June 19th 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.
Me? Bitch about the weather? I feel like we're still strangers after all this time...
Today's continuing series include Alec Guinness 100 at Film Forum, An Auteurist History of Film and Carte Blanche: MK2 at MoMA, The Italian Connection: Poliziotteschi and Other Italo-Crime Films from the 60's and 70's at the brevity-obssessed Anthology Film Archives, and The Fearless Roman Polanski at IFC Center. The happenings be thus;
Film Forum
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1946) Dir; David Lean
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) Dir; David Lean
MoMA
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971) Dir; Peter Bogdanovich
FATHER AND MASTER (1977) Dir; Paolo Taviani
Anthology Film Archives
THE VIOLENT FOUR (1968) Dir; Carlo Lizzani
HIGH CRIME (1973) Dir; Enzo G. Castellari
BowTie Chelsea Cinemas
FEMALE TROUBLE (1974) Dir; John Waters
IFC Center
CUL-DE-SAC (1965) Dir; Roman Polanski
FRANTIC (1988) Dir; Roman Polanski
Today's Pick? It was my short-lived pleasure and priveledge to patronize the fantastic downtown art space known as the 92YTribeca, a joint that has sadly been dark for nearly a year now. Besides great gallery exhibitions and live music perfs, they boasted a fantastic rep film program, headed up by one Cristina Cacioppo, whose policy of nurturing fledgling booking talent birthed such series as Overdue, Not Appearing at a Theater Near You, Basic Cable Classics, and her own Beer Goggles. I got to cheer on Sam Jones in a pristine 35mm print of FLASH GORDON. I was among those graced by the presence of director Walter Hill at an unspooling of his 1981 masterwork SOUTHERN COMFORT. I spent some quality time in this venue, and my acumen for my great passion benefitted greatly as a direct result. Its greatly missed.
It was during the waning days of the venue's operation that I caught one of its last screenings, at which I familiarized myself with the term poliziotteschi, slang for an Italian sub-sub-film genre that loosely translates to American slang as cop, as in police film. Its many practitioners (and let's face it, if you worked in the Little Boot's cinema back then you produced in the vogue or perhaps not at all) included Damiano Damiani (A Bullet for the General), Mario Bava (Danger: Diabolik), Elio Petri (The Tenth Victim) , Fernando de Leo (The Boss) , and tonight's champ, Enzo G. Castellari (Inglorious Bastards), the director of the very movie I saw a year ago at the 92YT, and which unspools once more this fair eve. So as a remembrance of a beloved venue, a grateful nod to the awesome Miss CC, and a celebration of a category of European film that took an indelible American classic, William Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION, itself inspired by the 60's New Wave from those same foreign climes, and upped the ante in terms of violence and melodrama to heights gloriously absurd, I make this entry my Pick. If Douglas Sirk, Anthony Mann and Sam Fuller had a baby, it'd be named Polizio Tteschi. What, three men can't give birth to a kid? It's 2014, evolve you troglodyte!
Enzo G. Castellari's HIGH CRIME screens tonight as part of The Italian Connection: Poliziotteschi and Other Italo-Crime Films of the 60's and 70's at Anthology Film Archives. You're walking out of this screening with a moustache. Whether it belongs to you or not.
For more info on these and all NYC's classic film screenings in June '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 that's not a moustache; THIS is a moustache. Moustache.
-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.
