unexamined/essentials

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2011-10-31T09:42:00.001-04:00

Hi there,

We are transitioning this project to theFilmsaurus, a Wordpress site. You can find it at

We expect to achieve a full transition by January 1, 2012. In the meantime, any new content will appear there, not here.

For your links, we are eternally grateful. Please update them to point to theFilmsaurus.

Thank you,

Jaime N. Christley
Curator

Directors Who Can Do No Wrong #8: Andrei Tarkovsky

2011-10-25T18:00:00.000-04:00

Nostalghia (1983)

8. Andrei Tarkovsky

The giant of latter-day Soviet cinema was taken from us too soon - his directing career spanned about twenty-five years, but in that time, he was responsible for some of the most enthralling, and divisive, great movies that anyone has ever seen. His work is known for its patient style (which, in turn, requires patience of the viewer), its fugue-state atmosphere, its lapses into meditative silence, and, above all, a seemingly ceaseless river of indelible imagery - haunting, dreamlike, yet always tactile, earthy, and seeming to exert its own gravitational pull.

Introduce yourself to Tarkovsky with: Ivan's Childhood

Master Class: The Sacrifice, Nostalghia, Andrei Roublev, Solaris, Stalker, The Mirror

Deep Cuts: The Steamroller and the Violin

Stalker (1979)

Directors Who Can Do No Wrong #9: Orson Welles

2011-10-24T19:05:00.000-04:00

From an auteurist standpoint, the great directors have the power to transform bad, lackluster, or cliched material into great art. But even the mightiest directors have had a few duds. Robert Altman's Quintet is ignored by almost everyone; stalwart Fordians do not look kindly upon Born Reckless; even the hardcore Hawksians consider Trent's Last Case to be without merit. (There is also some disagreement regarding A Song is Born.) Hitchcock had Juno and the Paycock, and Michael Mann probably doesn't like to think about The Keep.

It's quite rare, then, that a filmmaker (or, occasionally, a filmmaking team) should pitch a no-hitter, from start to finish. Here's a list of ten. For sanity's sake we are grading on a slight curve: feature filmmakers only, their documentary work (if any) doesn't count, nor do their shorts, TV episodes, and "etc" work.

9. Orson Welles

The greatness of Welles was such that he could screw up royally, have a project taken out of his hands, burn professional bridges in a 360-degree roundhouse sweep, sometimes never finish a film at all, and still, the path he cut in the cinematic landscape, from his debut film (Citizen Kane) - a landmark that may have made independent filmmaking an aspirational goal for the first time in history, and continues to inspire young directors to this day - almost all the way up until his death in 1985, would be regarded as the devastating wake of some kind of god. His unfinished work, the mutilated work, the compromised work, is such that, in defiance of our own pre-list caveat, we would rank it with anyone else's best.

The Dreamers (1982)

Introduce yourself to Welles with: Citizen Kane

Master Class: Chimes at Midnight, F for Fake, Citizen Kane, Mr. Arkadin aka Confidential Report, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, The Lady from Shanghai, Othello, The Trial

Deep Cuts: fragments of The Other Side of the Wind, The Dreamers, and Don Quixote; The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh

Citizen Kane (1941)

Tomorrow: Andrei Tarkovsky

Directors Who Can Do No Wrong #10: Jacques Tati

2011-10-23T19:09:00.000-04:00

Note: beginning January, 2012, all new unexamined/essentials posts will appear exclusively on theFilmsaurus; until then, new posts here will be mirrored there.

--------------------------

From an auteurist standpoint, the great directors are frequently the ones that have the power to transform bad, lackluster, or clichéd material into great art. Even the mightiest directors, however, have a few black marks on their transcript. Robert Altman's Quintet is almost universally detested or ignored; stalwart Fordians do not look kindly upon Born Reckless; even the hardcore Hawksians consider Trent's Last Case to be without merit. (There is some disagreement regarding A Song is Born.) Hitchcock had Juno and the Paycock, and Michael Mann probably doesn't like to think about The Keep.

It's quite rare, then, that a filmmaker should pitch a no-hitter, from start to finish. Over the next week and a half, we'll highlight ten who did exactly that. For sanity's sake we are grading on a slight curve: fiction feature filmmakers only. Their documentary work (if any) won't t count, nor will their one- or two-reel shorts, TV episodes, or "etc" work.

Jour de fête (1949)

10) Jacques Tati

Tati destroyed his career with a multi-million dollar disaster that forever divorced his popular persona (expressed on the screen with the iconic M. Hulot) from his uncompromising, idiosyncratic vision. His final two features would consist of a crowd-pleasing nod to the paying public's desire for Hulot to remain on the screen as much as possible, and a highly personal, but virtually unseen, experimental video that combined a live circus spectacle with a completely fabricated one. In America, his name would be mud – Cimino, Verhoeven, Harlin – and while he was alive, he never redeemed himself in the eyes of the accountants. History has been much kinder, and that disaster (Play Time) is now considered one of the pinnacles both of cinema as art and entertainment, and it's only the capstone of (an admittedly sparse) career that has no downers: from Jour de fêtethrough Parade, every film of Tati's is an unqualified masterpiece.

Introduce yourself to Tati with: M. Hulot's Holiday

Master Class: Play Time, Mon Oncle, Jour de fête, Trafic

Deep Cuts: Parade

Play Time (1967)

Tomorrow: Orson Welles

Site News You Can Use

2011-10-19T16:30:00.000-04:00

In an effort to make unexamined/essentials more accessible and relevant - and to help attract more attention to our efforts in highlighting, you know, "good movies you should see," there are a number of developments, some already in the works, that will change the way the unexamined/essentials directory is used by cinephiles around the world. The site already has an extensive list of "must-see films," organized by year (from 1895 to 2011), but that alone has not been effective enough in connecting people with good film experiences. Sure, you can click on our directory page, then an individual year, see a title you might like to see, store it in your mind for future use...

Or, you can enjoy the site more. Here are the changes that are in store for unexamined/essentials:

Name change: unexamined/essentials will become TheFilmsaurus. We have purchased the dot-com domain name, and created a Twitter account, for "thefilmsaurus," a sorta-portmanteau of "film" and "thesaurus." This will be a slow change, so all of our valuable linking partners can get on board with it, and our traffic doesn't suffer.
The Twitter account is already serving the social network community: if you @ thefilmsaurus with a film you like, you will get five films recommended in return.
The 5-for-1 recommendation service will be embedded into this site as a form, if you aren't interested in Twitter or have no idea what I just said in (2).
An increase in blog posts, other than reviews. Liven the joint up a little.

That's all for now. It's not a fundamental change, we still believe in highlighting underrated films that require more attention, as well as great films that everyone should see. That's our niche. We just want you to have more fun spending time here.

2011 New York Film Festival

2011-10-17T18:03:00.000-04:00

Le gamin au vélo / The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

Since I don't attend Cannes or Toronto (yet), I usually have to wait for many of the year's best films to come to New York, and each year, I try to see as much as possible of the festival's main slate - which is, at the end of the day, the pick of many preceding festivals.
What made this year different is that my coverage appeared on sites other than my own - namely Slant Magazine, The House Next Door (which is Slant's official blog), and Keyframe (the official blog of Fandor).

Just how the festival impacted 2011's year in film, according to unexamined/essentials, will be revealed when the 2011 page goes up - on target for 1/1/2012. Until then, here's a list of the films I reviewed, with links:

4:44 Last Day on Earth (Abel Ferrara)
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)
Corpo Celeste (Alice Rohrwacher)
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)
The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)
Music According to Tom Jobim (Nelson Pereira dos Santos)
My Week with Marilyn (Simon Curtis)
Pina (Wim Wenders)
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
Shame (Steve McQueen)

Jodaeiye Nader az Simin / A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

Music According to Tom Jobim (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 2011)

2011-09-22T22:26:00.003-04:00

Earlier in the day before seeing Music According to Tom Jobim, a documentary-musical on the giant of Brazilian jazz-pop (and when has the word "pop" ever been more inappropriately inadequate?), I half-jokingly remarked to a colleague that the documentary was a dead genre. There's certainly enough ammunition to reinforce the argument, at least in observing how the documentary, once a dream of the medium's promise, has now been reduced to the status of glorified Powerpoint presentation, using unimaginative cutting either to grant undeserved confirmation of audience viewpoints or locating the most banal "story" in a heap of topical, zeitgeist-y footage and a hash of standard-gauge talking heads.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos's film provides a refreshing rebuke to my cynicism: it is almost completely free of the spoken word - instead a compilation of archival television and film footage of artists, all over the world, over the course of several decades, performing Jobim's melodies, in at least half a dozen languages. Dos Santos provides no context that isn't to be found simply by looking into the images and listening to the singers and musicians, performing against every imaginable backdrop, before every conceivable kind of audience, from a closed recording booth to an extravagant street parade that seems to stretch into infinity.

The cumulative effect, assuming you receive even a fraction of the pleasure the music is intended to give you (and there's quite a lot), is a "collage" structure that gradually becomes a string of beautiful, privileged musical moments, unfettered by the simulation of drama or pushpin historical context. A lovely adventure.

I Can Explain

2011-09-19T18:28:00.000-04:00

Lincoln Center

You may have noticed, following a few months of heavy posting, a period of quiet these last few weeks. Truth is, in spite of appearances to the contrary, I have been quite busy, primarily writing reviews of new films for Slant Magazine; you can also find reviews of unexamined/essentials classics such as David Holzman's Diary, Band of Outsiders and Red Desert. At the moment, my duties consist of covering the New York Film Festival (where my reviews will appear on Slant as well as Kevin Lee's blog for Fandor, Keyframe).

I have also been producing and directing my own work, in the form of Slant's first foray into video podcasting, aptly named "SlantCast." It is not without its rough edges, but it came out rather well and I hope you enjoy it. It's a two-parter, covering some "what we can expect" commentary on the 49th New York Film Festival's main slate (featuring Slant critics Ed Gonzalez, Simon Abrams, and Nick Schager), as well as a conversation with astute film writer David Phelps on the subject of the late, great Raul Ruiz. My d.p. and editor was Andrew Theiss, without whom the podcast would not be possible.

In the interest of being crassly commercial, we do ask that you watch the entire podcast and share it with friends and like-minded cinephiles. Each viewing helps to pave the way for future podcasts.

Raul Ruiz

2011-08-19T15:32:00.001-04:00

The great Chilean filmmaker, Raul Ruiz, passed away today. He's Chilean by birth, but as an artist, if you were to measure his cinematic footprint in strict geopolitical terms, it covers millions of square miles, from Hollywood, across the European continent (France, Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands, to name only a handful), to South America. A "ledger" accounting of his work - what goes in what box - is impossible, as he worked in every conceivable genre, shooting for television and cinema, on film and video. He made documentaries, science fiction, historical narratives, adventure films, as well as (often beginning within these frameworks) a kind of unnameable, strange cinema of dreams, the kind you experience while wandering between the realms of memory, unconsciousness, and waking life.

Much of his work was made while he toiled in relative obscurity. The most exhaustive filmography (from his earliest work, through 2005) is on the Rouge website. You can use it as a primer for his work. Here are a few suggestions from unexamined/essentials:

TOP TIER:

Mysteries of Lisbon (2010)

Time Regained (1999

Three Lives and Only One Death (1996)

Life Is a Dream (1986)

Treasure Island (1985)

Manuel on the Island of Wonders (1984)

Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983)

On Top of the Whale (1982)

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979)

ESSENTIAL VIEWING:

Nucingen House (2008)

Klimt (2006)

Genealogies of a Crime (1997)

Mammame (1986)

Richard III (1986)

City of Pirates (1983)

Please note, this is based on a broad impression of each film's reputation among cinephiles. If you disagree with an individual ranking, or feel we have missed any titles, we remain, as always, open to suggestions.

Pre-Code Hollywood (at MUBI)

2011-07-27T18:00:00.001-04:00

The online cinematheque/cinema journal MUBI is observing Film Forum's "Essential Pre-Code" series by running a series of capsule reviews. I contributed two entries, for Lawyer Man (a new piece, distinct from the capsule review on here) and The Mouthpiece. A third capsule, for The Match King, will appear shortly.

ADDENDUM: The Match King, as promised.

Ladies They Talk About (Howard Bretherton and William Keighley, 1933)

2011-07-21T17:00:00.139-04:00

Essential Viewing, 1933

If time ran in reverse, and they were remaking 1960s "girls in prison" exploitation films in the early 1930s, you might end up with something along the lines of Ladies They Talk About, a brisk, tart, raucous melodrama that is perfectly dated in some ways (whenever tiny-eyed, über-earnest Preston Foster appears), seemingly ageless in almost every other, as its images of Los Angeles and a highly theatrical San Quentin State Prison would easily find a home in Samuel Fuller's Crimson Kimono or Jack Webb's Dragnet.

Here's a film that simply can't sit still, treating the women's wing of the penitentiary like a giant comic strip, with violent, popping frames and vivid caricatures. The moment pictured above is a narrative-ground-to-a-halt musical number, and not the Busby Berkeley kind, either; that girl is held in a long, unbroken take while another girl strums a guitar off-camera, like Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo. (And yes, that's Joe E. Brown, who otherwise doesn't appear.) Stanwyck is the heroine, a bad girl locked up for aiding and abetting a bank heist - her performance is mostly a bitter, defiant mask that served her well during those pre-Code years, when she was the toughest of the tough-as-nails dames.

The direction is credited to two men (Bretherton and Keighley), neither of whom have been served well by auteurist rescue and reconnaissance missions, even though the latter directed two well-regarded crime dramas ('G' Men in 1935, with James Cagney, and The Street with No Name in 1948, with Mark Stevens and Richard Widmark). Bretherton had been directing for several years before teaming up with Keighley on the latter's 1932 debut, The Match King, an un-subtle "rise of a scoundrel" melodrama starring Warren William as a lowly janitor who lies and cheats his way into controlling most of the world's match industry. In that film, the demands of the "here how things came to be" narrative seemed to stifle the pair's creative energies - anyway, it was Keighley's first turn at bat.

In spite of rather implausible plotting involving a poorly-conceived prison break (what were they going to do when they got to Nan's cell, anyway - and why didn't they make sure Nan had the master key?), these 69 minutes fly by, scarcely so concerned about its chosen thematic concerns (don't squeal, do the right thing, stand by your gal) that they can't be conveyed with a few tossed-off lines of dialogue. Keighley and Bretherton, perhaps out of obedience to budget, or time, or resources, represent many key spaces in wild abstraction, or in absence, as when Nan's two ex-compadres are executed (offscreen) beyond the wall of her cell: it's only logical they'd already disappeared into an unrendered void.

Lawyer Man (William Dieterle, 1932)

2011-07-20T19:44:00.003-04:00

Further Investigation, 1932

William Powell's tickiest performance, and that's saying a lot - here he's supposed to be playing a wet-behind-the-ears Jewish lawyer who wins a big case in the first two minutes, starts mixing with the swells (watch his hair go from just-out-of-kneepants parted-down-the-middle to uptown slick), only they're too big for him and he has to figure out a way to out-swim the sharks, all in about 72 minutes. Kind of like a seriocomic, Vitaphone Damages with the future Nick Charles in the Rose Byrne role. The movie stretches plausibility by suggesting that anyone with Joan Blondell as their secretary would would allow their attention to be hijacked by Claire Dodd, but as they did with Aline MacMahon in The Mouthpiece, the movies put a little dark liner under otherwise lovely lower eyelids and all of a sudden they're ancient history.

Most of the show is Powell mugging up a storm and acting like a hormonal teenager whenever he sees a pair of legs, then turning into Tony Camonte (with legal briefs instead of Tommy guns) when the corrupt Manhattan D.A. does him dirty. Dieterle gets in a little visual panache but less than you might see in Jewel Robbery or The Last Flight: a stand-out sequence simply pans across a room as Powell goes to make a phone call, but the backdrop (a swinging party) is achieved by the largest, most elaborate panorama of rear projection I've seen in a film.

Otherwise, the pleasures are mostly in watching Blondell, who tries to keep her boss in line when a pretty client comes calling - she and Powell have an running sound joke of slamming books on desks or making other percussive noises to communicate displeasure with each other.

Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Eric Rohmer, 1987)

2011-07-19T08:07:00.000-04:00

One of the director's transitional works, Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle represented a period during which Rohmer was wrapping up the "Comedies and Proverbs" and gearing up for "Tales of the Four Seasons." As those groups build on a chosen structure or element that certifies their membership in their respective group (a proverb or season that inspires the narrative form, pattern of images, and feelings), so too does Four Adventures use structure (four chapters, alternating rural and urban perspectives) to guide its thoughts. It might be considered a minor entry in Rohmer's filmography if it didn't have so much on its mind, if it didn't contain such singular images and confrontations, if its musical arrangement of tones was not played so perfectly. I reviewed the film for Slant Magazine.

Pre-Code Hollywood

2011-07-14T19:57:00.002-04:00

New York City's Film Forum is running a 50-film, four-week tribute to pre-Code Hollywood. I wrote about it for Slant Magazine, and I'll be speaking about it tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM on 105.9 FM (WQXR). Please tune in!

ADDENDUM: The segment to which I lent my dulcet tones and cinephile expertise is now streaming online at the WQXR website.

Dan O'Bannon

2011-07-11T17:52:00.006-04:00

The late Hollywood screenwriter, director, designer, and image-maker Dan O'Bannon is being feted by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a career that spanned three decades and assisted in the birth of such memorable films as Alien, Total Recall, Star Wars, and Heavy Metal. The tribute consists of five features, including his directorial debut (The Return of the Living Dead). Do we source O'Bannon's legacy to the two films he directed, the nine screenplays he wrote or co-wrote, or the innumerable stories and characters he developed? No, and yes. O'Bannon's influence was much wider than can ever be enumerated in credits, and extends to a certain spirit of craftsmanship and traditional construction in the fast-evolving science fiction and horror genres from the 1970s onward, keeping alive the spirit of Howard Hawks and Val Lewton in the era of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. It's true that H.R. Giger is responsible for the original Alien creature design that has endured for over 30 years, but you can thank O'Bannon for keeping it in the shadows as long as possible. I wrote a short consideration of O'Bannon's legacy, including an appreciation of the two films he directed (Return in 1985, The Resurrected in 1992) for Slant Magazine.

The series begins tonight with Alien and runs through next Tuesday. Here's how we rank O'Bannon's two directing gigs:

TOP TIER:
The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

FURTHER INVESTIGATION:
The Resurrected (1992)

Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

2011-06-29T21:48:00.003-04:00

Like many of Allen's features, Midnight in Paris wears its thesis on its sleeve: within the first few minutes a character explains the "fallacy of the golden age," in which a person longs for the past because he is unable to cope with the present. The character (played by Michael Sheen, with a haughty American accent) is set up as an object of ridicule, called "pedantic" twice, but in a way, he's right.

Guilty of the charges is Gil Bender (Owen Wilson, in a brilliantly casual and self-assured performance), who does retreat into the past as a way of denying the present. The main thrust of the film, however, is the beauty of the past Gil retreats into, and how it allows him to reclaim the present.

To explain further would only mean a dry plot synopsis, whereas the film's real power lies not only in the depiction of nostalgia-saturated settings, populated by an all-star lineup of the 1920s Parisian creative scene (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Buñuel, Picasso, Stein, Man Ray, Dalí, Matisse, etc), but by the depiction of Gil overwhelmed by nostalgic emotion, his sense of wonder, glee, bewilderment, and gratitude. More potent than inciting nostalgia in the audience (which, by itself, would have been the cheap move) is showing its effect on a character. The film's gimmick, therefore, is transformed into a conveyance for pure emotion. When Allen doubles down on the "time machine" effect of nocturnal Paris, transporting Gil and Adriana into La Belle Époque, Allen inverts what could easily be explained as madness on Gil's part into a shared experience.

As with Alexander Sokurov's 2002 masterpiece, Russian Ark, there's giddy joy in the narrative's free-fall through history, with its colorful costumes, detailed sets, and recognizable faces. In the present-day scenes, Gil is never shown waking up or sleeping, gently suggesting that Gil may suffer from insomnia. Even if that's the case, the adrenaline rush of sleeplessness, as well as the potential consequence of hallucinations, are indivisible from the thrill of Gil's (and our) experience of a bygone Paris that can be generated simply by our desire to see it and feel it. Replace the "Golden Age fallacy" with the elation of history, as created by our fondness for its legendary artists, writers, and composers, its night spots, little cafes, and meeting places. In a way, there are parallels with Jacques Tati's Play Time - the anarchic party scene, that is - in the way Allen suggests that we can find paradise by wanting it badly enough, even if the result is simply the architecture of imagination.

The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969)

2011-06-29T19:50:00.002-04:00

Essential Viewing, 1969

The missing link between Richard Lester, Slap Shot, and the crash-test derby genre of action films that enjoyed a small but sturdy share of box office dominance in the 1970s and 1980s (before CGI made real cars all but obsolete), The Italian Job is a film that jacks into several pleasure centers to create a giant, bouncy momentum that could only end on a note of comic uncertainty. Director Collinson (who is not now generally known for any of his other work) lays it on a little thick in some early scenes (such as Michael Caine having a row with his girlfriend in a toy shop), but otherwise marshals vast sums of production money, an army of different types of vehicles, a gargantuan cast, and countless panoramic vistas with casual mastery. This is one of the most entertaining films of all time, certainly the one of the best heist pictures not made by a filmmaker of substantial renown - the only film it resembles is Steven Spielberg's 1941, a film whose praise is often qualified by a stalwart defense of its excesses. The Italian Job, on the other hand, is enormous but energized, voluptuous but never heavy.

Black Bart (George Sherman, 1948)

2011-05-26T15:56:00.007-04:00

Further Investigation, 1948

George Sherman's western deserves recognition for being one of the only movies to feature the legendary Lola Montez as a central character - in fact, the canonical Max Ophüls biopic did not appear for another seven years. This movie, an 80-minute Technicolor genre piece of modest means, name-checks her Bavarian phase (which Ophüls would depict memorably, to say the least) twice, but it's really all just scaffolding to promote the legendarily gorgeous, and legendarily leggy, Yvonne De Carlo: if not for the expository dialogue regarding how she got six figures' worth of diamonds to tote through the wild west, her role functions purely for spectacle and scripted love interest. Yes, it's true, this B-western does not have the contemplative aspect, or the spellbinding mise-en-scene, that helped Ophüls's film to be regarded as an all-time masterpiece.

Then again, few films do. What's worth considering is what, if anything, distinguishes Black Bart from its mere description: a rather light, anti-hero western with a significant share of its running time devoted to a showgirl/"it" girl/A-list glamour girl. Sherman's style is clean and casual, depicting action sequences from a medium-wide perspective. Black Bart's heists are cut against news coverage, cleverly allowing two years to pass in a few seconds' worth of montage - the left-to-right kind, not the spinning-front-page kind. Character actor Percy Kilbride steals a great deal of the picture with a few, short scenes:

Yes, I believe he has just the one shirt for the entire picture.

Almost at the halfway point, the movie serves its big number, a highly sexualized cabaret performance by Ms. Montez. A few words about build-up, which is achieved to singular effect by Sherman. You will, I hope, agree that when a film is 80 minutes long, and made in the short-sweet-and-to-the-point idiom of Hollywood's more budget-conscious production front, that when you are 15 minutes in, and the film has established itself as a routine (if pleasant) genre picture, with dependable character types and all the usual trimmings, that you have a pretty good idea how the remaining 65 minutes are going to go. Black Bart gets the viewer going along this path, and then introduces a new, highly disruptive element. After observing the discussion between a couple of Wells Fargo men as they consider the ongoing crisis of an outlaw who is holding their corporation hostage with his relentless stagecoach heists, the sharp, staccatto pounding of nails is heard as, right in their midst, a showman is just putting the finishing touches on a one-sheet advertising the imminent arrival of the world-renowned exotic dancer, Lola Montez.

"I'm not interested in the woman you're advertising. I'm interested in those diamonds."

Without delay, the film consolidates two storylines into one: that of the title character (played by Dan Duryea, as only he could play a gentleman hold-up man), and that of the film's top-billed star (De Carlo), allowing the film, using the tool of deferred pleasure, to build toward the inevitable "big show." Within minutes of this poster's appearance, we meet Montez on a stagecoach (her conveyance of choice in the Ophüls, too), which is quite naturally hijacked by Bart (but not for the reasons you'd expect), and we're off.

What is not mentioned very often in discussions of genre cinema is the employment of (visual, narrative, aural) disruptive elements, although the musical production number is the one that is used more often than not, even in noir films and westerns. Sherman (with his writers, William Bowers, Luci Ward, and Jack Natteford) not only stops the film for a little song and dance, he structures several frames around the event, similar to the way one exit from the highway has three or four warning signs. Certainly De Carlo's star power demanded nothing less, but Sherman takes advantage of the structure to include a few side benefits.

In the afternoon prior to the show, Bart confronts his on-again-off-again partners-in-crime at the saloon. He's dressed to the nines, they're sipping whiskey as they savor their newfound status as legitimized Wells Fargo muscle. In spite of the fact that the pair cheated him out of a prior heist and left him holding the bag, there's no hard feelings, and he invites them to the show. (I'd explain why he's sitting in the catbird seat, with amazing threads and VIP access to the event, but that would be telling.) They reconvene later, in more appropriate attire (comparatively dressed down a notch for him and up for them; the late-1840s equivalent of a polo shirt and Hilfiger pants and a little too much cologne), and descend upon the theater, where he has box seats.

What's going on here is that Sherman has quietly, but potently, applied the brakes on the heist narrative, and enhanced our experience of moment-to-moment life in an up-and-coming frontier town, temporarily reconfiguring the crude pre-metropolis into a zone of refinement, respect, and luxury. We are given a demonstration of how the townspeople (men, mostly) are brought up and out of the muddy chaos, with the right enticement. It's a delicate declaration of equality that extends even to the "lowest" of men.

The camera follows the trio through the theater, but also backs off to survey the performance/spectator space. This is easily the film's most elegant set of camera movements.

The above stills were taken from one single camera movement across the rear of the auditorium, all while keeping an eye on the trio as they re-emerge in the forward-most, stage-right loge. There is a cut to isolate the trio from the audience, followed by a similar pan that gives us a prime view of the proscenium:

In a tracking shot that echoes the one that came before it, the camera dollies back across the orchestra and audience, and the film cuts to a vivid medium closeup of the emcee.

His introduction is short and sharp. We are all set and ready to go. Before we can stand to wait any longer, the camera whip-pans stage left...

The curtain rises...

...and Lola hits the screen. In an appearance that has been anticipated by a series of disruptions and arrests, we are still unprepared for this shotgun blast of star power. It's almost confrontational, the suddenness and magnitude. It's also worth emphasizing that De Carlo is a highly sexualized figure, and she's onscreen to give us a highly suggestive dance, and that she's playing the role of one of the most famous figures of female sexuality in history. The film is very nearly up to that tall order.

(It's important to note, in case this narrative of stills implies otherwise, that De Carlo has been in the film for most of the preceding 40 minutes. It's not that she's just appearing now, a la Harry Lime in The Third Man.)

(But that might as well be the case.)

Everyone is dressed in their finest, and the film observes how dressing up for a big to-do means different things to different people, but also that everyone in attendance has made a significant effort to look his or her very best, and when a couple of haggard, bearded winos pass the bottle during the performance, they do it with a respectability that approaches that of a Japanese tea ceremony.

This sequence captures something rare for the cinema, besides what I have already mentioned (its democratic well-wishing, its transmission of star power), and that is the phenomenon of the sheer power of a live performance as it is propagated - and amplified - by a small, almost constricted, space. Sherman's camera has inscribed the length and the width of the auditorium twice in two consecutive shots, and continues to emphasize the enclosure through reverse and sidelong shots across the orchestra, the spectators, the stage, and the loges. Few films - let alone second-tier genre fare - have been able to capture the immediacy of live performance: the cramped intimacy, the shock of the performer who broadcasts her charisma through a small but dense crowd, the way the small space compounds that effect.

Hell's Half Acre (John H. Auer, 1954)

2011-05-23T18:02:00.001-04:00

Essential Viewing, 1954

Pretty much an unknown quantity these days, there's very little of John H. Auer's filmography that's readily available for viewing, but even a minor work like this should spark some interest. For the purposes of nomenclature, Hell's Half Acre is a Honolulu noir - postwar bitterness, opportunism, and despair, typically depicted in movies as the intellectual property of North American cities, is transplanted to the South Pacific completely intact and fresher for the change of scenery. Even under the weight of a television staple like "Hawaii Five-O," the genre hybrid alone would grant the film curio status.

But there's more. There's a pronounced influence by The Third Man (another fish-out-of-water noir set in postwar ruins), both in aspects of the plot (woman tries to track down her presumed dead husband), as well as the way the lap slide guitar serves as an astonishingly appropriate replacement for Anton Karas's legendary zither. Instead of Carol Reed, Auer's direction feels like the earliest films of Shohei Imamura's (which would not appear for another four years), as cheap, desperate crooks cannonball through skid row Honolulu, a shantytown of plaster-plywood firetraps and a trillion clotheslines.

But wait, there's more! Forty minutes into the picture, the plot grinds to a halt, and a very, very long sequence takes place in what appears to be complete narrative stasis, on temporary hiatus from the machinery of the boilerplate melodrama. While much of the film that comes before and after seems to resemble a mix of Imamura, Hathaway, and Karlson, this particular chapter resembles no other film except for the very singular Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010). The heroine has tracked down her husband and she's 100% certain it's him, and he knows she knows, and we know she knows he knows, etc. But still, they play this maddening verbal shell game in which he denies he's her husband and she feigns uncertainty, or resignation. Or does she, and does he, in fact, and what's going on, etc. In another context their verbal sparring would be interpreted as flirtatious, but circumstances cast their words in bitterness and longing, and it's all complicated by our nagging suspicion that at least one of them is playacting. The plot, as it's been constructed up to that point, either supports the illusion or doesn't, depending on whether you blinked, and when, and whether or not you tuned out momentarily, at all, during the preceding forty minutes. Did I mention that the entire movie drops absolutely everything for this sequence, which goes on for what feels like two whole reels?

And there's more. Elsa Lanchester has a supporting role as a jovial, Honolulu cab driver: the regal Bride of Frankenstein/Mrs. Charles Laughton herself cannot be undone by a dowdy hack's jumpsuit and cap. Another queen, this time of the B's, Marie Windsor, appears as a resolutely vile, alcoholic moll: when she sees her soused husband in the bedroom with nude Evelyn Keyes (not as sordid as it sounds...well, maybe a little), her callous shrug indicates a soul blacker even than her more famous turn (in a nearly identical role) in Kubrick's The Killing (1956).

Most of the above is directed by Auer with plucky, skid row know-how: nothing special, but good enough for government work. Late in the picture, after the Certified Copy sequence, a different, far more inventive director emerges, musically quick-cutting between hooligans peeking out from back-alley hidey-holes, dissecting a frame with a policeman's revolver (the frame pans left across the lovers in the background as the gun enters right, held by the out-of-frame cop), while the climactic showdown is held among Tiki torches and assorted bamboo kitsch.

The Kennel Murder Case (Michael Curtiz, 1933)

2011-05-23T15:33:00.004-04:00

Essential Viewing, 1933

Running not even an hour and a quarter in length, and adapted from a novel that was released earlier the same year, The Kennel Murder Case isn't so arty that the cinephile will look to rescue it from its fate as "just another B-mystery with a literary pedigree." When you get down to it, that's what it is. But it has plenty more going for it.

The cast, headed by William Powell as Philo Vance, is directed in dutiful observance of their genre roles: nothing odd there, unless you count the way Powell's posture is aligned with the interior decoration. Eugene Pallette, as usual, is a significant asset. Mary Astor and Helen Vinson, in some choice gowns (one has some serious, marching-band-grade epaulets), are effortlessly regal and slightly naughty.

Visual patterns are richer than required. Without tipping the film out of balance into abstraction, Curtiz wrangles a lot of baroque imagery in the form of weighty closeups and sly, whisper-like camera moves. It's almost a major feat in and of itself, that the film is - on close study - pretty tricked up, but it's all stabilized by a fairly rote locked-room mystery. But consider the almost comically long flashback, where Vance finally explains the solution, or the way the killer is represented in the flashback only by shadow, or the chair that bursts through the window as if by its own motor force (a dreamlike moment), the infinity of vertical lines in the men and architecture, or the troublesome array of brick-a-brack.

Or, better yet, enjoy these still images from the film:

a mystery so convoluted, Mr. Vance required miniatures to explain it

the murderer [spoiler]

one of countless Feuilladean wide shots

one of countless Feuilladean closeups

only one problem there...

three guesses who this belongs to

always demand that your local detective should sport the finest gloves when investigating a crime scene

elaborate art deco refrigerators - this is how the elite store their mayonnaise

a placid window shot interrupted by a despondent chair: goodbye, cruel office

or it was an ejector seat, and here comes the pilot

Wake of the Red Witch (Edward Ludwig, 1948)

2011-05-23T11:48:00.004-04:00

Essential Viewing, 1948

It's a tale of men whose souls are owned by the sea first, and maybe a woman, second. There seems to be two villains in the story, diametrically opposed because of the machinery of the plot, but neither is purely bad and they share a tenacity of large vision - greedy dreamers, but dreamers nonetheless. And then there's the young man, our surrogate, who is drawn to both giants. Although its source material is a bestselling novel by Garland Roark, it feels like a hybrid of two of Val Lewton's best films, The Ghost Ship and I Walked With a Zombie, although if one detects the supernatural veneer that enriches those films, Ludwig's style is more restrained, the better to serve a more traditional adventure-mythology context. It's rich in nautical and island imagery, not modest but not ostentatious, either, with a few moments and qualities that stand out: Gail Russell emerging, wraith-like, through palm fronds to confront Gig Young (who'd just been spying on her as she bathed in the nude), Luther Adler's curiously flattened affect (his unconvincing belly laugh the most Lewton-esque thing of all), the surreal falseness of the studio-bound oceangoing scenes and underwater climax. Like many Republic adventure films, Wake of the Red Witch seems like it takes place in a large box, but it also seems to contain a larger spirit.

What to See in New York City 5/20- 5/26

2011-05-20T11:32:00.000-04:00

All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

Sincerest apologies for this feature's absence last week, but hopefully you all were able to navigate your way safely to Elaine May's Ishtar (screening followed by a discussion with the director) at 92Y on Tuesday, May 17. Rest assured that, had we been able to run the "What to See" feature last week, the criminally underrated Ishtar would have headlined.

As for this week:

Top Tier:

ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami, 2001) / Union Docs / May 22 @ 7:30 PM (included in a program with Kiarostami shorts Bread and Alley, Breaktime, and Two Solutions for One Problem)

All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950) / BAMcinématek / May 20 @ 10 AM

The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960) / IFC Center / May 20, 21 and 22 @ 11 AM

The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton, 1928) / Film Forum / May 23 @ 7:30

The Informer (John Ford, 1935) / Museum of Modern Art / May 23 @ 4:30 PM

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) / Landmark Sunshine Cinema / May 20 and 21 @ Midnight

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) / Museum of Modern Art / May 25 @ 1:30 PM

The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952) / Museum of Modern Art / May 20 @ 7 PM; May 22 @ 5:30 PM

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) / Asia Society / May 22 @ 5 PM (followed by q&a with director Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Went the Day Well (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)

Essential Viewing:

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010) / IFC Center / ongoing, multiple showtimes

99 River Street (Phil Karlson, 1953) / 92Y Tribeca / May 26 @ 7:30 PM

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010) / IFC Center / ongoing, multiple showtimes

Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963) / Walter Reade Theater / May 22 @ 12 PM (the Film Society will show a 70mm print)

The Dead (John Huston, 1987) / Museum of Modern Art / May 21 @ 8 PM; May 25 @ 4:30 PM

Father of the Bride (Vincente Minnelli, 1950) / Walter Reade Theater / May 21 @ 4 PM

The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973) / BAMcinématek / May 24 @ 6:50 PM and 9:15 PM

Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) / IFC Center / May 20 @ Midnight

Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 2005) / Anthology Film Archives / May 24 @ 7 PM

Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin, 2009) / Anthology Film Archives / May 24 @ 9:30 PM

The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) / Museum of the Moving Image / May 20 @ 8 PM

Quick Billy (Bruce Baillie, 1971) / New Museum / May 26 @ 7 PM (discussion with director Baillie and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Serie noire (Alain Corneau, 1979) / Anthology Film Archives / May 25 @ 7 PM

Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010) / 92Y Tribeca / May 21 @ 5:45 PM

Too Early, Too Late (Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1982) / Anthology Film Archives / May 26 @ 7 PM

Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) / Anthology Film Archives / May 20 @ 7:30 PM

Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942) / Film Forum / ongoing through June 2; multiple showtimes

Further Investigation / 2011 films of note / other items of interest:

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) / in wide release

Giant (George Stevens, 1956) / Walter Reade Theater / May 21 @ 6 PM

A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951) / Walter Reade Theater / May 20 @ 3:30 PM; May 22 @ 5 PM

more Dziga Vertov @ Museum of Modern Art / May 22 @ 3PM and 5:15 PM, as well as May 25 @ 6:45 PM

Harry Smith program @ Anthology Film Archives / May 26 @ 7:30

The Right Profile

What to See in New York City 5/6 - 5/12

2011-05-06T11:59:00.002-04:00

Enthusiasm (Dziga Vertov, 1931)

Change in formatting this week. Instead of a venue-by-venue schedule, this feature will list the films broken down first by unexamined/essentials categories (Top Tier, Essential Viewing, Further Investigation), and then in alphabetical order. Simpler that way - you see a title that interests you, decide whether or not you can catch it, and there you go.

Top Tier:

Bluebeard (Georges Méliès, 1901) / BAMcinématek / May 9 / 7:30 PM (part of a larger program of shorts - seen with A Kingdom of Fairies, below, and others)
Carriage Trade (Warren Sonbert, 1971) / Anthology Film Archives / May 8 @ 4:45 PM
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) / Museum of Modern Art / May 6 @ 1:30 PM
Enthusiasm (Dziga Vertov, 1931) / Museum of Modern Art / May 6 @ 6:30 PM / (introduced by Peter Kubelka)
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941) / Museum of Modern Art / May 11 and 12 @ 1:30 PM
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952) / IFC Center / [May 6 and 7 @ 11 AM]
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975) / Museum of the Moving Image / [May 6 @ 7 PM] [May 7 @ 2:30 PM]
A Kingdom of Fairies (Georges Méliès, 1903) / BAMcinématek / May 9 / 7:30 PM (part of a larger program of shorts - seen with Bluebeard, above, and others)
Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) / Museum of Modern Art / May 12 @ 6:30 PM (introduced by Ken Jacobs)
Side/Walk/Shuttle (Ernie Gehr, 1991) / Museum of Modern Art / May 8 @ 2 PM (part of a larger program of shorts that also includes All My Life (Bruce Baillie, Essential Viewing, 1966))
A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986) / Walter Reade Theater / May 7 @ 8:45 PM

Lookin' to Get Out (Hal Ashby, 1982)

Essential Viewing:

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010) / IFC Center / ongoing
The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010) / Film Forum / through May 10 / multiple showtimes
Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1989) / IFC Center / [May 6 and 7 @ Midnight]
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Asia Argento, 2004) / Landmark Sunshine Cinema / May 6 @ Midnight
The Landlord (Hal Ashby, 1970) / BAMcinématek / May 10 / multiple showtimes (6:50 PM screening followed by Q&A with Lee Grant and Robert Downey, Sr.)
Lookin' to Get Out (Hal Ashby, 1982) / BAMcinématek / May 10 @ 6:50 and 9:30 PM (director's cut)
The Makioka Sisters (Kon Ichikawa, 1983) / Film Forum / through May 12 / multiple showtimes
Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) / Film Forum / through May 12 / multiple showtimes
Rebels of a Neon God (Tsai Ming-liang, 1993) / Walter Reade Theater / May 6 @ 2 PM
Rita, Sue, and Bob, Too! (Alan Clarke, 1987) / Film Forum / May 7 and 8 @ 6 PM
Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975) / BAMcinématek / May 6 / multiple showtimes
A Week Alone (Celina Murga, 2008) / Museum of Modern Art / May 12 @ 4:30 PM (introduced by Murga)

Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes)

Further Investigation / 2011 films of note / other items of interest:

Show Girl in Hollywood (Mervyn LeRoy, 1930) / Film Forum / May 9 / multiple showtimes
Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, 2011) / Museum of the Moving Image / May 8 @ 2 PM (note: running time is 330 minutes)
Student Short Films by Krzystof Kieslowski / Anthology Film Archives / May 6 @ 7 PM

In a rare public appearance, Mr. Kubelka will introduce Vertov's Enthusiasm at the Museum of Modern Art on Friday, May 6, at 6:30 PM

What to See in New York City 4/29 - 5/5

2011-04-29T13:46:00.001-04:00

The Arbor (Clio Barnard)

Film Forum Premieres: Meek's Cutoff (Essential Viewing, 2010) continues, but what's been added is an acclaimed film by newcomer Clio Barnard, The Arbor (Essential Viewing, 2010), an experimental theater-documentary chronicling the life of British playwright Andrea Dunbar. The film has actors lip-synching and "acting out" a documentary.

The Arbor plays several times per day, but there's a special, 4-shows-only run of Alan Clarke's Rita, Sue, and Bob, Too (Essential Viewing, 1986) on April 30, May 1, 7, and 8, at 6 PM. The Clarke tickets are sold as separate admission from The Arbor, not as a double-bill.

Film Forum Repertory: More W.C. Fields. Nothing extraordinary in "the auteur is the director" terms but discussions in which one party suggests that W.C. Fields isn't an auteur usually end in tears and/or bloodshed, so there you are. Here's what we have:

Friday: International House doesn't have a strong rep but it's got a crazy premise. It doubles with Million Dollar Legs (Essential Viewing, 1932), which is one of the most delirious and surreal films ever to emerge from Hollywood.
Saturday disproves the notion that Film Forum front-loaded this series with Fields's most "classic" films, as both The Bank Dick (Essential Viewing, 1940) and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Essential Viewing, 1941) play on a double bill. Two of his most popular - also his last two - so expect a crowd.
Another Gregory La Cava silent comedy, again with one showtime, again with live music by Steve Sterner: Running Wild (1927), in which Fields is hypnotized to go from zero to hero.
My Little Chickadee and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (both 1939) play on Sunday and Monday. Both are more interesting for their configuration (Fields and Mae West; Fields and Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy) than as films. It's the Old Army Game plays once on Monday evening, with Sterner's live piano.
Leo McCarey is one of the few great filmmakers whose work is featured in this series, but Six of a Kind (Further Investigation, 1934) is not one of his best - not unpleasant, but perfectly minor, more a trifling star vehicle for Fields, George Burns & Gracie Allen, and others, than anything else. The strongest word I can think of to describe it is: agreeable. And it's the last film of the series, alongside You're Telling Me!

IFC Center Premieres: Takashi Miike, one of the most diverse, and audacious, auteurs the Japanese cinema has ever seen, has fallen off the radar somewhat in recent years, so the ripping, Seven Samurai-inspired 13 Assassins (Essential Viewing, 2010) arrives with some boomerang momentum, hailed as a return to form by critics and cinephiles alike. Lots of opportunities to see it, but try to catch it with a big, appreciative crowd. After Certified Copy and Uncle Boonmee, Miike's film is arguably the highest-rated film to be released so far this year. And it's our pick for New Releases this week.

Nearly as well-reviewed is Werner Herzog's 3-D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Essential Viewing, 2010) which explores Chauvet Cave, home of the oldest known cave paintings.

IFC Center Repertory: Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro (Top Tier, 1962), Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (Top Tier, 1980), and La Femme Nikita (Essential Viewing, 1990).

Museum of Modern Art:

One more showtime for John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (Top Tier, 1940) on Friday at 1:30 PM.
There's a "Free Teen Night" showing of Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Blade Runner (Top Tier, 1982) on Friday. Presumably non-teens can go if they pay or have a membership.
Additional Dziga Vertov throughout the week - click on the website link for titles and showtimes.
Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (Top Tier, 1941) plays on Wednesday and Thursday at 1:30 PM - we assume you've heard of it.

Anthology Film Archives: for repertory cinema, Anthology wins the pot this week, in terms of putting together a slate that features films that are both great and not super-obvious (take that, Kane-showing MoMA and Kurosawaholic IFC Center), starting with Sam Peckinpah's greatest film, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Top Tier, 1973), on Friday at 7:30 - with an introduction by screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer - and again on Sunday at 4:30 PM and Tuesday at 9 PM. An epic, autumnal ode both to the Western film and the Western myth, gorgeously photographed by John Coquillon and scored by Bob Dylan (who also plays "Alias" in the supporting cast). It may be the eccentric genre stylist Peckinpah's most accessible movie, yet only he could have made it.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah)

Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (Top Tier, 1971) at 5:30 PM; Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures (Top Tier, 1963) at 6 PM, with Smith's Scotch Tape; Jim McBride's Glen and Randa (Essential Viewing, 1971). Blacktop and Glen and Randa show again on Monday at 7 PM and 9:15 PM, respectively, and the McBride plays a third time on Wednesday at 7 PM.

Museum of the Moving Image: Given our still-developing exploration of national cinemas, unexamined/essentials tends to shy away from trying to cover country-based film series, such as the New Chinese Cinema series at MoMI this week. We have Li Hong-qi's Winter Vacation as an Essential Viewing title for 2010, but that's about it. If you see any of the other films and think they deserve recognition, please let us know. Winter Vacation plays on Sunday at 7:15 PM.

Just a hunch, but there might be something to Kenneth Branagh's Thor, a puzzling, high concept super-production from the-guy-who-was-once-thought-to-be-the-the-second-coming-of-Laurence-Olivier-until-he-started-believing-his-own-press-and-then-became-a-gadfly-/self-appointed-bringer-of-Shakespeare-to-the-cineplex-before-disappearing-into-hammy-supporting-roles-and-an-acclaimed-Swedish-crime-series-and-the-occasional-yet-still-trailing-Olivier-directing-gig-and...-where-were-we? Another bucket of water in the waterfall of comic book superhero movies, and an odd place to find a once four-time Oscar nominated actor-director-writer-producer who once (was thought to have) carried giant duffel bags of Chaplin/Welles/Beattty/Olivier/Stroheim mojo, Thor goes into wide release next weekend, but gets a special showing on Thursday at 7 PM. Hey, there have been stranger things in moviedom than an overabundance of thought and craft finding its way into ostensibly meaningless blockbuster cinema. Take a chance?

More in the city:

92Y Tribeca

Saturday: Paul Schrader's American Gigolo (Essential Viewing, 1980), at 7 PM.
Wednesday: a film that may be the very finest of William Wyler's "William Wyler made good films" period of the early-to-mid-1930s, Counsellor at Law (Top Tier, 1933). At the very least, it's the fastest film playing this week!

Landmark Sunshine Cinema:

Saturday: a midnight showing of Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre (Essential Viewing, 1989).

Symphony Space:

Lee Chang-dong's Poetry (Essential Viewing, 2010), which we reviewed here, plays on Sunday at 7:30 PM.

Current Cinema Pick of the Week: 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010), countless showtimes at IFC Center

Repertory Cinema Pick of the Week: Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973), plays three times at Anthology Film Archives: on Friday at 7:30 PM, Sunday at 4:30 PM, and Wednesday at 9 PM.

Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933)

What to See in New York City 4/22 - 4/27

2011-04-22T06:00:00.007-04:00

The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)

A bit of a light week - lots of folks will be at the Tribeca Film Festival - but plenty to see. Film Forum, Premieres: Meek's Cutoff continues.

Film Forum, Repertory: A series devoted to legendary comedian W.C. Fields begins. Here are some of the better-rated ones of the bunch. (It's useless to discuss auteurism in the face of such a man.)

It's a Gift (Essential Viewing, 1934) has three showtimes each on Friday and Saturday; it's double-featured with Man on the Flying Trapeze (Essential Viewing, 1935). The latter was directed by Clyde Bruckman, whose name I will forever associate with X-Files episode, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," and a co-director of many of Buster Keaton's finest films.
David Copperfield (Essential Viewing, 1935) is one of the few films featured in this series from a capital-A Auteur: George Cukor. It's not often talked about in the company of, say, Holiday or A Star is Born, but it's worthwhile nevertheless. Just don't expect a Fieldsian yukfest. It's on a Sunday-Monday double bill with
Alice in Wonderland (Essential Viewing, 1933). Seeing this film via anything more honorable than a bootleg was, until last year, a bit of a Holy Grail for film enthusiasts - Dave Kehr wrote about its DVD release for the New York Times, and there's discussion on his blog. Although Norman Z. McLeod is the credited director, this Alice bears the stamp of the visionary designer William Cameron Menzies (Invaders from Mars, Things to Come). This movie also has a heck of a cast, from Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, and Edna May Oliver to Baby LeRoy and Ned Sparks. Consider it a stew of countless creative minds.
Sally of the Sawdust (Essential Viewing, 1925) is not cited as one of the great masterpieces of D.W. Griffith, but it's still really good - light and funny, and a good showcase for Fields. It's double-billed with a plate of classic Fields shorts, including the surreal Fatal Glass of Beer (Essential Viewing, 1933), on Monday.
Ernst Lubitsch directed a segment of If I Had a Million, which shows on Wednesday. That's probably the only reason to see it.
Gregory La Cava's So's Your Old Man (Essential Viewing, 1926) shows only once on Thursday, at 6 PM, with live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner.

IFC Center, Premieres: We've been hearing good things on the blog-/social-media-osphere about Jim Mickle's Stake Land, which begins a theatrical run on Friday.

IFC Center, Repertory: A light week this week. Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (Top Tier, 1961) and Ridley Scott's Alien (Top Tier, 1979) are being shown over the weekend - the latter as a midnight show, the Kurosawa at 11 AM. Great films, to be sure, but not exactly off the beaten path.

Museum of Modern Art: Dziga Vertov v. Charles Burnett continues with more Kino-Pravda and Kino-Eye throughout the week, as well as Burnett's Nightjohn, two of his recent documentaries (Warming by the Devil's Fire and Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property), and Finding Buck Mchenry. John Ford's 1940 film of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is usually considered a dry and dull "official classic." Put that thought right out of your head. Instead, get down to MoMA on Wednesday or Thursday at 1:30 PM and submit to one of Ford's most singular, humanist masterpieces (Top Tier, 1940), a work of art so great that it holds enormous quantities of hope, pride and despair, simultaneously, without for a moment contradicting itself. It's also a feast for the eyes - you'll forgive the cliche for the sake of Gregg Toland's brilliant, gravestone photography.

Cobra Woman (Robert Siodmak, 1944)

As with last week, Anthology Film Archives doubles up on the Vertov dosing this week, with screenings of Man With a Movie Camera, Enthusiasm, and more. The hot item this weekend, however, is Antonioni's L'Avventura (Top Tier, 1960), which plays at 6:30 PM on Saturday and Sunday. It's absolutely essential to see this on the big screen.

Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater: The Satyajit Ray series continues - two films we profiled last week, The Chess Players (Essential Viewing, 1977), and Distant Thunder (Essential Viewing, 1973), show again this week, as does Ray's final film, The Stranger (Essential Viewing, 1991).

Museum of the Moving Image: Robert Siodmak is best known for getting a Best Director Oscar nomination for The Killers (1946) (rare for a film noir), but his career has lots of lovely highlights, including his fantastic 4-film run from 1944: Phantom Lady, Christmas Holiday, The Suspect, and MoMI's Saturday afternoon "Fashion in Film Festival" fare, Cobra Woman, made in sumptuous, eccentric Technicolor. Playing at 2 PM. (Essential Viewing, 1944) More:

A quadruple-auteur masterpiece (featuring the inimitable talents of writer Philip Yordan, producer-designer William Cameron Menzies, cinematographer John Alton, and director Anthony Mann), Reign of Terror (Top Tier, 1949) is showing at 92Y Tribeca at 7:30 PM, preceded by an introduction by Village Voice critic J. Hoberman.
An out-of-the-way screening room on S. 3rd Street in Brooklyn, Spectacle, is running some films by - or starring - Orson Welles. No word as to whether they are showing prints or videos, but we'll tell you when we find out. Highlights include the bizarro Journey Into Fear (Essential Viewing, 1943) on Saturday at 4:50 PM and the great Chimes at Midnight (Top Tier, 1965).

Current Cinema Pick of the Week: n/a (although Stake Land, at IFC Center, is getting some good word of mouth, and there's always Meek's Cutoff at Film Forum)

Repertory Cinema Pick of the Week: [tie] The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) [playing at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday and Thursday at 1:30 PM]; L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

more cities on the way... we promise!

Chicago
San Francisco
Minneapolis-St. Paul