August 14th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Today's rep cinema shenanigans begin at Film Forum as their Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror series unspools William Cameron Menzies' INVADERS FROM MARS, Kurt Neumann's KRONOS and Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. MARS and KRONOS are a two-fer today, while Bowie, as usual, stands alone. A cornucopia of genre treasure to be sure, but not my Pick today.

Also at the Forum today D.W. Griffith's monumental and insanely influential work of silent cinema INTOLERANCE continues to flaunt about in its newly restored DCP iteration. Love it, chose it, skipping it.

Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA, the director's breakthrough work of world cinema, returns to our movie mad metropolis as part of MoMA's ongoing Auterist History of Film series. Glad to have any and every opportunity to catch this on the big screen, however I just made this my Pick last month, so me and Monica Vitti need some time apart to think things over. She'll understand.

The Mid-Manhattan Library's series 1970's: NYC on Film trots Tony Manero out once more to show off his moves in John Badham's SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Fun, emblematic of its era, but ultimately insubstantial, so I'm going with a more iconic figure in American film. Manero was the subject of only two films, played twice by the same actor. Tombstone, Arizona's most famous lawkeeper boasts a slightly bigger cinematic CV.

Cine-Simenon, Anthology Film Archives' series dedicated to screen adaps of novelist Georges Simenon's works, continues today with screenings of Julien Duvivier's A MAN'S NECK and Phil Karlson's THE BROTHERS RICO. The former is the 1st sound incarnation of the writer's famed detective Jules Maigret, while the latter concerns Richard Conte's knucklehead siblings who won't leave him the f@*# outta their problems, ya know what I mean??? Ahem. Good fare to be sure, but a different sort of crime- and problem-solver takes my Pick this day. Keep readin'.

Uptown at the Walter Reade theater the Film Society's thoroughly entertaining series Fasten Your Seatbelts (Part Two): 20th Century Fox brings the deadly serious with a pair of actor's showcases today. Anatole Litvak's THE SNAKE PIT offered yet one more plum role for master thesp Olivia De Havilland as a woman who awakes in a sanitarium with no memory of what brought her there. Tamed by the passage of time, the film nonetheless still provides gripping melodrama and a fascinating character study. I heart Miss De Havilland incredibly, and take comfort in the fact that she still glams amongst us, currently spending her chillax years in Paris no less. However a monumental work of guy flick cinema screens this day, and I will never take sides against John Ford. Anybody who punches John Wayne and lives is no trifling individual.

Sean Feeny altered his monicker after joining his older brother Francis, a black sheep who'd fled the family home in Maine, in the burgeoning west coast film biz the elder sibling had fallen into backwards and found great success in. Francis had Americanized his surname to Ford, partially in hope to avoid connection with any past sin. What was good for the older bro was good for the younger neophyte. Thus was John Ford officially put to work in the movie industry, taking any odd gigs he could get at first, including dangerous stunt work on his director brother's two-reel actioners, before graduating to the bullhorn himself. Apparently, perhaps apocryphally, he was awarded his first directorial gig because he could yell better than his peers. He was paired with Harry Carey on a series of silent horse operas that proved immensely popular, and a CV was born, one which he would sum up to the end of his days, despite numerous genres conquered, thusly; "My name is John Ford, and I make westerns."

Having formed the Field Photographic Unit some years later for the U.S. Navy's Office of Strategic Services, which resulted in his personally filming the Battle of Midway, Ford returned from WW2 satisfied in the knowledge that he'd proudly served his country and eager to get back to work. Darryl F. Zanuck, president of 20th Century Fox, thought Allan Dwan's 1939 take on the Wyatt Earp/O.K. Corrall legend, Frontier Marshal, was a fine film that could be made great, and that it could be Ford's perfect transition back to both civilian life and big box office. Having actually known Earp during his final years, indeed making of the ex-marshal a routine Sunday dinner guest and raptly absorbing every word of the yarns spun by this living legend, Ford was understandably quite particular about the depiction of the man and the story to be sure. Zanuck only reluctantly greenlit a Ford project, as the studio prez was notorious for his micro-management from pre- to post-production, and Ford was equally notorious for not giving a good goddam what Zanuck had to say. The end result, however, was usually worth the friction, as a film like THE GRAPES OF WRATH or HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY went a long way toward quelling personal animus. For his vision of the frontier tamer Ford turned to a familiar cohort, Henry Fonda, and turned to a dicey proposition indeed, matinee idol Victor Mature, to essay the crucial, tragic role of Doc Holliday. The two turned out to be quite the team, and I maintain they've still retired the jersey on the legendary duo, no matter how incredibly Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas or Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer pulled it off. There are westerns, and there are John Ford westerns, and today's Pick might well be the quintessential entry in that elite latter category. You may judge for yourself, just try to do it tonight while it screens in the venue intended. You don't wanna piss off the guy who punched John Wayne, do ya?

John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE screens tonight at the Walter Reade theater. I sure do like that name.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy/gal is too. August is just getting started, my fellow Cinegeek! Let's see how many alternate verbs for screening and unspooling I can concoct!

-Joe Walsh

joew@niratestock.net