February 13th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Is is possible that we're just about halfway done with February already? That winter and all its attendant misery is waning rather than waxing? That the three best seasons that ever existed, Spring, Summer and Autumn, lay just around an icy, foreboding corner? YES IT IS, Stockers! Look no further than pitchers and catchers reporting to Yankees training camp in Tampa for proof! In a few weeks we'll have the Oscars, March Madnes and exhibition baseball. In the meantime there's plenty of classic cinema unspooling in our fair city to take your mind off the wait.

Louis Mallle's THE LOVERS is offered up at MOMA for the next three days as part of their Auteurist History of Film series. The oft overlooked Malle never quite found a place with the old guard of French cinema or the Nouvelle Vaugue, but still forged an impressive career that took turns traditionally commercial (debut ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS), arthouse controversial (PRETTY BABY), and classification defying (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE). This film falls somewhere between the first two categories, featuring a second turn for Malle's cameras from the great Jeanne Moreau, who in no small way helped spur the obscenity charge against the film that ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to decide its fate. The court ruled in favor of the film in one of the most famous verdicts in the history of cinema, prodding forth this definition of pornography from Justice Potter Stewart; "I know it when I see it." So now you HAVE to see this flick. Just not today, sez me.

The Tarrytown Music Hall dusts off its projector's bulb to offer a rare screening in its wonderfully archaic theater space. Tonight the ultimate Valentine's Day flick screens at the Hall, James Whale's baroque and bizarre tale of the unburied betrothed BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Rebranding the horror of his original frightfest as Strickfaden enhanced melodrama the director concocted what many consider his masterpiece, a souffle of mad scientists, the monsters who despise them, and the production designers who make them all look good. The Hall's surrounded by great restaurants and the express Metro North gets ya there in a little over 1/2 an hour. I highly recommend a trip there. Just not today.

Finally the Film Forum presses on in its month-long trib to the year in Hollywood 1933. Two from Rouben Mamoulian, the great stylist of the transitional silent to sound era, screen at the FF today. THE SONG OF SONGS details the exploits of a young and naive Marlene Dietrich as she leaves her idyllic small village life for the opportunities provided by big city livin'. I mean just how corruptible could our darling Marlene be, I ask? If only for the salacious camerawork focused on the nude Marlene, courtesy of the statue she poses for, I would HIGHLY recommend this flick. However an equally great, equally hot icon of the era is also onscreen at the Forum today, also courtesy of Mamoulian, in perhaps her most indelible perf. Indeed, one of the most iconic screen performances in cinema history, which she pretty much accomplished without saying a word, and in the sound era no less. To paraphrase Norma Desomond, they had FACES then.

Some people think Ingmar Bergman was the finest cinematic export Sweden ever bestowed upon the world. Some people forget that Greta Garbo was Swedish. I mean that has to be the case, no?

The one-time fashion model turned movie actress shot to fame in the silent era under the tutelage of directors like Mauritz Stiller and G.W. Pabst, and was soon stolen away to our shores through the tenacious efforts of Hollywood's self-appointed father figure Louis B. Mayer. He and his "boy genius" production head Irving G. Thalberg steered the young star to even greater heights, in box office champs like FLESH AND THE DEVIL, A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS, and THE KISS, the latter being the last silent effort for both studio and star. All three featured her on and offscreen lover John Gilbert, also a massive star in the silent era. Both were about to test fresh hell with sound cinema. Garbo would make ANNA CHRISTIE, and not only assure her commercial viability but bat away all competitors as highest grossing flick of 1930. Johnny boy, eh not so much. HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT was mocked more for its trite dialogue, but the reveal of his high pitched voice killed his greatest screen asset; sex appeal. The early 30's would prove rocky terrain as he tried to maintain his screen persona and commercial appeal, but the actor's star was clearly waning. Garbo, by then the actor's spouse, interceded, demanding to be re-teamed with her man before the cameras in an upcoming biopic of one of her homeland's most famous monarchs, one who would, onscreen anyway, abdicate all worldy power and goods for the man she loved. Grudgingly, Mayer acquiesced, and not only was one of the great classics of the early sound era born, not only one of the great cinema romances and the sacrifices of said mirrored by the story onscreen, but perhaps cinema's most hauntingly romantic final shot committed to celluloid, to be examined and discussed and adored. It is one of the great ironies of the medium and the people who made it great that one of its most revered icons, after having to prove herself in the early age of sound, would in that age make her most indelible mark with what worked for her in the beginning; silence.

QUEEN CHRISTINA screens today at the Film Forum as part of their 1933 retrospective. 'Nuff sed.

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-Joe Walsh