November 24th 2012. Pick Of The Day.

Let me begin as usual with what ISN'T my Pick Of The Day. It's a long list this brisk Saturday and the also-rans are some of the most incredible films ever produced. So let's start a trimmin', shall we?

The Nitehawk in Brooklyn offers a liquid brunch as complement to their screening of WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. So shines a good deed in a weary world.

Also at the Nitehawk this day is Nick Ray's sorta-autobiographical BIGGER THAN LIFE, one of the earliest films to deal with substance addiction in postwar postcard 50's America. James Mason delivers one of his most indelible perfs. Not my Pick today.

Anthology Film Archives' excellent Warner Archives appreciation continues wth two of ace DP Jack Cardiff's directorial efforts, the franchise non-starter THE LIQUIDATORS, and the Congo Uprising set ultraviolent actioner THE MERCENARIES, the latter for which he recieced a fair amount of shit back in the waning Summer Of Love era. Edgy fare to say the least from the proper Cinematographer of THE RED SHOES and BLACK NARCISSUS, and all the more interesting for that CV. Can't go wrong choosing one or both today, but not my Pick.

The AFA also serves up three programs of the short silent works of George Melies today, celebrating one of the true fathers of cinema. Normally I'd say this was unmissable, but the AFA, bless their souls, usually unspools the works of the master on a regular basis. My Pick is somewhat more elusive to the big screen...

92YTribeca celebrates 100 years of Sam Fuller with a 60th anniversary screening of his persoanl fave amongst his CV, PARK ROW, a celebration of journalism set at the turn of the century, honoring his own newspaper roots and impressing via design and cinematography on a shoestring. Intriguing. Still not my Pick.

The IFC presents JAWS and DR. STRANGELOVE at midnight, two very difficult choices, let alone choosing to turn them down in favor of another film. I remain firm. As does my choice for Pick Of The Day.

Museum of the Moving Image presents Noir master Robert Siodmak's THE DARK MIRROR as part of their Cinema and its Doubles series, a movie that features not one but TWO COUNT 'EM TWO Olivia DeHaviland's, whch is the very stuff of dreams. No disrespect to Joan Fontaine, of course. I also eschew this potential choice too. And not just because that rhymed. No, Moving Image is screening another dark and mysterious tale this day, one of the finest ever filmed and one of its helmers greatest achievements among a career arguably filled with them. John Carpenter once posited, in reference to the themes within his masterpiece THE THING, that there exist two kinds of horror yarn; conservative horror, which proposes the terror comes from without, and liberal horor, which proposes that terror comes from within. I'm not sure anybody would have labelled Alfred Hitchcock a liberal, but one of the master theses on the latter came from his own efforts.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT was scripted by that specialist in eccentric Americana Thornton Wilder, and there's little doubt that The Mahstah found agrreeable company with this writer who revelled in the blackly comic that lay at the heart of Hitch's newly adopted home and its folsky charm. Some will argue that the terror IS from without in SHADOW, that a malevolent force visits upon the wholesome traditional family that IS strange to them, although accepted. That I counter-argue would be to ingore a huge swath of the story and its theme. The stranger in question is INDEED strange, but his name is UNCLE CHARLIE, a blood curlding sociopath chillingly essayed by the great Joseph Cotten, and the power he exploits is not merely his relation by blood to our central protagonists but that blood's influence on his kin, evidenced by plucky teenage niece Tersa Wright's horrific relation to all the dark things in her Uncle's wheelhouse. Indeed, upon disovery of her uncle's sins she can't bring herself to expose him because, as she states, they're made from the same stuff. Throw in the father indulging his odd neighbor's predilection for concocting the perfect murder, seemingly in the abstract, and the casual actual murder attempt regarded as part of the day's normal course, and I believe you have not merely one of the great blackly comic views of the midwestern family circa 1943 but one of Hitchcock's finest works, a thriller that surpasses it's great thrills to paint the flipside portrait of Ford's American unit, yet remains ultimately no less patriotic. Plus Joseph Cotten's one of the creepiest pricks in film history. Top five. Try me.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT screens at Museum of the Moving Image as part of their Cinema and its Doubles series today at 3pm. I implore you to drag your triptophan suffrin' ass of its cushion today and watch this pristine black and white gem as it should be seen!

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-Joe Walsh