August 8th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
The day in rep screenings begins at Film Forum with the final opportunity to catch Rene Clair's LE BEAUTE DU DIABLE, the auteur's customarily stylish take on the Faust legend, starring Gallic great Michel Simon as both the alchemist talked into history's worst deal and the dealmaker himself, Beelzebub M. Pitchfork. As it already stole my Pick not just two days ago I summarily deny and cast it out. The power of da rules compels me.
Also at the Forum D.W. Griffith's insanely infuential INTOLERANCE, an epic made partially as apology for his earlier groundbreaking silent epic BIRTH OF A NATION, is afforded a nine day reprieve and now is scheduled to end Tuesday the 20th. Also made this my Pick already, so ancient Babylon makes way today for 1950's Rome. A very fair trade methinks.
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, Alain Resnais' classic tale of memory and heartbreak and their mingling with Japan's postwar ennui, screens as part of MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. It's summer, so no.
The Film Society's trib to the cinematic legacy of David Bowie winds down today with a screening of Alan Clarke's BAAL, a 1982 BBC production of Bertolt Brecht's first play, which finds the Thin White Duke wallowing in the muck as the debauched anti-social musician who busks for food, engages in several sexual affairs and ultimately commits murder. He seemed a cheeky lad. Normally such degenerate behavior would steal my Pick with no trouble, but today I choose a more conventional and winsome work of cinema where playing hooky from the palace represents the biggest crime committed. In Hays Code 1953 that was a venal sin. Trust me.
Over at Anthology Film Archives their series Cine-Simenon, dedicated to the celluloid adaps of the works of novelist Georges Simenon, gets underway with Marcel Carne's LA MARIE DU PORT and Bertrand Tavernier's THE CLOCKMAKER; the former the tale of Jean Gabin's innkeeper and cinema owner who unknowingly falls for his mistress' sister (tres woof!), the latter the tale of the titular timepiece tinkerer who suddenly discovers his son is a killer. Mon Dieu. Both of the highest interest, but they simply pale when judged against what many consider the ultimate date night movie, even lo these 60 years later. When you have Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn and the leaning tower of Pisa as your leads, you kinda have an inarguable advantage amongst the pack.
Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor as reporter and princess hiding their true identities from each other as they careen wildly about postwar Italy and fall madly in love in the process. It might well have been had Taylor not declined and Grant not deemed himself too old for the part (a problem he apparently didn't have co-starring with Hepburn TEN years later in Stanley Donen's CHARADE). William Wyler tested the young Audrey Hepburn, she of little stage and screen experience, and found her effervescent charm irresistable. He wouldn't be the last won over by said. The onetime ballerina had turned to chorus girl work to pay her and her mother's bills postwar, which subsequently led to small acting gigs for Lippert Pictures and Ealing Studios. While filming a supporting part in MONTE CARLO BABY she was spotted by French novelist Colette, who was participating in the search for an unknown to essay the role of her famous fictional courtesan Gigi on stage. "Viola!", was the author's purported assessment upon first glimpse of the actress, and a legendary career was now underway. In her first film lead, co-starring with Peck, who'd insisted she be given equal billing above the title wth his, she not only birthed what critic Nathan Rabin most famously labelled the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype (so well-represented by the likes of Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel today), she bagged her first and only Best Actress Oscar, besting the likes of Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner in the process. And who can argue with that? There is a special sprightly joie de vivre that Hepburn may lay claim to, cinematic and otherwise, that no other actress could or can. Otherworldy yet human. Luminous yet soft on the eyes. There are few movie stars whose unique appeal bleeds off the screen into the real world and remains indelible, and in Audrey Hepburn's case I can never look at a even a still frame of her and not smile. The lady just makes my day. What can I say?
William Wyler's ROMAN HOLIDAY screens outdoors tonight at Brooklyn Bridge Park at sunset. Get there early to stake out your territory. As Ford Prefect once famously observed, "It's a dangerous universe. You've really got to know where your towel is."
Follow me on Twitter @NitrateStock.
Like the FB page at Facebook.com/NitrateStock.
Check with the folks at Occupy Sandy for updated info about thier donation/volunteering needs.
Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too, Stockahz! Back tomorrow with a new Pick. Til then will somebody please explain to me who hijacked summer 2013 and where do we pay the ransom? I got $73.48 to chip in. That's $73.48 hard American cash!
-Joe Walsh
