CRUCIAL VIEWING
Nicholas Ray's PARTY GIRL (Classic Revival w/ Lecture)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday & Wednesday, 6pm
Following the independent coproductions BITTER VICTORY
and WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES, one of Hollywood's prodigal sons returned to make this musical/noir hybrid
at MGM (he didn't hang around long, next heading to
Alaska for THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS). As usual, Nicholas
Ray took a fairly standard-issue setup and made it his
own: a mob attorney and showgirl (Robert Taylor and
Cyd Charisse, the studio's two remaining contract
stars) bond over their mutual prostitution and vow to
climb out of the underworld (in this case, 1920s Chicago). Shot on CInemascope in Metrocolor, the movie is heralded for its potent love story and visual flamboyance, despite only
having two bonafide song-and-dance numbers. Cahiers du Cinema, of course, went crazy: "PARTY GIRL is
Nicholas Ray's masterpiece," opened Jean Douchet's
review, "With this film he appears to have reached
the end of his search and has been able to flesh out
the secret relationships and the silent language that
unites beings and things. PARTY GIRL is the triumph
of silence, meditation, and self-control over noise
and fury." Screening in the "Great Transition"
series, with Reader critic Andrea Gronvall leading a
discussion after the Wednesday screening. (1958, 99
min, 35mm). MK
More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ANIMATING LIFE: A Tribute to Helen Hill (1970 – 2007) (Experimental)
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
Even if, god forbid, Helen Hill's films weren't salvaged from the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina, her name would surely live on based on her endlessly useful, enchanting and influential filmmaking guidebook Recipes for Disaster: a Handcrafted Film Cookbooklet. But her work survives thanks to these newly preserved prints that are making the rounds through the country, showing this weekend at Chicago Filmmakers. Her best known and well loved MADAME WINGER MAKE A FILM: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE 21ST CENTURY is a delightful animated educational piece about handmade film techniques that are as useful now as they will be after the apocalypse. Her CalArts MFA thesis film SCRATCH AND CROW is a gentle lyric of chickens, watermelons, death and rebirth. VESSEL is a great early film, and one that is very different than most of her other work in tone, pace and animation style. BOHEMIAN TOWN is a musical love letter to Halifax, where she taught at the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative. MOUSEHOLES is a lovely remembrance of her grandfather, mixing home movies and animation. What has to be the sunniest film ever made at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm, the hand-processed black and white YOUR PIG IS DOWN THE ROAD is an ebullient note to her husband's titular announcement. Also on the program are FILM FOR ROSE, TUNNEL OF LOVE, THE WORLD'S SMALLEST FAIR, and RAINDANCE. (TRT 60 min, various formats). JM
Full program details at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
Information on the life, films and legacy of the artist at www.helenhill.org.
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The 43rd CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Multiple Venues – Check Reader Guide for full details
The Chicago International is a tough issue for many local cinephiles. No other Chicago organization has the resources to mount a film event on such a great scale, although there are many others with deeper stakes in the medium and sharper understandings of its most signficant trends. Fortunately, this year's edition, which runs for roughly two weeks, brings an unusually large number of great and noteworthy films to the city. The first week's highlights include three brutal works in Cinemascope: Carlos Reygadas's SILENT LIGHT (screening Tuesday, 9pm at Landmark), Andrei Zvyagnitsev's half-Tarkovsky / half-Saroyan THE BANISHMENT (screening Sunday, 7pm & Monday, 8pm at Landmark) and this year's deserving Palme d'Or honoree 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (screening Sunday, 6pm at AMC River East / Tuesday, 8:45 pm at Landmark Century Centre), a disturbing abortion drama whose inventive, handheld camerawork lends every long, immobile take an air of ominous possibility.
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Additional unmissables come from two heavyweights of the cinema (one classic and one comtemporary): Jean Renoir and Béla Tarr. Don't miss this opportunity to see the recently remastered print of Renoir's celebrated 1951 India film THE RIVER (Wednesday, 6:30pm at Landmark), a gorgeous and complex dissection of colonial ethos. The latest from Tarr, the Hungarian director often cited as the last great European modernist, is A MAN FROM LONDON (Thursday, 4:15pm at Landmark; more showtimes next week): a subdued genre piece that lacks the magic of earlier opuses SATANTANGO (1994) and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000), but is no less distinct and extreme in its insistence on incredibly long takes, stark black and white imagery, and fluid, deep focus photography.
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More worthy offerings: Mohsen Makhmalbaf's India-set SCREAM OF THE ANTS (Saturday, 2:15pm at Landmark); a restored print of the silent comedy, once thought lost, HER WILD OAT (Sunday, 5pm at Landmark), and YOU, THE LIVING (Monday, 2:30pm & Tuesday, 7pm at Landmark & Thursday, 4:30pm at Landmark), Swedish director Roy Andersson's latest set of comic tableaus vivants. IV / DW
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Be sure to check the Reader's Guide for additional recommendations and detailed reviews.
Full schedule at www.chicagofilmfestival.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
CHICAGO HORROR FILM FESTIVAL (Special Event)
Portage Theatre – Friday through Sunday, check site for showtimes
Exactly one week before the Music Box's 3rd annual MASSACRE takes on horror heavyweights like Argento, Cronenberg and Kubrick, the CHICAGO HORROR Film Society puts on a terrifying collection of new films by unsung genre masters that work with budgets ranging from minuscule to ultra low. Many features will be premiered, such as FALLEN ANGELS, an occult thriller promising "Seven deadly sins...Seven deadly demons...Seven more deadly ways to die... ," and the evil wizard epic MAGUS (screening Friday and Saturday, respectively, each with the filmmaker in attendance), along with a ton of provocative shorts such as GAY ZOMBIE, the heartbreaking tale of a sensitive young zombie's struggle with sexual identity (screening in an afternoon shorts program on Sunday).
More info at www.chicagohorrorfest.com.
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INDIGENOUS MEXICO FILM FESTIVAL (Special Event)
The Newberry Library (60 W. Walton) – Saturday, 10am
From the Newberry's site: "Since 1998, the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios (a bi-national, Mexico-US partnership) has provided video and computer equipment and training to more than 200 indigenous filmmakers in Chiapas, Mexico. The co-founder of the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios will present eight of the best indigenous productions from Chiapas with English subtitles. He will discuss how indigenous communities create their own media, promote their autonomy, and tell their own stories with their own words and images. These videos, often produced by youth, are used within the communities to promote sustainable projects, preserve and reflect the culture, and also as a means of resistance to oppressive government policies."
Complete details here.
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Fritz Lang's SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (Classic Revival)
Film Studies Center (U of C) – Friday, 7pm
Fritz Lang's fourth noir with Joan Bennett (after MAN
HUNT, SCARLET STREET, and THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW)
follows GASLIGHT's model of newlywed panic ("This is
not the time to think of danger...this is my wedding
day" she utters early on), with Bennett discovering
the gruesome hobby practiced by too-good-to-be-true
husband Michael Redgrave. The then-fashionable
Freudian mumbo jumbo that bogs down the plot proves to
be a double-edged sword, as Lang capitalizes on the
dream imagery to indulge in some of the most evocative
cinematography of his formidable career, courtesy of
the master Stanley Cortez (MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS,
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER). After failing to match the
success of SCARLET STREET, SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR
became the second and last film to the bear the name
of Lang and Bennett's startup Diana Productions,
sinking the venture only two films in. (1948, 99 min, 35mm). MK
Full program details available here.
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Early Films by PETER GREENAWAY (Classic Revival)
Facets Cinémathèque – Saturday & Sunday, 1pm
This weekend, Facets will host matinee screenings of two of the depraved British intellectual Peter Greenaway's earliest (and best) movies: THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT (1982, new 35mm print; screening Saturday) and A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS (1985, new 35mm print; Sunday). Nathan Lee of the Village Voice puts the pair in the context of a career that was, to his mind, promising for a time, if always problematic and ultimately disappointing: "Greenaway may have been a pedantic control freak from the get-go, but The Draughtsman's Contract and A Zed & Two Noughts exhibit a cheeky sense of invention before mirthless, calcified mannerism set in...[Draughtsman] gives us murder, a mysterious naked man with chameleon-like abilities, and the sudden appearance of inexplicable motifs in Neville's drawings, but its main interest lies in the invention of a tone: fastidious meets facetious. That impish sneer will later harden into a grimace, as Greenaway begins to view the world as a sign system awaiting his cerebral orchestration, but the effect in Draughtsman's is awfully droll... It's bloody Merchant Ivory compared with A Zed & Two Noughts, an enjoyably decadent, ridiculously convoluted thingamajig that by any sensible standard ought to have been the culmination of a style rather than an early step in its development... No movie has ever been less abashed by its mythic, scientific, aesthetic, and metaphysical concerns, here asserting their presence in every inch of the production design and every preposterous plot point. The characters in Zed aren't convincingly human, but neither are they meant to be. Greenaway is exclusively interested in the details of their anatomy and in assigning them symbolic roles. You want the human touch, go cozy up with Mike Leigh. Hardcore 'text' is the name of the game in Greenaway, an artificer of tricky reads who sadly came to nought."
Full details at www.facets.org.
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George Cukor's IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Among his attributes, the great George Cukor (THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, ADAM'S RIB) was a remarkably prolific director, sometimes releasing two films a year. IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU came out months before the better-known A STAR IS BORN, and while not as ambitious, it shares a healthy skepticism about the lure of celebrity. Judy Holliday (in her last performance for Cukor, after ADAM'S RIB, BORN YESTERDAY, and THE MARRYING KIND) plays a sweet working-class girl who realizes her dream of "being somebody" when her name is printed on a Manhattan billboard. Predictably, she becomes a pawn of advertising culture--portrayed at its most odious by horny soap company heir Peter Lawford. Dave Kehr has noted how casually people can be cruel to one another in Cukor's films (undermining the notion that he was just a director of light entertainment) and some of the scenes between Holliday and Lawford are true to this description, turning the simple parable into something more pungent. It still doesn't reach the heights of the great mass-culture critiques released around the same time--for example, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER--but it comes within hailing distance thanks to the assured performances and the authentic flavor of working-class New York in Garson Kanin's script. (1954, 86 min, 35mm). BS
Venue Information here.
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Charles Burnett's KILLER OF SHEEP (Classic Revival)
Music Box – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
Exactly thirty years after its completion, the debut feature by the great Charles Burnett is finally enjoying its first-ever commercial release. This weekend, the Music Box provides two final opportunities to catch the 35mm print in Chicago. For a film that has received abundant accolades over the years and is consistently hailed as a masterpiece by a wide variety of critics, KILLER OF SHEEP is remarkably strange. At once beautiful, contemplative and anguishing, its lingering greatness is hard to place. Shot on 16mm in stunning black and white, Burnett's story unfolds in Watts, an economically depressed black neighborhood of Los Angeles, and focuses on one of its residents, Stan (played by Henry Sanders, who would become a successful character actor on television). The title is somewhat literal, since Stan works in a slaughterhouse, but Burnett offers only oblique connections between the character's job and the effects it may or may not have on his psyche, family and surroundings. Our protagonist insists that he is not poor, yet we watch in sorrow as he struggles to realize the most modest of dreams. Sanders' unforgettable million-mile stare—whether in his kitchen or on the killing floor—makes his character's loneliness utterly chilling. J. Hoberman calls the film an "urban pastoral" of persisting relevance; indeed, the Watts of KILLER OF SHEEP bears a nuanced resemblance to many ghettos of the present. Watching it, one has the feeling that these images will remain lodged in the collective consciousness for years to come. The Music Box has graciously extended their run for a second week—don't miss out! (1977, 83 min, 35mm). GK
More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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THIS WEEK AT DOC FILMS
DOC’s timely retrospective of the Senegalese activist, novelist and filmmaker Ousmane Sembene continues this Thursday with one of his rarer titles, EMITAI (1971, 101 min, 35mm; 7pm), a historical drama about the impressing of Senegalese natives by the colonial French military during World War II. The film society programs put it distinctly: “EMITAI realized Sembène's theory that ‘film should be a school of history.’ Sensing the danger of that ambition, governments in Senegal and elsewhere banned [it] immediately.” Also screening are THE BARGAIN (1914, 64 min, 35mm archival print; Sunday, 7pm), one of the first Westerns and a concentrated example of producer Thomas Ince’s style—a formula which would have a major influence on John Ford when he began working soon after; a lesser-known William Wyler title, THE GOOD FAIRY (1935, 98 min, 35mm archival print; Monday, 7pm), a farce penned by a young Preston Sturges; the first Ealing Studio comedy, HUE AND CRY (1947, 82 min, 16mm; Tuesday, 7pm); Akira Kurosawa’s enduring classic—and landmark “unreliable narrator” movie—RASHOMON (1950, 88 min, 35mm), which would be noteworthy alone for introducing Japanese cinema to American audiences; THE BEST TWO YEARS (2003, 112 min, 35mm), an autobiographical drama about a Mormon missionary’s work in Holland (and allegedly one of the finest Mormon films); and a final chance to see big-screen projection of the effective East Berlin period piece THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006, 137 min, 35mm; Friday, 6:15, 9:00, 11:45pm & Sunday, 1pm) and the smash-hit documentary about type-face, HELVETICA (2007, 80 min; Saturday, 6:30, 9:00, 11:30 & Sunday, 4pm). BS
Full details at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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ALSO PLAYING AT THE FILM CENTER
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INGMAR BERGMAN: A TRIBUTE
The recent death of Ingmar Bergman at 88 years old has sparked a number of tribute screenings, but the Film Center's month-long series seems to double as a salute to Sven Nykvist, Bergman's favorite cinematographer, as six of the ten films screening were shot by him. Starting in the 1960s, Nykvist and Bergman began refining a cinematic language that tried to replicate the effects of natural light in close quarters--a strategy that gave additional power to the already-commanding faces in Bergman's films. Their first collaboration, THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960, 89 min, 35mm; Friday, 8pm & Monday, 6pm), is a Medieval tale starker than THE SEVENTH SEAL, a murder-and-revenge story based on a 14th century ballad. Though Bergman is often disparaged for his egotism, THE VIRGIN SPRING betrays a rich historical imagination, as it depicts both the piety and brutalism of Medieval times with hardly any contemporary editorializing. A tough work to shake off, few films evoke so distant a period (morally as well as temporally) with such faithfulness. The same can be said of FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982, 188 min, 35mm; Saturday, 2:30 pm & Tuesday, 6:30 pm), albeit for different reasons. Bergman's valedictory work, a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood transformed with Dickensian sprawl, it's set in a turn-of-the-century Sweden of the imagination. Nykvist's work here emulates the colors of a child's nightmares (particularly in the harsh daylight of the wicked stepfather sequences), though the film often lapses into fine dreams: The opening half-hour, set at Christmas 1907, is unforgettably rich, arguably the warmest sequence in Bergman's extensive catalogue. BS
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FESTIVAL OF FILMS FROM IRAN
This week, the Siskel Center begins its annual festival of films from Iran with the new film by a major national auteur: HALF MOON (2006, 114 min, 35mm; Saturday, 8pm & Sunday, 5pm) by Bahman Ghobadi, director of the endearing MAROONED IN IRAQ and TURTLES CAN FLY and a likeable actor in his own right. (He starred in Samira Makhmalbaf’s Blackboards and appeared in Kiarostami’s THE WIND WILL CARRY US.) HALF MOON is said to continue his preoccupation with relations at the Iran-Iraq border and predisposition for magical realism – both of which aid in his depiction of traditional Kurdish culture. Also in the festival are DANDELIONS DANCE IN THE WIND (2007, 88 min, DigiBeta video; Sunday, 3pm & Thursday, 8:15pm), a coming-of-age story set in Tehran and UNFINISHED STORIES (2007, 76 min, 35mm; Sunday, 5pm & Monday, 6pm), a trilogy of related tales with a feminist slant, allegedly in the vein of Jafar Panahi’s masterful The Circle. BS
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SHADOW COMPANY
Finally, the Canadian documentary SHADOW COMPANY (2006, 86 min, 35mm) screens for a week-long run. This survey of mercenary soldiers fighting for the U.S. government in Iraq should make for an interesting companion with the Ghobadi film; its gallows humor and thorough research have already merited it a Critic’s Choice selection in this week’s Reader and NewCity. BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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DARKNESS SWALLOWED (Experimental)
Conversations at the Edge / Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
From the CATE program: "For twenty years, Betzy Bromberg walked the line between experimental filmmaking and Hollywood, where she worked as a special effects supervisor and cameraperson on blockbusters like THE TERMINATOR (1984) and THE ABYSS (1989) while also crafting her own visually striking, politically-charged films. Currently the director of the Film and Video Program at CalArts, Bromberg's latest project, a DARKNESS SWALLOWED reflects this tightrope in its mastery of form and subject. Six years in the making, the film maps the physical traces of memory through lush micro-scapes and haunting score. The final result, according to Holly Willis of the LA Times, contains 'images that, once seen, will stay with you forever'." (2006, 78 min, 16mm).
More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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END OF THE NIGHTSTICK (Documentary)
Film Studies Center (U of C) – Thursday, 7pm
The FSCenter continues its Human Rights at Home series, presenting films that, "address pressing issues in Chicago and the Greater Midwest such as police brutality, and problems facing union workers, the urban and rural poor." Though it was made over 10 years ago, this week's feature sadly and certainly remains highly topical: "END OF THE NIGHTSTICK investigates charges of institutional racism, violence and cover-up within the Chicago police department over a 20-year period. It gives voice to the survivors of police torture and brutality, and tells the story of a resistance movement, as local activist groups, including the Task Force to Confront Police Violence, refuse to let testimonies of police violence remain buried." (dirs. Peter Kuttner, Cyndi Moran and Eric Scholl, 1995, 44 min).
Full program details available here.
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Hitchcock's JAMAICA INN & SABOTEUR (Classic Revival)
Block Cinema – Friday & Thursday, 8pm
All Hitchcockophiles have a favorite "minor work" by the director--Slavoj Žižek's choice is the Communist espionage thriller TOPAZ, the Cahiers critics famously championed UNDER CAPRICORN, CINE-FILE has been know to vouch for latter day outbursts like MARNIE, FRENZY and FAMILY PLOT--but no one, to our knowledge, has stood up for the pair of extremely unacclaimed features screening this week in Block's exhaustive retrospective: JAMAICA INN (1939, 108 min, 35mm; screening Friday, 8pm), Hitchcock's last British feature before being recruited to Hollywood, and the uninspired spy thriller SABOTEUR (1942, 108 min, 35mm; screening Thursday, 8pm for FREE), not to be confused with the far superior SABOTAGE, made 6 years earlier. That is not to say that they're without merit or intrigue. Completists will surely want to compare the former to Hitchcock's other, more distinguished adaptations of Daphne du Maurier thrillers (REBECCA, THE BIRDS) and take note of the nebulous, unruly themes and ridiculous subplots of the latter. DW
Synopses and more info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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OTHER NOTABLE RELEASES
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