CRUCIAL VIEWING
The Films of Manoel de Oliveira (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center– Showtimes noted below
In a culture given to nearly constant update and revision, the films of Manoel de Oliveira offer a much-needed sense of permanence. Writers are quick to impart significance to Oliveira's age (He turns 100 this fall, which makes this mini-retrospective double as a celebration), but more valuable are the intimations of eternity that mark his best work. Continuing a Modernist tradition in which a work of art becomes a personal repository of various aesthetic, historic, and philosophical legacies, Oliveira achieves with moving images what James Joyce and T.S. Eliot did with the written word—illuminating the present moment with the light of antiquity. This ambition is already apparent in Oliveira's first film, DUORO, WORKING RIVER (1931, 18 min, 35mm), a short city symphony about the director's home town of Oporto, Portugal. Juxtaposing the city's modern architecture with the daily activities of working men, the film ponders the complex relationship between Civilization and the individuals who inhabit it. DUORO is, appropriately, the first in the Film Center's series; it screens with Oliveira's equally hard-to-find first feature ANIKI-BOBO (1942, 70 min, 35mm; both Friday, 5:15pm & Monday, 6pm), a tale of impoverished children which the program notes describe as "a playful precursor to neorealism." Also playing this week is VALLEY OF ABRAHAM (1993, 187 min, 35mm; Saturday, 3:30pm & Monday, 6pm), an epic work from Oliveira's magisterial late period. Inspired by Flaubert's Madame Bovary though retaining only the novel's basic structure, the film is actually a thorough dismantling of the ethos of Falubert's era. As with other films in this stage of Oliveira's career, the film abounds with subtle absurdism—or what the critic Michel Chion calls "cinematographic irony," in which significant and insignificant action are both presented iconically. The effect is similar to traditional painting or the processional style of pre-Modern theater, but the unforgettable aura that Oliveira creates is eerily timeless. Of all seven films screening this month, VALLEY OF ABRAHAM is the only one available on DVD in the US, which makes this series of critical importance. BS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE (Classic Revival)
Bank of America Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Let's set aside for a moment the convention that IN A LONELY PLACE is another of Nicholas Ray's sub rosa memoirs, charting the decline of his marriage to Gloria Grahame; that the apartment complex Bogart and Grahame's LONELY lovers live in is a replica of one of Ray's own early Hollywood residences; that screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart) is in some way a stand-in for Ray's own Hollywood disaffection: an "abnormal" man isolated among jocular thieves and pretty louts. What's up on the screen is enough to satisfy us without resorting to biographical criticism: that is, a film whose wit, maturity, and bruised romanticism defy us to subdue or deconstruct them. LONELY is the most perfect sort of romance: one that shows the lover revealed as a "tyrannical detective" (Bogart is Spade even when he isn't); one that squeezes out a little of our own optimism as we watch suspicion roast our heroes alive. It is the most perfect sort of mystery: one that succeeds in making its own solution entirely irrelevant before it's revealed. Finally, it is the most perfect sort of noir: one that isn't. The tropes are here, but LONELY is as much about the impossible hope of shoehorning real and immutable suffering into a Hollywood film circa 1950 as about the gruesome deaths of hat-check girls or the fatality of character. They don't make 'em like this anymore—and, like the man says, they never really did. If anyone's counting, LONELY may be the best Bogart movie ever made, and it certainly contains his best performance. More to the point, it is one of the great American sound films: turning star-power and genre both into deadly weapons for getting under our skin. See it. (1950, 94 min, 35mm) JD
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Venue info at www.cine-file.info/venues/lasalle.html.
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Astaire and Rogers: THE GAY DIVORCEE & TOP HAT (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
Fred Astaire is elegant, while Gene Kelly is athletic. It is the oft-heard distinction—just compare Astaire's slighter frame to Kelly's. But there is a more fundamental difference: Fred Astaire is a man. Kelly wins our hearts with his boyish enthusiasm and abundant imagination. Astaire has politely outgrown all of that. When watching Astaire, we never doubt that he will overcome, we only wonder how. He is effortless, not just in his dance, but in his being. More perhaps than anyone on film, it is nearly impossible to discern where his dancing ends and his acting begins. Ginger Rogers on the other hand is energy personified. She never stops moving—a precise hurricane in female form. With such diametrically opposing styles the sexual electricity sparks and crackles across the gap. In THE GAY DIVORCEE (1934, 107 min, 35mm; Friday, 3pm & Monday, 7:45pm) Rogers is too busy being busy to realize that Astaire is not the gigolo hired to move her divorce along. And if you prefer Irving Berlin over Cole Porter, then TOP HAT (1935, 101 min, 35mm; Sunday, 5:15pm & Tuesday, 6pm) is recommended, not just for the score or Astaire and Rogers—Van Nest Polglase's Art Deco designs alone are worth the price of admission. WS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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STOP MAKING SENSE (Contemporary Revival)
Music Box – Friday & Saturday, midnight
For once Leonard Maltin is actually correct: STOP MAKING SENSE really is the best rock movie ever made. Why? Because filmmaker Jonathan Demme doesn't treat the thing as a concert movie. To him, it's narrative. As the film begins David Byrne strolls onstage, a tight closeup on his shoes; he's alone except for a boombox. Once he's done with his solo feature, "Psycho Killer," the other members of the band join him one by one over the course of several songs. It's not only the equivalent of "rising action" in story terms but also a heart- (and foot-)warming metaphor for the creation of a family. That the group is multigendered as well as multiethnic (with special guest artists including guitarist Alex Weir and funkier-than-thou Bernie Worrell) gives the "story" much more resonance than a lot of fictional attempts. The film is brilliantly shot by the great Jordan Cronenweth (BLADE RUNNER); his textured look coupled with the third-act appearance of David Byrne's "big suit" create one of the cinema's truly iconic images. By "Take Me to the River" at film's end, the audience is invariably up and dancing. It's a bonafide demonstration of the power of cinema to make you shake your ass. (1984, 88 min) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Terrence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE (Contemporary Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm
Terrence Malick returned from a twenty-year hiatus with this epic, dreamy meditation on James Jones' World War II novel about the battle at Guadalcanal. The notoriously reclusive and deliberate filmmaker reportedly shot close to one million feet of film in Australia and the Solomon Islands with cinematographer John Toll and then edited down from a six-hour original cut to this nearly three-hour theatrical release, the only version ever made available. In the process, several big names from the ensemble cast were reduced to cameo appearances, while others were cut entirely. The film was widely hailed for its ambition and imagery, but many critics found Malick's exploration of "war in the heart of nature" overly strewn with pretty, but meaningless, shots, and lyrical voiceovers that ask questions with no answers. In other words: slightly pretentious. But Malick has never been interested in providing meanings or explanations. His films, instead, are about reveling in the world in all its beauty, violence, and mystery. Malick's work has often been linked to his scholarly background (he studied under Stanley Cavell at Harvard, taught at MIT, and translated a Heidegger text) and his philosopher's detachment has rarely been more evident. A soldier dies, a bird is born, and the world moves on, oblivious to our attempts to understand or master it. All we can do is gaze in wonder. (1998, 170 min, 35mm) MS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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Jacques Demy's THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (Classic Revival)
Music Box (Matinee Series) – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am; Wednesday, 12:40pm
Jacques Demy's tragic romance, set in a small coastal town in Northern France, is one of the best-loved and most often revived musicals of all time. The simple story line provides few novel ideas on human love and disappointment, but the film's bombastic melodrama and gorgeous pallet of pastel hues, which provide an ideal back drop for the radiant beauty of a twenty year old Catherine Deneuve, are full of potency. The music by Michael LeGrand—every bit as indulgent as Demy's visuals—has had a life of its own, inspiring translations into numerous languages and recordings by Tony Bennett and Connie Francis. The film was shot on an Eastman negative stock that rapidly faded and became almost unusable, but a beautifully restored version exists today thanks to Demy's foresight in making black & white negatives split into three color bands, which his wife, director Agnès Varda, later used to create a gorgeous new color print that exists both on celluloid and DVD. (1964, 110 min, 35mm) HB
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Luchino Visconti's SENSO (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 3pm & Thursday, 6pm
The Film Center's month-long retrospective continues with SENSO, a film that exemplifies both the formal flourish and thematic discordance of Count Visconti's critically-contested body of work. Dave Kehr, writing for The Reader: "Aptly titled—a lush, melodramatic portrait of seduction and betrayal, decadence and deceit in the midst of Italy's resistance to Austrian occupation in the mid-19th century, revealing Luchino Visconti at his most baroque and the Italian cinema at its most spectacular. A fine tragic performance by Alida Valli and surprisingly good work by Farley Granger (imported for American box-office appeal) help overcome some of the obvious narrative gaps created by the Italian censors. Visconti's sinuous Marxism here begins to creep to the fore." (1954, 119 min, 35mm)
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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Films by Michael Snow & Larry Jordan (Avant-Garde)
Doc Films (University of Chicago)
Doc continues its summer-long experimental film onslaught this week with two wildly disparate, mid-career works by a pair of avant-garde masters.
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Michael Snow's PRESENTS – Wednesday, 8pm
The so-called Structural arm of avant-garde film is routinely and casually pegged as dry, academic, and formal to a fault. What is often overlooked in cursory treatments of this side of the field is its surprisingly common use of humor—everything from the sly intellectual sort to downright slapstick. Michael Snow's PRESENTS (1980-81) has both ends covered. The first ten minutes tweaks expectations as the image slowly unsqueezes from a vertical slit to reveal a nude woman on a bed. The next two sequences are absurdist explorations of "camera-movement": in the first it is the set that moves, with the performers struggling to stay afoot; in the second, the camera invades the set, demolishing everything in its path. Finally, the back wall collapses revealing a window on to the real world. What follows are hundreds of hand-held shots: automobiles, birds, street scenes, demolition sites, stovetops—a cataloging of the filmmaker's environs. Many of the shots are peculiarly pedestrian and seemingly artless—given Snow's background, they feel deliberately so. With a drumbeat at every cut Snow riffs on one definition of the title, crying now, now—and with this section's hour-long duration, it's an eternal now. This concluding sequence is both strangely compelling and frequently tedious, and it seems that's the point. It's a game of dare with the audience: can you stay till the end? (1980-81, 90 min, 16mm) PF
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Larry Jordan's SOPHIE'S PLACE – Thursday, 8pm
The engraver is the ancestor of the animator. More than the cartoonist, whose work is spontaneous, the engraver and animator practice the art of making something carefully planned and crafted appear sudden, alive. There's a lineage that can be traced from Albrecht Dürer to Gustave Doré to Ub Iwerks. Like the Czech Karel Zeman, Larry Jordan has embraced this ancestry; his most famous animated films, including the beautiful feature SOPHIE'S PLACE (1986), not only use images from lithographs as their source material, but expand on the sort of thinking particular to the form: an engraving's ability to contain innumerable hidden details, symbols, jokes. His collages create moving image equivalents to Dürer's mystical and alchemical woodcuts and mysterious paintings. Originally attracted to movies as a Surrealist and a follower of Cocteau—that is, as an artist and a poet—Jordan has become the last great engraver. (1986, 90 min, 16mm). IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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HEARTBEAT DETECTOR (French Contemporary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
The reviews have been decidedly mixed for this French import, which stars the always-interesting Mathieu Amalric (veteran of films by Desplechin, Assayas, and Techine). In this dialogue-driven mystery, Amalric plays the in-house psychologist at a multi-national's headquarters who gradually learns about the corporation's sinister past. Scott Foundas hesitantly praised the film in the Village Voice for its "strange, discursive digressions" and its unapologetic focus on ideas as much as action; and Strictly Film School's Acquarello went even further: "Framed as a mystery and corporate intrigue film, HEARTBEAT DETECTOR is [actually] a scathing and unflinching indictment of the societal toll of corporate economics, where efficiency, optimization, productivity, and profitability are used as evasive euphemisms for inhumanity, exploitation, and social genocide." Most American film writers, however, have attacked the film as meandering, cold and, that old critical standby, pretentious. In other words, this sounds like the kind of idiosyncratic French art cinema that only reaches US movie screens once or twice a year—an exciting prospect for admirers of Catherine Breilat, Patrice Chereau, and Jean-Claude Brisseau. (2007, 141 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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FOREVER (New Documentary)
Facets Cinémathèque – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
FOREVER is not a film about death—it is about the joie de vivre that art brings us in life. FOREVER is not about the graves in Paris' famous Pere-Lachaise cemetery, the final resting ground for Frédéric Chopin, Marcel Proust, Simone Signoret, Maria Callas, Amedeo Modigliani, Isadora Duncan, Jim Morrison, and many other artists from around the world—it documents the spirits of these famous residents, whose legacies continue to influence the living. Dutch documentarian Heddy Honigmann guides us through the lives of some of the cemetery's visitors—a retiree, a concert pianist, a taxi driver, an embalmer, a seemingly endless stream of American tourists searching for a counter-evidence of Jim Morrison's death—elegantly relating their experience, finding solace and joy alongside grief and loss. Cutaways to the banal lives of her subjects and flashbacks to previous lives of the dead keep the film from getting caught up in somber reminiscence. It ought to be noted that Honigmann, who lost much of her family in the Holocaust, treats the subject of death with a meditative gentleness rather than bitter or overwhelming aversion. Audiences old enough to remember the works cited (Chopin's sonata, Signoret's performance in LES DIABOLIQUES, Yves Montand's cooing, not to mention The Doors), will find another layer of appreciation for the enduring power of art in this gentle and understated work. (2006, 95 min, 35mm) HB
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Full details at www.facets.org.
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MORE SCREENINGS & EVENTS:
The Music Box has graciously extended its run of Guy Maddin's bewilderingly brilliant biographical pseudo-documentary MY WINNIPEG (previous coverage here); they're also providing audiences with a few more opportunities to catch UP THE YANGTZE (previous coverage here) and Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS (previous coverage here). Check Reader Movies for showtimes. Wednesday at dusk (around 9pm), Northwestern University's Block Cinema hosts a FREE outdoor screening of PLANET OF THE APES. Check out their entire summer schedule here.
The Film Center hosts a pair of special premieres: FRANK & CINDY is an energetic portrait of a dysfunctional family, previously featured on This American Life; WHAT’S YOUR POINT, HONEY? follows a septet of young women chosen to take part in an intense leadership training program. The filmmakers behind both features will be making appearances throughout the week. Check Reader Movies for showtimes and details.
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THE THIN RED LINE
