CRUCIAL VIEWING

Billy Wilder's ONE, TWO, THREE (American Revival)  
Music Box - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am  
In what amounts to boneheaded rabble-rousing, British film critic John Patterson recently wrote an article in which he scolds Andrew Sarris for reneging on his original negative assessment of Billy Wilder in The American Cinema, aka the ur-text of the auteur theory. Patterson goes on to label Wilder as a cold-hearted cynic and, what's worse, a filmmaker of "contestable quality." Though he never established a signature visual style comparable to that of a Welles or Renoir, Wilder was constantly ahead of the curve in his candid critique of American society, addressing topical, sometimes off-limits, issues central to contemporary life. In SUNSET BLVD. he took on Hollywood, in THE LOST WEEKEND he dealt with alcoholism, in THE APARTMENT he skewered the corporate rat race, and in ONE, TWO, THREE he satirized Cold War attitudes. In some sense ONE, TWO, THREE could have only been made by an expat director like Wilder, an Austro-Hungarian-born Jew who fled Berlin after the rise of the Nazi Party. Taking place during the height of the Cold War, the film centers on "Mac" MacNamara (played by James Cagney), a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin, who's entrusted with looking after his boss's floozy daughter Scarlett during her trip abroad. Unbeknownst to her guardian, Scarlett regularly crosses the border into East Berlin to cavort with a hot-blooded Bolshevik with whom she marries and conceives a child. When the couple reveals their plan to move to Moscow, it's up to MacNamara to remedy the imbroglio before his boss arrives. This screwball narrative is a pretext for Wilder to mock both American and U.S.S.R. sensibilities, e.g. democracy as capitalist imperialism, communism as narrow-minded zealotry. Although the film's humor relies on one-dimensional caricatures and stereotypes, similar to its successor DR. STRANGELOVE, it must have felt razor-sharp at the time of its release. In the end, Wilder seems to suggest that the two parties aren't so different after all, and that swapping political ideologies is as easy as changing clothes (literally). And in response to Mr. Patterson's cries of misanthropy, I refer him to the philosophy espoused by MacNamara toward the end of the film: "Any world that can produce the Taj Mahal, William Shakespeare, and Stripe toothpaste can't be all bad." (1961, 108 min, 35mm) HS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

Tod Browning's DRACULA and Karl Freund's THE MUMMY (American Revival)
The Gene Siskel Film Center - Sunday, 3:15pm and Thursday, 6pm (Dracula); Sunday, 4:45pm and Monday, 6pm (Mummy)
As part of their continuing series of classic Universal titles, the Siskel this week is treating us to two of the greatest pre-code films ever made. In DRACULA, Tod Browning, the greatest horror director of the silent period, famously inaugurated Universal's long cycle of scary movies. Browning's Dracula, played with astounding charisma by Béla Lugosi, is a handsome, collected, and hyper-civilized monster whose lust for blood and power plays out not in fangs, hairy palms, and vivid, animalistic transformations (as in Bram Stoker's novel) but in the pregnant look, the deliberate pause, and the contorted, barely controlled fury threatening to boil over in every gesture.  Lugosi's performance as the titular count was a radical departure from the rat-like portrait drawn in the novel, but has become the gold standard in stately and erotic menace, haunting the nightmares of the susceptible for three-quarters of a century now. The product of a deep collaboration with Karl Freund, perhaps the greatest cinematographer ever to live, DRACULA is a beautiful and disturbing film, one of the great financial successes in Universal's history, and a high-point in any consideration of the genre. The film's oneiric pacing and logic defy summary: nothing makes any sense at all, and yet feels so utterly and terrifyingly inevitable. For years, critics were fond of dismissing DRACULA as a shallow and sloppy exercise that contrasted poorly to James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN, arriving later the same year. But in the roughness of DRACULA's style, its stagy performances, its incoherent plotline, its strange, stuttery dramaturgy, they missed the ways all of these ostensive faults only enhanced the film's true power. Dracula is a demonic, supernatural force of evil that, repeatedly, is equated in power and malice, to cinema itself. His hypnotic gaze penetrates into our eyes as much as into those of the innocent flower-vendor he murders upon his arrival in England, and that gaze is symbolically and visually linked to that of his exact opposite, the mysterious foreigner Van Helsing, whose glasses have the unearthly power to reflect the lights of artifice itself. (1931, 75 min, New 35mm Print) 
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In a fine instance of pairing, also showing this week is THE MUMMY, in many ways a reworking of the themes of DRACULA in a different register.  Karl Freund returns here, in his directing debut (Charles Stumar, soon to shoot WEREWOLF OF LONDON, was his cinematographer). Where DRACULA cultivates the roughness of its texture, shocking us with every camera position and cut, THE MUMMY is an enterprise of early talkie virtuosity, from the stunning awakening of the monster in his tomb after thousands of years to the mesmeric connection between him and his reincarnated paramour. In his mastery of the suggestive and uncanny, Freund is unmatched, and he uses this mastery to connect horror and cinema as viscerally, though wholly differently, as Browning did in DRACULA. Here it is the idea of the projection, the phantasmatic connection between the ancient magician and his prey that allows him not merely to control her will but her sight as well that is the principal source of the Mummy's monstrosity. Indeed, he is the very epitome of the monstrous in Boris Karloff's performance, his career finest. As Ardath Bey, the resurrected Imhotep, he is an image of infinite fragility, a precisely-persisting piece of diabolical machinery so tender that it seems a single careless touch would destroy him. Freund fills his frame with Karloff's terrorized and terrorizing face and eyes, a visage that demonstrates at all times that all that remains of his existence is his asymptotically failing physicality, perpetually being transmuted into the mind of his victim/lover as vision, his power feeding on his own suspended existence like a reel of film always just about to run out. It is the greatest achievement of 1930s horror films. (1932, 78 min, 35mm) KB
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

Julien Duvivier's LA BELLE ÉQUIPE (French Revival) 
Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Portage Theater) — Wednesday, 7:30pm  
Released in September 1936, after the electoral success of the left-wing Popular Front coalition and a summer of the most widespread strikes in French history, Julien Duvivier's LA BELLE ÉQUIPE (presented here in a rare print from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs) is rightly interpreted as a parable which problematizes the utopian goals of a working-class cooperative. But much like a wholly unrelated comic-book blockbuster franchise also screening this week, what appears to be an explicit allegory remains somewhat politically incoherent—especially because Duvivier filmed two different endings, one extremely pessimistic, and another rather less so. (As in life, we don't know which one to expect for this particular screening.) The plot involves five under-employed protagonists (including Jean Gabin) who win the lottery and—instead of going their separate ways—pool the cash and embark on a productive and inspiring campaign to construct a riverside vacation spot, a fraternal project that takes place within that seemingly-inaccessible universe of perpetually inebriated camaraderie familiar from Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE. Fans of that film will find similar moments of populist, escapist transcendence, tempered by a somewhat explicit misogyny (which may or may not represent a deliberate critique of contemporaneous politics). Preceded by the 1934 Popeye cartoon WE AIM TO PLEASE (Dave Fleischer, 7 min, 16mm). (1936, 100 min, 16mm) MC
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.
               

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Samuel Fuller's THE STEEL HELMET (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 7pm
Samuel Fuller released his first masterpiece with THE STEEL HELMET, an action drama set during the then-current Korean War. In fact, the movie is most remarkable for its currency: it brings to the typically "safe" world of fiction filmmaking heated discussions of real cultural clashes between the United States and North Korea-and, more radically, between Americans. Many have noted the discussions of institutionalized racism, which are, like Fuller's unsentimental depiction of violence, far ahead of their time. The same can be said of Fuller's pulsating editing and use of close-ups, which boldly reveal the filmmaker's background as a war journalist. Writing about the close-ups in THE STEEL HELMET, Dave Kehr expressed the idea that, "these shots represented a pressing new urgency, a need to force his audience to identify completely with his protagonists and experience the drama of his films as his heroes did: as a series of difficult choices and conflicting emotions." Note: the originally scheduled 16mm print has been upgraded to 35mm. (1951, 85 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Soundings: Films by James Herbert (Experimental)
Chicago Filmmakers at National Pastime Theater (941 W. Lawrence Ave.) - Saturday, 5pm and Sunday, 8pm
James Herbert is certainly best known for making most of REM's music videos in the early to mid-80s (including the classic "It's the End of the World as We Know It"), but in the art film world he is known for his extensive filmography that spans four decades, comprised mostly of powerfully romantic, rigorously formal, richly tactile studies of youthful nudes. These subjects move with unexpected rhythms caused by the vagaries of speed in Herbert's hand-cranked projections, which would then be re-photographed. The films in this program are taken from a high point in Herbert's career, and will give a fantastic introduction to those sadly unfamiliar with his work. Herbert's oft-studied subject—young nude couples—appears in all four films, which include AUTOMAN (1988), set in the back seat of a car; FRONTIER (1984), which finds a couple arguing; PIANO (1988); and SOUNDINGS (1986) which considers a couple wandering though a rural landscape. (1984-88, approx. 80 min total, 16mm) JBM
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.

Jean Epstein's THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (Silent French Revival) 
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7pm  
A director and film theorist affiliated with the French Impressionist movement of the 1920s, Jean Epstein is credited with laying the groundwork for many cornerstone concepts in cinema studies, such as the notion of medium specificity, or what he referred to as photogénie. As film scholar Malcolm Turvey details in his history of the "revelationist" tradition, at the heart of the French Impressionist approach is the belief that film holds the ability to transcend the fallibility of human vision and reveal the true nature of reality via cinematic techniques like editing and close-ups. While viewers may take these ideas for granted today, Epstein and his contemporaries are responsible for no less than realizing cinema's potential as a bona fide art form. It's fitting that Epstein chose to adapt Edgar Allen Poe, a major influence for the French symbolist poets, who in turn offered a reference point for the Impressionist filmmakers. Co-written by Luis Buñuel, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER remains just as eerie today as it was over eighty years ago. Epstein's use of chiaroscuro lighting and deep space lend the film a haunting, atmospheric quality and the actors involved (including Abel Gance's wife) give suitably hypnotic performances. The story, about a man obsessed with immortalizing his dying wife in a painting, is all too apropos for a filmmaker who wrote extensively about the boundaries between reality and representation. (1928, 63 min, 16mm) HS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

               

ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS

Continuing through July 27 at Johalla Projects (1821 W. Hubbard) is local artist Ivan Lozano's one-person show C___ of the Eye / C___ of the Hand: New Work by Ivan Lozano, which includes media-based pieces reflecting on pornographic cinema, religion, and other themes.

The Art Institute of Chicago currently has experimental filmmaker Paul Sharits' 1975 16mm four-projector installation SHUTTER INTERFACE on view, through August 1. It is showing in the Modern Wing as one of the finalists under consideration for purchase for the AIC by the Acquisition Committee of the Society for Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Also on display is filmmaker, musician, and artist Tony Conrad's 1973 paper work Yellow Movie 3/5-6/73, which, though not a moving image work, is cinematic in its inspiration. More info here.

Iceberg Projects (7714 N Sheridan Rd.) continues with Deborah Stratman's exhibition The Name Is Not the Thing Named, which includes the eponymous video loop (2012, 11 min) and a series of photographs. Gallery hours Saturdays and Sundays 10-4pm, by appointment; see http://icebergchicago.com.     
    

MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS

The Silent Film Society of Chicago's Silent Summer Film Festival (at the Portage Theater) kicks things off with Albert Parker's 1922 film SHERLOCK HOLMES (85 min, Archival 35mm Print), starring John Barrymore, on Friday at 8pm. Live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren.

The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival hosts several screenings this weekend. First, on Friday at 8:30pm, Elastic Arts Presents: 16mm Horror Showcase features recent work by local filmmakers. Screening are A REVENGE by Zhuo Yun Chen, FAREWELL WHITE CITY by Matt O'Shaughnessy, VISITOR 420 by Bethany Schmitt, BAU BRUT by Adam Rose, and THE BEAST WITHIN by Ross Meckfessel (all 2012, unknown total run time, Digital Projection). The next two nights feature programs curated/organized by The Cinema Culture. On Saturday at 6:30pm, is Amir George's THE MIND OF DELILAH, Will Goss' medium-length film LAND, and "Avant Garde Remixed," described as "one big mash-up of mash-ups. Performed by VJ/DJ Jayve Montgomery, Avant-Garde Remixed is a presentation of several avant-garde films re-edited and re-scored by several different filmmakers. Montgomery compiles all the re-edits into one big visual audio mix." On Sunday at 5pm, it's JD Wilkes' SEVEN SIGNS, Jim Vendiola's DRIFT, and the touring program "Watch This Film & Video Tour, " which includes work by Nelson Carvajal, FaceOdd, Amir George, Alice Cohen, Anansi Knowbody, Jason Ogawa, Lindsay Denniberg, and Lewis Vaughn. (Unknown total run times, Digital Projection). All screenings take place at the Hairpin Lofts Art Center (2800 N. Milwaukee Ave., 2nd Floor).

The Sundown in K-Town Film Festival, presented by the Better Boys Foundation and Facets Multi-Media, continues through July 27. On Tuesday at 8:15pm, at the Better Boys Foundation Center (1512 S. Pulaski Rd.), Heather Lyn MacDonald's 1996 documentary BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE (81 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens, followed by a panel with Starinah Dixon, Company Member, M.A.D.D. Rhythms; Bril Barrett, Founder and Company Member, M.A.D.D. Rhythms; and Dejunique Hearn, Company Member, TapLAB2@1512.

Facets Cinémathèque screens Maïwenn's 2011 French drama POLISSE (127 min, 35mm) for a week; Facets' Night School series presents Michael Sarne's 1970 whatsit MYRA BRECKENRIDGE (94 min, Video Projection - unconfirmed format) on Saturday at Midnight. The screening is introduced by Dominick Mayer.

Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 animation PRINCESS MONONOKE (134 min, 35mm) screens Friday at 6pm (in Japanese) and Saturday at 3pm and Wednesday at 6pm (English dubbed version); Miyazaki's 2004 film HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (119 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at 5:30pm, Tuesday at 6pm, and Thursday at 7:30pm (all shows English dubbed); Bess Kargman's 2011 documentary FIRST POSITION (94 min, 35mm) and Tanya Wexler's 2011 UK comedy HYSTERIA (100 min, 35mm) both play for a week; Genevieve Davis' 2012 documentary/drama hybrid SECRET LIFE, SECRET DEATH (84 min, Mini-DV Video) screens Friday at 8:30pm and Tuesday at 8:15pm, with director Davis in person at both screenings and selected actors in person at the Friday show; and John Mossman's 2012 drama INTO THE WAKE (76 min, HDCam Video) screens on Saturday at 8pm, Monday at 7:45pm, and Wednesday at 8:30pm, with director Mossman and actor/producer/co-writer Tim Miller in person at all three shows.

Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Nancy Meyers' 1998 version of THE PARENT TRAP (127 min, 35mm) screens Friday at 7 and 9:30pm; and Robert Fuest's 1975 horror film THE DEVIL'S RAIN (86 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 7 and 9pm.

Also at the Music Box this week: "Cinemapocalypse" takes place Friday and Saturday, featuring 35mm prints of some rare exploitation films, from the collection of Austin, Texas' Alamo Drafthouse, with AD programmers Lars Nilsen and Zack Carlson in person. It all begins on Friday at 7pm, with Trailer War (Approx. 75 min, 35mm), a collection of vintage film trailers; at 9pm, it's Gary Sherman's 1982 cult film VICE SQUAD (97 min, 35mm), with director Sherman in person; and at Midnight, it's H. Tjut Djalil's 1989 Indonesian horror/action film LADY TERMINATOR (82 min, 35mm). On Saturday at 7pm, it's David Schmoeller's 1979 film TOURIST TRAP (90 min, 35mm); At 9pm is Y.K. Kim and Woo-sang Park's 1987 US/Hong Kong film MIAMI CONNECTION (120 min, 35mm); and a Secret Screening on Saturday at Midnight. Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace's 2012 LCD Soundsystem concert film SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS (105 min, Unconfirmed Format) has a single screening on Monday at 7:30pm; the "Noir City: Chicago" series has a preview screening of Stuart Heisler's 1942 film THE GLASS KEY (85 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 5, 7:20, and 9:40pm; Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2011 Russian film ELENA (109 min, Unconfirmed Format) and Jonathan Demme's 2011 documentary NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS (87 min, Unconfirmed Format) are both held over.

Sing-A-Long Mary Poppins (Unconfirmed Format) is on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm; Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot's 2012 documentary FOLLOW ME: THE YONI NETANYAHU STORY (88 min, Unconfirmed Format) is held over in the 11:30am Saturday and Sunday matinee slot only; and Larry Charles' THE DICTATOR (Friday; 83 min, Unconfirmed Format) and Jim Sharman's 1975 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Saturday; 100 min, 35mm) are the additional Midnight films.

On Saturday at 7pm, The Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Odd Obsession Foreign Film Series w/ Impala Sound Champion DJs, which features Brian Trenchard-Smith's 1980 Australian oddity STUNT ROCK (86 min, DVD Projection). The screening is followed by a DJ set by Impala Sound Champion.

Landmark's Century Centre Cinema presents Tim Burton's 1988 film BEETLEJUICE (92 min, Digital Projection - unconfirmed format) on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.

Block Cinema (Northwestern University) presents an outdoor screening of Stanley Donan's 1957 musical FUNNY FACE (103 min, Video Projection - unconfirmed format) on Wednesday at sundown (approx. 8:45pm). It's on the East Lawn of the Norris University Center, 1999 Campus Dr.

The Logan Square International Film Series (Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Joel and Ethan Coen's 1998 film THE BIG LEBOWSKI (117 min, DVD Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm.

Transistor (3819 N. Lincoln Ave.) screens Gary Hustwit's 2011 documentary URBANIZED (85 min, DVD Projection) on Monday at 8pm.

The Chicago Cultural Center presents Sopon Sukdapisit's 2011 Thai film LADDALAND (113 min, Video Projection - unconfirmed format) on Saturday at 2pm and Michael Henry Wilson's 2010 South African documentary RECONCILIATION: MANDELA'S MIRACLE (88 min, Video Projection - unconfirmed format) on Wednesday at 6:30pm as part of the Cinema/Chicago summer series.

The DuSable Museum screens Al Hawkins' 2005 documentary THE WILL TO SURVIVE: THE STORY OF THE GULLAH/GEECHEE NATION (60 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Monday at 6:30. Followed by a discussion with producer/director Al Hawkins and additional guests.