October 28th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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In the run-up to our calendar's annual celebration of spookery in all its glorious forms we have a slight lull in the sked today, but there's still some wonderful stuff for your consideration. These include the new and continuing series To Save and Project at MoMA, Middle Ages on Film: VIKINGS! at Anthology Film Archives, and the last gasps of Jean-Luc Godard's occupation of the Film Society. The shenanigans in full:
Film Forum
NOSFERATU (1979) Dir; Werner Herzog
BAM
DRIVE, HE SAID (1971) Dir; Jack Nicholson
MoMA
AMERICAN ANTI-NAZI FILMS REDISCOVERED (1936-38) Various Directors
Film Society of Lincoln Center
STRUGGLE IN ITALY (1971) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
LES CARABINIERS (1963) Dir; Jean-Luc Godard
Anthology Film Archives
WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES (1984) Dir; Hragjan Oalafssenssenssenssenflaugenn
Ahem.
I mean,
Anthology Film Archives
WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES (1984) Dir; Hrafn Gunnlaugsson. We kid because we love. And because a moose bit my sister once.
Today's Pick? I gotta go with a greatly esteemed yet scarily batshit director (for glorious proof click here) and his equally unsettling choice of material. I'm talking about the magnificent Werner Herzog and his ballsy remake/reworking of F. W. Murnau's NOSFERATU, the latter's untoppable template for cinematic horror. While Herzog's update can rest on many virtues (as well as suffer its flaws), chief among these were his no-brainer casting of buddy/archenemy Klaus Kinski as the reincarnation of Max Schreck, the revulsive figure at the heart of the Murnau masterpiece whose very T-shirt image may still thrill and chill the genre-obsessed. Kinski brings his usual messianic, maniacal zeal as the titular rodent/human hybrid, and the effulgent Isabelle Adjani accompanies the proceedings as Mina to his Dracula, as copyright expirations alowed Herzog et al to do what Murnau was constrained against; credit Bram Stoker's source novel without permission or renumeration. Adversity is famous for birthing great art, as Murnau's unofficial (for legal reasons) 1922 adap of Stoker's work has attested over the years, but there's something else altogether delightful in the naming of the real names. Here we get what might've been, had Murnau had the rights to Stoker's nightmare-inducer back in the day, and also Herzog's wholly unique voice and its take on the property. There are such things, Tod Browning's Van Helsing would inform some 10 years after Murnau perfected Stoker's seminal ghoulie for celluloid. Tonight you may sit amongst these things at the Film Forum and drink it all in. As it were.
For more info on this and all NYC's classic screenings in October '13 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 more of the month's slowly dwindling screenings, but take heart! Halloween approacheth! And the month's gonna end with a bang! Til we interact electronically again knuckleheads stay safe and sound and keep an eye out for the neighbors too! Boogah!
-Joe Walsh
