CRUCIAL VIEWING
Douglas Sirk’s A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE (Classic Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm and 9:30pm
As is often the case in Douglas Sirk films, love takes center stage in A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE, his adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's book A Time to Live and a Time to Die, which tells the story of a German soldier and a Jewish woman who forge a relationship even as the bombs drop around them in war-torn Nazi Germany. The film made an under-whelming impression on critics and audiences upon initial release but over time has been considered one of Sirk's greatest works. And despite some fairly shaky accents and heaps of melodrama (it is a Sirk film after all), this is a title the film rightly owns. While the term Brechtian often seems like it was coined for Sirk, his characters are much more than simply archetypes standing in to illuminate an ideological position (although they are that too.) A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE, for all of its campy overtures, finds both sympathy and condemnation in Sirk's protagonists, eschewing black and white caricatures for shades of grey. To simply cast all German soldiers as demonic seems like a desire to willfully misunderstand history, and humanity's capacity for atrocious deeds. Sirk looks for understanding whilst ultimately suggesting that his characters are responsible for the world they find themselves in, a fact borne out in the film's tragic conclusion. A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE also pays homage in its final sequence to Lewis Milestone's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, another story penned by Remarque. With surprising cameos from both Klaus Kinski and Erich Maria Remarque himself, this stunning Technicolor masterpiece is not to be missed. Finally, A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE is tragically made all the more poignant by the fact that Sirk's own son, raised as a Nazi by his first wife, fought and died on the Russian front. (1958, 132 min, 35mm) BC
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Also see Cine-File contributor Ignatius Vishnevetsy’s earlier review here.
More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Max Ophüls’ THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... &
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
The Siskel Center closes its month-long Max Ophüls series with two characteristic late works that correlate romantic longing with the opulence of a dead era. Both THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... (1953, 105 min, 35mm; Saturday, 3pm and Thursday, 6pm) and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948, 86 min, 35mm; Saturday, 5pm and Tuesday, 6pm) are set in a fin-de-siècle Europe that resembles a dollhouse come to life: Every element of the decor seems to have been fetishized before it was built. Yet unlike most historical romances, the sets don't suffocate the drama—in fact, they underscore the films' tragic dimension. The central affairs of EARRINGS and UNKNOWN WOMAN are, fittingly, never realized (Both even end, operatically, in the death of one of the lovers), given that the precious environments in which they transpire will soon be forever destroyed by the barbarism of World War. As in the later masterpieces of Luchino Visconti (SENSO, THE LEOPARD, LUDWIG), the outmoded codes of Europe's aristocracy—both visual and social—are recreated with absolute thoroughness so as to remind us of how foreign they now are. Still, Ophüls' transcendent camera movements and his characters' glorious sophistication allow the memory of this forgotten world to live on. BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Tommy Wiseau's THE ROOM (Cult)
Music Box – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
A woman announces, "Well, the results came back—I definitely have breast cancer," and that's the last we ever hear of it. A group of men don tuxedos for no apparent reason and then toss around a football. A drug dealer threatens to kill someone and then disappears for the rest of the movie. Upon awaking, a man picks up a rose from his night table, smells it, and throws it on top of his sleeping girlfriend. A recurring rooftop "exterior" is obviously a studio set, with a backdrop of the San Francisco skyline digitally composited behind the action. Accidental surrealism can be even more potent than the conscious kind, and THE ROOM is some kind of zenith of its type, the equal to anything Ed Wood ever committed to celluloid. Although what's on screen looks like it cost about $14.99, the actual budget was upwards of $6 million, in part because actor/producer/writer/director Wiseau shot simultaneously in 35mm and HD (supposedly he didn't understand the differences between the two formats). Now the film has become a worthy successor to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, with enthusiastic fans performing a series of rituals at each screening. Ross Morin, assistant professor of film studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, calls it "one of the most important films of the past decade. Through the complete excess in every area of production, THE ROOM reveals to us just how empty, preposterous and silly the films and television programs we’ve watched over the past couple of decades have been." (2003, 99 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Christian Petzold’s JERICHOW (New German)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Thomas (Benno Fürmann) needs money. His mother is dead; his "friends" have collected the debt he owed them. All his has is a rickety house and the clothes on his back. Walking with his food stamp groceries home one day, he spots a car that's driven into the ravine. Its drunken owner, Ali (Hilmi Sözer), loses his license and hires Thomas as his driver. Of course Ali has a beautiful wife—Laura (Nina Hoss), a former bartender who married Ali because he promised to pay off her debts. She's been to prison; Thomas was dishonorably discharged from the Army. It's a simple set-up: the monstrous lovers held prisoner by an innocent. Simple and tense. JERICHOW is romance without dreams. There are only goals: a husband must be cuckolded, a debt must be paid, a man must be killed. The result isn't something doomed or "fated": just a natural progression, which is even more dreadful. (2008, 93 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD (Classic Revival)
Facets Cinémathèque - Saturday, Midnight
When DIARY OF THE DEAD was released last year, Robin Wood noted that George Romero had risen from the midnight movie circuit to the arthouse circuit without really changing his approach to filmmaking. With this installment of their "night school" series, Facets finds a balance between the two poles; but regardless of the conditions in which it's viewed, DAWN is one of the greatest social satires in American cinema, a parable that condemns our worst superficial tendencies (consumerism, casual racism) by pitting them against matters of life and death. It's also a masterpiece of suspense, gross-out humor, even documentary (Romero's use of his native Pittsburgh—as rich in social observation and personal mythology as Scorsese's New York—remains the most underrated strength of his 70s work): the kind of movie that reveals new layers on every viewing. It's inspired way too many knock-offs unworthy of comparison, but it may be a testament to Romero's populism that his masterwork of anarchist upheaval would find acolytes among so many genre filmmakers. (1978, 139 min, DVD projection) BS
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More info at www.facets.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS:
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago): the smorgasbord of a summer schedule continues this week with John Carpenter’s first film, 1974’s DARK STAR (Thursday); Alfred Hitchcock’s final film, 1976’s FAMILY PLOT (Friday); and Andy Warhol’s THE LOVES OF ONDINE (Thursday).
Bank of America Cinema screens the 1933 film ZOO IN BUDAPEST on Saturday.
Also at the Music Box this week: SERAPHINE continues for another week; Michael Curtiz’s Errol Flynn adventure film THE SEA HAWK plays in the Saturday and Sunday matinee slot; X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE is the second midnight film on Friday and Saturday; and UNDER OUR SKIN plays Sunday at 1pm.
Facets Cinémathèque runs Hitoshi Matsumoto’s 2007 comedy/monster film BIG MAN JAPAN this week.
Chicago Filmmakers’ Reeling Film Festival presents a free outdoor screening of the sing-along version of MAMMA MIA! Saturday at dusk (approx. 8:30-m) at Hollywood Beach (5800 N. Lake Shore Drive).
Also at the Film Center this week: Collin Souter’s documentary on dating, BREAK-UP DATE, Dierdre Timmons’ documentary on burlesque students, A WINK AND A SMILE, and Jeremiah Zagar’s documentary on his outsider artist father, IN A DREAM, all receive week long runs; and the Indie Comedy series concludes with two programs.
On Saturday the Portage Theater presents the quadruple-feature of THE MAGIC SWORD, THE MOLE PEOPLE, REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, and WEREWOLF OF LONDON.
Erik Canuel’s 2007 Canadian film BAD COP, BON COP screens Wednesday at the Chicago Cultural Center.
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