October 16th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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It's 1945 all over again as the French stand triumphant today over the Japanese and Italians. I mean on NYC's rep film circuit. Too soon?
Cinegeek booty to be gotten this day include one of Marcello Mastroianni's great comedic turns as a murder-minded husband, Anouk Aimee's reprisal of her indelible LOLA for that same film's director, and The Rolling Stones' tolerance of Jean-Luc Godard while they create their masterpiece. Continuing series include Film Forum's Jacques Demy retrospective, MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film, and the Film Society's exhaustive, pun intended, trib to the aforementioned Godard. The oxymoronic full skinny as follows;
Film Forum
TOKYO STORY (1952) Dir; Yasujiro Ozu
MODEL SHOP (1969) Dir; Jacques Demy
THREE SEATS FOR THE 26TH (1988) Dir; Jacques Demy
MoMA
DIVORCE, ITALIAN STYLE (1961) Dir; Pietro Germi
Film Society of Lincoln Center
NUMERO DEUX (1975) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
PASSION (1982) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (1968) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
LE GAI SAVOIR (1969) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
COMMENT CA VA (1978) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
A MARRIED WOMAN (1964) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
Today's Pick? I know it's only been a few months since I chose Yasujiro Ozu's elegiac TOKYO STORY, his examination of elder Japanese society and their growing sense of obsolescence in the postwar world, a perceived entropy the society had been experiencing as a whole since the modern industrial world's encroachment at the turn of the century, but as it's regarded as his masterpiece I see no reason why it shouldn't stand above the pack once more today. Ozu was and is widely celebrated for his unconventional film technique, forever seemingly uninterested in trad edits and match cuts and more absorbed by faces, reactions, conflicts. Indeed his backgrounds are usually stylistically unremarkable, his camera consistently static, yet within these potentially yawn inducing parameters came some of the loveliest cinema to grace and inspire the world stage. This year's initial Ozu retrospective at Film Forum was mounted as tribute to the great essayist and Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, and the Japan Society picks up the trib torch this Friday with a series beginning with Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW and running through to February with Hirokazu Kore-eda's AFTER LIFE, so it pleases me greatly that the bulk of 2013 has been devoted to one of the great enthusiastic drumbeaters world cinema ever had as an ally. While today's screening isn't overtly projected in his memory, I'm just gonna go ahead and say it is. I roll like that.
For more info on these and all October 2013's classic screenings in NYC click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Back tomorrow with a new shove in the right direction, til then safe and sound and look out for the next guy/gal/whatsis too!
-Joe Walsh
