May 31st 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.
Aloha, May 2014. Sayonara Springtime. Auf Wiedersen Arctic chill. We now, ostensibly, make our collective sojourn into weather far more accomodating to picnics, baseball and the fleet darting between rep film houses to sate our Cinegeek lust. June's got plenty of goodies in store for us, but for now let us pay our observances to this month's last offerings. 'Cause they're awesome.
Today's continuing series include Original Gangsters at IFC Center, Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist (Part One) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, An Auteurist History of Film Reprise, Part Two at MoMA, Punk Rock Girls at BAM Cinématek, and the penultimate weekend of Moving Image's comprehensive Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective. The hijinks look thus;
IFC Center
THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931) Dir; William Wellman
GODZILLA (1954) Dir; Ishiro Honda
BLUE VELVET (1986) Dir; David Lynch
PURPLE RAIN (1984) Dir; Albert Magnoli
Nitehawk Cinema
OLIVER! (1968) Dir; Carol Reed
METROPOLIS (1927) Dir; Fritz Lang
THE BABY (1973) Dir; Ted Post
Film Forum
SORCERER (1977) Dir; William Friedkin
Film Society of Lincoln Center
ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955) Dir; Douglas Sirk
MoMA
HUD (1963) Dir; Martin Ritt
THE BIRDS (1963) Dir; Alfred Hitchcock
THE LEOPARD (1963) Dir; Luchino Visconti
Mid-Manhattan Library
LAW AND ORDER (1953) Dir; Nathan Juran
BAM Cinématek
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS (1982) Dir; Lou Adler
JUBILEE (1978) Dir; Derek Jarman
Museum of the Moving Image
THE DOWNFALL OF OSEN (1935) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
OSAKA ELEGY (1936) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
THE LOVE OF SUMAKO THE ACTRESS (1947) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
MISS OYU (1951) Dir; Kenji Mizoguchi
Landmark Jersey Loews
BARBARELLA (1968) Dir; Roger Vadim
METROPOLIS (1927) Dir; Fritz Lang
Today's Pick? A no-brainer. Actually a plea for a meeting point between the brain and the soul, or, as the film states it, the Head and the Heart, the search for a Mediator between the two its quixotic intent. Fritz Lang was perhaps the most powerful filmmaker of Germany's Weimar era, standing with F. W. Murnau and G. W. Pabst as titans of their nation's film industry, heralded by critic and moviegoer alike. He did not, however, attain this rank and rep by providing audiences with a case of the warm fuzzies. Lang was among the first to follow the blueprint of 1918's DR. CALIGARI, where shadow transformed from inconvenience fought against in the early silent era, to something embraced, even manipulated by the mind of the narrator. Lang became fascinated by what lay in those shadows, and made of them a character unto themselves in seminal works like THE SPIDERS, DESTINY, and the unequivocably influential DR. MABUSE,THE GAMBLER.
A trip to New York City in the mid twenties, and his first glance at its skyscraper skyline, stirred withim him the beginnings of a story that eventually grew into his biggest production, an epic I've always maintained was less SciFi and more a vision of a world ruled by Henry Ford. Here however, Lang's shadows were balanced by an equally potent light, his pessimism for the moment challenged by his own barely concealable hope for a better tomorrow, one where industry and its captains may find equal footing with the workers who make it possible. For those familiar with his CV (of which I am mostly, not completely) I ask; was he ever more earnest than in his portrayal of the human Maria, more unabashedly romantic than in Brigitte Helm's scenes with Alfred Abel's Freder? The pessimist is so because he hides a secret optimist, and there exists no better evidence of this in Lang's work than here, I believe.
As a perhaps unintended meta exercise, this masterpiece of compromise, which came from a director seemingly dictatorial, unspools tonight against the backdrop of a battle between underdogs and establishment. The Friends of the Loews, a non-profit group that has selflessly dedicated their time, money and physical labor to the preservation and restoration of tonight's chosen venue, are locked in a battle over their very survival with their city's government, a battle which may very well extend to the venue's survival. There are legit points to be made on both sides of the argument, to be fair, but when tallied the situation does seem to be one more tale of bureaucratic bullying, of opportunistic annexing of the sweat and imagination of a smaller, but more farsighted group. In the spirit of this unspooling I hope a real-life Mediator is imminent. Can't we all just get along?
Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS screens tonight, 8:15pm at the Landmark Jersey Loews, in its 2010 restoration, and is accompanied by Bernie Anderson on the movie palace's restored Wonder Morton organ. This is going to be an event long remembered by the film fanatics who attend. Do your best to be one of them.
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 and other audio tomfoolery check out the 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 I'll catch ya at Club Yoshiwara!
-Joe Walsh
P. S. Even though we're coming into the summer months and therefore not often as mindful of the displaced, some of our fellow NY'ers are yet to be made whole since Hurricane Sandy hit nearly two years ago. Check in with the good folks at Occupy Sandy to see if you can't still volunteer/donate to our neighbors in need. Be a mensch.
