CRUCIAL VIEWING
Rare Features by D. W. Griffith (Silent Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Showtimes noted below
The summer series at Doc is easily the best in the city. Inexpensive, unadorned presentations in a large theater with a good-sized crowd. Its modesty makes it one of the richest experiences you can get in Chicago, film-going or otherwise. You can write poems about it.
This week, they present two rare, unaccompanied silent features by D. W. Griffith: Lilian Gish pastoral A ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY (1919, 60 min, 16mm; Wednesday, 8pm), made near the peak of his popularity, and THE SORROWS OF SATAN (1926, 90 min, 16mm; Thursday, 8pm), an adaptation of a popular Victorian novel. The latter was the director's first assignment for Paramount after years as an independent and the final film of Carol Dempster, who became the "Griffith Girl" after he'd parted ways with Gish.
In America we've been uneasy about embracing Griffith; praise always seems to come with an apology. It shouldn't be that way. If they teach us Shakespeare in school, they should teach us Griffith. He made movies seem like the most natural medium for expressing human feeling—the only medium, maybe. It's as though emotion, art, morality only live in projected images and the edits that connect them. It is (inadvertently) visionary and one hopes that the vision is right.
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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The Films of Manoel de Oliveira: Week 2 (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
The Film Center’s celebration of Manoel de Oliveira continues this week with more screenings of the director’s hardest-to-find work. Of particular interest is Oliveira’s second feature, RITE OF SPRING (1963, 94 min, 35mm; Friday, 8pm & Wednesday, 6pm), which is said to be radically different from the director’s recent films with their cards-to-the-chest style. According to former Village Voice critic Michael Atkinson RITE OF SPRING anticipates the beguiling naturalism of Abbas Kiarostami, as a northern Portuguese village recreates their annual Passion Play for Oliveira’s camera. The result is not a document of religious ritual but a more insidious look at a ritual’s construction. As Atkinson writes, “It’s one of the best films about Christ, because… it reflects on the dramatic impulse behind religious feeling.” Made the same year, Oliveira’s short THE HUNT (1964, 20 min) also looks to rural life for inspiration—in this case, with a fictional story about a young villager trapped to his neck in a bog. Little is known about this work outside of Portugal, although the Internet Movie Database notes that Totalitarian censors forced Oliveira to give this cynical tale a happy ending. THE HUNT screens with Oliveira’s more recent DAY OF DESPAIR (1992, 75 min, 35mm; both Sunday, 5:15pm & Monday, 6pm), a short feature about the last days of the 19th century author Camilo Castelo Branco. (It should be noted that Oliveira previously adapted two of Branco’s novels, Francisca and Doomed Love, the latter of which screens later in this retrospective.) One should never expect an Oliveira film to follow generic conventions, and DAY OF DESPAIR is no exception: In keeping with the director’s perversely literary style, the film’s text comes entirely from Branco’s personal letters. Those familiar with Oliveira’s late-period style—at once ruminative and slyly satirical of highbrow staidness—should look forward to this film, which surely presents a new side of the director’s love-hate relationship with 19th century mores. BS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses de Oliveira in the current issue of Film Comment (read here).
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SUPER 8 DIARY: Jason Halprin (Experimental)
The Nightingale (1084 N Milwaukee) – Saturday, 8pm
Filmmaker, teacher, and stalwart of the local film community, Jason Halprin has an undying love for that most nimble and lively of film formats: Super 8. In his hands, that thin string of film yields the same sort of magical discoveries that one can find in the work of other film diarists like Saul Levine (with whom he shares an interest in the political world, though with less graphic/trippy editing from Halprin) or Jonas Mekas (with whom he shares a spontaneous visual imagination and lightness of touch). Excepting the political work, Halprin's diaries are largely depopulated, focusing instead on meditations of turbulent nature, quiet cities, and movement through these spaces. A strongly recommended show. (2003-2007, ~60 min, Super 8) JM
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More info at www.nightingaletheatre.org.
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John Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN (Classic Revival)
Bank of America Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
A train of stolen art treasures is bound for Nazi Germany. Can a rescue attempt by the Resistance be far behind? In THE TRAIN, John Frankenheimer does for the war movie what he did for political thrillers in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY: he scales back the pointless machismo and goes for something lean and mean and thrillingly cold. This strategy neutralizes some potentially-absurd casting (would you buy Burt Lancaster as a French station-master?) by making the smooth mechanics of the plot supreme. The setting is ostensibly Europe, but the action could easily take place somewhere else. It's certainly a technique that Steven Spielberg has taken to heart; in fact, every WWII movie he's ever made pillages something from Frankenheimer. Alongside a cracking good story, there's a lot to enjoy here. The film's razor sharp black & white look favors the steam and grime of the title conveyance, and actors like Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau acquit themselves nicely. A suitably existential ending is the capper. (1945, 133 min, 35mm). RC
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Venue info at www.cine-file.info/venues/lasalle.html.
xx Don Siegel's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS* (Classic Revival)
Pixar's WALL-E** (Contemporary Horror)
*Portage Theater – Friday 8pm
**Multiple Venues – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Perpetually timely, continually replicating, and fount of filmic
analysis—what can't we do with INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956, 80 min, 35mm)? The conflicting ideologies of career individualist Don
Siegel's direction and HUAC blacklist-victim Daniel Mainwaring's
screenplay—the conflated and sometimes inverted oppositions of
freedom-vs.-conformity, individual-vs.-society, animal-vs.-plant,
democracy-vs.-communism—helped sustain some of the most
indestructible metaphors of the American cinematic imagination, and it
is perhaps profitable to compare this initially-unheralded pessimistic
masterpiece with a present-day dystopia of an almost pod-like
universal esteem, Pixar's distinctly less politically equivocal WALL-E (2008, 97min, 35mm). The image of plant life—harbinger of a
highly contagious bland alien collectivity in INVASION—has become in this film
a literal icon of rebirth for the remains of the human race,
represented as a herd of already-brainwashed hyperconsumers serviced
by other kinds of soulless masters: the computer (HAL 9000 edition),
and its attendant army of mechanistic drones. While Siegel and
Mainwaring's pod-villians remain ambiguously positioned between
seductive Communist threat and McCarthyite conformists, it becomes
increasingly difficult to accept Pixar's ostensive critique of
unsustainable technocracy when every scene is suffused with a
painstaking, almost pious regard for hydraulic kinematics. But both
films derive their unmatched symbolic power from a knowing engagement
with contemporary anxieties: for one, the wholesale replacement of the
individual human soul (by pods); in the other, from that soul's
unrestrained prosthetic-narcotic extension (iPods). Friday's screening
of INVASION also features an appearance by star and prolific character actor Kevin McCarthy in person. MC
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More info at www.portagetheater.org and www.disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e.
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Herzog's ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (New Release)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Everybody used to ask, "who would win, Freddy or Jason?" Now that we have our answer, perhaps it's time to start upping the ante of our cinephilic pipe dreams to something like "how come The Discovery Channel doesn't hire Werner Herzog?" or "yeah, and then he should totally remake THE BAD LIEUTENANT with the guy from THE VAMPIRE'S KISS." Turns out we'll have to do better than that: with GRIZZLY MAN, the maverick who once described nature as "vile and base" found an unlikely sponsor in the stateside home of PLANET EARTH—but then what was BURDEN OF DREAMS if not the original SURVIVORMAN (and how many of his narratives, from AGUIRRE to RESCUE DAWN, could just as easily bear that title)? Herzog has been on the prowl for ecstatic truths of late, peeking behind sacred waterfalls (THE WHITE DIAMOND) and plumbing the murky depths (THE WILD BLUE YONDER), so it's no surprise he's landed in Antartica. This being a Werner Herzog Film (as opposed to any kind of documentary), Antarctica is populated exclusively by misfits, subterranean monsters, and suicidal penguins (the latter a not-so-subtle dig at the recent anthropomorphic hit), all lurking around ravishing land and seascapes. No doubt Discovery will eventually run this into the ground, but here is one location that seems uniquely suited for the big screen. (2007, 99 min, 35mm) MK
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Also Playing at Doc Films (Contemporary Revival)
Hou Hsiao-Hsien's meticulous arrangements of sound and space (the latter often filmed obliquely, from corners of a room or street that few other directors would think to occupy) are ideally suited for the cinema. This weekend, DOC Films puts its lovely big screen to use with his underrated MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001, 120 min, 35mm; Friday, 7 & 9:30pm). Telling the tale of a young waitress and her impetuous affair with a petty criminal, it's the closest Hou has come to a genre picture—a doomed love story in the tradition of THEY LIVE BY NIGHT—but there are enough narrative curves to make it distinctly his own. One episode in particular, an unexpected trip to a snowy village in northern Japan, is among the most memorable he's ever shot. Also this weekend, DOC presents SCANNERS (1981, 103 min, 16mm; Saturday, 7 & 9:30pm), David Cronenberg's most frequently revived film and one of the most ingenious uses of Montreal in cinema, a fluid transformation of that city's characteristic interiority and weird architecture into a lair of global conspiracy. This is the one where special people use telekinesis to make their enemies' heads explode. BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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Astaire and Rogers (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
Sure, it only seems this way, but Fred Astaire gets fired in nearly every movie he graces. It is the occupational hazard of band members, but it was also the plight of many folks in 1933. If there is more to entertainment than entertainment, there is something to be said for Astaire's easy confidence and elegant swagger amongst regular job hopping, this time all the way to Rio. Ironically, FLYING DOWN TO RIO (1933, 89 min, 35mm; Friday, 6:15 & Monday, 8pm), is only Astaire's second movie. He is not yet a star. His role is small, his future in movies is uncertain, and his performance is magnificent. Four years later he starred in SHALL WE DANCE (1937, 109 min, 35mm; Sunday, 3pm & Wednesday, 8pm). The standard complaint is that SHALL WE DANCE is the same movie as TOP HAT (featured last week)—dancing punctuated with romantic misunderstandings. It is, but what's wrong with that? We watch these movies for the dancing, the design, and the music. SHALL WE DANCE has that in spades, and the music this time is George and Ira Gershwin's. WS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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Visconti: Week 4 (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
Say it with me: Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone. He of the criminal tastefulness, imprisoned by his own excellent manners. What is cinema to do with such a man? Blessedly, cinema answered that question many years ago: it gave him Burt Lancaster to work with. It did not, for instance, give him John Garfield whose characters have something like decency and remorse buried deep within them. Behind the statuesque façade and imposing frame, Lancaster's eyes (and actions) reveal quivering, animalistic survival—precisely what Visconti's movies lacked. In THE LEOPARD (1963, 185 min, 35mm; Saturday, 3:30 & Thursday, 6:30pm), Visconti's pretty pictures of an aristocratic family's battle to stay in power during the Risorgimento, the revolutionary movement that reunified Italy as a democratic state, are given meaning by Lancaster's primal control of his family, his body, his emotions. Lancaster positions his family, who obey him with a mixture of fear and respect, so they will have a chance in the new social order, one ruled by money not manners. CONVERSATION PIECE (1974, 121 min, 35mm; Tuesday, 6pm) stars a less grand Lancaster. Here he is an American professor relocated to Italy, but no less patriarchal and bent on survival. If you can only see one see THE LEOPARD. WS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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MORE SCREENINGS & EVENTS:
Opening at Landmark Century this week: French action thriller TELL NO ONE (details) and '90s throwback THE WACKNESS (details).
Börkur Gunnarsson's BITTER COFFEE screens Saturday and Sunday at 1pm, as part of Facets' "One Czech a Month" film series: A clash of personality and culture ensues when a Croat and his Finnish girlfriend go on summer holiday with another couple. Director Gunnarsson, a native of Iceland who moved to Prague to study film, reflects this autobiographical pan-European sensibility in his low-budget feature debut. The largely improvised scenes, with dialogue in Czech, English, and Icelandic, were shot simultaneously with three digital cameras. MS
Also playing at Facets this week: POISONED BY POLONIUM:THE LITVINENKO FILE, an intimate and damning portrait of Putin's Russia and the scandalous poisoning of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, screens all week; Sunday, they'll host a $5 preview screening of their upcoming DVD LOUISE BOURGEOIS, a French documentary about the estimable modern sculptor.
William Wyler's Barbara Streisand musical FUNNY GIRL, set in New York City circa World War I, is the Music Box's matinee feature this weekend. The plot is familiar: an aspiring starlet meets a sophisticated entrepreneur who turns her into a star. The film is loosely based on the life of Fanny Brice, although her career-sparking collaborations with Irving Berlin are never addressed. HB
Wednesday at dusk (around 9pm), Northwestern University's Block Cinema hosts a FREE outdoor screening of Pixar's RATATOUILLE. Check out their entire summer schedule here. The Film Center hosts a week-long run of "cross-cultural romance" OUTSOURCED (details) and a special presentation of ex-Chicagoan filmmaker Frank Ross's domestic drama PRESENT COMPANY (details). Directors of both films will be appearing throughout the week, to host audience Q&As.
Extended runs at the Music Box: Guy Maddin's brilliant, autobiographical pseudo-documentary MY WINNIPEG (previous coverage here); acclaimed Chinese documentary UP THE YANGTZE (previous coverage here) and Dario Argento's most violent outing to date, MOTHER OF TEARS (previous coverage here). Check Reader Movies for showtimes. |
