CINE-FILE SELECTS
Our Doc Films series Cine-File Selects
continues to run Mondays at 7pm throughout the winter. This week's selection
comes from contributor Rob Christopher. View the full schedule here.
Norman Lear's COLD TURKEY (American
Revival)
Doc Films (University
of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm
The only theatrical feature written and directed by TV pioneer Norman
Lear (creator of All in the Family, Maude, and Good
Times) is a striking attempt to marry the topical, character-driven
sensibility of the modern sitcom with the timeless national satire of
Preston Sturges. The premise has a depressed rust-belt town agreeing
to give up smoking for 30 days to collect the large prize offered by
a "humanitarian" cigarette company; the ensuing humor is a Sturges-esque
skewering of a range of American institutions, ranging from Methodist
churches to corporate sponsorship to politically motivated nativism.
Lear doesn't have Sturges' breathless pacing (but then, who does?);
he comes closer to channeling the master in executing so many potentially
spiteful jokes with general good humor. Comedy buffs will enjoy this
for the casting alone, which is a treasure trove of sitcom icons, television
character actors (many familiar faces from Lear's own shows), and an
eclectic assortment of other film, television, and radio oddities: Dick
Van Dyke, mugging a little less than usual, plays the social-climbing
reverend who organizes "Operation Cold Turkey"; Bob Newhart, atypically
exaggerated, plays the tobacco executive who launches the national campaign;
appearing in smaller roles are Tom Poston, Vincent Gardenia, Barnard
Hughes, Jean Stapleton, Edward Everett Horton, M. Emmett Walsh, and
the comedy team Bob and Ray. As an added bonus, the music is provided
by a young Randy Newman, who was himself at the height of his satirical
powers when the movie was made. From a contemporary vantage point, the
most remarkable thing about COLD TURKEY is that it reflects an era when
American comedies were still made to look like real movies: The high-grain
cinematography and real Iowa locations reveal as much social observation
as any of the jokes. (1971, 99 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Kartemquin's
THE CHICAGO MATERNITY CENTER STORY
(Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 1:30pm
Considering the current state of America's horrific health care
system and the battle to ensure affordable care for everyone, it is
fitting that Kartemquin's latest preservation effort of its own venerable
film catalog looks back at a time when those in the medical industry
not only wanted to help those in need of care, but effectively could
help every person who walked in the door. Actually, that's not entirely
true: MATERNITY CENTER examines the last days of Chicago's maternity
center as it attempts to continue helping those seeking home
births, with the center facing pressure to close from the medical industrial
complex rapidly rising in America. Unapologetically on the side of the
women who rely on the center, the film posits the reasons for the center's
closing as the center's board members' competing interests in other,
more lucrative aspects of the health care industry, namely hospitals
and drug companies. Exasperated supporters of the clinic meet repeatedly
with the board with testimonials and statistics showcasing the need
for low-cost birthing options in Chicago, yet the board offers only
platitudes, with one member stating blithely "This [center] is charity." What allows MATERNITY CENTER to rise above partisan activism is the
fifteen-minute documentation of a home birth near the beginning of the
film. The camera records one of the last center-assisted home births
in Chicago as head practitioner Beatrice Tucker oversees and instructs
a young doctor in handling a potentially difficult birth. The scene
is tense, and the labor is difficult, exhausting the family members
gathered to assist, but the baby's arrival confirms the center's position
that modern, sterile childbirth need not happen at an expensive hospital.
Watching MATERNITY CENTER, and its accompanying Reagan-era short THE
GENDER GAP (Jennifer Rohrer, 1984, 16 min, 16mm), it's hard to suppress
the creeping realization that the inequalities presented in the films
are far too similar to today's to be coincidental, as if we've been
stuck living in a time loop the past 40 years. Filmmakers
Gordon Quinn, Jennifer Rohrer, Sue Davenport, Jerry Blumenthal, and
Sharon Karp in person. (1976, 60 min, newly restored 16mm print)
DM
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Federico Veiroj's
A USEFUL LIFE (New Uruguayan)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday,
3:45pm and Monday, 6:15pm
It's not surprising that A USEFUL LIFE
has been a favorite on the festival circuit among film programmers and
others of the cinephilic persuasion: its protagonist, Jorge (played
with a fine reserve by Uruguayan film critic Jorge Jellinek), has worked
tirelessly at the Cinemateca Uruguaya for 25 years. Scenes depicting projector problems, audiences of six for Erich von Stroheim's GREED,
and a filmmaker's polite, but frustrated, inquiry into the aperture
plate that's being used (all the more painful because of his politeness)
should ring familiar to most programmers. But this insider minutiae
does not circumscribe the film in a world only accessible
to film geeks; instead, it is a means to illuminate character. The details
of Jorge's life unfold in a similar manner to the domestic rituals we see in
Chantal Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN, providing insight into hidden aspects of personality and, perhaps, psychology. Jorge's passionate focus on film determines his identity and defines the boundaries of the world he lives in—a world that is slowly
disappearing (did we mention the audience of six?) and then, suddenly,
is gone. The second half of the film finds Jorge negotiating the real
world, outside of the Cinematheque, and we watch to see if he is successful
moving from the shadow to the light. Director Veiroj's second feature
is unpretentious and charming; it is imbued with a sense of love for
film (conjuring tonal parallels to many different
films and filmmakers, including Manoel de Oliveira, whom the Cinemateca
is celebrating with a 100th anniversary retrospective during the film).
Over the course of the film, this love for film opens up to a love for life—cinema has
taught Jorge to see past the screen to the wider world around him. (2010,
67 min, 35mm) PF
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Vivienne Dick's No Wave Films (Experimental
Revival)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday,
6pm
Like the screeching din of No Wave's amateurish musical aesthetic,
Vivienne Dick's Super-8 films cast off traditional narrative filmmaking
methods in favor of a more immediate bricolage of calico sets, poor
sound recording, and improvised acting. Imagine if the Kuchar brothers
had even less of a budget to work with, if that's possible. Dick's films
exemplify No Wave's cart-before-the-horse approach to art that freed
the thinking of a lot of novice musicians and filmmakers, allowing them
to reinvent the (squeaky) wheel. At times challenging to watch, the
experience of viewing these films drives towards some of the larger
issues that Vivienne Dick is exploring. This is exemplified in the jarring
construction of BEAUTY BECOMES THE BEAST (1979), which plots the effects
that the current political/media/environmental landscape has on young
women. No Wave darling Lydia Lunch (from Teenage Jesus & The Jerks,
whose song "Baby Doll" is the film's theme) plays a multitude
of feminine tropes, from a playful child to a sexualized teenager, each
more unhinged than the last. Relatives, or perhaps internalized anxieties,
perform domestic tasks around Lydia while teenage boys dance and roughhouse.
Dick's interest in the women at the margins of New York's musical boys'
club makes for an interesting examination of relational power dynamics
in SHE HAD HER GUN ALL READY (1978), with Pat Place and Lydia Lunch
alternating control of each other, leading up to the kinetic climax
aboard Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster. Also screening is the
beachcomber dystopia short STATEN ISLAND (1978). (1978-9, approx. 80
min total, Super-8mm on DigiBeta) DM
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More info at www.conversationsattheedge.org.
Klaus vom Bruch's DAS SCHLEYERBAND
(Experimental Revival)
White Light Cinema at The Nightingale - Sunday, 7pm
Often, the use of found footage to comment on events of the recent
past involves heavy manipulation of mass produced media. There is an
overt effort to deconstruct scraps of industrial communication, and
to decode hidden truths about the modern world through the use of jarring
visual effects. The resistance to this impulse is what makes vom Bruch's
lengthy video both refreshing and hermetic. Utilizing a mixture of television
news footage, commercials, and propaganda tapes from the Red Army Faction
(the Anglicized name of the Baader-Meinhof group), vom Bruch's work
poses more questions about West German society thirty years after the
end of WWII than it answers. Images related to the kidnapping of a former
SS officer who became one of the country's leading industrialists, Hanns
Martin Schleyer, as well as those of a Lufthansa plane that was hijacked
by Palestinian terrorists, are presented in an almost episodic fashion.
Often lasting for a few minutes without cutting, vom Bruch forces the
audience to rewatch newscasts of the violent "German Autumn," without
the emotional distance of analysis. This approach to the subject matter
serves to critique the violent nature of events without positing a reason
why. The addition of images of product consumption alongside the self-produced
materials of left-wing domestic terrorists seems to imply that the common
thread of the West German national identity has frayed, and the lack
of distinction between the two poles is an eloquent reflection of the
artist's inability to make sense of what has happened. In many ways,
the violent fall of 1977 was the most important national event for Germans
between 1945 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, but not one that vom Bruch
wants to glorify. Introduced by DePaul and Columbia College film
instructor Therese Grisham. (1977-78, 112 min, video) JH
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Note: This program is organized
by C-F editor Patrick Friel
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More info at www.whitelightcinema.com and www.nightingaletheatre.org.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH (Documentary
Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
[Note: we are running this review
two weeks in a row, for week two of the film's run, given the importance
of this film and the rare opportunity to see it in 35mm]
From J. Hoberman's essay "Witness
to Annihilation" (reprinted in his collection Vulgar Modernism): "People have been asking me, with a guilty curiosity I can well
understand, whether SHOAH really has to be seen. A sense of moral obligation
is unavoidably attached to such a film. Who knows if SHOAH is good for
you? There were many times during the screening that I regarded it as
a chore and yet, weeks later, I find myself still mulling over landscapes,
facial expressions, vocal inflections—the very stuff of cinema—and
even wanting to see it again... For, if at first, SHOAH seems porous
and inflated, this is a film that expands in one's memory, its intricate
cross-references and monumental form only gradually becoming apparent.
One resists regarding SHOAH as art—and, as artful as it is, one should."
Indeed, it seems perverse to enumerate the great formal achievements
of Lanzmann's masterpiece—the jarring transitions between objective
and subjective filmmaking, the astonishing close-up photography, the
epic tracking shots of barren fields that force the viewer to recreate
death camps in his/her imagination, and, most notably, its refusal to
depict the extermination of European Jewry with any archival footage—yet
they are essential to its achievement as history. Lanzmann's purposefully
decentralized structure makes one feel just how enormous the atrocity
of the Holocaust was. The controlled execution of millions is beyond
comprehension, and certainly beyond easy summary; so the film proceeds
as an accumulation of detail, none privileged above any other. In the
towering mosaic of SHOAH, the testimony of a concentration camp guard
assumes as much weight as a shot of a truck's rolling tires (the unforgettable
final image of Part I); and, significantly, all of these things exist
in the present. Lanzmann depicts the Holocaust not only in the faces
of survivors, onlookers and former Nazis, but in the places these people
occupy—places that, in some regard, will never disappear. From Hoberman
again: "[A]lthough SHOAH is largely oral history, Lanzmann's eschewal
of illustration triggers a primitive response to the photographic image.
Looking at a photograph, one sees through the composition and imagines what has been pictured. Hence, Lanzmann's
fanatical attention to detail; this is a film which can only unfold
in the mind's eye. The question that underlies SHOAH is, how did the
Holocaust happen? Lanzmann sets out to answer this both in terms of
practical logistics and human sensations. How was it done, how did it
feel?" Note: The Siskel Center is screening SHOAH in two parts,
both of which are roughly five hours long. Part I screened last week
and only shows ONCE this week: on Saturday at 1pm; Part II screens every
day this week. On Saturday, the film will screen in its entirety. (1985, 544 min, new 35mm print) BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
George Cukor's GASLIGHT (American
Revival)
Music Box - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
GASLIGHT may be the only film whose title spawned a verb: to gaslight.
That the word has endured—strikingly in both common usage and in a
clinical context—is a testament to the fact that the film articulates
something vital and singular. To gaslight someone is, basically, to
convince them that they do not have a firm grasp on reality when, in
fact, they have as firm a grasp as anyone else. In the film, Gregory
Anton (Charles Boyer) woos Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) so that he
can convince her to move into her murdered aunt's old house, with its
stash of hidden jewels that Boyer intends to find (the aunt was murdered,
we realize early on, by Boyer himself). In order to distract his wife
from his search and from discovering his true identity, Boyer slowly
erodes Bergman's sanity. The film's almost unutterable creepiness derives
from the particular way that he does this: slowly, subtly, methodically.
He convinces her that she's absent-minded when she's not; that she loses
things he has in fact hidden; that she's done things she hasn't; that
she hasn't when she has. The title derives from the diversion of gas
from the rest of the house, causing the lights to dim, when Boyer hunts
for the hidden jewels in the attic. When Bergman notices the lights
periodically dimming, she's told she's seeing things and, eventually,
believes it (at least consciously she believes it: film critic Robin
Wood has made the argument that in pointing to a dissonance between
Bergman's acceptance of her husband's accusations and her buried inklings
of his true identity, GASLIGHT offers "the most marvelously precise
definition of the relationship between conscious and unconscious knowledge").
All of this should be sounding uncomfortably familiar because, obviously,
unintentional gaslighting is a primary feature of all romantic relationships.
Who left the lights on? Who forgot to put away the food? Who said they'd
call and forgot? You did, of course; you did, even if you can't remember.
The phrase 'you're driving me crazy'—often repeated in the context
of romantic relationships—is apposite; romantic partners literally
and continually cause us to question our sanity. The possibility brought
up by GASLIGHT, one you're likely never to forget completely after you've
seen the film, is that they could be doing so on purpose. (1944, 114
min, 35mm) TM
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Martin Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION
OF CHRIST (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 6:30pm
A very personal adaptation by Martin Scorsese of Niko Kazantzakis'
novel, which imagines the life of Jesus in human, rather than divine,
terms. In the book-length interview Scorsese on Scorsese, the
director admits to rewriting almost all of the dialogue in Paul Schrader's
screenplay following late-night bull sessions with his collaborator
Jay Cocks. The result, as Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, is "a religious
film informed by some of the cadences, intonations, and attitudes of
[modern] New York." This is a singular combination, and certainly
not for religious purists; but as an attempt to dramatize a private
response to religious subject matter, it is often as daring as the crucifixion
sequence of ANDREI RUBLEV. The most daring, of course, is the film's
controversial final chapter, in which Jesus is tempted by Satan with
images of the life he could have led had he not accepted his role as
the Messiah. Many practitioners have likely imagined these sequences
when reading the Bible, yet few artists have dared to recreate their
vision in all its idiosyncratic detail. (Just as every reader conceives
of a novel differently, every practitioner conceives of scripture after
his or her own idiom; this seems perfectly natural, and yet it remains
taboo to deviate from the lifeless presentation epitomized by Cecil
B. DeMille.) In taking this risk, Scorsese faced the greatest controversy
of his career; today, the film stands as one of his masterworks. The
radical vision is filled out with a passionate and highly mannered cast
that includes Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas, and Harry
Dean Stanton, Victor Argo and John Lurie as apostles; an eerie score
by Peter Gabriel; and some imaginative, highly flexible camera work
by the great Michael Ballhaus. (1988, 164 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Zachary Levy's
STRONGMAN (New Documentary)
Facets Cinémathèque - See Venue website for showtimes
Though clearly in need of an editor less emotionally-attached to
the project, STRONGMAN manages to elucidate the interesting themes in
Aronofsky's THE WRESTLER—the degradation of the human body, the transformation
of muscle into fat, a champion's hubris. Stanley "Stanless Steel"
Pleskun is a middle-aged strongman from South Brunswick, New Jersey,
eking out a living hauling scrap metal and putting on shows of strength
in parking lots. Apparently successful in the past, Stanley now covets
the success of other strongmen, papering over his envy with the purist
insistence of showing off "real" strength instead of doing "tricks" to appease an audience. Currently he only seems to impress his alcoholic
brother and his blue-collar friends, but Stanley is insistent his next
break is around the corner, so he constantly drills his girlfriend Barbara
on how to properly introduce him to a crowd. The documentary sags under
its own sad weight in many places, and as mentioned earlier needs a
heavier hand in the editing room, but things pick up in the third act
as Stanley's drinking begins to mirror his brother's and Barbara begins
to lose patience with Stanley's domineering. An honest existentialist
portrait of living in a depressed (and depressing) community, freshman
director Zachary Levy never condescends to his subjects, which is refreshing,
given the myriad opportunities available to Levy to deflate Stanley's
pursuits. (2009, 113 min, video) DM
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More info at www.facets.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Also at The Nightingale this
week: the real-time audio/video hacking group I Love
Presets (Rob Ray, Jon Satrom, and Jason Soliday) will present a
special Groundhogs Day show on Wednesday at 8pm. Duplicates (Joseph
Kramer and Ryan Dunn) is up first.
Also at the Gene
Siskel Film Center this week: Roman Polanski's 1965 classic REPULSION screens Friday and Tuesday, with a lecture at the Tuesday show by filmmaker
and SAIC professor Jim Trainor; on Friday, Taggart Siegel's new documentary
QUEEN OF THE SUN: WHAT ARE THE BEES TELLING US? has a special advance
screening; Oscar Ruiz Navia's 2009 Columbian drama CRAB TRAP screens Saturday and Wednesday; Barr Weissman's new film THE SECRET
TO A HAPPY ENDING: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS plays on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, with Weissman in person on Saturday;
Chico Colvard's new documentary FAMILY AFFAIR is on Sunday and
Thursday; and Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine's 2008 French documentary
KOOLHAAS HOUSELIFE screens Sunday and Wednesday.
Also at the Music Box this week:
Mariana Chenillo's Mexican film NORA'S WILL opens Friday;
THE ILLUSIONIST continues; Yony Leyser's WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS:
A MAN WITHIN is held over for Saturday and Sunday matinee screenings
only; Michael Winner's 1985 film DEATH WISH 3 screens Wednesday
at 7:30 as part of the periodic "AV Club Presents" series, with
The Onion's Scott Tobias and actor Alex Winter in person; the Friday
and Saturday midnight shows are Gilles Marchand's 2010 French film
BLACK HEAVEN and William Lustig's controversial 1980 gore film
MANIAC, showing in a new print and with Lustig in person both nights.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Peter Jackson's THE RETURN
OF THE KING plays Friday night and Sunday afternoon; John Erick's
2010 film DEVIL is Saturday night and Sunday afternoon; the Sunday
night D.W. Griffith series has his 1924 film AMERICA; the 1933
William Faulkner adaptation THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE is Tuesday; on Wednesday at 9:30 it's Harold Ramis' 1993 film GROUNDHOG
DAY; the early Thursday film is Raoul Walsh's 1936 Mae West film
KLONDIKE ANNIE; and the late Thursday show is David Hemmings' 1981
Australian film THE SURVIVOR.
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) screens Ernst Lubitsch's 1946 film CLUNY BROWN on Friday at 7pm;
and Martin Scorsese's 1972 film BOXCAR BERTHA on Thursday at
7pm. Both in 35mm.
The Film Studies Center (University
of Chicago) screens Catherine Breillat's 2007 film THE LAST MISTRESS on Friday at 7pm.
Chicago Filmmakers presents
their New Animation Showcase on Friday at 8pm. The program features
new work from the US, Norway, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Israel/Denmark,
and includes the Academy Award nominated film THE LOST THING by Shaun
Tan and Andrew Ruhemann.
B-Fest at Northwestern University runs from 6pm Friday to 6pm Saturday. The
line up is: THE PUMAMAN, TOP DOG, MAMA DRACULA, THE WIZARD OF SPEED
AND TIME (short), PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, BLACKENSTEIN, MANOS: THE
HANDS OF FATE, THE MANITOU, UNDEFEATABLE, I ACCUSE MY PARENTS, NIGHT
OF THE LEPUS, AMERICAN NINJA, SKIDOO (yes, the Otto Preminger film),
COOL AS ICE, and MIGHTY PEKING MAN. Unknown formats. More details available
here.
The Chicago Cultural Center screens the documentary THE RIGHTOUS ENEMY on Friday at 6:30pm.
The Logan Square International Film
Series (3421 W. Medill Ave.) screens Alejandro Jodorowsky's EL
TOPO on Sunday at 8pm (DVD projection).
This week at the Portage Theater:
The Wednesday matinee film is the 1947 film LOST HONEYMOON (1:30pm;
from DVD); on Saturday, starting at noon, it's a quintuple feature of
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS, THE BRAIN EATERS, THE
CRAWLING EYE, PHANTOM FROM SPACE, and DAY THE WORLD ENDED.
The Chicago Film Seminar hosts Gregory Waller from Indiana University, who will talk on "Tracking the Nontheatrical: The American Cinema in 1915." Scott Curtis from Northwestern University will respond. This event is
Thursday at 6:30 at the School of the Art Institute, 112 S. Michigan
Ave., Rm. 1307.
David Wojnarowicz's A FIRE IN MY
BELLY (1986-87) will be on view through February 6 at the Smart
Museum on the University of Chicago campus. They will be showing
the original 13-minute version on continuous loop in a black box screening
area. |
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COLD TURKEY
