June 26th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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Film Forum's exhaustive and slowly winding down tribute to Yasujiro Ozu begins today with an early afternoon memorial service to the writer who did more than anyone else to bring the cinematic sensei's work in particular, and Japanese film in general, to the world's attention. Donald Richie left us this past February at the too-young age of 88, and his scholarly panache looms large over this retrospective. This memorial, scheduled for 11am, will include friends and colleagues of Mr. Richie's such as fellow Japanese cinema expert Stephen Prince, filmmaker Paul Schrader, and the Forum's director of rep screenings Bruce Goldstein. Free to the public on a first-come basis. Highly recommended.
Post-service the Forum unspools two works from the filmmaker Mr. Richie adored so. Ozu's AN AUTUMN AFTERNON and THAT NIGHT'S WIFE concern the dilemmas encountered by two different fathers, one desperate to marry off a daughter and the other to save the life of his. The former was the auteur's last film. The latter features live piano accompaniment from the great Steve Sterner. Both worth your attendance. Neither my Pick. Hey, I've picked a BUNCH of flicks from this series this month, I'm allowed to focus my attention elsewhere, and today I Pick an Asian cinematic auteur unique in his own right. And a little more kinetic. No hard feelings, Yaz.
Robert Bresson's PICKPOCKET screens for three days as part of MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. Famous for featuring a voiceover narrative that is lousy with cognative dissonance, Bresson's film also served as a bridge between French cinema's old school and its looming Nouvelle Vague. A must. Just not today.
Also at MoMA the museum's own massive trib to a film pioneer, Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios, continues merrily apace with screenings of SUEZ and FRIENDLY ENEMIES. Tyrone Power oversees the construction of the famous canal in the former, while the latter deals with the conflicted loyalties of newly Americanized German immigrants. Ripping yarns to be sure, but they fail to persuade on a day when another legend was born, who provided yarns that didn't rip per se, but they were, literally, cracking good. Read on.
The Mid-Manhattan Library's summer film series, 1970's: NYC on Film, today presents Francis Ford Coppola's monumental THE GODFATHER. As the library's only equipped to screen DVD & BluRay, a fact I normally never hold against a venue doing its best to provide interesting programming, I must sit this out until next month when BAM"s newly restored Harvey Theater brings us the guns and cannolis in a glorious new DCP restoration. It's not personal, MML.
No, today belongs to an icon of world cinema, one who initially was pressed into celluoid service to fill the void left by Bruce Lee's untimley death, as was the case with fellow Peking Opera grads like Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. However, it wasn't until he fully embraced his love for another legend of the screen, from America, from the silent era, and from an altogether different genre that he alone saw the bridge to, that Jackie Chan took his first step into a larger world. And we followed.
Chan Kong-sang was born on April 7th 1954 kicking and hwaahing. That's how I like to see it anyway. He quickly earned the nickname "Cannonball". That pic paints itself. At the age of 8, once his father emigrated for work reasons, he was enrolled in the rigorous, and some would say child-abuse-friendly, Peking Opera, where he spent his adolesence enduring strict balletic, athletic and martial arts training. In his words,"It was really arduous, we hardly had enough to eat, enough clothes to keep warm, training was extremely tiring, and Master could cane us anytime". So he attended China's version of Catholic school, apparently. Kiddin'. His quick mastery of the school's grueling curriculum sparked his notoriety, and he ascended to an elite group within the Opera known as the Seven Little Fortunes, whose film career began when the child actors first appeared in Big and Little Wong Tin Bar. It was an inauspicious debut for a performer who would later revolutionize an entire genre of cinema.
After working as a stuntman on a pair of films with his hero Bruce Lee, FIST OF FURY and the game-changing ENTER THE DRAGON, he briefly left film to attend college and work in construction, where a fellow employee re-monickered the aspiring star "Jackie". Soon Hong Kong film producer Willie Chan contacted the Peking Opera grad about joining the ranks of eager Bruce Lee replacements in the none-too-subtly titled NEW FIST OF FURY. After a few failed attempts to fill the Karategi of the still-mourned Lee, Chan was loaned out to action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, who was making his directorial debut. Yuen allowed Jackie control over his own fight choreography, and the soon-to-be star decided to pay homage to a different pioneering cinematic stunt icon; one Buster Keaton. The blend of action/comedy sent the resulting box office through the roof, and from there the stunts only got wilder and more dangerous, and the action set pieces more outrageous and engaging. Jackie Chan was well on his way to becoming JACKIE CHAN! First, though, he would ultimately have to assume complete control, auteur status, over his work, before he could become the rightful heir to a genre hybrid since unmatched. Today, you lucky Cinegeek so-and-so's are afforded the oportunity to attend said directorial debut. EARN this!
Jackie Chan's defining work of comic martial arts cinema THE YOUNG MASTER screens today with his CITY HUNTER as part of the Film Society's trib The Jackie Chan Experience. Ya know how many bones this guy has left out of his desire to entertain you ungrateful bastards? NONE! NONE MORE BONES!! The least you can do is attend and show the man some love!!! Plus the Walter Reade has killer AC. Not as killer as Jackie's leg sweep, but killer nonetheless.
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Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too! Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick! How is June almost over goddammit?!?!?
-Joe Walsh
