slogan proclaimed: "Getting there is half the fun. Being there is all of it." Adapted by Jerry Kosinski from his own story. Douglas won an Oscar as the political kingmaker.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Being There at Great Movies.

May 8, 2004

The Ladykillers

UK, 1955, 91 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick; Starring Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers

Droll black comedy of not-so-bright crooks involved with a seemingly harmless old lady. Guiness scores again (even his teeth are funny) with a top-notch supporting cast in this little Ealing Studios gem. Written by William Rose.

June 13, 2004

To Live (Huozhe)

China/Hong Kong, 1994, 133 min, Color, Not Rated, Mandarin w/subtitles

Directed by Yimou Zhang; Starring You Ge, Li Gong, Ben Niu, Wu Jiang

Zhang Yimou directs a most ambitious and personal film with this sweeping social and political saga. As a powerful and penetrating perspective of life in modern China, Yimou's film is an epic yet intimate tale of the grim struggle that results from living under communist rule. Superb drama follows the lives of one family — weak but adaptable Fugui, his strong-willed wife (Gong Li), and their young daughter and son — from prerevolutionary China in the 1940's through the 60's Cultural Revolution. As a grand spectacle of storytelling, To Live is certain to be a crowd pleaser.

July 11, 2004

Yankee Doodle Dandy

USA, 1942, 126 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Michael Curtiz; Starring James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf

Cagney wraps up this film into a neat little package all his own with a dynamic re-creation of George M. Cohan's life and times. As he emerges from gangster roles to star, Cagney dances up a storm, inventing most steps on the spot. Songs include "Give My Regards to Broadway," "You're a Grand Old Flag," and "Over There." The film won three Oscars of its eight nominations: Cagney deservedly won Best Actor for his rare song-and-dance performance, as did music directors Ray Heindorf and Heinz Roemheld for their scoring.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Yankee Doodle Dandy at Great Movies.

August 8, 2004

Smoke Signals

Canada/USA, 1998, 89 min, Color, PG-13

Directed by Chris Eyre; Starring Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer

Serious themes are treated in a deceptively simple and humorous manner, based on stories from Alexie's book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Geeky, orphaned Thomas lives on a Coeur d'Alene reservation in Idaho where he's reluctantly looked after by stoic Victor, whose long-gone father Arnold saved Thomas from the fire that killed his parents. Victor and Thomas leave on a picturesque road trip from their reservation to gather the remains of Victor's recently deceased father in Phoenix. Surprise ending. Made by and with Native Americans and supported by Sundance Institute. Not preachy or politically correct. A delight.

Season 37 2002 – 2003

September 8, 2002

Amarcord

Italy, 1973, 123 min, Color, R, Italian w/subtitles

Directed by Federico Fellini; Starring Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Magali Noël, Ciccio Ingrassia

The Cinema, Inc. will kick off its 37th season with a screening of critically acclaimed Italian director Federico Fellini's visually striking 1973 fantasy-memoir about his boyhood growing up in fascist Italy in the seaside village of Rimini. In Amarcord (which is Italian for "I remember"), Fellini reminisces in his usual flamboyant surreal style about family, sex, religion and politics. "Fellini's own boyhood in prewar Italy had seen extremes," notes Kevin Hagopian of Penn State University. "In a single year, he had gone from the rigid, authoritarian absurdities of a boarding school … to lovely anarchic days ranging the Italian peninsula in a vaudeville troupe. Out of the vast space between fascism and freedom, Fellini fashioned a career as one of the cinema's great philosophers of the human spirit." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awards four stars (his highest rating) to this Oscar winner for Best Foreign-Language Film. "Federico Fellini's Amarcord takes us back to the small Italian town of his birth and young manhood," explains Ebert, "and gives us a joyful, bawdy, virtuoso portrait of the people he remembers there. He includes a character undoubtedly meant to be young Federico – earnest, awkward, yearning with all the poignancy of adolescent lust after the town beauties. But the movie's not an autobiography of a character. It's the story of the town itself."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Amarcord at Great Movies.

October 13, 2002

Billy Liar

UK, 1963, 98 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by John Schlesinger; Starring Tom Courtenay, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Ethel Griffies

"One of the seminal British working-class films of the 1960s, Billy Liar is a first-rate comedy-fantasy that features Tom Courtenay in a role which Albert Finney had played in the stage version by [Keith] Waterhouse and [Willis] Hall," writes Cinebooks' Motion Picture Guide, which gives the film four stars (out of five). Cinebooks adds, "No one will argue the plot's derivation — James Thurber's classic short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," with Courtenay as Billy Fisher, a dreamer who works for a funeral director, but who retreats into a fantasy world. Billy is also a pathological liar who, as Oscar Wilde once said, doesn't lie for gain, just for the sheer joy of lying. Billy is involved with three young women, two of whom share an engagement ring. [Julie] Christie, in one of her earliest roles, is terrific as an adventurous young woman willing to overlook anything the charming Billy tosses at her."

November 10, 2002

Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens)

Germany, 1935, 55 min, B&W, Not Rated, German w/subtitles

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl; Starring Adolf Hitler, Max Amann, Martin Bormann, Walter Buch

"You might not become a Nazi after watching [Triumph of the Will]," writes Grant Balfour for Amazon.com, "but you will understand too clearly how Germany fell under Hitler's spell. The early crowd scenes remind one of nothing so much as Beatles concert footage (if only their fans were so well-behaved!). Like the fascists it monumentalizes, Triumph of the Will overlooks its own weaknesses — at nearly two hours, the speeches tend to drone on, and the repeated visual motifs are a little over-hypnotic, especially for modern viewers. But the occasional iconic vista (banners lining the streets of Nuremberg, Hitler parting a sea of 200,000 party members standing at attention) will electrify anyone into wakefulness." The Cinema, Inc. will screen a 55-minute version of this 110-minute landmark documentary, plus a related short subject.

Read Roger Ebert's review of Triumph of the Will at Great Movies.

December 8, 2002

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control

USA, 1997, 80 min, Color/B&W, PG

Directed by Errol Morris; Starring Dave Hoover, George Mendonça, Raymond A. Mendez, Rodney Brooks

"People say the darnedest things to filmmaker Errol Morris," writes Maitland McDonagh in Cinebooks' Motion Picture Guide, "as anyone who's seen his breathtaking true-crime documentary Thin Blue Line can attest. His new subjects are four slightly loopy eccentrics: MIT robot scientist Rodney Brooks; elderly topiary gardener George Mendonca; retired lion tamer Dave Hoover; and Ray Mendez, an authority on tiny naked mole rats, those hairless rodents that bear an uncanny resemblance to penises with teeth and legs. Morris intercuts their interviews and other footage to create a subtle, eerily profound meditation on man's relationship with the world around him." Janet Maslin of The New York Times adds, "[This film] intersperses … eerily poetic images with flashes of the humor and even absurdity that come with life in an offbeat profession. ("They can nail you before you say oops," says Hoover about life with lions.)"

January 12, 2003

Alexander Nevsky (Aleksandr Nevskiy)

Soviet Union, 1938, 112 min, B&W, Not Rated, Russian w/subtitles

Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein, Dmitriy Vasilev; Starring Nikolay Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov, Dmitriy Orlov

Set in 13th century Russia, director Sergei Eisenstein's magnificent nationalistic historical drama Alexander Nevsky vividly chronicles the transformation of the brilliant but moody and emotionally volatile title character (charismatically played by Nikolai Cherkassov) into a national hero. When fearsome Teutonic knights in grotesque armor and savage Tartars simultaneously invade Mother Russia, Prince Nevsky assembles an army of peasants and aristocrats to repel the invaders. With the Russian army at his beck and call, Eisenstein produced a masterpiece of Soviet (and world) cinema. This epic film, which Soviet dictator Josef Stalin vainly hoped would discourage Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler from invading the Motherland, climaxes with a ferocious 30-minute recreation of the decisive 1242 battle on a frozen lake. Leonard Maltin gives Alexander Nevsky four stars (his highest rating) and singles out for special praise the film's "[m]agnificently visualized battle sequences" and its wonderful score by renowned Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.

February 9, 2003

Shall We Dance? (Shall We Dansu?)

Japan, 1996, 136 min, Color, PG, Japanese w/subtitles

Directed by Masayuki Suo; Starring Kôji Yakusho, Tamiyo Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka, Eri Watanabe

Leonard Maltin says Shall We Dance? is a "Beautifully realized film of a middle-aged businessman (Koji Yakusho), secretly yearning to break out of the rigid conformity of his daily life, who encounters the world of ballroom dance. Deliberately paced and laced with humor, with a game cast. Ballerina turned actress Tamiyo Kusakari matches Yakusho's fine performance." (Maltin gives the film 3½ stars.) An opening title for this superb romantic comedy notes: "In Japan, ballroom dancing is regarded with much suspicion." But as New York Times critic Janet Maslin acidly comments: "Japan may not recognize ballroom dancing, but if Masayuki Suo's film is any evidence, it knows about midlife crises set to music."

March 9, 2003

Kiss Me Deadly

USA, 1955, 106 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by Robert Aldrich; Starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez

"More than once, [Kiss Me Deadly] has been called the best film noir ever made," writes Robert Weston in Film Monthly. "Certainly [it] was decades ahead of its time. … Based on Mickey Spillane's novel of the same title, Kiss Me Deadly follows the hard-fisted exploits of Mike Hammer, a character with the dubious distinction of being the harshest, least sympathetic of the seminal hard-boiled detectives. In the film version of Kiss Me Deadly, Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is searching for a mysterious box he knows nothing about, save for the fact that it contains something more valuable than anything he has ever chased in the past." Cinebooks' Motion Picture Guide gives the film five stars, calls it "Aldrich's greatest directorial effort," and adds, "Kiss Me Deadly is shot in an unforgettably harsh fashion, visually underlining the paranoia and existential funk of the film noir world view as few other films have done."

April 13, 2003

Crimes and Misdemeanors

USA, 1989, 104 min, Color/B&W, PG-13

Directed by Woody Allen; Starring Bill Bernstein, Martin Landau, Claire Bloom, Stephanie Roth Haberle

"Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors is a thriller about the dark nights of the soul," claims Roger Ebert. "It shockingly answers the question most of us have asked ourselves from time to time: Could I live with the knowledge that I had murdered someone? Could I still get through the day and be close to my family and warm to my friends knowing that because of my own cruel selfishness, someone who had loved me was lying dead in the grave?" Leonard Maltin gives the film 3½ stars and calls it: "Arguably Woody [Allen]'s most ambitious film, playing heavy drama against often uproarious comedy, and certainly one of his most passionately debated; a one-of-a-kind effort that only he could pull off."

Read Roger Ebert's review of Crimes and Misdemeanors at Great Movies.

May 11, 2003

All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre)

Spain/France, 1999, 101 min, Color, R, Spanish w/subtitles

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar; Starring Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan

"When Pedro Almodóvar gleefully established himself as 'Spain's most reputable disreputable young filmmaker' (in Vincent Canby's words), it was the dizzy hilarity of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown that marked him as an avatar of outrageous, sexy humor," writes Janet Maslin of The New York Times. She adds, "Starting at that place in Mr. Almodóvar's great big heart where womanhood, artifice, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and All About Eve collide, [this Oscar winner for Best Foreign-Language Film] weaves life and art into a rich tapestry of love, loss and compassion. This film's assorted females — real, theatrical or would-be — move past the nervous-breakdown stage and on to something much more forgiving."

June 8, 2003

Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e guilass)

Iran/France, 1997, 95 min, Color, Not Rated, Persian w/subtitles

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami; Starring Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi

"A wealthy Iranian named Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives around in circles," writes Sandra Contreras of Cinebooks' Motion Picture Guide, "picking up several men and offering to pay them well for an easy job, but refusing to specify what he needs done. Of course, he arouses suspicion, but what he's looking for isn't sex — it's someone to bury him after he commits suicide. … Abbas Kiarostami's carefully paced film, which won the Palme d'Or at [the 1997] Cannes Film Festival, balances ennui with suspense in a narrative that's ultimately as heartbreaking as it is delicately simple." Stephen Holden of The New York Times adds, "[I]t isn't until Badii meets the taxidermist [Abdolhossein Bagheri] that the film finds a lyrical voice to match its powerful visual imagery. [Bagheri's] gorgeous, rough-hewn soliloquy about regaining his zest for life after trying to hang himself from a mulberry tree is a simple, eloquent parable of the senses opening to the refreshment of life's simple pleasures."

July 13, 2003

They Were Expendable

USA, 1945, 135 min, B&W, Not Rated

Directed by John Ford, Robert Montgomery; Starring Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Jack Holt

Leonard Maltin calls this four-star film "One of the finest (and most underrated) of all WWII films, based on the true story of America's PT boat squadron in the Philippines during the early days of the war." Richard T. Jameson of Amazon.com agrees, "[It] is a heartbreakingly beautiful film, full of astonishing images of warfare, grief, courage, and dignity: the artificial 'rainfall' that lashes the beached [John] Wayne as his PT boat explodes in the surf; the glow around a communally improvised dinner for nurse [Donna] Reed; an old ship-repairer [Russell Simpson] settling in grimly to wait for the Japanese, with 'Red River Valley' as benediction; the propeller spray that hangs over a jungle inlet, like the dust from one of Ford's cavalry pictures, as the PTs round a bend and disappear into history. This is a masterpiece."

August 10, 2003

Metropolis

Germany, 1927, 153 min, B&W, Not Rated, Silent w/intertitles

Directed by Fritz Lang; Starring Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp

"Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis is one of the great achievements in the silent era, a work so audacious in its vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today than when it was made," declares Roger Ebert, who gives Metropolis four stars. Ebert adds, "Lang's movie is one of the great overwrought fantasies of German Expressionism, a story of a monstrous twenty-first-century city in which the workers labor like robots in their subterranean factories, while the privileged classes dance the night away, far above."