February 15th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Valentine's Day go smoothly, Stockers? The cards and candy do the trick? First dates go swimmingly? The selection at your local pickup spot worthy and agreeable?

Yeah?

Good. Now let's talk classic film.

Louis Malle's sophmore directorial effort THE LOVERS screens its last as part of MOMA's Auteurist History of Film series. Jeanne Moreau is Jeanne Moreau and picks whatever goddam man she pleases. Either that or it's a lively postwar meditation on female sexuality in a culture of rapidly changing gender politics. I like my first take. Either way, great flick but not my Pick.

Anthology Film Archives wearily trudges forth into day two of its Valentine's Day Massacre series, offfering back to back screenings of Maurice Pialat's award-winning WE WON'T GROW OLD TOGETHER, an ice weasel's eye-view of marriage and its attendant hilarity, and Albert Brooks' early masterpiece MODERN ROMANCE, which is sorta the same ice weasel thing but funny. REALLY funny. Check 'em out. Then head to Modell's to buy some jogging gear.

Big Al's insanely entertaining and equally preposterous NORTH BY NORTHWEST unspools at the Rubin Museum as part of their Cabaret Cinema series. There are very few times Hitch took his plot less seriously while also treating the set pieces with steely focus. It's the ultimate example of Tha Mastah's patented formula, begat with THE 39 STEPS, continuing through SABOTEUR and finally hunted down by a killer crop duster. Appropriate to both film and its era a cocktail purchase is required to attend the screening. Damn this tempts as my Pick today, but I resist.

Speaking of Hitchcock and how awesome his body of work was and is his self-appointed successor's VERTIGO ripoff OBSESSION screens at midnight at my fave new theater in the five boroughs, the Nitehawk Cinema in Billyburg. Screenings like these only encourage Brian De Palma. I'm just sayin'. Good god definitely not my Pick.

Thankfully the Nitehawk offers an alternative midnight screening of actual masterpiece ROBOCOP from the delightfully demented Paul Verhoeven! This flick goes great with tater tots and root beer, and whaddaya know?!? The Nitehawk will serve up all three at your request this midnight! And some of you don't believe in heaven...

The IFC Center brings the 70's cult horror and cult whatsis with twin midnight screenings of Ridley Scott's seminal ALIEN and Alejandro Jodorowsky's unique EL TOPO. What more needs be said at this point about either film, except what the fuck is EL TOPO about?

And the Film Forum's tribute to the turbulent Hollywood year 1933 merrily proceeds apace, today unspooling the whacko Katherine Hepburn melodrama CHRISTOPHER STRONG, in which she portrays an Amelia Earhardt-type aviatrix who commits the ultimate sacrifice in order to save her lover's marriage. Yep, they wasted no friggin' time back then, huh? This is what's referred to as a pre-code flick, and is also one that helped established the Hays Office and the tightening of standards industry-wide to protect the innocent ears and eyes of the puritanical American public that only really just wanted to see this stuff in the first place. However, some films offended the sensibilities of the few to degrees unforgivable. Which brings me to my Pick Of The Day.

Barbara Stanwyck. Babs. Long have I harbored a crush for this saucy, sassy starlet from the golden age of the studio system. Some gals got moxie, some got sex appeal, some got the survival instincts of a tiger. The ones who can lay claim to all three may also lay claim to the appelation Broad, a distinction of the highest honor in my childhood Bronx neighborhood, applied thusly; "That broad's okay". Hollywood circa the early sound era hadda lotta broads, mostly because the talkies created the need for whip smart women and dialogue that did them justice. Jean Arthur, Ann Sheridan, Lauren Bacall, well pretty much any actress who helped create the Hawksian Woman falls squarely into this category. Which brings me back to Babs.

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens July 1907 in Brooklyn, which may render anything else I say redundant. Talented and ambitious, she idolized silent film star Pearl White and wasted no time entering show biz, auditioning to be a Ziegfield girl at the age of 16. Cast as a show girl to lend authenticity to a stage play, she cobbled her new stage monicker together from her character's first name and a fellow actresses' last. She was off and running.

Early sound film success was had with a role in Frank Capra's LADIES OF LEISURE, which basically established Stanwyck's hard-knock with heart screen persona, sometimes portraying the heroine trapped in circumstances bigger than the people involved, and sometimes not so much, essaying the seedy machinations of the single mindedly upwardly mobile, which is a nice way to put it. One of her most notorious roles has come to be regarded as the representative insult to decency that caused the Motion Picture Production Code's inception, whereas the truth is that many films over a collective period of years provoked the establishment of this puppet decency commitee. For twenty plus years the Hays Code would hold sway, until the postwar diminuation of the studio system coupled with cultural upheaval, and a demand for less censorship rendered the body moot. The film that supposedly single-handedly forced its creation remains, however, and has lost none of its seductive power. The tale of a woman who reclaims control of her sexuality from the man who trades it as barter and who then employs it to climb to the highest echelons of society is never to be confused as feminist manifesto. But still, there's something in Stanwyck's eyes that indicates a comeuppance has been had. A kinda sexy something in her eyes. Hubba.

BABYFACE screens today as part of a two-fer with CHRISTOPHER STRONG at Film Forum. This is definitely not one to be missed. Did I mention Stanwyck's got this certain something in her eyes?

Follow me on Twitter @NitrateStock! Like the page at Facebook.com/NitrateStock! Check with the Occupy Sandy peeps to see if you can help! February update coming this weekend! Back tomorrow with this week's last Pick! Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy is too, Stockahz!

-Joe Walsh