May 18th 2014. Pick of the Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
It's Sunday. Let's just get to it.
Okay, Mets suck. Now let's get to it.
Continuing series today include Film Forum Jr. at (where else?) Film Forum, Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist Part One at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Cool Worlds: The Animation of Ralph Bakshi at BAM Cinématek, An Auteurist History of Film Reprise, Part Two at MoMA, and Museum of the Moving Image's half finished and absolutely unmissable Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective. The rep circuit roshambo as follows;
Film Forum
THE TWO OF US (1967) Dir; Claude Berri
DR. STRANGELOVE or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) Dir; Stanley Kubrick
THE FRONT (1976) Dir; Martin Ritt
Nitehawk Cinema
BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971) Dir; Robert Stevenson
Film Society of Lincoln Center
WHY DOES HERR R. RUN AMOK? (1970) Dir; Rainer Werner Fassbinder
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER (1970) Dir; Rainer Werner Fassbinder
THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (1971) Dir; Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Mid-Manhattan Library
THE PARADINE CASE (1947) Dir; Alfred Hitchcock
BAM Cinématek
AMERICAN POP (1981) Dir; Ralph Bakshi
HEY GOOD LOOKIN'! (1983) Dir; Ralph Bakshi
MoMA
PARIS BELONGS TO US (1961) Dir; Jacques Rivette
EXODUS (1960) Dir; Otto Preminger
IFC Center
GODZILLA (1954) Dir; Ishiro Honda
Museum of the Moving Image
POPPY (1935) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS (1939) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
Today's Pick? Time, I'm very well aware, is slowly running out on Moving Image's essential Kenji Mizoguchi retro, a crucial program for expert and neophyte alike, as these 35mm prints may not see these shores again for another 20 years. Another unmissable event occurs this day, however, so I gotta pass the Japanese master up for the moment. (Actually you can attend my Pick AND make the evening screening at Moving Image, but let's just keep that between us wait oh hell!) The Bakshi series at BAM Cinématek offers up a pair of early 80's efforts that found themselves both as ambitious and out of place in the post-New Hollywood era as anything produced by Scorsese, Coppola, Friedkin et al. This only adds to their intrigue, but fails to boost them past today's Pick on the sledgehammer-bell test. (Actually you can catch the evening screenings oh Christ I've just done this!) The Film Society offers a Leelo Dallas Multipass to the Fassbinder frivolities today, and what better way, I ask, to while away a glowing spring afters by holing up in the Walter Reade with a day's rations to sun yourself by the projecter's bulb while wallowing in Teutonic translations of sudsy Hollywood melodrama? (Just to clarify, I'm a fan. I promise to never use parentheticals after this post.)
The better expenditure of your time today, I argue, is a very rare screening of Martin Ritt's quiet masterpiece, probably the greatest film ever made about Hollywood's McCarthy-era blacklist, crafted by the very victims of said shameful practice; 1976's THE FRONT, the proud recipient of a brand new DCP resto which will be accompanied at Film Forum's afternoon screening by a Q&A with screenwriter Walter Bernstein, who also authored the scripts for PARIS BLUES and FAIL SAFE, and personally spent time as piñata during the senator's witch bash. The film perfectly captures the meeting point of desperate opportunism and incorruptible integrity, the line between which had blurred drastically in a postwar period stoked by atomic fears, in the character of a constantly-broke, irresponsible newsstand hack turned flesh and blood alias for a group of blacklisted TV scribes eager to sell scripts. Woody Allen, here for the first providing his services solely thespian in his writer-director phase, is granted perhaps his finest role outside any he'd provide himself, encapsulating the sum total of all our worst human instincts, and doing so without losing our sympathy, until...well I don't wanna give anything away to those who haven't seen it. Suffice to day Bogie, his hero, would be proud.
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in May '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. For the monthly overview listen in to the new podcast, and follow me on SoundCloud! For reviews of contemporary cinema and my streaming habits (keep it clean!) check out my Letterboxd page! And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then safe, sound, make sure the next knucklehead is too.
-Joe Walsh
P. S. Should you be feeling charitable during this still harsh weather period please remember to check in with the good folks over at Occupy Sandy. Some of our NY neighbors are still feeling the effects of the 2012 hurricane. Be a mensch.
