April 12th 2013. Pick Of the Day.

Jules Dassin's irreverent exultation of Greek culture circa 1960, NEVER ON SUNDAY, breaks its last plate today as part of MOMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. Julie D crafted this dramedy to showcase the talents of then-love interest and soon-to-be lifemate Melina Mercouri, and also tellingly cast himself as her suitor/foil. The film is terrific, although its title theme song would go on to haunt our elevators and dentist offices for eons. Took it as my Pick on Wednesday, so today I say to it OPPA! And smash something porcelain in its honor.

Master stylist and satirist Frank Tashlin nabs the spotlight at Film Forum as his classic WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? screens for a week in a brand spankin' new DCP restoration. Tashlin's most Tashlian effort observes the American postwar culture through the worlds of advertising agencies, scandal rags and Hollywood celebrity. If the man weren't so wholly irreverent it would be downright scathing! Tempts, but I got a week, so I skip it as my Pick today.

Back uptown at MOMA the museum's tribute to the immediate influence German expressionism had on Hollywood, and indeed cinema worldwide, soldiers on. No pun. The Weimar Touch todays offers Julien Duvivier's THE GOLEM and yesterday's pick FURY, directed by one Fritz Lang. I'm EXTREMELY tempted to pick mah boy Fritz a second day in a row, as I always am. Alas, rules is rules, and while I'm also intrigued by the Duvivier another filmmaker obscure to these shores, or at least to these eyes, is feted this eve. So I'm gonna hold off. Read on.

Anthology Film Archives' series dedicated to the Middle Ages on Film offers a doozy tonight as Andrei Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV starts at 7pm and ends when your great grandkids ask how old you are. That's both wisecrack and compliment. Tarkovsky's examinaton of iconic portraiture from both the lens and the brush is considered by some the pinnacle of the director's oeuvre. Yet the fact that it screens twice more before fest's end, coupled with my shameful employment of the term oeuvre, disqualifies it as my Pick today. Fear not Andrei's, we have time...

Back across town at Film Forum Sam Fuller's Cinemascope masterpiece HOUSE OF BAMBOO gets a week to show off its new DCP restoration. Fuller was a hardscrabble newspaperman and fully transposed that ethic to his film career, cranking out tough gems like THE STEEL HELMET, PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET and SHOCK CORRIDOR. BAMBOO tests the testosterone of he-man leads Robert Stack and Robert Ryan in a circuitous mystery thought the vice underworld of postwar Japan. And it looks GREAT! Again, I got a week, so I skip this piece o' work today.

And midnight in classic film in these beautiful boroughs brings Dan Curtis' ode to Amicus and Giallo BURNT OFFERINGS, a cursed house/bloodline classic screening at our beloved Nitehawk Cinema in scenic Billyburg. Oliver Reed and Bettie Davis star, but take a backseat, if that was ever deemed possible, to the film's lead and focus of the Nitehawk's midnight tribute, the one and only Karen Black. That's sayin' something. I proffer there is currently no finer theatergoing experience to be had in the five boroughs than exists at the Nitehawk, but I must resist their root beer and tater tots in favor of a different retrospective that begins this day, one I may indeed be choosing to show I got some snob tendencies to assuage, but really because I'm just fascinated by film cultures I'm completely ignorant of.

Nah, its fully snob motivated. Hey, ya get honesty here.

Roberto Rosellini made ROME OPEN CITY in 1945. And all hell broke loose thereafter. Maybe it's unfair to label this flick the Patient Zero of the various postwar cinematic pandemics that occured in its wake, but that's sorta the case. The film's employment of natural lighting, found locations, actor's actual makeup and wardrobe and non-professionals in onscreen perfs set forth a revolution that begat partially or wholly the NYC avant garde, the European New Wave, and the general awakening to world cinema by audiences everywhere who had sought, conciously or otherwise, an anitdote or at least partner to Hollywood cinema. Latin America in this period was no less immune to the artistic possibilities this new movement afforded. Several directors railed against the status quo in thier respective countres, but Brazil became the unofficial home to the Cinema Novo rebels. A neo-realist cause that embraced the auteur theory, therefore affording cult status to directors with limited resources, the Novo directors eschewed the traditional comedies and musicals that ingored or in some cases embraced their status as feifdom of industrialized interests and sought to fortify a national identity unique and separate from outside interests. Preservation of culture, of a people's soul, through its cinema, was largely the lesson learned by the Novo directors from innovator Rossellini. The Cinema Novo movement had many fathers, and one will be accompanying several prints of his incredibly hard to find films for a week at Lincoln Center. One of the great perks of NYC residence is being a subway's ride away from essential attendance. Here is an example of such.

Carlos Diegues' XICA and BYE BYE BRAZIL screen tonight as part of the Film Society's trib to the director. He's on hand to introduce both films so I'm just gonna take the latter as today's Pick because it bears his passport's homeland in the title. To borrow a term from the Portuguese, groovy.

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Be safe, be sound, and make sure the next guy/gal is too! Back tomorrow with this week's last Pick! And how 'bout dem Knicks might I ask?

-Joe Walsh