April 13th 2013. Pick Of the Day.

The Film Society's ampitheater presents Stanley Donen's FUNNY FACE, the lone onscreen pairing of Hollywod icons Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Ebullient cinema, but I skip it today in favor of an even more rarely screened icon.

MOMA's series dedicated to the immediate influence German expressionism had on Hollywood filmmaking continues apace. The Weimar Touch today offers the early Max Ophuls effort THE TROUBLE WITH MONEY, Wiliam Dieterle's expert Warners biopic THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA, and Paul Czinner's Shakespeare adap AS YOU LIKE IT. All tempting, but all screening at least once more during the fest, so I painfully pass them up.

Anthology Film Archives' retrospective focusing on the Middle Ages on Film today offers Robert Bresson's THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC. I know how it turns out, so I'm skippin' jury duty.

Back uptown at Lincoln Center the Film Society's tribute to Brazillian Cinema Novo legend Carlos Diegues enters its second day with screenings of the filmmaker's QUILOMBO and SUBWAY TO THE STARS. I chose the grand man himself for yesterday's Pick, and though technically these films are completely eligible I pass them up in favor of an arguably greater innovator. I know, eu sou uma pessoa horrível ...

Film Forum offers some Sam Fuller love by screening the nail-spitting auteur's first Cinemascope feature HOUSE OF BAMBOO. Robert Stack takes on Robert Ryan in postwar Japan's Yakuza underworld. Twin colossi collide!!! Heh. Screens all week so not my Pick today.

Also at the Forum Frank Tashlin skewers postwar American pop culture in WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? Again, we got a week to dig the Tony Randall-Jayne Mansfeild goodness, so it'll have to wait.

And midnight offerings in our fair metropolis include a whopping FOUR-COUNT-'EM-FOUR flicks at the IFC, Stanley Kubrick's 2001 and THE SHINING, Clint Eastwood's directorial debut PLAY MISTY FOR ME, and Martin Brest's perfect distillation of all things 80's action flick BEVERLY HILLS COP. Across the river and through the woods in B-Burg the Nitehawk Cinema continues its midnight series honoring cult icon Karen Black with Dan Curtis' gloriously unhinged BURNT OFFERINGS, which also stars stalwart lunatic Oliver Reed and the grandest Dame of them all Bette Davis. Loves me some Karen Black, but I gotta skip it as my Pick. Today that honor goes to one of the greatest film comics the medium ever saw, an innovator and an icon, whose star dimmed for a time while Chaplin and Keaton's were being polished off and basked in, but nevertheless found the inevitable rediscovery that was due a filmmaker of his esteem. In awarding my Pick to this man today, however, I take fully into account the efforts of the men presenting his vision, who routinely do so in the manner he intended. Let's salute the preservationists, shall we?

Ben Model has been providing classic film enthusiasts with live musical accompaniment for their fave silent films for the last 28 years, and has routinely graced the ivories at MOMA and Film Forum to name just two venues. Beginning in film school, volunteering to enhance the film experience for students who would otherwise watch in unintended silence, he has gone on to become a leading authority on silent cinema and the city's premier soundtrack to that era. Together with curator Bruce Lawton and film historian Ben Massa they form the nucleus of The Silent Clowns Film Series, which annually resurrects a healthy sampling of Hollywood's speechless classics for the benefit of film lovers interested in viewing them the way they were designed to be.

Today the Silent Clowns fete a very deserving gentleman indeed. Harold Lloyd was the box ofice equal of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the 20's, but spent a couple of sound era decades in their shadows, largely becuase his financial demands for the television broadcasting of his films were deemed way too high. So for the longest time they sat and gathered dust while the New Wavers of the 60's were erecting statues to his peers. Some time after his death Time-Life acqiured the rights to his classics, and proceeded to screw them up entirely. Incorrect frame rate and improper music were but two of the crimes committed against these works. Justice was served eventually by none other than silent cinema savior Kevin Brownlow, who corrected most of these mistakes, and today we may delight in the master's works in as close a form to their original state as is possible. And today, thanks to the efforts of Browlow and the enthusiasm of Model, Lawton and Massa, we may all collectively gather beneath the clock tower and try to catch the four-eyed phenom should he fall.

Harold Lloyd stars in SAFETY LAST, screening as part of The Silent Clowns Film Series' celebration of the grand old man's 120th anniversary of his birth, at the Library of the Performing Arts' Bruno Walter Auditorium. Ain't that a friggin' mouthful for a silent flick?

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy/gal is too! Back next week with more Picks! In the meantime follow the Twitter or Facebook posts to keep up on what's screening in classic cinema! GO KNICKS!!!

-Joe Walsh