a highly-opinionated selection of things happening around town, and sometimes out of town. this month's page here.
mon. mar. 2
bruce conner's explosive cinema: a tribute part ii 8:30 PM @ redcat
tue. mar. 3
bad day at black rock 1 PM @ lacma
wed. mar. 4
fulton lights @ bordello
vicky cristina barcelona, volver @ new beverly theatre
three ages 8 PM @ silent movie theater
mae shi, mika miko FREE 8 PM @ ucla kerckhoff grand salon
thu. mar. 5
parasomnia @ egyptian theatre
vicky cristina barcelona, volver @ new beverly theatre
the punk rock movie 8 PM, blank generation @ silent movie theater
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
fri. mar. 6
the man with two brains, dead men don't wear plaid @ aero theatre
the loves of a blonde, the fireman's ball @ new beverly theatre
what ever happened to baby jane? 7:15 PM, what's the matter with helen? @ silent movie theater
gone in 60 seconds (1974) MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
rats @ the smell
jon brion @ largo
little wings @ mccabe's
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
sat. mar. 7
ghastly ones, living sickness @ bordello
radar bros. @ largo
the red balloon 4 PM, white mane @ aero theatre
the jerk, all of me @ aero theatre
the loves of a blonde, the fireman's ball @ new beverly theatre
aliens MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
death wish three 10 PM @ silent movie theater
pharoah sanders quartet @ jazz bakery
earthless FREE @ 2316 porter st.
sun. mar. 8
famous monster 7 PM, the time travelers @ egyptian theatre
where's poppa, the one and only @ aero theatre
a history of violence 6:30 PM, straw dogs @ new beverly theatre
the haunted castle (w/ live score by maneul göttsching) 8 PM @ silent movie theater
larkin grimm @ the echo
mon. mar. 9
a history of violence, straw dogs @ new beverly theatre
tokyo sonata (preview screening) @ lacma
elliott caine quintet @ jazz bakery
larkin grimm @ echo curio
tue. mar. 10
encounters of the spooky kind 2, skinny tiger and fatty dragon @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly theatre
the verdict 1 PM @ lacma
larkin grimm @ the echo
grizzly man 7 PM, incident at loch ness FREE @ hammer museum
wed. mar. 11
new mastersounds @ the mint
enter laughing, the comic @ aero theatre
ed wood, problem child @ new beverly theatre
our hospitality 8 PM @ silent movie theater
zach galifianakis @ largo
the wall (die mauer) FREE 7 PM @ hammer museum
thu. mar. 12
thee oh sees, bipolar bear @ the smell
captain blood @ egyptian theatre
the hot rock, cops and robbers @ aero theatre
a boy and his dog, TBA @ new beverly theatre
two films about the fall 8 PM @ silent movie theater
double take FREE 7 PM @ hammer museum
fri. mar. 13
nosferatu MIDNIGHT @ nuart theatre
burning star core, john wiese, ezra buchla @ the smell
the brothers warner, kings row @ egyptian theatre
the exorcist iii, the ninth configuration @ new beverly theatre
a woman under the influence @ ucla film archive
rio bravo @ lacma
jon brion @ largo
in a lonely place 7:30 PM, fade to black @ silent movie theater
vanishing point MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
sat. mar. 14
dan auerbach @ el rey
smegma @ the smell
nocturne, crack-up @ starlight studio screenings
nobody lives forever, each dawn i die @ egyptian theatre
the exorcist iii, the ninth configuration @ new beverly theatre
oil: a symphony in motion, the salvation hunters @ ucla film archive
man's favorite sport? 9:10 PM @ lacma
ninja iii: the domination 10 PM @ silent movie theater
tombstone 8 PM @ angel city drive-in
sun. mar. 15
the treasure of the sierra madre, the sea wolf @ egyptian theatre
bound for glory @ aero theatre
ashes of time redux, TBD @ new beverly theatre
mon. mar. 16
ashes of time redux, TBD @ new beverly theatre
mika miko @ the smell
kurt vile, meg baird, lucky dragons @ echo curio
tue. mar. 17
ashes of time redux, TBD @ new beverly theatre
occult la: esoteric cinema in the southland 8 PM @ silent movie theater
wed. mar. 18
the in crowd, TBD @ new beverly theatre
the film parade, her crowning glory, a tale of two cities @ ucla film archive
the navigator 8 PM, sherlock jr. @ silent movie theater
thu. mar. 19
high sierra, the hard way @ egyptian theatre
high and low @ aero theatre
the in crowd, TBD @ new beverly theatre
made in sheffield 8 PM, shadowplayers @ silent movie theater
do what thou wilt: kenneth anger on aleister crowley and the occult 7 PM @ hammer museum
one am radio @ space 1520
fri. mar. 20
i am a fugitive from a chain gang, the public enemy @ egyptian theatre
kagemusha @ aero theatre
mad max 8 PM, the road warrior, mad max beyond thunderdome @ new beverly theatre
the prowler, the hoodlum @ ucla film archive
the thief of baghdad @ ampas samuel goldwyn theater
jon brion @ largo
el dorado @ lacma
land of the pharaohs 9:45 PM @ lacma
the big knife 7:30 PM, barton fink @ silent movie theater
dirty mary crazy larry MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
sat. mar. 21
little caesar, the mayor of hell @ egyptian theatre
the seven samurai @ aero theatre
mad max 8 PM, the road warrior, mad max beyond thunderdome @ new beverly theatre
brother from another planet, return of the secaucus seven @ ucla film archive
sun. mar. 22
ladies they talk about, wild boys of the road @ egyptian theatre
ikiru @ aero theatre
a hal roach silent sampler 7 PM @ ucla film archive
mon. mar. 23
mi ami @ pehrspace
the iron mask @ ampas samuel goldwyn theater
tue. mar. 24
spider baby, the big bird cage @ grindhouse film fest @ new beverly theatre
bart davenport @ silverlake lounge
wed. mar. 25
ride the high country, the wild bunch @ new beverly theatre
seven chances 8 PM @ silent movie theater
marnie stern @ the echo
thee oh sees @ silverlake lounge
thu. mar. 26
the mae shi, foot village, pre @ the smell
the comfort of strangers, the homecoming @ egyptian theatre
the hidden fortress @ aero theatre
ride the high country, the wild bunch @ new beverly theatre
the bridge, the naked eye @ ucla film archive
urgh! a music war 8 PM, debt begins at twenty @ silent movie theater
fri. mar. 27
louis ck @ wiltern
the servant, the caretaker @ egyptian theatre
the last starfighter @ aero theatre
jon brion @ largo
the thing from another world, house of wax @ new beverly theatre
sunset boulevard 7:15 PM, mulholland dr. @ silent movie theater
eat my dust MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
sat. mar. 28
bipolar bear @ the smell
shanghai express, the bitter tea of general yen @ starlight studio screenings
nels cline singers @ redcat
the go-between, the pumpkin eater @ egyptian theatre
the thing from another world, house of wax @ new beverly theatre
darkman MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
patton oswalt @ largo
the great race 8 PM @ ampas linwood dunn theater
le lit de la vierge @ silent movie theater
mondo action mix night w/ lady terminator 10 PM @ silent movie theater
sun. mar. 29
neil hamburger @ spaceland
the wolf man 5:30 PM, gaily gaily @ egyptian theatre
lawrence of arabia @ new beverly theatre
silent and early sound films from the hearst metrotone news collection (1919-30) 7 PM @ ucla film archive
saturday night and sunday morning 8 PM @ silent movie theater
the homosexuals @ the echo
mon. mar. 30
lawrence of arabia @ new beverly theatre
tue. mar. 31
little big top, TBD @ new beverly theatre
wed. apr. 1
johnny cash presents the everly brothers show FREE @ ucla film archive
ochberg's orphans 7 PM, the rape of europa FREE @ ampas linwood dunn theater
battling butler 8 PM, go west @ silent movie theater
white denim @ spaceland
thu. apr. 2
post-punk junk mix night 8 PM @ silent movie theater
autolux @ detroit bar
white magic @ el rey
fri. apr. 3
dr. lonnie smith @ the mint
the rules of the game, smiles of a summer night @ new beverly theatre
sunday, point of order! @ ucla film archive
cruising 7:30 PM, windows @ silent movie theater
deadly sweet MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
sat. apr. 4
the rules of the game, smiles of a summer night @ new beverly theatre
lobster man from mars MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
popular science vol. j7-5, secret beyond the door @ ucla film archive
day of wrath @ silent movie theater
sun. apr. 5
andrei rublev 5 PM @ new beverly theatre
mon. apr. 6
andrei rublev 8 PM @ new beverly theatre
cinemad's short film almanac 8 PM @ silent movie theater
tue. apr. 7
andrei rublev 8 PM @ new beverly theatre
wed. apr. 8
amps for christ @ the smell
minnie and moskowitz, love streams @ new beverly theatre
the general 8 PM @ silent movie theater
thu. apr. 9
minnie and moskowitz, love streams @ new beverly theatre
european punk night 8 PM @ silent movie theater
fri. apr. 10
the thin man, after the thin man @ new beverly theatre
jeanne dielman 23 quai du commerce 1080 bruxelles @ lacma
l'urlo MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
sat. apr. 11
the thin man, after the thin man @ new beverly theatre
eliminators MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
jeanne dielman 23 quai du commerce 1080 bruxelles @ lacma
ordet 7 PM @ silent movie theater
sun. apr. 12
faust (w/ live score by cabeza de vaca arkestra) 8 PM @ silent movie theater
mon. apr. 13
animated documentaries 8 PM @ silent movie theater
tue. apr. 14
the loved one 7 PM, gates of heaven, blinky FREE @ hammer museum
wed. apr. 15
black lips @ detroit bar
run tecato run @ ucla film archive
college 8 PM @ silent movie theater
thu. apr. 16
crash 'n' burn 8 PM, breaking glass @ silent movie theater
fri. apr. 17
foot village @ the smell
gamperaliya @ ucla film archive
gertrud @ silent movie theater
sat. apr. 18
red scorpion, universal soldier, rocky iv, the punisher, i come in peace @ all day dolph lundgren film fest @ new beverly theatre
ruthless @ ucla film archive
sun. apr. 19
spartacus (uncut version) 5:30 PM @ new beverly theatre
the buccaneer 2 PM @ ucla film archive
vampyr 8 PM @ silent movie theater
mon. apr. 20
spartacus (uncut version) 8 PM @ new beverly theatre
joanna priestley: fighting gravity 8:30 PM @ redcat
tue. apr. 21
taxi driver, hardcore @ new beverly theatre
wed. apr. 22
taxi driver, hardcore @ new beverly theatre
steamboat bill jr. 8 PM @ silent movie theater
homemade hollywood FREE 7 PM @ hammer museum
fri. apr. 24
all about eve, the big knife @ new beverly theatre
silent light @ lacma
sat. apr. 25
the time machine (1960) 2 PM, 8PM @ alex theatre
all about eve, the big knife @ new beverly theatre
angus MIDNIGHT @ new beverly theatre
silent light @ lacma
dangerous men MIDNIGHT @ silent movie theater
festival of books @ ucla
sun. apr. 26
lost horizon, TBD @ new beverly theatre
neil hamburger @ spaceland
festival of books @ ucla
sunday afternoon with chazz FREE 3 PM @ hammer museum
mon. apr. 27
lost horizon, TBD @ new beverly theatre
zoe beloff: conjuring specters 8:30 PM @ redcat
tue. apr. 28
lost horizon, TBD @ new beverly theatre
the cameraman 8 PM @ silent movie theater
wed. apr. 29
stray dog, thunderbolt and lightfoot @ new beverly theatre
thu. apr. 30
target video tribute night 7:30 PM @ silent movie theater
fri. may 1
king kong (1933), TBD @ new beverly theatre
black lips @ el rey
sat. may 2
king kong (1933), TBD @ new beverly theatre
sun. may 3
winchester '73, bend of the river @ new beverly theatre
mon. may 4
winchester '73, bend of the river @ new beverly theatre
tue. may 5
winchester '73, bend of the river @ new beverly theatre
museum of jurassic technology's david wilson lecture 7 PM @ hammer museum
wed. may 6
waltz with bashir, TBD @ new beverly theatre
day of wrath FREE @ hammer museum
thu. may 7
waltz with bashir, TBD @ new beverly theatre
fri. may 8
TBD, queen kelly @ new beverly theatre
sat. may 9
mika miko, the soft pack @ the smell
TBD, queen kelly @ new beverly theatre
wed. may 13
shadows of forgotten ancestors, color of pomegranates @ new beverly theatre
haxan: witchcraft through the ages FREE @ hammer museum
thu. may 14
shadows of forgotten ancestors, color of pomegranates @ new beverly theatre
WHAT IT IS:
ALL ABOUT EVE
Six Oscars were awarded this cynical and entertaining examination of life as it exists on the Broadway theatre scene. Bette Davis glows as the aging star being undermined by her protege Anne Baxter, as Eve Harrington. With George Sanders, Celeste Holm, and Marilyn Monroe. A gem.
ANDREI RUBLEV
The dazzling and harrowing tale of the 15th century icon painter who survives the cruelties of medieval Russia to create works of art. As bloody Tartar raids, religious brutality, and pagan rites work to quell Rublev's desires and needs, he undertakes a spiritual odyssey that affirms man's ability to transcend adversity. Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966. 205 min.
ANGUS
In this comic coming-of-age story, Angus is a teen terror who cuts up on the football field but still can't manage to fit in at high school. Luckily, his geeky friend Troy and his chess-playing grandfather are there to help Angus turn a practical joke into an evening of magic. With Kathy Bates, George C. Scott and Rita Moreno, and introducing Charlie Talbert as Angus.
Animated Documentaries
Tonight we’ll look at a dense and entertaining assortment of films in which animation serves to represent “the facts.” Breaking through the bounds of vérité, animated documentaries excavate the minds of real people in real situations, conceiving of visuals for events that weren’t documented, raising issues of perception and experience, often weaving in conventions of kids' films in the service of exceptionally dark content. The evening's program covers many bases, from the winsome and rough tales of virginity in Never Like the First Time to the bouncy audio-fragmentation of British farmers in Success with Sweet Peas, from The Velvet Tigress, which deconstructs the scandal behind a 1930s murderess, to the vintage Windsor McCay piece The Sinking of the Lusitania from 1918, which blurs the countless lines between documentary and propaganda. We’ll also be including the fantastic “Men in Black” segment of the Oscar-nominated documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing The Wartime Experience, and more!
ASHES OF TIME REDUX
Taking a cue from Francis Ford Coppola, Wong Kar-wai returned to an early work to forge the "definitive version" of what many already believed to be a masterpiece. Restored, re-scored by Yo-Yo Ma, re-edited with unseen footage, and digitally colorized, Ashes of Times Redux is no indulgent exercise. It's actually tighter than the 1994 cut. The moody costume drama plays out almost entirely in close-up, with dialogue spoken at a whisper and sudden bursts of martial arts action. The all-star cast includes Brigette Lin Ching-Hsia, Leslie Cheung Hok-Yau, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Carina Lau Kar-Ling, Maggie Cheung Man-Yu and Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau. Action directed by Sammo Hung with characters from Jin Yong's Eagle-Shooting Heroes. In Cantonese with English subtitles.
Bad Day at Black Rock
1955/color/81 min./Scope | Scr: Millard Kaufman; dir: John Sturges; w/ Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin.
A one-armed veteran uncovers small-town secrets when he tries to visit a war hero's family.
Battling Butler
Based on the popular stage play, Battling Butler, while being one of the most-low-key of all Keaton's films, was also the most successful upon its release, despite being a departure from his usual habit of dense, complicated gags. Buster plays the twittish millionaire Alfred Butler, who, while wooing a girl, pretends to be the champion boxer "Battling" Butler. Of course, the real "Battling" catches wind of this, and challenges Buster to step in the ring. What's unusual here is that the film's climax takes a surprise dramatic turn, with Buster getting pummeled within an inch of his life until he gains the courage to go ape and gruesomely turn the tables. This ending did not appear in the original play, but rather was inserted by Buster and his team of screenwriters, and eerily resembles the real-life situation he sometimes faced at the hands of his alcoholic father during on-stage vaudeville performances by The Three Keatons, when he had to respond to sudden violence with violence of his own. Dir. Buster Keaton, 1926, 35mm, 71 min.
BEND OF THE RIVER
A compelling study of a man divided between his questionable, hidden past and his new life, set in 1840's Oregon. James Stewart stars as the former outlaw who now works as a wagon train scout. He comes into conflict with his one-time friend (Arthur Kennedy) who hijacks the settlers' supplies in order to turn a profit. Features beautiful Technicolor landscapes. With Julia Adams and Rock Hudson. New 35mm print!
THE BIG BIRD CAGE (WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY II)
"Women so hot with desire they melt the chains that enslave them!" So cried the ads for this favorite women-in-prison flick. Pam Grier and Sid Haig star in this follow-up to The Big Doll House, as thieving mercenaries who engineer a prison break from the outside.
THE BIG KNIFE
Clifford Odets' fall from Golden Boy of the leftist New York theatre scene to an underutilized studio contract writer (his last screen credit was for an Elvis movie) is one of the classic stories of squandered Hollywood talent. The Big Knife was his return to the stage, and a fantastic excoriation of the Hollywood rot and corruption. It's the story of a failing actor stuck making wrestling movies, who just wants to retire in peace, but....they keep pulling him back in. Adapted for the screen by director Robert Aldrich, The Big Knife features some of Odets' best trademark poetic dialogue this side of Sweet Smell of Success, and an unforgettable, overheated performance by Rod Steiger (in a hilarious parody of Columbia head Harry Cohn, known to manipulatively weep crocodile tears in negotiations) as the manipulative blowhard studio head who pulls all his strings. Written with a brilliant poison pen, and directed with a harsh full-frontal style that jabs the points home, there are few Hollywood Gothics as cutting as The Big Knife. Dir. Robert Aldrich, 1955, 35mm, 111 min.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen
Frank Capra's film concerns an American missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) who is kidnapped by a powerful Chinese warlord and falls prey to his intoxicating spell. With Nils Asther, Toshia Mori and Walter Connolly. (1933-Columbia)
The Blank Generation
The Blank Generation, one of the earliest punk films from another of the first groups of punk filmmakers. Amos Poe and co-director Ivan Kral's purposefully rough-hewn document of the nascent NYC scene is centered around now-infamous underground clubs like CBGB, and captures embryonic versions of Talking Heads, Television, Blondie and Ramones in all their grittiness. Dirs. Amos Poe & Ivan Kral, 1976, 16mm, 55 min.
Blinky
A video collaboration by Bruce and Norman Yonemoto and Jeffrey Vallance. In the novella Blinky the Friendly Hen (1979), Vallance documented the purchase of a frozen chicken and its burial. Naming the fryer Blinky, Vallance transformed poultry into pet, paying tribute to the billions of hens sacrificed each year for our consumption. Ten years later, questions of the true cause of Blinky’s death continue to swirl. (1988, 15 min.)
The Blood Spattered Bride
The title alone made this Spanish entry into the '70s lesbian vampire craze an instant grindhouse favorite, but its beautiful, heady imagery and visceral nastiness established this one of the most brutal adaptations of J. Sheridan LeFanu's oft-filmed "Carmilla" (vampyro lesbo template extraordinaire). Susan, an unstable young bride, hallucinates rape attacks while her chauvinist husband is out of the hotel room. Ditching the lodging, the unhappy couple ends up at an ancestral home connected to the husband, and Susan has violent dreams involving a strange woman in white--Mircalla, who turns up in the bosomy flesh not long after. Repelled by her husband's macho demands, Susan falls under Mircalla's spell and embarks on a spree of bloody mayhem. Whether viewed as an audacious feminist parable or sick macho trash, it's overflowing with spurting gore and full frontal, and is a fascinating horror fantasy that moves at a speedy clip all the way to its queasy, unforgettable final shot.
Dir. Vicente Aranda, 1972, 35mm, 100 min.
BOUND FOR GLORY, 1976, MGM Repertory, 147 min. David Carradine plays folk singer Woody Guthrie in this superlative bio-pic, which follows Guthrie as he travels across America fighting for the working man. Director Hal Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler (who won an Academy Award for his work) vividly evoke the late 1930's era in which the film takes place, and Carradine gives one of his best performances as a hero to underdogs everywhere. Co-starring Ronny Cox. Film critic Kevin Thomas will introduce the screening.
A BOY AND HIS DOG
This is a kinky sci-fi tale about a young man (Don Johnson) and his telepathic dog. While searching for food and sex in a destroyed world, they happen upon an impotent group of survivors. This group drafts Johnson to father a new generation, but there is little pleasure to be found in their method. Also features Jason Robards and Tiger, the former Brady Bunch dog.
Breaking Glass
British new wave star Hazel O'Connor rose to fame through her role in Breaking Glass--a tale of a singer's tumultuous rise to fame! O'Connor plays Kate, a plucky youth hungry for a recording contract, who hooks up professionally and personally with an equally ravenous young manager (Phil Daniels of Quadrophenia). After seedy gigs across London, it's big-break time, but in the process Kate gets swallowed by record company machinery and emerges as an ashen, Numanesque pop robot in a startling, Tron-tinged finale. Director Brian Gibson keeps the film crisp with several original post-punk numbers (written by O'Connor), grimy widescreen neon and a realistic portrait of the Winter Of Discontent, the late '70s moment in time when the British government was in total upheaval. Dir. Brian Gibson, 1980, 35mm, 104 min.
THE BRIDGE: A TRUE STORY OF A TROUBLED CHILD
(1958) Directed by Louis Clyde Stoumen and Abram D. Murray
Preservation funded by The Stanford Theatre Foundation
Stoumen's short dramatic film about an emotionally troubled boy.
Camera Eye Pictures, Inc.. Producer: Bernice Block. Screenplay: Alan Marcus. Cinematographer: Edward R. Martin. Editor: Harry Robin. Narrator: Robert Ryan. Cast: Hugh Corcoran, Biff Elliot, Beverly Dvorett. 35mm, approx. 27 min.
BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET
(1984) Directed by John Sayles
For his fourth feature, John Sayles gave the well-worn sci-fi trope of the alien a revitalized punch with African American actor Joe Morton starring as a visitor from beyond the stars. After ditching his malfunctioning spaceship at Ellis Island, Morton's mute newcomer, known only as "The Brother," navigates the customs of Manhattan's residents while searching for a place to call home. From his initial refuge in a Harlem bar, he encounters a cross section of earthlings who read him--and the world--through a puzzling prism of race, class and ethnicity, a scenario Sayles taps for both brilliant comedy and commentary.
A-Train Films / Cinecom Pictures. Producer: Peggy Rajski, Maggie Renzi. Screenplay: John Sayles. Cinematographer: Ernest R. Dickerson. Editor: John Sayles. Cast: Joe Morton, Rosanna Carter, Ray Ramirez, Yves Rene, Peter Richardson. 35mm, 108 min.
THE BROTHERS WARNER, 2008, 90 min. An award-winning, intimate portrait of the four film pioneers (Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner) who founded and ran Warner Bros. studios for over a half-century. Written and directed by Cass Warner (Harry Warner’s granddaughter and author of the book Hollywood Be Thy Name), this epic story includes never-before-seen photos and footage from the Warner family archives. THE BROTHERS WARNER is the story of a family that rose from immigrant poverty through personal tragedies, persevering to create a major movie studio with a social conscience. The cast of interviewees includes Dennis Hopper, Debbie Reynolds, Norman Lear, Sherry Lansing, Tab Hunter and many others.
Bruce Conner's Explosive Cinema: A Tribute, Part II
Influential maestro of found footage Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was often described as the father of MTV-style editing. His reply: "Don't blame me!" An artist of explosive intensity and enigmatic allure, Conner displayed a legendary mastery of assemblage, drawing, collage and film. At once voluptuous and razor-edged, Conner's compact, cinematic bombs are an inspired mix of heartfelt meditation and tragicomic political satire. Surveying the filmmaker's work over a 50-year span, the program includes A Movie (1958, 12 min.), Marilyn Times Five (1973, 14 min.), Permian Strata (1969, 4 min.), Mea Culpa (1981, 4 min.), Looking for Mushrooms (1967, 3 min.), Looking for Mushrooms (1996 version, 15 min.), Report (1967, 13 min.), Television Assassination (1995, 14 min.), Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1977, 5 min.), Valse Triste (1977, 5 min.) and Easter Morning (2008, 10 min., DV).
In person: Dennis Hopper, longtime Conner friend and co-conspirator, and guest of honor Jean Conner
THE BUCCANEER
(1938) Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
One of the rarest of Cecil B. DeMille's sound films, The Buccaneer mines a little tapped vein of American history--the War of 1812--for a rousing bit of homegrown spectacle. Fredric March stars with devilish swagger as Jean Lafitte, the French pirate transformed into an American folk hero for his exploits at the Battle of New Orleans--all for the love of an American aristocrat (Margot Grahame), as DeMille tells it. Alongside March, Hollywood newcomer Hungarian actress Franciska Gaal stars as Gretchen, a shipwrecked waif plucked from the sea by Lafitte, while Akim Tamiroff steals the show as Lafitte's lovably brusque cannoneer.
Paramount Pictures. Based on a novel by Lyle Saxon. Screenwriter: Edwin Justus Mayer, Harold Lamb, C. Gardner Sullivan. Cinematographer: Victor Milner. Editor: Anne Bauchens. Cast: Fredric March, Franciska Gaal, Akim Tamiroff, Margot Grahame, Walter Brennan. 35mm, 124 min.
The Cameraman
Keaton's first feature for MGM turned out to be the final film of his own which he had creative control. The Cameraman finds Buster as Luke Shannon, a lowly portrait photographer smitten with a girl who's an assistant in the newsreel biz--so he buys a motion picture camera of his own, and bungles several attempts at becoming a freelance shooter for her company, before turning things around in his favor both professionally and with his beau. MGM was wary of letting its new contract star put his neck on the line for the kind of hair-raising stunts he was known for, so what The Cameraman lacks in sheer physical spectacle (although it does contain two wholly smashing action sequences), it makes up for in the romantic comedy department, with a sweet love story played out with the help of the dashing Marceline Day. A massive success in its day, the film is widely considered to be Keaton's last significant feature.
Dirs. Edward Sedgwick & Buster Keaton, 1928, 35mm, 70 min.
CAPTAIN BLOOD, 1935, Warner Bros., 119 min. Director Michael Curtiz directs one of the best swashbucklers ever made, and the film that made Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland stars. Dr. Peter Blood (Flynn), a man unjustly convicted of treason, is exiled to Port Royal, sold into slavery and bought by the lovely Lady Arabella (de Havilland). He and fellow convicts manage to escape, take over a Spanish galleon, and pirate Captain Blood is born! Lionel Atwill and villainous Basil Rathbone are standouts in the exceptional supporting cast.
THE CARETAKER, 1963, Caretaker Films/Judy Daish Associates, 100 min. Dir. Clive Donner (NOTHING BUT THE BEST; WHAT’S NEW, PUSSYCAT?). Quiet suit-and-tie-wearing packrat Robert Shaw and his acid-tongued, black-leather-clad brother Alan Bates own a decaying townhouse. In the midst of a brutal winter -- out of equal parts loneliness and compassion -- Shaw lets a cantankerous old tramp (Donald Pleasence) stay the night. But Pleasence doesn’t leave, separately offered the job of caretaker by both sincere Shaw and mind-games-playing Bates. Writer Harold Pinter's first widely-acclaimed theatrical success offers an audaciously funny deconstruction of stage drama, much in the manner of Samuel Beckett, and was originally to receive financial backing from an American company in its transfer to the screen. When the Americans pulled out at the last minute, a number of showbiz luminaries, including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Noel Coward and Leslie Caron, offered their backing to make sure the picture got made. Cinematography by Nicolas Roeg. (Screened from a digital source) "Donner's version of Pinter's funniest and most famous play…allows three of the greatest stage interpretations of Pinter's characters to speak for themselves." – Time Out London NOT ON DVD
Cinemad's Short Film Almanac
Avant-garde. Cult. Experimental. Indie. Underground. Sticks and stones. Since 1998, Cinemad has been covering films thrown into the avant gutter, interviewing unusual filmmakers that don’t fit neatly into academics or preconceived genre terms. First as a photocopied zine and now as a website, Cinemad tries to spread the word about great films that are ignored by traditional distribution and magazines. And, out of all Cinemad covers, shorts may be the most ignored. This almanac of past Cinemad short subjects is a mix of wild styles and unusual atmospheres, from the frenetic lesson in heroic cinema in Virgil Widrich's animated wonder Fast Film, to a nuanced look at reality by Sam Green and the stark desolate worlds of Jake Mahaffy or Jennifer Reeves. Watch first, think second.
College
The epic struggle between athlete and intellectual is hardly a laughing matter, but College delivers one of the funniest, earliest examples of the jock vs. nerd story. His character Roland is an intelligent buffoon who must adapt to the athleticism of Clayton University, where he hopes to win the favor of a former high school classmate (Anne Cornwall). Keaton's subsequent disastrous attempts to become a star athlete are so breathtakingly executed with perfect childlike attitude; the track-and-field mishap sequence, filmed on the USC track, exemplifies the stunning degree of Keaton's physical control, as does his character's transformation from dispassionate stumbler to ace athelete. College is a necessity for fans of sports films, jocks, nerds, and anyone who wants to learn a thing or two about comedic filmmaking at 1/200 of the unit cost (the film was significantly lower-budgeted than usual, due to the box-office disappointment of The General).
Dirs. Buster Keaton & James W. Horne, 1927, 35mm, 66 min.
THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES
Paradjanov's mosaic on the life, art and spiritual odyssey of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova. The film is a collection of images and tableaux that interweaves landscapes, villages, costumes, props and music to form a metaphorical history of the Armenian nation. The film "achieves a sort of visionary para-surrealism through the most economical means of gesture, props and texture...A sublime and heartbreaking film" (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice). With Sofico Chiaureli, M. Aleksanian and V. Galstian. Dir. Sergei Paradjanov, 1969.
THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS, 1990, 107 min. Director Paul Schrader and screenwriter Harold Pinter adapt the novel by Ian McEwan (Atonement) into a slowly building psychosexual nightmare. British tourists Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson, hoping to reignite the flame of their receding passion in the ancient alleys, palazzos and canals of a decadent nocturnal Venice, are ensnared by a charmingly perverse rich couple (Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren). Fascinated by the building sexual tension, the younger pair are languidly drawn like moths to a flame and by the time they realize there is genuine danger, it may be too late to escape. "…The screenplay is by Harold Pinter, so expert at suggesting the terrifying depths beneath innocent words." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times; "…Director Paul Schrader has fashioned a film of surpassing creepiness…Schrader is an astute guide through the circuitous byways of sexual manipulation. His hypnotic thriller supplies intelligent pleasures as well as gruesome chills." - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone Trailer NOT ON DVD
THE COMIC, 1969, Sony Repertory, 94 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Dick Van Dyke plays an aging silent film clown who has seen better days, but whose ego prohibits him from accepting the truth about his life and career. An impeccable fidelity to the art of silent movies (seen in films-within-the film), combined with a rich, dark performance by Van Dyke, make this one of Reiner's most affecting and original efforts. With Mickey Rooney.
COPS AND ROBBERS, 1973, MGM Repertory, 89 min. Dir. Aram Avakian. Cliff Gorman and Joseph Bologna play a pair of New York cops who feel smothered by the financial and social demands of their miserable lives. Their solution: an ingenious securities rip-off designed to buy their freedom. Adapting his own novel, Donald Westlake provides an effective combination of social satire and caper film, all set to a terrific score by the legendary Michel Legrand.
Crack-Up
A respected art critic and historian believes that priceless works of art are being stolen, but everyone else believes he's insane. An exciting thriller starring Pat O'Brien and Claire Trevor. (1946-RKO-Radio) Irving Reis mystery w/ Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall
Crash 'N' Burn
Crash 'N' Burn, a fierce half-hour doc covering the Toronto punk club of the same name, photographed in '77 by Ross McLaren. In addition to Cleveland gods The Dead Boys, the film also documents local thrashers The Diodes and Teenage Head. Dir. Ross McLaren, 1977, 16mm, 28 min.
Cruising
For equal opportunity skank in queer cinema, you can't get much nastier than this incendiary pair of thrillers from 1980 which delve deep into the underbelly of New York's post-disco gay scene and come up covered in grime. William Friedkin's Cruising sparked a storm of protests as rookie cop Al Pacino goes undercover as a leather-clad bar boy hunting down a serial killer who knifes his hogtied victims in the back. Al learns how to sniff poppers and thrash around hilariously on the dance floor before finally getting his man... or does he? In depicting the underground gay bar scene in the most raw and uncompromising fashion, and in piling on layer after layer of claustrophobic red herring twists to deliberately make the audience as confused as Pacino's character, Friedkin created a masterwork of ill ease, one of his greatest films to stand alongside The Exorcist and The French Connection. Dir. William Friedkin, 1980, 35mm, 106 min.
Day of Wrath
Returning to some of the themes of his earlier masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer made one of his strongest humanist statements with the controversial Day of Wrath. Set in a 17th-century village where allegedly wicked women are tortured and burned alive for witchcraft, Day of Wrath follows Anne, the beautiful young bride of an aging local pastor. By giving in to her passion for her husband’s grown son, she seemingly wills the death of her betrothed--a sin synonymous with witchcraft in the eyes of the brutal village elders. Produced at the height of Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark, the crystal-clear political parallels between fascism and witch-hunting were not lost on Danish society at the time. Despite the allegorical content, however, Dreyer’s subject is the frightening and uncontrollable power of human emotion; always a master of the close-up, Dreyer conducts his performers in an overwhelming symphony of conflicting sentiments.
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943, 35mm, 97 min.
Deadly Sweet
What happens when Tinto Brass at the peak of his wildly experimental period tackles a crime thriller inspired by Italian comic books with the aid of legendary cartoonist Guido Crepax ("Valentina")? The answer is the ultra-rare Deadly Sweet (aka Heart In His Mouth), a mad pop-art stew featuring European heartthrob Jean-Louis Trintignant and short-lived '60s "it" girl Ewa Aulin--a Miss Teen Sweden who headlined the notorious screen version of Candy and co-starred with Trintignant a year later in the equally explosive Death Laid An Egg. The threadbare story follows Trintignant and a string of inconvenient corpses through swinging 1967 London, as he and Eva tangle with blackmailers, gangsters and a malicious dwarf, all accompanied by delirious comic-inspired visual effects and editing decades before Sin City. An unsung treasure full of beautiful excess and directorial virtuosity, the film takes the standard giallo formula and flips it completely upside down, with utterly delicious results.
Dir. Tinto Brass, 1967, DigiBeta, 107 min.
DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, 1982, Universal, 88 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Steve Martin is a private eye who manages to interact with Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Alan Ladd thanks to gorgeous black-and-white cinematography (courtesy of RAGING BULL director of photography Michael Chapman) and some extremely creative editing. This merging of classic 1940s film noir clips and new footage directed by Reiner is a movie buff’s dream, and a hilarious comedy regardless of how familiar one is with the classics being referenced. Discussion following with director Carl Reiner.
Debt Begins At Twenty
Debt Begins At Twenty, a half-fiction, half-documentary look at the emerging Pittsburgh scene in 1980. Dir. Stephanie Beroes, 1980, 16mm, 40 min.
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
Adding to Godard's rule that "all one needs to make a movie is a girl and a gun", a '68 yellow Dodge Charger is thrown into the mix in this kickass adaptation of Richard Unekis' obscure novel "The Chase". A reckless stock car driver and his mechanic (Peter Fonda and Adam Rourke) rob a supermarket for quick cash. One-night stand Susan George tags along. Police obsessively begin 120MPH pursuit. That's pretty much it, and all you really really need. Director John Hough (The Legend Of Hell House) delivers an energetic, sociopathic remix of Two-Lane Blacktop as the fractious threesome try to elude the law--and Susan George in her blue denim teardrop tank-top sets the standard of beauty for all dirt-poor debutantes. Plus, in a somewhat ballsy move, Fonda was allowed to do all his own driving stunts, adding an extra splintery edge to the film's classic chases through the back roads of California.
Dir. John Hough, 1974, 35mm, 93 min.
Double Take
In this first West-Coast showing of his latest film, completed while in residence at the Hammer Museum, artist Johan Grimonprez casts Alfred Hitchcock as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a double take on the cold war period. Double Take targets the global political rise of fear as a commodity, in a tale of odd couples and double deals as television hijacks cinema, the Krushchev and Nixon debate rattles on, and sexual politics quietly take off. Story by Tom McCarthy, edited by Tyler Hubby and Dieter Diependaele, and with music by Christian Halten. (2009, 80 min., Dir. Johan Grimnprez)
Do What Thou Wilt: Kenneth Anger on Aleister Crowley and the Occult
Join Kenneth Anger, avant-garde filmmaker and author of the infamous Hollywood Babylon series, as he discusses “The Wickedest Man in the World,” Aleister Crowley. A British occultist, hedonist, and author, Crowley inspired a fanatical following in the 20th century through his occult writings.
EACH DAWN I DIE, 1939, Warner Bros., 92 min. Dir. William Keighley. One of the most rugged of prison yarns artfully blends political corruption and gangster mayhem with an underlying theme of social commentary as only Warners could dish it! James Cagney portrays a crusading reporter who is framed for murder and gets jugged in the penitentiary with career criminal George Raft. Cagney attempts to remain a lawful citizen to gain his freedom but can endure only just so many double-crosses. Stanley Ridges, "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom, Paul Hurst, Louis Jean Heydt and Edward Pawley are doing hard time in the prison jute mill alongside Cagney. With George Bancroft as a resolute warden, Jane Bryan the loyal heartthrob and Victor Jory as a corrupt parole board official. This action-packed crime drama spawned innumerable imitations that never equaled the entertainment quotient of the original. Discussion in between films with actor Richard Erdman (NOBODY LIVES FOREVER).
Eat My Dust
Matching two kinds of high-octane, over-revved engines--the souped-up internal combustion and the teen sex drive--into one delightful genre crash-up of an exploitation vehicle! It's Teen Sex Romp meets Car Race Hicksploitation, as Ron Howard portrays Hoover Niebold, so desperate to woo auto-eroticist and mammarianly gifted ("stacked") Darlene he defies his sherriff father and steals a local racer's prize-winning vehicle to take her on a long raucous joyride, with Pops and cops in hot pursuit. Written and directed by New World stalwart and secret weapon Charles B. Griffith--the El Cheapo scriptwriting genius behind Little Shop of Horrors, Bucket of Blood, Death Race 2000 and seemingly every beloved Corman Flick with a sense of humor. Here, given the reins, he delivers a car crash fillled flick that's light in tone, frivolous, playful, and is the straight-up gaggiest film in the series. Hot diggety-dog!
Dir. Charles B. Griffith, 1976, 35mm, 89 min.
El
Luis Buñuel's clinically precise study of an older gentleman's dizzying descent into sexual paranoia. As the film's May-December romance dissolves over the husband's hallucinations of his wife's infidelity, Buñuel provides an endless wicked undercurrent of satiric jabs at machismo and Catholic repression. One of Buñuel's most perverse explorations of perversity. Dir. Luis Bunuel, 1953, digital presentation, 90 min.
El Dorado
1967/ Technicolor/126 min. | Scr: Leigh Brackett; dir: Howard Hawks; w/ John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan.
An aging gunfighter is revitalized when he joins forces with a drunken sheriff. “So much is coming to an end in El Dorado. Wayne, Hawks, Hollywood, the heroic western, the classical cinema…Humor and affirmation on the brink of despair are the poetic ingredients of the Hawksian western. And now memory. Especially memory. Only those who see some point in remembering movies will find El Dorado truly unforgettable.”—Andrew Sarris.
ELIMINATORS
(from IMDB)
As part of their experiments in time travel, Drs. Reeves and Takada construct a cyborg "Mandroid" with the body of a downed pilot. After the success of the initial experiments, Reeves decides to have the Mandroid scrapped. Not wishing to be taken apart, Mandroid flees with the help of Dr. Takeda, who is killed for his disobedience. Distraught by the death of his one friend, the Mandroid goes north to America in search of someone who can help him in getting revenge and stopping Dr. Reeves in whatever evil plan he intends to use his time machine for.
ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND 2 (Gui Yao Gui)
(from IMDB)
Impoverished teahouse worker (and martial-arts student) Abao is engaged to his boss' daughter, Little Chu, and fights to protect her from the lecherous advances of the wealthy but repulsive Master Shi. The two men's romantic rivalry escalates into full-scale supernatural warfare after Shi enlists the aid of a wicked sorcerer, and Abao encounters a benevolent female ghost. Dir. Ricky Lau, 1990.
ENTER LAUGHING, 1967, Sony Repertory, 112 min. Carl Reiner's first feature is an astonishingly assured debut, with a visual polish (thanks largely to veteran cinematographer Joseph Biroc) and a deep sense of personal expression (it was based on Reiner's autobiographical novel of the same name). Reni Santoni plays a young Jewish man who dreams of becoming a comedian during the Depression. Needless to say, his parents think that working in the family drugstore is a safer bet. Even in this early film, Reiner shows his skill at casting secondary roles, with a supporting cast that includes Shelley Winters, Elaine May, Jose Ferrer, Jack Gilford, Janet Margolin and Michael J. Pollard.
European Punk Night
Two films celebrating the early '80s European punk rock diaspora! Considered to be a "lost" film until its very recent re-discovery, La Brune Et Moi is a whizz-bang tour through the Parisian punk underground, co-starring Pierre Clementi (The Conformist, Belle De Jour) and a long list of energetic Gallic bands like Metal Urbain, the Go-Go Pigalles and Astroflash. In 1980, director Philippe Puicouyoul "borrowed" the production gear being used on a separate film he was working on, in order to clandestinely knock out this paean to one of the high points in the history of French rock 'n roll. While it has the most threadbare of plotlines, the film is really an effervescent excuse to showcase the best 'n brightest of the scene at the time, which it does in a seriously fun way. Second on the evening's bill is possibly the rarest and coolest film of the entire fest--one that we still can't announce the title of, since we're unsure of the condition of the print we'd like to show--but rest assured, once you've seen it, you'll thank us for having shown it.
La Brune Et Moi Dir. Philippe Puicouyoul, 1980, MiniDV, 50 min.
second film TBA Dir. ??, 198?, 16mm, 90 min.
THE EXORCIST III
No one will claim that Exorcist III is better or more disturbing than William Friedkin's original, but it is scarier, packed with more jumpy shocks, sound spikes, and demonic imagery than you can shake a burnt bible at. An oddly comic George C. Scott stars as police Lt. Kinderman, who comes to believe his old friend, Father Karras (Jason Miller), is alive and locked inside a Georgetown mental institution. Which is odd, because Karras died at the foot of a stairwell 15 years ago. Much to God's chagrin, the soul of the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif), executed the same night Karras leaped to his doom, has taken over the priest's body and is committing ghastly murders. William Peter Blatty adapted and directed his own novel, Legion, and, aided by the haunting lighting of DP Gerry Fisher (Highlander), the results are unexpected and impressive. Co-starring Ed Flanders, Jason Miller, Nancy Fish and Nicol Williamson as Father Paul Morning.
Fade To Black
In the rest of the Hollywood Gothic series, we've got struggling screenwriters, wannabe starlets, and diabolical directors, but Fade To Black focuses on the fanboys and geeks that spatter the backdrop of Hollywood's vista. Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away) is a massive movie nerd working at a prop house who knows every esoteric bit of Tinseltown trivia, but not the least bit about how to interact with another human being. He has nothing but the movies, so when he cracks and becomes a serial killer, it's in the form of impersonating his favorite films that he offs his victims (and aren't impersonators truly the lowest rung on the fanboy ladder?). With ample footage cut in from classic films, the ghosts of old Hollywood haunt Fade to Black, both spooking around Christopher's cranium and leaking through into the rotting Hollywood Boulevard of 1980. Dir. Vernon Zimmerman, 1980, 35mm, 102 min.
FAMOUS MONSTER: FORREST J. ACKERMAN, 2007, Roadhouse Films, Inc., 48 min. Dir. Michael McDonald. The documentary FAMOUS MONSTER takes a fast-paced, colorful look at the life of science fiction's greatest fan -- Forrest J. Ackerman, whose 85-year love affair with the genre helped bring it into the mainstream and shape the way we view science fiction today. Through archival footage, film clips and interviews with Ackerman and the fans and filmmakers he inspired, we follow Ackerman as he grows from a kid reading Amazing Stories magazine and watching movies like METROPOLIS and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, to a literary agent for some of the biggest names in fantasy writing, to the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a magazine that inspired generations of filmmakers.
Faust
w/ live score by Cabeza De Vaca Arkestra
A landmark of German Expressionism, Faust was Murnau’s final film in Germany, impressing Fox Studios so much that they lured him to the U.S. immediately afterwards. The most expensive UFA film to date–taking six months to film, and costing over two million marks--Faust is full of bravura effects, including the magnificent signature visual of Mephistopheles towering over a miniature of Faust’s village like an enormous Angel of Death. Faust was also the final collaboration with Emil Jannings (who also played the fired doorman in Murnau’s Last Laugh, and the title role in Tartuffe). Jannings’ chameleonic performance is typically excellent, and, along with the film’s expert Rembrandt lighting and Bruegelesque imagery, makes Faust a complete cinematic experience never to be forgotten. The evening's live score is provided by Cabeza De Vaca Arkestra, an all-star L.A. ensemble featuring Nora Keyes, and members of Dios Malos.
Dir. F.W. Murnau, 1926, 35mm, 106 min.
THE FILM PARADE
(1934) Directed by J. Stuart Blackton
Pioneer filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton was intrigued by the idea of a film about the history of the movies as early as 1915. He finally released a 52-minute feature called The Film Parade that was shown in New York and favorably reviewed by Variety in 1933. He continued tinkering with the film for the rest of the decade, and later filmmakers and distributors used Blackton's footage for stock or to produce their own variously titled and truncated versions. The Archive has completed restoration of the original 1933 version in 35mm, with tinted sequences and Blackton's heartfelt narration.
Screenplay: J. Stuart Blackton. Cast: Marian Blackton, Violet Blackton, Margerie Bonner, J. Stuart Blackton Jr., J. Stuart Blackton. 35mm, 70 min.
THE FIREMEN'S BALL
One of the hallmarks of the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman's anarchic and freewheeling black comedy is a wry and devastating parable about Stalinist authoritarianism. The inventive story concerns the rituals surrounding a small town's celebration of a retiring fire chief and a bizarre beauty pageant. A trenchant commentary about the social and political order. Screenplay by Ivan Passer and Jaroslav Papousek. Cinematography by Miroslav Ondricek. Forman's last Czech film.
FUTURE-KILL
With a title that's anything but deceptive, Future-Kill is overflowing with low-budget sci-fi violence. Edwin Neal and Marilyn Burns of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre star as nuke-protesting mutant punks. Burns plays a benevolent freak, and Neal an evil, ironclad, mohawked killer (think Robocop meets Wez from Road Warrior) poetically named Splatter. When prankster frat boys enter the big city in which the mutant activists dwell, the frats are framed for a mutant's murder. The actual killer, Splatter, goes on a murderous rampage in order to kill the Greek brothers before his mutant-on-mutant crime is discovered. Though the story is actually much crazier than can be described, rest assured that prostitutes get killed, someone is tarred-and-feathered, and there's fire.
GAILY, GAILY, 1969, MGM Repertory, 107 min. Beau Bridges stands in for famed screenwriter Ben Hecht in Norman Jewison’s whimsical adaptation of Hecht’s memoirs of his youth working on a newspaper in early 20th century Chicago. Melina Mercouri (NEVER ON SUNDAY, TOPKAPI) is the brothel madam who feels protective toward the innocent Bridges, and Brian Keith is Bridges’ alcoholic newspaper editor mentor. With Hume Cronyn, George Kennedy and the debut of a young Margot Kidder. Robert Boyle was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction. NOT ON DVD Discussion in between films with art director Robert Boyle.
GAMPERALIYA
(1964) Directed by Lester James Peries
A seminal work in Sri Lankan cinema, Gamperaliya launched "a revolution, not only in the way films were made, but also in the content," according to producer Anton Wickramasinghe. Based on the novel by Martin Wickramasinghe, the film focuses on Piyal, a teacher and member of the new rising middle class, who falls in love with the daughter of his village's leading aristocratic clan. Defensive positions are assumed and the girl's parents insist upon a marriage to a stuffed shirt of her own class. For its elegant style, Gamperaliya has been compared to Satyajit Ray's "Apu Trilogy."
Cinelanka Ltd.. Based on a novel by Martin Wickremasinghe. Producer: Anton Wickremasinghe. Screenplay: Regie Siriwardena. Cinematographer: William Blake. Camera: Gamini Fonseka. Editor: Sumitra Gunawardana. Cast: Punya Heeendeniya, Henry Jayasena, Wickrema Bogoda, Trelicia Gunawardena. Presented in Sinhala dialogue with English subtitles. 35mm, 120 min.
Gates of Heaven
Funny, inspiring, and bizarre, Gates of Heaven is an unorthodox look at life through the eyes of pet cemetery proprietors, embalmers, pet owners, and those who hope to be them. (1978, 85 min., Dir. Errol Morris)
The General
At the high point of his career, Keaton's turn as a hopeful Confederate soldier set the stage for one of his most impressive, action-packed comedies. The General is based on the book "The Great Locomotive Chase," and throws Keaton into a situation where he must protect the only two loves in his life: his train and the beautiful Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). One of the most expensive films of its time, The General boasts hundreds of extras, burning bridges, train chases (one falls into a gorge where it is said to still lie in ruin), and a neverending stream of Keaton stunts, all performed with the deadpan expression iconic of the "Great Stone Face." One can't help but succumb to Keaton's charm as he leaps from one physical impossibility after another, whether running the length of a train or precariously riding its cowcatcher. The stoic grace with which Keaton pulls off these feats not only places him amongst the great comedians, but also makes him the coolest "everyman" action hero of the silent screen.
Dirs. Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1927, 35mm, 106 min.
Gertrud
Dreyer’s elegant final film finds the director at the crossroads of romantic longing, memory and regret. Over several decades, we follow Gertrud, an alluring, strong-willed singer who demands a certain kind of impossible love from her men, none of whom can live up to the expectations they themselves help to set. In drawing room and boudoir interiors, Gertrud and her men hash out their passions, failures and compromises. Marked by a sensational, restrained performance by Nina Pens Rode, who fully embodies the figure of the embattled ingenue, Gertrud is, like its protagonist, many things to many people: obscure, witty, caustic, remote, brilliant and absolutely one of a kind. Perhaps the quietest of Dreyer’s masterpieces, Gertrud is also the most psychologically acute, and the most stylistically daring.
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964, 35mm, 116 min.
THE GO-BETWEEN, 1970, Sony Repertory, 118 min. Director Joseph Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter team up again, this time to adapt L. P. Hartley’s novel of romantic subterfuge at the turn of the 20th century. Leo, a 13-year-old boy (Dominic Guard) on the cusp of puberty, goes to stay with his rich friend at their country estate in the summer of 1900. The friend’s older brother is engaged to lovely Marian (Julie Christie), on whom Leo develops a crush. Marian takes a shine to the boy and soon is enlisting him to carry messages to her secret lover, a neighboring tenant farmer named Ted (Alan Bates). As the idyllic summer disappears, Leo grows up, seeing and hearing things he must keep in the strictest confidence. When Ted and Marian’s affair takes a tragic turn, the impact on Leo’s life is overwhelming and will be felt well into adulthood (where Leo is played by Michael Redgrave). With Margaret Leighton. "The last of three superb collaborations between the Nobel-winning writer Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey, THE GO-BETWEEN explores the mysterious adult world of sex and class as seen through the eyes of a young boy at the start of the last century..." – Channel 4 Film (U.K.) More NOT ON DVD
Gone In 60 Seconds
Gone In 60 Seconds is the ultimate car-lover flick made by the ultimate car lover: successful real estate businessmen H.P. Halicki, who wrote, starred, and directed the movie, leading America Film Magazine to dub him "the Orson Welles of car chase films. Utilizing his extensive car collection, and the junk yard he owned as part of his real estate holdings, Halicki constructed the most diabolical, fender-bending chase ever--40 non-stop minutes of high-speed insanity over the highways and byways of Southern California. Most importantly, he did the stunts himself, weaving in and out of traffic on the LA freeways at a pulse-pounding speed sure to give vicarious pleasure to anyone who's ever been stuck on the 405. Alternating between stache-heavy '70s camp (this could have been the model for the classic Beastie Boys video "Sabotage") and documentary thrills, Gone In 60 Seconds is car porn at its finest!
Dir. H. B. Halicki, 1974, 35mm, 98 min.
GO WEST
In Go West (a parody of Chaplin's "Tramp" persona, and his brand of sentimental "personal" comedies), Keaton plays "Friendless", a depressive chap who gets a ranching job and meets his soulmate: a pluckish milk cow who quickly becomes Buster's only friend in the world. When she and her herd are shipped off to the slaughterhouse, and when the train is held up by thieves in a gun battle, it's up to Buster to lead the herd to safety--straight through a bustling downtown Los Angeles! Dir. Buster Keaton, 1925, 35mm, 69 min.
THE GREAT RACE
Director Blake Edwards followed his “Pink Panther” success with this boisterous, freewheeling comedy in which wealthy daredevil The Great Leslie, the maniacal Professor Fate and feminist reporter Maggie DuBois compete in a turn-of-the-century auto race from New York to Paris.
Cast Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Arthur O’Connell, Vivian Vance, Dorothy Provine, Larry Storch.
Directed by Blake Edwards. Produced by Martin Jurow. Screenplay Arthur Ross. Story Blake Edwards, Arthur Ross. Cinematography Russell Harlan. Film Editing Ralph E. Winters. Production Design Fernando Carrere. Set Decoration George James Hopkins. Music Henry Mancini. Sound M.A. Merrick. Special Effects Danny Lee. Film Effects Linwood Dunn, James Gordon. Second Unit Photography Harold Wellman. Costume Design Donfeld, Edith Head (Natalie Wood). Makeup Gordon Bau. Hairstylists Sydney Guilaroff (Natalie Wood), Jean Burt Reilly (Supervisor). Patricia-Jalem Productions-Reynard Co. Warner Bros. 1965. 35mm. 150 minutes. This 35mm answer print is screened courtesy of Warner Bros.
Filmed in Panavision with Eastman Color negative (credited as Technicolor). Released in 70mm (blow-up) with Eastman Color prints. Released in 35mm Anamorphic (CinemaScope) Technicolor imbibition prints.
A HAL ROACH SILENT SAMPLER
Any discussion of early comedy will inevitably include Hal Roach. Whether directing, writing or producing, Roach enjoyed success with a number of leading comedians, such as Charley Chase. But for every household name, there were other less well-known players whose appeal also contributed to Roach's success. Chase's brother, James Parrott, for instance, starred in a number of Roach shorts, while names such as Glenn Tryon, Arthur Stone and Eddie Boland are overlooked because of the difficulty of seeing their films on screen. Accordingly, this program features the work of those unsung Roach comedians who deserve a second, if not a first, look.
HARDCORE
A conservative, Calvinist businessman from the midwest travels to Los Angeles to search for his missing daughter. When he discovers that she has been appearing in underground, pornographic films, he begins to investigate the seedy industry in an effort to find her and bring her home. Paul Schrader's exploration of morality and obsession features a commanding performance by George C. Scott as the tormented father. Also starring Peter Boyle and Dick Sargent.
THE HARD WAY, 1942, Warner Bros., 102 min. Dir. Vincent Sherman (THE DAMNED DON’T CRY). Ida Lupino is a magnificent, domineering Svengali who bullies the entire movie into believing her younger sister is a star -- and by the end, we believe it, too! Supposedly inspired by Ginger Rogers’ early career, THE HARD WAY won Lupino the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress. Lupino transforms her kid sister (Joan Leslie) from a mining-town nobody into a Broadway headliner, but loses everything in the process. Jack Carson (who should have won a supporting Oscar) and Dennis Morgan are the men unfortunate enough to cross Ida’s path. Marvel at James Wong Howe’s crack photography. NOT ON DVD Discussion between films with actress Joan Leslie.
The Haunted Castle (w/ live score by Manuel Göttsching)
Manuel Göttsching, founding member of legendary Krautrock band Ash Ra Tempel and composer of the '80s minimal masterpiece "E2-E4", will appear at the Cinefamily to perform his live score to F.W. Murnau's 1921 silent German classic The Haunted Castle. Made right before Nosferatu (1922), Murnau's Gothic psychodrama concerns an aristocrat whose haunting party is disrupted by the spooky presence of an uninvited Count with a murderous legend that precedes him. As his dark aura causes havoc amongst the guests, Murnau takes the viewer on a journey through the group's fractured collective psyche, using shadowy expressionist techniques and complex flashbacks to create a lulling, mesmeric state. Manuel Göttsching's pulsing, spellbinding electronic score is a keen accompaniment: as Murnau weaves in and out of exotic dream sequences, Göttsching's oscillations and Teutonic melodies push and pull the brain into a harmonic sweet spot, and lend a cosmic counterpoint to this eerie early thriller.
Dir. F.W. Murnau, 1921, digital presentation, 70 min.
Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
Benjamin Christensen’s notorious pseudo-documentary about the history of witchcraft is a beguiling blend of animation, fiction, fantasy, and “re-enactments,” with satanic rituals, witch trials, and medieval torture devices. (1922, 77 min., Dir. Benjamin Christensen)
HER CROWNING GLORY
(1911) Directed by Laurence Trimble
An early entry in the series of John Bunny/Flora Finch comedy vehicles, Her Crowning Glory derives its plot from a facetious twist of the Samson and Delilah story.
Vitagraph. Cast: John Bunny, Flora Finch, Helene Costello, Mae Costello, Edith Halleran. 35mm, silent, 16 min.
THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (KAKUSHI-TORIDE NO SAN-AKUNIN), 1958, Janus Films, 126 min. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. A samurai (Toshiro Mifune) transports a high-maintenance princess through war-torn lands, accompanied by a pair of bickering peasants (characters said to have inspired C-3PO and R2-D2 in STAR WARS). A deft mix of comedy and action transpires in a film that finds Kurosawa at his most playful and entertaining. In Japanese with English subtitles.
HIGH AND LOW (TENGOKU TO JIGOKU), 1963, Janus Films, 142 min. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Using American crime novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain as a starting point, maestro Kurosawa manages to examine social class barriers and the harsh realities of unprincipled capitalism as well as the tumultuous conscience of Toshiro Mifune, a shoe magnate challenged with a life-changing decision. Will he or won’t he pay the ransom when lone-wolf psycho Tsutomu Yamazaki accidentally kidnaps the son of Mifune’s chauffeur, instead of Mifune’s own child? The specter of greed is seamlessly integrated into this mesmerizing suspense thriller. One of Kurosawa’s best! With Tatsuya Nakadai, Kenjiro Ishiyama. In Japanese with English subtitles.
HIGH SIERRA, 1941, Warner Bros., 100 min. Dir. Raoul Walsh (WHITE HEAT). The quintessential gangster romance, from the pen of W. R. Burnett, one of America’s most important crime writers (with a script co-written by John Huston). Humphrey Bogart plays Mad Dog Earle, an outlaw looking for one last score, sidetracked by love, hounded by inescapable fate. With the incomparable Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie, under Walsh’s typically rugged direction. Remade twice, as COLORADO TERRITORY (a hardboiled western also helmed by Walsh) and I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES (in Cinemascope and color with Jack Palance as Earle).
THE HOMECOMING, 1973, Kino International, 111 min. Director Peter Hall flawlessly transfers Harold Pinter's stage play to the screen for Ely Landau's American Film Theater series, retaining the brilliant original cast. A philosophy professor (Michael Jayston) returns to his family home after years away, bringing with him his new wife (Vivian Merchant). But his testosterone-fueled brothers -- a sleazy pimp (Ian Holm) and an aspiring boxer (Terence Rigby) -- along with his malicious father (Paul Rogers) and his unhinged uncle (Cyril Cusack), through their escalating sarcasm and anger, turn the couple's family visit into an unrelenting nightmare. "…A family dramedy that courts absurdity to powerfully make its point…Pinter puts dialogue in his cast’s mouths that suggests all ids have been checked at the door…Between its exaggerated macho posturing and the spasmodic body language of the actors, the film begins to resemble some kind of obscene slapstick comedy…It manages to say something poignant and disturbing about the decorum that dominates the discussion in even the happiest of families..." -- Jeremy Heilman, MovieMartyr.com
Homemade Hollywood
How did three nobodies blow Steven Spielberg’s mind with an Indiana Jones flick they made as teens in the 1980s? Clive Young, author of Homemade Hollywood: Fans behind the Camera (2008), traces the fan film movement from the 1920s, when con men made fake Little Rascals movies, to the Internet video sensations of today. Young will play clips from some of his favorites and will be joined by special guest fan filmmakers Sandy Collora (Batman: Dead End) and Trey Stokes (Pink Five).
THE HOODLUM
(1951) Directed by Max Nossek
This briskly paced, low-budget, B film noir features quintessential tough guy, Lawrence Tierney, in a most fitting role as Vincent Lubeck, an angry, brooding, habitual criminal, who after five years in the joint is released on parole to live with his mother and brother Johnny (played by Tierney's real life brother, Edward). Sent to work at the family gas station, Vincent grows bitter and restless, and begins plotting his escape from the menial labor of his humdrum life. Completely void of fear, pain and compassion, Vincent has no qualms about destroying everyone and everything in his path.
Jack Schwarz Productions, Inc. / Eagle-Lion Classics, Inc.. Producer: Maurice Kosloff. Screenplay: Sam Neuman, Nat Tanchuck. Cinematographer: Clark Ramsey. Editor: Jack Killifer. Cast: Lawrence Tierney, Allene Roberts, Marjorie Riordan, Lisa Golm, Edward Tierney. 35mm, 63 min.
IN PERSON: author James Ellroy ("The Black Dahlia"), author Eddie Muller ("Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir").
THE HOT ROCK, 1972, 20th Century Fox, 101 min. Dir. Peter Yates. William Goldman adapts Donald Westlake’s hilarious caper novel, a farce in which a gang of jewel thieves botch every aspect of their planned heist. Robert Redford and George Segal lead a stellar cast that also includes Zero Mostel and Charlotte Rae in this ingenious action-comedy.
I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG, 1932, Warner Bros., 93 min. Dir. Mervyn Le Roy. The inspiring social commentary-as-crime drama that transfixed America more than 75 years ago still packs a wallop! James Allen (Paul Muni) musters out of WWI, gets down on his uppers and becomes inadvertently involved in a robbery. Drawing 10 years in the unspeakable savagery of a Southern chain gang, Allen escapes to Chicago, financial success and the dubious charms of Glenda Farrell. Allen soon discovers that there is no escape from fate and a perverse legal system bent on retribution rather than justice. This true story, based on the book by Robert Elliott Burns, resulted in two Academy Award nominations (Best Picture and Actor for Muni) and long overdue reforms to the antiquated Southern chain gang system and was banned by the state of Georgia. Helen Vinson, Preston Foster and Allen Jenkins co-star. A landmark film that boosted the viability of Warners as a major studio, with one of the most memorable closing lines in movie history!
IKIRU, 1952, Janus Films, 140 min. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. A middle-class businessman discovers that he is dying and decides to change his life before it’s too late. As he spends his last months building a playground in a poor section of his city, the man (played by Kurosawa favorite Takashi Shimura) contemplates where his life has gone wrong, and how he can make it right again. The result is Kurosawa’s most inspiring film, a movie that avoids every cliché and gets right at the heart of what it means to be human. In Japanese with English subtitles.
In A Lonely Place
No Hollywood Gothic series would be complete without a noir entry--and In a Lonely Place is one of the best. When Humphrey Bogart's contract at Warner Brothers expired, the first film he made with his own production company was this shadowy classic where Hollywood was not just a dark place, but an ugly one. Bogie plays a bitter, alcoholic screenwriter with a serious temper problem suffering from creative exhaustion, stuck doing assignments he hates for people he doesn't respect. When a hatcheck girl he knows shows up murdered, he's the prime suspect--and even he isn't sure whether he did it or not. Wannabe actress Gloria Graham puts up his alibi, but the downward spiral starts to become too much for the burgeoning romance. Graham's ongoing divorce with director Nicholas Ray permeates the film with a extra tension that, together with Ray's own tumultous relationship with Hollywood, make this a potent and wicked thriller that would send any has-been writer back to his cottage to lick his wounds. Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950, 35mm, 94 min.
THE IN CROWD
(from IMDB)
The central character in the movie is a young man of the rock and roll generation in his senior year of high school. When one day he successfully gets on a popular teen dance television show he becomes a star. The plot follows him as he lives his new life in his new world. What he finds are adoring fans, jealous rivals, bitter friends left behind, and the girl of his dreams...his dance partner. Dir. Mark Rosenthal, 1988.
THE IRON MASK
In celebration of its new book and exhibition honoring Douglas Fairbanks, the Academy presents a rare screening of “The Iron Mask,” in which Fairbanks reprises his role as d’Artagnan from “The Three Musketeers.”
In the late 1920s, the public’s infatuation with the new sound technology was rapidly propelling “talkies” to box office dominance. Fairbanks nonetheless defied the trend and forged ahead with one last silent film, “The Iron Mask”; he was determined to mount the finest production possible and make a triumphant exit from silent cinema in the swashbuckling film style he had perfected during his career. Ironically, his beautifully designed, romantic adventure can now be seen as a farewell to the silent era itself.
Cast Douglas Fairbanks, Leon Bary, Stanley J. Sandford, Gino Corrado, Belle Bennett, Marguerite de la Motte, Dorothy Revier, Vera Lewis, Rolfe Sedan, William Bakewell. Directed by Allan Dwan. Story Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks). Based on The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas, and the memoirs of d’Artagnan, Richelieu, and de Rochefort. Scenario Editor Lotta Woods. Cinematography Henry Sharp. Film Editing William Nolan. Art Direction Laurence Irving. Consulting Production Designer William Cameron Menzies. Costumes Maurice Leloir. The Elton Corporation. United Artists. 35mm. Silent. 103 min. INTRODUCED BY SILENT FILM HISTORIAN AND PRESERVATIONIST KEVIN BROWNLOW. Featuring a print restored under Brownlow’s supervision, with a stereo musical score composed by Carl Davis and the original sound prologue by Mr. Fairbanks.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
1975/color/201 min. | Scr/dir: Chantal Akerman, w/ Delphine Seyrig.
A groundbreaking work of art cinema, Chantal Akerman’s sharply observed and compellingly restrained masterpiece recounts the seemingly innocuous household chores of single-mother Jeanne Dielman (Seyrig). But beneath the surface of her modest Belgian petit bourgeois behavior, recorded in real time by cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Akerman uncovers a feminist tragedy. ”A majestic movie! Akerman fills her movies with patterns and textures of ordinary life, the stuff other films never even notice. Today the film’s observational strategies—its long takes and scrupulous framing—practically amount to a lingua franca of international art film.”—Dennis Lim, The New York Times.
Joanna Priestley: Fighting Gravity
Los Angeles premiere
"The exquisite animated world of Joanna Priestley has been one of the best-kept secrets of the toon community... Undeniably original and hard to forget." Animation Magazine
Dubbed "the queen of independent animation" by Bill Plympton, Joanna Priestley unveils her new short Missed Aches (2009, 4 min.), a humorous rant about the need for proofreading. This can't-miss program for animation buffs also includes a series of animated gems representing the range of the artist's techniques: Voices (1985, 4 min.), Grown Up (1993, 7 min.), All My Relations (1990, 5 min.), Streetcar Named Perspire (2007, 6:30 min.), Utopia Parkway (1997, 5 min.), Candyjam (1988, 7 min.), She-Bop (1988, 8 min.), Pro and Con (1993, 9 min.), and Dew Line (2005, 4:30 min.). Mentored by Jules Engel at CalArts, Priestley had previously made 19 award-winning films about subjects as varied as relationships, plants, magic, menopause, abstraction and prison. Retrospectives of her work have been presented at The Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, and American Cinematheque, among other venues.
In person: Joanna Priestley
JOHNNY CASH PRESENTS THE EVERLY BROTHERS SHOW (ABC, 7/8/70-9/16/70)
(1970) Directed by Marty Pasetta
The Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, had guested on many music and variety shows by the time they became TV headliners with this summer-replacement series in 1970. Though it lasted only three months, "Johnny Cash Presents The Everly Brothers Show" rides high on the Everly's engaging personalities, gorgeous harmonies and rapport with fellow musicians. The Archive has compiled a selection of highlights from seven of the show's 10 broadcasts, including musical numbers by Don and Phil, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Tina Turner and Stevie Wonder. This program also includes a compilation of the Everly Brothers pre-1970 TV appearances, featuring many of their early hits.
Executive Producer: Harold D. Cohen, Joe Byrne. Producer: Bernie Kukoff, Jeff Harris. Writer: David Pollock, Elias Davis, Mike Settle, Jeff Harris, Bernie Kukoff, Allyn Ferguson. Music: Jack Elliott. Host: Don Everly, Phil Everly. Beta-SP, A Halcyon Productions Presentation, 90 min.
IN PERSON: Dan Einstein, Television Archivist, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
KAGEMUSHA, 1980, 20th Century Fox, 179 min, Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Co-produced by Francis Coppola and George Lucas during the latter part of Akira Kurosawa's career, when he often had trouble with financing, this winner of Cannes’ Palme d’Or is a melancholy epic of disillusionment. When the double (and brother) Nobukado (Tsutomu Yamazaki) of Lord Shingen Takeda (Tatsuya Nakadai) comes across a condemned thief (also Nakadai) who looks uncannily like ruler Shingen, Nobukado proposes an idea to his brother’s court. In a bid to save himself from having to continue life as his brother's "shadow," Nobukado trains the thief to be the lord's double. When Shingen dies by an enemy sharp-shooter's rifle, his military chiefs heed the final request of their lord and inform the thief he must now double full-time to fool their rivals into believing Shingen is still alive. Yet how long can the shadow exist without his subject? The film asks, "At some point, may the shadow become the main subject himself?" And, quite crucially, "If it does, will the others realize it?" Kurosawa's haunting tale fantastically weaves tides of expressive color and smoke, evoking truth and lies, clarity and confusion, devotion and betrayal. In Japanese with English subtitles.
KINGS ROW, 1942, Warner Bros., 127 min. Hollywood’s ultimate soaper is one of the best remembered yet seldom screened masterpieces of the 1940s. Life in a turn-of-the-century Midwestern small town is viewed though the perspective of five childhood friends (Robert Cummings, Ann Sheridan, Betty Field, Nancy Coleman and Ronald Reagan). Beneath the veneer of provincial civility lurks a creepy underworld of sadism, bigotry, sexual repression and assorted family skeletons. Casey Robinson’s screenplay, based on Harry Bellamann’s scandalous novel, went through repeated drafts before earning a grudging approval from the Production Code Administration. What was missed by the Breen office was expertly shaped into a magnificent film of sweeping grandeur and power by director Sam Wood (FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS). Memorable performances -- particularly by Reagan ("Where’s the rest of me!") -- along with one of the most revered musical scores of all time by the great Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Adding heft is a superb supporting cast led by Claude Rains, Charles Coburn (in a surprising and unusual turn as a warped, domineering doctor), Judith Anderson and Harry Davenport. Discussion in between films with director Cass Warner (THE BROTHERS WARNER).
LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT, 1933, Warner Bros., 69 min. Dir. Howard Bretherton & William Keighley. Compare this early, thoroughly bizarre women's prison picture with Warner Bros.' later, more realistic, hard-edged CAGED (1950), and it’ll make your head spin! Gun moll Barbara Stanwyck is nailed for abetting her male friends in a robbery, but her former hometown pal, radio evangelist Preston Foster, goes to bat for her with the DA. Temporarily paroled to Foster, Stanwyck confesses she really was part of the robbery, and straight arrow Foster turns her in to do her time. Bitter Stanwyck interacts with her new prison mates, including a nostalgic old crone, a lady with a threatening parrot (!), a butch cigar-smoking bully and a musically inclined tough cookie played by legendary songbird Lillian Roth. Catfights, smart-aleck putdowns, escape plans with Stanwyck's former crime cronies and the unrequited love of reformer Foster are the order of the day. The compressed narrative moves like a runaway freight train. NOT ON DVD
Land of the Pharaohs
1955/color/104 min./Scope | Scr: William Faulkner, Harry Kurnitz, Harold Jack Bloom; dir: Howard Hawks; w/ Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, Dewey Martin.
A pharaoh obsessed with life after death builds a great pyramid for himself and his treasures. “All of Hawks’s intelligence is confirmed and exercised in Land of the Pharaoh, the only epic film which has style, rigor, and plastic beauty.”—Henri Langlois.
Le Lit De La Vierge
In the late '60s, french heiress Sylvina Boissonnas funded a collective of radical art cinema productions under the banner Zanzibar--heady, hallucinatory works of avant-garde film that straddled the line between performance art, revolutionary agitprop and self-conscious mythopoetic narrative. One of the most lucid artifacts of this movement was Le Lit de La Vierge, Garrel’s blasphemous chef d’oeuvre about the life of Jesus. Counterculture icon and fellow director Pierre Clementi plays Jesus, a shivering heap of bones sent unwillingly into the cruel world with a bullhorn and a crown of thorns by his mother Mary (fellow fashionista Zouzou). Belying the drug-addled circumstances of production in Morocco, Le Lit de la Vierge is an immaculate conception in its own right: 20-year old Garrel’s incredibly assured direction favors flawless widescreen tracking shots and performances almost balletic in their physical refinement. A rarely-seen film suffused with indelibly poetic images and a spirit of playful heresy, Le Lit de la Vierge screams with creativity, energy and an unlikely kind of wisdom.
Dir. Philippe Garrel, 1969, 35mm, 114 min.
LITTLE CAESAR, 1931, Warner Bros., 79 min. Dir. Mervyn Le Roy. Edward G. Robinson made movie history with his definitive portrait of sociopathic gangster Rico Bandello. W.R. Burnett’s novel was ripped from the front pages during the Great Depression to satiate a public already fascinated by the decadence of Al Capone’s Chicago. Bandello’s rise and fall is assisted by his pal, played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., the ubiquitous Glenda Farrell, Buster Collier and a lethal Sidney Blackmer. Look for a youthful Lucille La Verne (aka Joan Crawford) in a bit part. Mother of Mercy! Don’t miss this classic on the big screen!
LOBSTER MAN FROM MARS
(from IMDB)
Young film student tries to sell his weird movie to a desparate film producer who is in need of a tax write-off. The producer screens the film "Lobster Man From Mars". What follows is one of the most bizarre and funny film within-a-film sendups: Mars suffers from an air leakage, and send the dreaded Lobster Man to Earth to steal its air. The plot is foiled by a mad scientist, a girl, and an army colonel. The producer buys the movie, but it makes a huge profit and the producer is sent to jail, with the film student taking his place as the studio hot shot.
LOST HORIZON
Frank Capra's hypnotic and perversely appealing adaptation of James Hilton's novel. Though the material seems foreign to Capra's style and sensibility, it is a work of lost innocence and spiritual redemption. A plane fleeing revolutionary China is highjacked to a mysterious valley in the Himalayas known as Shangri-La. Ronald Colman stars as a British diplomat who falls for Jane Wyatt. The expansive, post-modern sets and art direction were inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Loved One
Savage and macabre, this funeral parlor satire, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, is billed as “the movie with something to offend everyone.” With a screenplay by Terry Southern and starring James Coburn, Liberace, Roddy McDowell, James Gielgud, and Milton Berle. (1965, 122 min., Dir. Tony Tichardson)
THE LOVES OF A BLONDE
Milos Forman's great comedy is an acute satire of Czech daily life. The film focuses on the relationship of a factory girl and a touring piano player. After spending a night together in a provincial town, she suddenly appears at the doorstep of his parents' house with devastating results. With Hana Brejchova, Josef Sebanek and Vladimir Pucholt. "Compassionate, painfully true and continually beguiling" (Time Magazine).
LOVE STREAMS
Underrated and impossible to see (except on a French import DVD), John Cassavetes’ LOVE STREAMS, based on a play by Canadian Ted Allan, confirms the unflagging auteurism that made his body of work one of the most unique and unified of post-Fifties cinema. A thematic summation of his twenty-five-year career, LOVE STREAMS is a rough and raw examination of love: its limits and falsities, its teetering into delusion, its power to destroy and to set free. Robert Harman, played with remarkable strength by Cassavetes (when Jon Voigt pulled out of the project mere weeks before shooting he was forced into the role, though suffering from the cancer that was to take his life) is a high-rolling, perpetually inebriated romance novelist with wildly unorthodox research methods living up in the Hollywood Hills in a house filled with a bevy of babes and a cross-section of Noah’s Ark. Gena Rowlands, preternaturally enthralling, is Sarah Lawson, Robert’s loopy sister whose recent divorce (from Seymour Cassel, in a re-casting of MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ) results in her estrangement from her daughter, and a lunacy that is equally tragic and absurd (note the GREED-like epic expansion of her hair). The depths of desperation are mined and contrasted through Robert’s ambivalence towards love and Sarah’s embarrassingly juvenile surfeit of affection. The performances are so naked that their fragility cuts through the film’s fiction, making LOVE STREAMS “a movie that gets better with every viewing” (Dennis Lim, The Village Voice). Not to be missed. – Andréa Picard
L'Urlo
Drawing its title and a dash of inspiration from Allen Ginsberg's famous beatnik work of the same name, L'Urlo (aka The Howl) is easily the most freewheeling and unjustly ignored title in the Tinto Brass canon. Tina Aumont (Torso) stars as Anita, a woman escaping the oppression of modern-day society in a globe-hopping travelogue that rivals anything by Alejandro Jodorowsky for sheer strangeness. Mixing anti-war sentiments with a flurry of rapid-fire pop culture references, atrocity footage, abundant nudity, and even oddball comedy, this oft-censored psychedelic madhouse will blow away anyone ready to groove along with its unique, inspirational rhythms. With plenty of the auteur's own obsessions and stylistic flourishes, L'Urlo congeals into an avant-garde snapshot of late '60s global unrest that still resonates today. Groovy.
Dir. Tinto Brass, 1970, DigiBeta, 93 min.
Made In Sheffield
The town of Sheffield's barren industrial panorama gave birth to an equally stark musical scene in the 1970s, dominated by bands who eschewed the traditional guitar route in favor of "drum machine dreams and bleep-blip bop" (DVDTalk.com). Made In Sheffield is the story of groups like Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League and Heaven 17, who, far away from the scenester showdown of London, used new technology to create uncompromising and prophetic musical visions of the future-now. Dir. Eve Wood, 2001, DigiBeta, 52 min.
Man’s Favorite Sport?
1964/color/120 min.| Scr: John Fenton Murray, Steve McNeil; dir: Howard Hawks; w/ Rock Hudson, Paula Prentiss.
Hawksian innuendo abounds in this fishing comedy about a best-selling author facing off with a superwoman publicist.
New 35mm print!
THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, 1983, Warner Bros., 93 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Brain surgeon Steve Martin is saddled with a horrible wife (Kathleen Turner), until he comes up with the perfect solution: transplanting the brain of a sweet, romantic woman into his nasty spouse’s gorgeous body. Outrageous gags and typically witty Reiner-Martin wordplay ensue in one of the funniest films of the 1980s.
MASK
Based on a true story, Bogdanovich's account of a courageous teenager (Eric Stoltz) who suffers from a rare disease that enlarged and disfigured his head, and who searches for love and tries to get his mother (Cher) off drugs. Also stars Sam Elliott.
THE MAYOR OF HELL, 1933, Warner Bros., 90 min. Dir. Archie Mayo. Who else would Warner Bros. put in charge of eternal punishment but James Cagney? Actually Cagney is a reformed gangster who is improbably put in charge of a reformatory staffed by a coterie of Dead End Kid forerunners led by Frankie Darro. When Cagney applies his street smarts to run the place, he runs afoul of a crooked administrator (Dudley Digges) while romancing a supportive nurse (Madge Evans). Breezy, smart-aleck entertainment whose success broke ground for repetitive Warner entries such as CRIME SCHOOL (1938) and HELL’S KITCHEN (1939). Rarely screened!
MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ
A lonely museum curator (Gena Rowlands) finds unexpected bliss with an eccentric parking lot attendant (Seymour Cassel) in this highly original take on the romantic comedy from John Cassavetes. Quite different in tone from most of the director's work, though still consistent with the intensity and deeply personal quality that marks all his films. With Timothy Carey and Val Avery. "Cassavetes demands that comedy be played as passionately as drama" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). Dir. John Cassavetes, 1971.
Mondo Action mix night
For this Mondo mix night, we've set our sites on the most inane and insane action films from around the world, compacted the trash, and served it up as a mashup night of raging vengeance and savage beatdowns. Gonzo action is the order of the day, so come check out the most overheated trailers we could find, the wackiest car chases, the silliest fight scenes, the most meatheaded catch-phrases, over-Foley'd bone breaks, and the angriest white men we could find! Exploding balls of fire will be outrun! Bad guys will spray endless bullets without hitting our hero! You will have a good time! Then, we'll watch a 35mm print of Lady Terminator--an Indonesian vengeance flick about an anthropologist possessed by an evil spirit armed with a machine gun and a killer snake in her vagina.
Lady Terminator Dir. H. Tjut Djalil, 1988, 35mm, 82 min.
THE NAKED EYE
(1957) Directed by Louis Clyde Stoumen
Director Louis Clyde Stoumen's evocative documentary on the art and history of photography begins with a quote from Ecclesiastes--"Truly the light is sweet..."--before a quick recounting of the medium's 100-year technical development. From there, Stoumen sharpens focus with extended narrative sequences on key artists. Alfred Eisenstaedt and Weegee are each featured while the second half is largely devoted to Edward Weston. In addition to traditional live-action footage, Stoumen, who taught film production classes at UCLA, brought scores of stills to life using a technique he called "photographic animation," predating Ken Burns' signature style by decades.
Camera Eye Pictures, Inc.. Producer: Louis Clyde Stoumen. Screenwriter: Louis Clyde Stoumen. Cinematographer: Louis Clyde Stoumen. Editor: Louis Clyde Stoumen. Cast: Raymond Massey, Weegee , Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Cole Weston. 35mm, 71 min.
The Navigator
The Navigator, an elaborately constructed, nonstop comedic tour de force, finds Buster as a buffoonish upper-cruster who gets trapped with his reluctant sweetheart on an adrift, deserted ocean liner. The two learn to cope with each other and fend for themselves, as they outwit problems ranging from uncooperative deck chairs to an attacking horde of cannibals! Surprisingly, The Navigator was the result of Keaton purchasing on a whim a disused steamship, and only figuring out later how it would fit into a future feature as a location. Dirs. Buster Keaton & Donald Crisp, 1924, 35mm, 59 min.
Ninja III: The Domination
When Ninja III: The Domination hit the screens, it was immediately hailed as a brave and important film, one of Hollywood's first to deal openly with the contemporary issue of ninja spirit possession. Okay, maybe it's not brave or important. But what do you expect from the director and the star of the Breakin' series? Lucinda Dickey plays an aerobics instructor who's taken over by the ghost of a bloodthirsty ninja warrior. When she starts to take revenge against his murderers (which, in this case, equals the entire Phoenix police department), another sword-wielding badass (Sho Kosugi) must lock horns with our svelte anti-heroine. It's Flashdance meets The Exorcist meets Enter The Ninja--and it also boasts one of the greatest and most inexplicable opening sequences in all of martial-arts cinema. Dir. Sam Firstenberg, 1984, 35mm, 92 min.
THE NINTH CONFIGURATION
"...one of the most genuinely bizarre offerings of modern US cinema" (Mark Kermode, Sight & Sound). The author of The Exorcist adapted his novel Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane for the screen, and the result was this strange combination of M*A*S*H-styled military satire, psychodrama, and spiritual thesis. Stacy Keach stars as the new director of a military insane asylum, housed in a gothic castle, who proves to be more disturbed than any of the inmates. With Scott Wilson, Jason Miller and Ed Flanders.
NOBODY LIVES FOREVER, 1946, Warner Bros., 100 min. John Garfield is a shady ex-GI hooked up in a plot to bilk a war widow (gorgeous Geraldine Fitzgerald). When he falls for her, the gang wants them both dead. Director Jean Negulesco (HUMORESQUE, ROAD HOUSE) ladles atmospherics onto the script by crime specialist W. R. Burnett (LITTLE CAESAR, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE), who here turns in one of his lighter, more romantic efforts. Featuring a terrific supporting cast that includes Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Coulouris and George Tobias. Presented in a new 35mm print funded by the Film Noir Foundation. NOT ON DVD.
Nocturne
A tough homicide detective (George Raft) is convinced that the death of a composer was not suicide, but murder. His prime suspects: ten beautiful women. With Lynn Bari. (1946-RKO) Edward L. Marin detective film w/ George Raft, Lynn Bari
Occult LA: Esoteric Cinema In The Southland
Co-presented by Process Books and L.A. Conservancy/ModCom
Author Erik Davis ("The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape") returns for another night of talks and films devoted to Southern California's alternative spiritual culture. Angelino occultism has many sources, but one of the most important is the cinematic imagination, whose mystic and psychedelic developments Davis will trace through a collection of clips and short films drawn from experimental (Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon), B-movie (The Trip), and mainstream Hollywood fare (Seconds, Head). The evening's second half will be hosted by Process Books publisher Jodi Wille, who will present unusual footage of LA's wild and wooly spiritual fringe, including rare clips from the Universal World Church and the Source Family. Other guest presenters include Maja D'Aoust (Philosophical Research Society), Paul Nugent (the Aetherius Society), and Kenneth Anger collaborator Brian Butler, who will show some ultra-rare footage of the notorious Angelino witch Cameron.
OIL: A SYMPHONY IN MOTION
(1933) Directed by M.G. MacPherson
Preservation funded by The Stanford Theatre Foundation
Oil was produced by a Los Angeles collective of amateur filmmakers, called "Artkino," who here attempted a lyric documentary from the point of view of the oil itself.
Cinematographer: Jean Michelson. 35mm, 8 min.
Live musical accompaniment will be provided.
THE ONE AND ONLY, 1978, Paramount, 97 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Struggling egomaniacal actor Henry Winkler turns to wrestling in an effort to generate publicity, and finds that the insanity of the sport is the perfect outlet for his hammy style. Unfortunately, he soon finds his new career wreaking havoc on his personal life (especially his marriage to Kim Darby). As usual, Reiner assembles a stellar supporting cast to back Winkler and Darby, with terrific comic turns from Gene Saks, Polly Holliday, and Herve Villechaize as an amorous wrestler.
Ordet
A profound and timeless inquisition into the powers and perils of spiritual faith, Ordet is a film only Carl Dreyer could make--seemingly simple in subject, yet enormously complex and fulfilling in its style and execution. Morten, a pious yet simple farmer, has three sons, each of whom represents a different point in the spectrum of religious belief. His eldest son is a thoughtful agnostic, while his second is a madman who has come to believe he is Jesus after suffering a breakdown in the seminary. When Anders, the third child, wishes to wed the daughter of a local fundamentalist, the two families collide in a debate about the role of religion and the nature of salvation. Though the drama is purely intellectual, Dreyer’s deliberate, sensitive treatments of performance, gesture and movement are almost ecstatic in their originality.
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955, 35mm, 126 min.
Our Hospitality
On the heels of Three Ages came this other early Keaton feature adorned with intricate, accurate historical details. Buster appropriates the legendary Hatfields-vs.-McCoys feud for a tale of comical clan wars set in 1830s Kentucky, and plays Willie McKay, a young man from New York who must travel back to the homeland in order to rightfully claim his family's land back from the bloodthirsty Canfields. The film's title comes from the vaunted Southern tradition of genality: Willie's love interest, a Canfield girl oblivious to the family feud (played by Keaton's wife, Natalie Talmadge) has him over for dinner--and the Canfields are prevented from disposing of him because he's an invited guest in their home! Naturally, as Buster flees in secret, an epic chase ensues, culminating in one of the deadliest Keaton stunts ever filmed, as he dangles like a pendulum over a treacherous waterfall, from only a long rope tied to a tree. This film also marks the final appearance of Joe Roberts (the brilliant, villainous comic foil who appeared in almost all of Keaton's two-reelers), who died shortly after filming.
Dirs. Buster Keaton & John G. Blystone, 1923, 35mm, 74 min.
PARASOMNIA (DREAMS OF THE SLEEPWALKER)¸ 2008, Rising Storm Productions, 103 min. Director William Malone (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, FEAR DOT COM, "Masters of Horror") helms this macabre twist on the Sleeping Beauty legend. This gripping peril-packed love story not only taps into the zeitgeist of dark yet edgy romance-driven fantasies, but also pushes the familiar slasher film landscape into the more unique world of the surreal. Art student Danny Sloan (Dylan Purcell) falls in love with the innocent and beautiful Laura Baxter (Cherilyn Wilson), a young woman with the sleep disorder Kleine-Levin Syndrome. In her treacherous forays in and out of reality, she encounters a mentalist and serial killer, played by menacing Patrick Kilpatrick (MINORITY REPORT, THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS). He tries to bend her fragile mind to his will, using an array of hypnotic weaponry manifested through his unsuspecting hosts in the real world, as well as the dangerous, deadly creatures he commands on the dark imagined plane. In addition, the film features characters played by genre legends Jeffrey Combs (RE-ANIMATOR) and Kathryn Leigh Scott (THE GREAT GATSBY, "Dark Shadows"), Golden Globe Award nominee and gravitas-bringing Timothy Bottoms (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW) and the sublime and notorious Sean Young (BLADE RUNNER), to name but a few. This is also director Malone’s homage to the late Polish Surrealist Zdzislaw Beksinski, which uses the artist's work as the inspiration for the dream world throughout the film. The filmmakers’ proceeds from this screening will be donated to arts organization MOCA for its continued support in providing arts education programs to the public and support for new artists. Valdemar Plusa, owner of the Belvedere Gallery and Beksinski's longtime friend and agent, will introduce the program. A panel discussion moderated by Richard Elfman (THE FORBIDDEN ZONE) on how art shapes and enriches the filmmaker’s vision, past and present, will precede the film, with director William Malone as well as legendary filmmakers Tobe Hooper, Mick Garris, Wes Craven and Stuart Gordon. (Please note actual film will not start until approximately 9:00 PM.)
POINT OF ORDER!
(1963) Directed by Emile de Antonio
Point of Order! is at once a landmark in political cinema and an incendiary aesthetic statement. Constructed entirely from CBS kinescopes of the controversial 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, the film famously eschewed both expert testimony and narration. Said a characteristically blunt Emile de Antonio, narration is "inherently fascist and condescending." But like the best of the concurrent direct cinema works, Point of Order!'s attitudes are constructed in its edit: a surface-level "objectivity" that is, in reality, brilliantly fabricated. The result is not just a searing indictment of McCarthyism, but an exposé of the fissures in American democracy as filtered through the new medium of television.
Point Films. Producer: Emile de Antonio, Daniel Talbot. Screenwriter: Emile de Antonio. Editor: Robert Duncan. 35mm, 97 min.
POPULAR SCIENCE, VOL. J7-5 (1948)
Subjects include the influence of airplane design on cars, the use of flying discs to illustrate aerodynamics and the completion of the "Big Eye" at Caltech's Mt. Palomar observatory. Preservation funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. 35mm, 10 min.
Post-Punk Junk Mix Night
Here, we present a cornucopia of clips from the best of the rest, the stuff we didn't have enough time to show in the fest: Acceleration: Punk, the lost French take on the goings-on in England; Shellshock Rock, a snapshot of the rough-and-tumble scene in Belfast, Ireland; Under Underground, a late-'70s Kansas City document; classic performances from "So It Goes", the Granada TV culture program hosted by future Factory Records chief Tony Wilson; D.O.A., the snarling 1980 film that chronicles the British scene as if it were already dead; the vintage TV special The Year of Punk, a reactionary UK news report from '77; forgotten music videos, spiky-haired ephemera, and more.
THE PROWLER
(1951) Directed by Joseph Losey
Set in a shadowy post-war Los Angeles, The Prowler focuses on a wealthy but neglected housewife (Evelyn Keyes) who spends her evenings alone, with only her husband's voice on the radio for company. When she's spooked by a peeping tom, a calculating cop (Van Heflin) answers the call, turning her ordered life upside down. The Prowler was the third of five films Losey made in Hollywood, and the most critically and commercially successful. The following year Losey was officially blacklisted and soon embarked on a career abroad where he eventually earned a reputation as a European auteur.
Horizon Pictures, Inc.. Based on a story by Robert Thoeren and Hans Wilhelm. Producer: Sam Spiegel. Screenplay: Hugo Butler, Dalton Trumbo. Cinematographer: Arthur Miller. Editor: Paul Weatherwax. Cast: Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes, John Maxwell, Katharine Warren, Emerson Treacy. 35mm, 92 min.
THE PUBLIC ENEMY, 1931, Warner Bros., 83 min. James Cagney had already taken on plum roles in SINNER’S HOLIDAY and THE DOORWAY TO HELL, but his performance as young upstart gangster Tom Powers catapulted him into stardom as one of Warners’ hottest, most charismatic personalities. Director William Wellman (THE OX BOW INCIDENT) captures the zeitgeist of a violent, anything-goes-era plunged into financial chaos and goosed along into perdition by the government’s misguided attempts at Prohibition. As character Powers’ star rises in the bootlegging underworld, his hubris takes him beyond the pale. Jean Harlow and Joan Blondell co-star. Wellman and Cagney reportedly fought hard with studio head Jack Warner to retain the shockingly downbeat ending.
THE PUMPKIN EATER, 1964, Sony Repertory, 110 min. Director Jack Clayton is now best-remembered for THE INNOCENTS, his interpretation of Henry James classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. However, he also was responsible for acclaimed films of the British New Wave. Anne Bancroft is luminously beautiful as a depressed and intelligent upper-middle-class housewife who can’t seem to stop having children, something that is driving her screenwriter husband (Peter Finch) around the bend. Harold Pinter’s caustic script (adapting Penelope Mortimer’s novel) paints one of the most brilliant and poignant portraits ever of what it’s like to be married. Bancroft received the Best Actress award from Cannes and the Golden Globes, as well as an Oscar nomination for her portrayal (yes, it equals, if not surpasses, her turn as Mrs. Robinson in THE GRADUATE!). With James Mason, Cedric Hardwicke. NOT ON DVD
The Punk Rock Movie
Don Letts was one of the ultimate British punk insiders, both running the trendy London boutique Acme Attractions and DJing at the Roxy, the short-lived venue where most of the performances in his vital Super-8 document The Punk Rock Movie were recorded. This, his first film, is an effervescent ground-zero take on one of the hottest flashpoints in all of 20th-century music: that brief, glorious period when the Class of '77 (The Clash, X-Ray Spex, The Damned et al.) and their fans thought they were poised to smash the state. The film captures a street-level view of their antics on-stage and off, and the vibe is seismic, as we're given not only a glimpse of the mythic London punk nightlife, but also a unflinching portrait of the squalor in which the scene existed. Dir. Don Letts, 1978, digital presentation, 86 min.
QUEEN KELLY
With its restoration in 1985, Erich von Stroheim's eighth and final silent film emerged from over 50 years of obscurity to its first official release and worldwide acclaim. As such, it now ranks as one of the great treasures of film history. The collaboration of Gloria Swanson, then Hollywood's greatest star, and financier Joseph Kennedy, the film was near completion when, after three months of production, Swanson closed it down enraged by von Stroheim's excesses. The story, a gothic romance in which a convent girl is seduced by a Prince and inherits a brothel in Africa, is told with stunning visual effect.
THE RAPE OF EUROPA
Directed and produced by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham, Bonni Cohen
“The Rape of Europa” tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II. 35mm. 117 mins.
RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN
(1980) Directed by John Sayles
Made several years before director Lawrence Kasdan's better known The Big Chill (1983), John Sayles' directorial debut is a sometimes funny, sometimes melancholy look at the lives of a group of formerly radical friends, who gather for a reunion in New Hampshire 10 years after they were arrested in Secaucus, New Jersey while driving to a demonstration in Washington, D.C. Sayles, in what has become his trademark style, underplays the drama of these rather ordinary lives, giving us a group portrait of persons settling uncomfortably into the middle class existences they once abhorred. Lacking Chill's melodrama, what emerges is a film about a baby boomer generation growing old before its time.
Salsipuedes Productions. Producer: William Aydelot, Jeffrey Nelson. Screenplay: John Sayles. Cinematographer: Austin de Besche. Editor: John Sayles. Cast: Bruce MacDonald, Maggie Renzi, Adam LeFevre, Maggie Cousineau, Gordon Clapp. 35mm, 110 min.
Rio Bravo
1959/color/141 min. | Scr: Jules Furthman, Leigh Brackett; dir: Howard Hawks; w/ John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson.
A sheriff enlists a drunk, a lady gambler, an old man and Ricky Nelson to help him fight off a ruthless cattle baron. “A western that’s practically a chamber piece, with barely a shot of the open skies—but it feels every bit as expansive, thanks to its gallant optimism and generous spirit…so clear and simple in its basic construction that it verges on elemental.”—Dennis Lim, Los Angeles Times.
THE RULES OF THE GAME
One of the great films of all time, a satirical anatomy of polite society, with a mixture of farce and bitterness. Set at a weekend party at the chateau of the rich Marquis de la Chayniest, the story concerns the complicated love intrigues among the aristocrats and the servants. But, one guest's refusal to play by society's rules sets off a tragic chain of events. "A single scene gives us more for our senses, emotions, and intellect than most whole movies do" (The New Yorker). Dir. Jean Renoir, 1939.
RUN, TECATO, RUN (A.K.A. RUN, JUNKIE, RUN)
(1979) Directed by Efraín Gutiérrez
Run, Tecato, Run is the last of three low-budget social problem films by Efraín Gutiérrez--all restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Gutiérrez--the first Chicano feature director--not only starred in these films, but developed a grass-roots distribution strategy that allowed him to outperform Hollywood releases in several cities. Based on true incidents, Run, Tecato, Run depicts a junkie's efforts to get off heroin in order to reclaim and raise his daughter. Produced for $60,000, the film explores the connections between the Vietnam War, drug addiction and crime--juxtaposing these against Mexican American family, culture and spirituality.
Chicano Film Enterprises. Producer: Josephine Faz. Screenplay: Efraín Gutiérrez. Cinematographer: Josephine Faz, Efraín Gutiérrez. Editor: Efraín Gutiérrez. Cast: Efraín Gutiérrez, Arturo Castillo, Josie Gutierrez. 35mm, 86 min.
RUTHLESS
(1948) Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
Director Edward G. Ulmer's complex psycho-melodrama Ruthless is undoubtedly worthy of rediscovery. A flashback-structured tale of a sociopath's remorseless drive for station and wealth, Ruthless (often referred to as Ulmer's Citizen Kane) employs a relentless undercurrent of emotional violence. As relayed in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Ulmer envisioned his feature as "a Jesuitic morality play… a very bad indictment against 100 percent Americanism--as Upton Sinclair saw it." The film's chilling, malevolent tone is personified in a starkly muted performance by lead--and frequent screen cad--Zachary Scott.
IN PERSON: Arianne Ulmer Cipes, daughter of director Edgar G. Ulmer.
Eagle-Lion Films. Based on a novel by Dayton Stoddart. Producer: Arthur S. Lions. Screenwriter: Alvah Bessie, S.K. Lauren, Gordon Kahn. Cinematographer: Werner Janssen. Editor: Francis D. Lyon. Cast: Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn, Sydney Greenstreet, Lucille Bremer. 35mm, 104 min.
THE SALVATION HUNTERS
(1925) Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg's first film--shot for less than $4,800 on location in San Pedro, Chinatown and the San Fernando Valley--was possibly Hollywood's first "independent" production. The gritty realism of its locations, the lack of artifice in its story and the lower depths of its characters shocked audiences and the industry alike. The film remains thoroughly modern. Sternberg's images thrive on composition and stasis. His ending resolves nothing and yet everything is different. The Salvation Hunters made a star not only of Sternberg, but also of Georgia Hale, who would play opposite Chaplin in The Gold Rush (1925).
Academy Photoplays. Producer: Josef von Sternberg. Screenwriter: Josef von Sternberg. Cinematographer: Edward Gheller. Editor: Josef von Sternberg. Cast: George K. Arthur, Georgia Hale, Bruce Guerin, Otto Matiesen, Nellie Bly Baker. 35mm, 72 min.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Patrick DeWitt presents Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Once a calendar The Cinefamily will host “Family Sundays”, where our good friends at Family Bookstore (just down the road!) will bring in their favorite people--artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, comedians, or generally inspiring folk--to curate and introduce a night of films. First, they’ll show lesser-seen short films that they’ve made, or that have been made about them--or that they just like. Afterwards, they’ll show a feature that has personally influenced them, and finally they’ll explain it all and take your questions too. The second in the Family Sunday series features Pat Dewitt, author of the quasi self-help guide Help Yourself Help Yourself. In his most recent novel, Ablutions, a nameless bartender ambles toward redemption, while flanked by a bleak coterie of sad and sinister dipsomaniacs. Among Dewitt's selections for the evening are an animated trailer for Ablutions by omni-faceted animator and Wholphin regular Carson Mell. Also included is the 1960 feature-length drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a gritty, incisive take on life and love in industrial Nottingham. Albert Finney stars in his first major role as surprisingly likable Arthur Seaton, a factory worker whose few hours of free time are spent drinking heavily, rebelling violently against his conceptions of authority, and connecting clumsily with equally troubled local women. Bukowski fans, take note.
THE SEA WOLF, 1941, Warner Bros., 100 min. Jack London’s renowned novel of tyranny and revolt at sea is brought to glorious fruition by Warner Bros. pantheon producer-director team of Hal B. Wallis and Michael Curtiz. The film is dominated by Edward G. Robinson’s powerhouse portrayal of the brutal skipper, Wolf Larsen, a philosophical sadist who wreaks havoc on his entire crew, most notably a shanghaied John Garfield, Ida Lupino and Alexander Knox. Great support is rendered by Gene Lockhart, Howard Da Silva and, in a wonderfully odious turn, Barry Fitzgerald. With a literate script by Robert Rossen (ALL THE KING’S MEN), this is the definitive version of a classic tale that is rarely screened. NOT ON DVD.
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR
(1948) Directed by Fritz Lang
Like many Hollywood woman's melodramas, Fritz Lang's The Secret Beyond The Door begins with a plot twist: a young woman marries a man she barely knows and soon suspects he's trying to drive her insane. Gothic themes of madness, mixed with Freudian psychoanalysis were particularly en vogue in the late 1940s and the story here affords Lang the opportunity to indulge in expressionist shadowscapes as well as his long-standing interest in architecture and its metaphoric connotations. Ultimately, however, the film is less about psychoanalysis, than about Stanley Cortez's beautifully photographed post-modern pastiche of gothic and expressionist imagery.
Diana Productions, Inc. / Universal. Based on a novel by Rufus King. Producer: Fritz Lang. Screenplay: Silvia Richards. Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez. Editor: Arthur Hilton. Cast: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil, Natalie Schafer. 35mm, 99 min.
THE SERVANT, 1963, Stuart Lisell, 112 min. Director Joseph Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter masterfully adapt Robin Maugham's novel into an unnerving and darkly humorous look at the dissolution of Britain’s upper class. A rich young playboy, Tony (James Fox, in a star-making role) decides he can’t get along without a valet when he strikes out on his own and makes the mistake of hiring Barret (Dirk Bogarde), a seemingly obsequious "gentleman’s gentleman." But Tony gets more than he bargains for when Barret slowly starts to exert his decadent, sinister influence, first installing his "sister" Vera (Sarah Miles) in an upstairs bedroom, then gradually usurping mastery of the household. With Wendy Craig. "…Bogarde, Losey and Pinter each stamp their personalities on this deliciously nasty film…Decades on from its release, THE SERVANT has lost none of its strangeness, nor its capacity to startle." – Channel 4 Film (U.K.)
Seven Chances
Seven Chances features the most magnificently ludicrous premise in all of Keaton-dom: Buster is a broke financial broker who is told he's inherited $7 million, under the condition that he gets married before his 27th birthday--which happens to be that very same day! After some wildly unsuccessful court-us interruptus, he desperately prints a personals ad in the paper telling of the inheritance. What follows is one of the most stunning signature Keaton chase sequences, with hundreds of would-be brides barreling down the streets of Los Angeles, zeroing in on Buster's bod (a tip of the hat to the early Keaton short Cops). An added bonus is the famous "avalanche" bit, a precisely constructed sketch with Buster tumbling down a dangerous hillside while trying to outrun a torrent of cascading rocks.
Dir. Buster Keaton, 1925, 35mm, 56 min.
Shadowplayers
Shadowplayers, a rich oral history film chronicling the rise and fall of the unparalleled Factory Records label, based out of the city of Manchester. Home to heavy hitters such as Joy Division, New Order and A Certain Ratio, the label has long been steeped in myth, thanks in part to recent films like 24 Hour Party People and Control. Shadowplayers features a host of Factory insiders like label founder Tony Wilson and designer Peter Saville telling it like it really was--or, at least, how it was to them. Dir. James Nice, 2006, digital presentation, 135 min.
SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS
Sergei Paradjanov's masterpiece, a brilliant, operatic story of starcrossed lovers set against the ethnographic panorama of the Carpathian Mountains. The film is a visual tour-de-force of symbols, metaphor, lyrical photography and active camera, interweaving myth and narrative into an elliptical, seamless work of art. "...a deeply psychological film...one whose sophistication makes the Pavlovian tactics of Eisenstein's montage seem almost primitive by comparison" (David Cook, A History of Narrative Film). With Ivan Nikolaichuk and Larisa Kadochnikova. Dir. Sergei Paradjanov, 1964.
Shanghai Express
Josef von Sternberg's spellbinding melodrama about a group of passengers on an express train from Peking to Shanghai who are hijacked by a Chinese warlord. The prostitute "Chinese Lily" (Marlene Dietrich) and the British officer (Clive Brook) she once abandoned are thrown together. "From the hypnotic chiaroscuro photography, the incredibly exotic costumes and the lavish production design, von Sternberg created a mythological China where 'dead space' is virtually absent" (David Cook). With Warner Oland, Anna May Wong and Eugene Pallette. (1932-Paramount)
Sherlock Jr.
Sherlock Jr., a staging ground for Keaton's most unconventional gags. Buster is a film projectionist and amateur detective who daydreams his way right into the film he's running, in order to solve its mystery plot (the reverse of Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo). Keaton's impeccable, laser-sharp timing and his conceptual brilliance converges in a career zenith with this film's second half, when his character inhabits a different concept of space and time as he only experiences the film-within-the-film world edit by edit. Dir. Buster Keaton, 1924, 35mm, 44 min.
SILENT AND EARLY SOUND FILMS FROM THE HEARST METROTONE NEWS COLLECTION (1919-30)
The UCLA Film & Television Archive recently completed a project funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation. With this funding, some of the oldest and most endangered newsreels in the collection have been preserved and restored. The newsreels include both silent era and sound newsreels from the first year of sound production (1929-30). Highlights from the silent era will include an obituary for President Theodore Roosevelt and the newsreel story "Women Besiege Capitol To Urge Suffrage Bills." Sound era selections will feature such titles as "Coolidge Reviews Bay State Fete" and "Edison Welcomes ‘Brightest' Boys."
35mm, approx. 100 min.
IN PERSON: Jeffrey Bickel, Newsreel Preservationist, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Silent Light (Stellet Licht)
2007/color/136 min./Scope | Scr/dir: Carlos Reygadas
One of the most critically acclaimed films of the last year, Carlos Reygadas’s spellbinding third feature is set in rural Mexico where a small, agrarian Mennonite community who speak a medieval form of German (Plautdietsch), are suffering from a crisis of faith. An immersive, sensual, and ultimately haunting experience, Silent Night recalls the redemptive dramas of Carl Theodor Dreyer, though the film’s extraordinary widescreen images and hypnotic rhythms are unmistakably Reygadas’s own. “I was amazed by Silent Light—the setting, the language, the delicacy of the interactions between the people on screen, the drama of redemption. And most of all by Carlos Reygadas’s extraordinarily rich sense of cinema, evident in every frame. A surprising picture, and a very moving one as well.”—Martin Scorsese.
SKINNY TIGER AND FATTY DRAGON
This entertaining buddy/cop film is the story of two pals busting up a gang of criminals and cheerfully breaking just about all the rules governing police conduct. A series of well-staged fights and chases are lightened by humor, making this a highly enjoyable film. One of the highlights is a chase sequence where the heroes destroy a villain's Mercedes, bit by bit, for the sole purpose of antagonizing the fiend. Sammo Hung does a continuous Bruce Lee impression throughout the film, despite or because of the fact that there is absolutely no physical resemblance between the wiry Lee and the portly and often mischievous Hung.
SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT
Ingmar Bergman's liveliest work concerns the sexual and romantic roundelay of four couples invited to a country mansion for a summer weekend. "The film is erotic and lyrical, full of blithe spirits brilliantly evoked" (James Monaco). With Gunnar Bjornstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Ulla Jacobsson and Harriet Andersson. Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1955.
SPIDER BABY
Lon Chaney Jr. heads a household of inbred cannibals in this bizarre and many-titled horror cheapie. As if that weren't enough, he also sings the theme song. Included in the cast of wackos are Sid Haig, Carol Ohmart and the ever-popular Mantan Moreland. It's weird.
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Steamboat Bill, Jr., equipped with a finale Keaton originally felt was shoehorned in by his producer, happens to provide the most memorable and thrilling climax of any of his pictures. In a set-up similar to Our Hospitality, Buster plays a city boy moving back to the country to follow in family footsteps and become a steamboat captain. Keaton fumbles his way through learning the job (of course), and in the process catches the eye of the daughter of his father's business rival. The original planned ending had Keaton piloting his way through a Mississippi River flood, but due to a real-life flood tragedy that year, Keaton was forced to change it to a cyclone finale, and he used the sudden shift in plans as divine inspiration, concocting a barrage of expensive, inspired bits involving a town getting ripped in half, including the single most dangerous of his stunts: a building's facade falling down perfectly around him, as he emerges unscathed through a open window. As Mark Bourne of DVDJournal.com says, it's "Keaton's signature image--a man alone, making the most of whatever the hell's going on around him".
Dirs. Charles Reisner & Buster Keaton, 1928, 35mm, 71 min.
STRAY DOG
A first-rate thriller in which Kurosawa has acknowledged his debt to Georges Simenon. Toshiro Mifune plays rookie Detective Murakami, who loses his gun only to discover that it has fallen into the hands of a killer. Terrified of losing his job, his search takes him into the Tokyo underworld, full of postwar shortages, "divinely hellish under Kurosawa's odd-angled lensing and staccato editing...Stray Dog is a Dostoevskian saga of guilt, and expiation, by association" (Pacific Film Archive). Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1949.
SUNDAY
(1961) Directed by Dan Drasin
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation
A stunning document of the police crackdown on a peaceful demonstration of folk singers in Washington Square Park in 1961.
35mm, 17 min.
IN PERSON: Dan Drasin (director of Sunday), Robert Duncan (editor of Point of Order!) and Douglas Kellner (UCLA professor and author of "Media Spectacle").
Sunday Afternoon with Chazz
Selected by Charles Irvin
In his drawings, videos and paintings, Charles Irvin takes absurdity to the extreme. For this special screening, Irvin presents his new video, Membrane Lane. Adopting the style of conspiracy theory documentaries such as Loose Change and Zeitgeist, Membrane Lane explores the origins and agenda of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a support group for individuals who claim to have been falsely accused of perpetrating child sexual abuse. Irvin mixes found footage with live action scenes, moving from highly-authoritative moments to silly and rebellious characters and scenarios, keeping everything slightly off balance. Irvin will also show a selection of earlier shorts, and the screening will be followed with an informal Q&A with the artist.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
(1911) Directed by William Humphrey
A Tale of Two Cities (1911) was one of several pioneering efforts by the Vitagraph, a.k.a. "Big V," to break away from the then industry-standard one-reeler to produce films of feature length. The studio successfully released the film in one-reel parts over the span of a week to test the public's appetite for longer and more complex narrative fare. Critics of the day lauded their efforts and suggested to theatre owners that the three parts be shown together, spurring Vitagraph to release their next three-reel literary adaptation (Vanity Fair, 1911) as one contiguous feature film. A Tale of Two Cities stars Maurice Costello (whose daughter plays the mischievous little girl in Her Crowning Glory) and Florence Turner, and helped launch the careers of Norma Talmadge, James Morrison and Lillian Walker.
Vitagraph. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Screenplay: Eugene Mullin. Cast: Maurice Costello, Florence Turner, Leo Delaney, Charles Kent, William Humphrey. 35mm, silent, 53 min.
IN PERSON: Robert Gitt, Preservation Officer, UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Live musical accompaniment will be provided.
Target Video Tribute Night
In 1977, San Francisco-based artist Joe Rees founded Target Video. Target taped bands in its studio space, in clubs, at parties and on the streets of the world when music television was nonexistent. With a vision and love for underground music and art, Target documented a truly explosive era, and in the process created a massive archive of punk rock performance footage that captured the scene in all its raw clumsiness and exuberance. Joe Rees and Target co-conspirator Jackie Sharp will be in-person at the Cinefamily to present an epic, two-part program drawing from the seemingly bottomless Target library. The first half is a Los Angeles- and California-centric program featuring classic footage of local heroes (The Screamers, Black Flag, TSOL) alongside lesser-known-but-equally awesome acts (Nervous Gender, BPeople, The Plugz). The second half mines the Target library for its rarest nuggets, and features footage of bands that will make music nerds squeal with glee. Ever heard of the Tuff Darts? Silence Hospital? Nash The Slash? This may be your one and only chance to ever see these clips, so this night is not to be missed.
THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD
Silent film legend Douglas Fairbanks delivers one of his most charismatic performances in “The Thief of Bagdad,” a rollicking adventure tale widely considered to be his masterpiece. Presented in celebration of the Academy’s new Douglas Fairbanks book and exhibition, this rare big-screen presentation also offers a dazzling display of silent film craftsmanship, highlighted by immense, detailed sets designed by William Cameron Menzies and ingenious visual effects that still impress today.
Dashing, athletic and enormously popular, Fairbanks was a star and citizen of many “firsts.” As the Academy’s first president, he helped develop the country’s first university-level film studies curriculum at USC and personally delivered the first lecture on film appreciation there. He also was a founder of United Artists, and along with his wife Mary Pickford, was the first to be immortalized in the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre footprint ceremony. As a civic leader, Fairbanks’s vision for Beverly Hills resulted in the unique cathedral-like design for the waterworks facility that today serves as the Academy’s Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study, home to the Margaret Herrick Library.
Cast Douglas Fairbanks, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher, Julanne Johnston, Anna May Wong. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Story Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks). Inspired by The Arabian Nights. Scenario Editor Lotta Woods. Cinematography Arthur Edeson. Film Editing William Nolan. Art Direction William Cameron Menzies. Costumes Mitchell Leisen. Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation. United Artists. 35mm. Silent. 155 min. FEATURING A COLOR-TINTED PRINT RESTORED BY KEVIN BROWNLOW WITH A STEREO MUSICAL SCORE COMPOSED BY CARL DAVIS
Three Ages
One of the earliest Keaton features, Three Ages uses the multi-part structure of D.W. Griffith's epic Intolerance both as a form of parody, and for practical reasons. At the time, it was unproven whether or not Buster could successfully wear multiple hats (writing, directing and acting) on a feature film, so should the venture have tanked, it was deliberately built so that it could be cut and re-distributed into three separate two-reelers, a form he had already conquered. In the film, Buster plays a young man in competition for a lady's hand, in a story told across three time periods: the Stone Age, the Roman Empire and the present day. It was also the first film to use the talents of Keaton's loyal staff of comedy writers, who would remain with him throughout most of the '20s. Lucky for us, its modest success paved the way for an extraordinary string of almost a dozen more silent features from Keaton before the end of the decade.
Dirs. Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1923, 35mm, 63 min.
THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT
Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate) made his directorial debut with this unusual crime caper about a veteran thief (Clint Eastwood) who takes a young drifter (Jeff Bridges) under his wing as he joins up with some misfit colleagues to retrieve the loot from a daring robbery committed years earlier. A well-made "buddy" film with unexpected moments of lyricism and melancholy. Bridges' performance earned him an Oscar nomination. Dir. Michael Cimino, 1974.
The Time Machine (1960)
H.G. Wells' classic novel was adapted in this enduringly popular film directed by George Pal. Rod Taylor is the time traveler who guns his machine into the distant future only to find a civilization enslaved by subterranean mutants. The Oscar winning special effects and finely detailed set design make this film a joy to view. Also starring Yvette Mimieux and Alan Young.
THE TIME TRAVELERS, 1964, MGM Repertory, 82 min. Writer-director Ib Melchior is renowned for his work on some of the most imaginative science-fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s, including THE ANGRY RED PLANET, ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, REPTILICUS and PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, along with "The Outer Limits" TV series. THE TIME TRAVELERS is one of his most ingenious concoctions, as a group of scientists (including Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders and John Hoyt) experimenting with a time portal are catapulted into a post-nuclear apocalyptic future. Look for Forry in a cameo. Discussion in between films with FAMOUS MONSTER filmmakers Michael Macdonald and Ian Johnston.
Tokyo Sonata
2008/color/119 min. | Scr: Max Mannix, Kyoshi Kurosawa, Sachiko Tanaka; dir: Kyoshi Kurosawa; w/ Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Kai Inowaki, Koji Yakusho.
The quiet unraveling of an ordinary Tokyo family of four begins when its salaryman patriarch suddenly finds himself out of work and decides not to tell his dutiful wife and two children. Pretending to head out to the office each day, he grows increasingly despondent and alienated from the rest of the household and they soon begin keeping secrets and pursuing clandestine activities of their own. This suspenseful and poignant drama from prolific genre master Kyoshi Kurosawa won a jury award at the Cannes Film Festival and multiple prizes at several Japanese film festivals.
In person: Kyoshi Kurosawa.
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, 1948, Warner Bros., 124 min. Dir. John Huston. Based on the novel by famous recluse B. Traven, TREASURE stars Humphrey Bogart in one of his greatest performances as flea-bitten adventurer Fred C. Dobbs, who hooks up with fellow packrats Tim Holt and Walter Huston to search for gold in the mountains of Mexico. The film that launched a thousand imitations with the classic refrain, "We don’t need no badges." Winner of Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director (John Huston) and Supporting Actor (Walter Huston).
Two Films about The Fall
Truly standing out amongst hordes of contemporaries, The Fall is the most unique and prolific of all British post-punk bands. Starting in 1976 and still continuing on today, The Fall has released 27 albums, survived more lineup changes than Spinal Tap, and has remained the brainchild of its caustically witty, one-in-a-trillion vocalist Mark E. Smith. The 2005 documentary The Fall: The Wonderful And Frightening World Of Mark E. Smith gives an in-depth look at the band's shifts in styles, legendary BBC DJ John Peel's love of the band, and Smith's tumultous relationship with pretty much every single one of the 50-some-odd ex-members of the band. The night's Fall energy continues with Hail The New Puritan, the outrageous mid-'80s docudrama about Michael Clark, the enfant terrible of the British dance world whose anatomically revealing costumes, sexually explicit choreography and collaborations with The Fall (and others such as Bruce Gilbert of the band Wire, and Glenn Branca) brought a previously unheard-of decadence to the stuffy ballet stage.
Urgh! A Music War
The legendary concert film Urgh! A Music War is the cinematic equivalent of a tried-and-true mixtape: a non-stop whirlwind of great bands spanning the new wave/punk gamut. In 1980, director Derek Burbidge filmed jam-packed bills in L.A., NYC, London and France, to capture in a Woodstock-ian presentation the bands on the cutting edge of rock and synthpop: Devo, Dead Kennedys, X, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Gang of Four, The Police, Wall of Voodoo, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, OMD, Pere Ubu, Magazine and more. Rarely were these bands--some of whom lasted a very short time--afforded the full lavish film shoot treatment, so Urgh! is a rare close-up peek at some of the most furious bands of the era at the peak of their powers, as well as an intriguing time-capsule snapshot of the era's rock fans, decked out in period gear and acting extra-wacky for the camera. Dir. Derek Burbidge, 1982, 35mm, 122 min.
Vampyr
Though Hitchcock called it “the only film worth seeing twice”, the mysteries of Vampyr couldn’t be untangled in a thousand viewings. Dreyer’s first sound film set a precedent for psychological horror, deploying mood and technical wizardry to render the strange logic of a nightmare on the screen. The threadbare narrative follows Allan Grey, a wandering explorer type, whose stop in the countryside turns into a mystery of shadowy murders, beautiful madwomen, and supernatural possession. Paced at the speed of pooling blood and seemingly shot in Ghost-O-Vision (Dreyer and his cinematographer intentionally fogged their images), Dreyer’s camera explores the uncanny crannies of its old French manse setting with a ghoulish fluidity. Like a dream, the images often dislodge the plot entirely, as Dreyer’s camera wanders away from the immediate action to explore a world of impossible sights and sounds, impeccably realized glimpses of a strange and horrifying dimension just outside our field of vision.
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932, 35mm, 75 min.
Vanishing Point
Combining the muscular thrill of machines with the philosophical dread of social conformity, Vanishing Point has influenced deep-thinking motorheads for decades--it's Existentialism and the Art of Car Racing. Kowalski (Barry Newman) is an near-otherwordly enigma in driving gloves who calmly bets his drug dealer the cost of his drugs that he can finish delivering a 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in an punishingly short time. Kowalski's motives are mysyterious; he just speeds, while on speed, to win a bet to pay for his speed. With near-psychic encouragement from a blind radio DJ (Cleavon Little), we all unite with Kowalski in the pole position, blasting ahead into his destiny. Originally abandoned to the drive-in circuit ghetto, Vanishing Point made a big splash in Europe, and now enjoys cult classic status, thanks to its abstractionist view of American highways, its panoply of nutso fringe dwellers--and of course, its endless collection of white-hot carplay.
Dir. Richard Sarafian, 1971, 35mm, 106 min.
The Verdict
1946/b&w/86 min. | Scr: Peter Milne; dir: Don Siegel; w/ Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Joan Lorring.
A Scotland Yard superintendent makes a mistake in an investigation, causing the execution of an innocent man.
The Wall (Die Mauer)
A poetic and enigmatic documentary from painter and filmmaker Jürgen Böttcher, who relies on sight and sound to contemplate the Berlin Wall’s historic and symbolic significance. European Film Prize for Best Documentary, 1991; Berlin Film Festival, 2006. (1989–90, 98 min., Dir. Jürgen Böttcher)
What's The Matter With Helen?
The inspired pairing of Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters has both stars biting off a little more scenery than they can chew in What's The Matter With Helen?, a film that spares no strain of hysteria in answering (slowly... but... loudly...) its eponymous riddle. As the unhinged mothers of a pair of Leopold and Leob-style murderers, Reynolds and Winters escape the unflattering limelight of their offspring's Oedipal scandal for the alleged anonymity of 1930s Hollywood, here painted as the treacherously-comic, gorgeously superficial Mecca of tyrannical stage parents and their budding JonBenets. Teetering neurotically between outrageous camp and prescient satire, the film's ridiculous arsenal of iconic character actors (including Timothy Carey and Agnes Moorehead) infiltrate every murky aspect of Old Hollywood: dirty sexy money, wingnut radio evangelism and the desperate whoring of precocious children by abject narcissists. Come for the tarty dance sequences featuring a stunning, ageing Reynolds, stay for the figurative--and literal(!)--crucifixions. Dir. Curtis Harrington, 1971, 35mm, 101 min.
WHERE'S POPPA?, 1970, MGM Repertory, 82 min. Dir. Carl Reiner. Gordon (George Segal) is a devoted son who has promised never to abandon his smothering mother (Ruth Gordon at her craziest). When he meets the perfect girl, he becomes determined to get rid of his impossible mom in one way or another, and the result is an outrageously dark and subversive comedy. Reiner satirizes everything from Jewish mother stereotypes to urban racial tensions in this cult classic
WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD, 1933, Warner Bros., 68 min. Dir. William Wellman. "Girls living like boys! Boys living like savages!" During the Great Depression, high schoolers Eddie (Frankie Darro) and Tommy (Edwin Phillips) decide to take off on their own, no longer wanting to burden their parents with another mouth to feed. A cross-country trip in search of work ensues, and they meet many other vagabond teenagers. These include Sally, played by Dorothy Coonan, who was later to become the fourth Mrs. Wellman and mother of the director's seven children. NOT ON DVD
WINCHESTER '73
A major western with James Stewart involved in hunting down a man and his stolen gun through a series of inter-related episodes. With a great shootout among the hills at the end, Leonard Maltin credits this film with reviving the popularity of Westerns during the 1950's. With Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea.
Windows
Cinematographer Gordon Willis (The Godfather trilogy, Manhattan) got his one shot at directing and inadvertently ended up appalling an entire minority with Windows. This nihilistic guilty pleasure stars a confused-looking Talia Shire as a single gal living in a NYC tenement, and velvety-throated Elizabeth Ashley as her scary dyke neighbor who's so obsessed with her that she hires a scumbag cabbie to rape Talia and tape record the whole ordeal--in the hopes that Talia will crack up and seek a little lovin' consolation. Things go from sick to worse when Talia starts doing the nasty with the policeman helping her out, turning our villainess into a full-blown psycho. Basic Instinct ain't got nothin' on this one, baby. Nominated for five Razzies during the award's inaugural year, Windows is a slick, sick lesbian chick flick. Dir. Gordon Willis, 1980, 35mm, 96 min.
THE WOLF MAN, 1941, Universal, 70 min. Dir. George Waggoner. "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." Although Universal had already released a bang-up werewolf movie (WEREWOLF OF LONDON) in the early 1930s, this is the one that is best remembered. It also represents the last release from Universal of an A horror picture for many years to come (horror became almost exclusively B level post-1940) and proudly reigns, along with FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA and THE MUMMY, as part of Universal’s classic horror quartet. Graced by the high-caliber performances of Lon Chaney as tragically cursed Larry Talbot and Claude Rains as his father, one of the prime reasons the film looks so good – i.e., an A picture – is the superbly atmospheric art direction and production design by Jack Otterson and associate Robert Boyle. The remake -- with Benicio Del Toro as Larry Talbot! -- will be released this coming November.
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
(1974) Directed by John Cassavetes
Over 30 years after its self-distributed release, screenwriter-director John Cassavetes' masterpiece retains the power to shock and unnerve for its raw, often harrowing depiction of a blue-collar Los Angeles family on the rocks. At its trembling heart, Gena Rowlands' performance as Mabel Longhetti, wife of everyman Nick (Peter Falk) and mother of three, stands as a virtually unmatched tour de force. As a woman struggling to reconcile who she thinks she should be--as wife, mother, lover--with the anarchic spirit she really is, Mabel is the kind of complex woman's role that is still all too rare in Hollywood's output.
Faces International Films, Inc.. Producer: Sam Shaw. Screenplay: John Cassavetes. Cinematographer: Mitchell Breit. Editor: David Armstrong, Sheila Viseltear, Beth Bergeron. Cast: Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands, Fred Draper, Lady Rowlands, Katherine Cassavetes. 35mm, 155 min.
Zoe Beloff: Conjuring Specters
"Beloff exists as the consummate time traveler, floating between the two eras of cine-technology." Jeffrey Skoller, Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film
New York artist Zoe Beloff's unique and mesmerizing films are philosophical toys-objects with which to think. Her work has especially focused on "phantoms," on images that are "not there," and on a precinematic version of the virtual-created by means of a stereoscopic Bolex camera that produces spectral 3-D images. Shadowland Or Light From The Other Side (2000, 32 min., 3-D 16mm, b/w), starring Kate Valk of The Wooster Group, locates a link between Victorian spiritualism and the birth of cinema in late-19th century "Ghost Shows," where actors interacted with magic lantern slides and stereoscopic views. Charming Augustine (2004, 40 min., 3-D 16mm film, b/w) is an experimental narrative inspired by one of Charcot's most famous patients at the Salpétrière in turn-of-the-century Paris. It explores connections between photographic documentation of hysteria and the prehistory of narrative film: Augustine captivates the doctors with her theatrical and photogenic hysterical attacks and in the process becomes a star-the "Sarah Bernhardt" of the asylum.
In person: Zoe Beloff