August 17th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO kicks the day in rep screening off as part of Film Forum's ode to film geek joy, the Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror series! I think we're all pretty much caught up with the story of Norman Bates and Marion Crane, but for them that ain't in the know I shall synopsize no further than to say Janet Leigh's lovesick secretary makes some pretty bad decisions indeed. Also, check Yelp before booking a motel room. Just sayin'.

Speaking of crazy the Film Society's trib to Werner Herzog offers up a quartet of the madman's most memorable. SIGNS OF LIFE, Herzog's feature debut, concerns the creeping insanity visited upon soldiers stationed in a nowhere seaport town. EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL gloriously defies explanation. For HEART OF GLASS the entire cast was placed under hypnosis to tell the tale of a village that slowly crumbles after its master glassblower dies. Like they do. And STROSZEK stars fringe musician Bruno S. as an ex-con transplanted, along with his prostitute girlfriend, to the American midwest. 'Nuff sed. A great way to kill a whole day with a wholly unique cinematic voice, but another of my heroes is repped by a masterpiece of his own, so I have to say nein.

Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image serves up Roman Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY (AGAIN!!!) and Alan Arkin's LITTLE MURDERS as part of their series Fun City: New York in the Movies 1967-75. Both dark takes on a then-blighted metropolis and the demons, figurative and otherwise, that beset it, both by turns horrific and hysterical, but neither compare to my Pick today, which is a work that literally defies classification. Much like its maker.

Anthology Film Archives' series dedicated to flesh merchant Russ Meyer, The Glandscape Artist, unspools today the fauxteur's VIXEN, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and SUPERVIXENS. The 6:45pm screening of DOLLS boasts the attendance of star Marcia McBroom who will intro the notorious classic. As much as I adore my morbid desire to watch breasts flopping about onscreen, the protagonist of today's Pick, if he may be reffered to as such, bests me totally in that activity.

Midnight shenanigans about our movie mad mecca include Meir Zarchi's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE at the Nitehawk Cinema and Irwin Allen's THE SWARM at IFC Center. Both of these films, eh, well, both are screening. That's about the nicest thing I can say. And I love both of these theaters and everything they do, but I've gotta go with Film Forum for yet a THIRD day because their programming this month has proved just too irresistable, and if any director ever understood the compulsion the movie experience may instill from either side of the camera it was the genius named Michael Powell.

Alright Scorsese too. But his stuff ain't screening today, and even he would defer to his hero on this one.

Powell entered the film industry in the early 20's as assistant to the popular silent director Rex Ingram, and rose up like you did back then, performing every menial task until you were promoted to a higher position. He worked as a still photographer, a title card writer, and even jumped in front of the camera for a few short scenes when an extra body was needed. In 1927 the Cinematograph Films Act was passed, which decreed that exhibitors screen a certain amount of British produced cinema as a percentage of the more popular Hollywood imports that threatened to kill their native film industry altogether. American distributors invented what became known as the "Quota Quickie", basement-budgeted short features and serials manufactured solely to meet the law's standards, which both allowed them to meet audience demand for the Hollywood product while offering steady employment for Brit film talent, in certain cases spawning full-fledged careers. Powell was one of the lucky recipients of this system, and he was soon directing for the first time.

Surely and steadily his work combined his innate, unique sense of storytelling with the craftsmanship honed through long hours and a lotta sweat. Once Britian officially entered WW2 Winston Churchill turned to the UK film industry for help, and the nation's cinematic propaganda arm was instantly activated. Powell was enlisted in this cause, and perhaps more significantly (if you're more into the history of film than war, like me) was paired with a refugee Hungarian screenwriter, another genius named Emeric Pressburger, and one of the cinema's greatest collaborative teams was born. Retitling themselves simply The Archers, they would together craft some of the most indelible works of 40's UK film, including ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING, THE 49TH PARALLEL, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, A CANTERBURY TALE, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, BLACK NARCISSUS, THE RED SHOES, and THE TALES OF HOFFMAN. Sadly their union ended in the early 50's after years of success and critical acclaim. Pressburger's career steadily rolled to a unceremonious halt, after a lone directorial attempt and writing work for other filmmakers. Powell's career would not end so quietly.

In the late 50's Powell was introduced to an ex-WW2 code-breaker and fledgling screenwriter named Leo Marks, who'd concoted a macabre story based around the neurological disorder scopophilia; the morbid desire to watch. Powell instantly indentified with the material and set out to make the most lurid, seamy, disrespectable potboiler he'd ever attempted in his career. In fact the ONLY time he'd attempted anything like said. The result, the tale of an experimental filmmaker who murders his subjects, bears all the earmarks of a Powell film yet remains the damndest thing he'd ever produced, and that's saying something. Simultaneously invoking the tropes of both grindhouse porn and arthouse cinema, it may perhaps be its maker's masterpiece. Unfortunately for him the scathing, scabrous vilification the film met from the UK critics doomed the film's box office chances and for all intents and purposes ended his career. It wasn't until Martin Scorsese later championed the film that it was given a second go some 20 years later, and this time the critics got it right. It's one of the gargantuan drags of cinema history that we never got to see what a fully financed Powell might've produced in the 60's and 70's as the times and mores changed, but its even better to know that he was publicly redeemed by his peers and lived to see it, and we may indulge in the glorious results.

Michael Powell's masterpiece PEEPING TOM screens as part of Film Forum's wonderful Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror series. All this filming isn't healthy, indeed.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next knucklehead is too! Back next week with more Picks. Until then follow the Twitter feed and Facebook page for my daily choices. I'm officially giving up on August. Lemme know when summer 2014 gets here.

-Joe Walsh

joew@nitratestock.net