CRUCIAL VIEWING
Orson Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (Classic Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7 and 9:30pm
The decades that have passed haven't made THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI any less mysterious, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS any less emotional, MR. ARKADIN any less dense, or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT any less audacious. Welles is always modern. Maybe that's why, trying to describe that last film, the first movie that comes to mind isn't one of its contemporaries (did Welles even have contemporaries?), but something like Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES. God knows the Welles film seemed as offensive at the time as the Mann one does now, and, Welles would be proud to know, still does. Its inarticulate excitement was the greatest product of Welles' famous love for Shakespeare. Of course, love shouldn't be confused with fidelity. Every director finds his or her own Shakespeare. Welles found a wild Shakespeare not unlike himself, a man whose words were one part sensitivity and one part anarchy (though CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT seems to suggest that there's no difference between the two—Shakespeare here is like God in THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS, and as only an atheist would think the Rossellini movie was non-religious, only someone with no faith in Shakespeare would think Welles is being disrespectful). The movie is maddening. Every image seems to oscillate between the lyrical and the farcical (sometimes within a matter of seconds) and every edit is a force of destruction. The script, a collage of Richard II, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V, and both parts of Henry the IV, with bits of Holinshed's Chronicles (Shakespeare's source for the plays) and original Welles, would be a masterpiece on its own, though its achievement is nothing compared to the images, the editing, and the cacophonous soundtrack. The Battle of Shrewsbury, where armored knights becomes bodies writhing in mud, remains the clearest articulation of Welles' politics. This very rare screening makes you proud to say that Chicago is the city of Doc Films. (1966, 115 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Jean-Luc Godard's MADE IN U.S.A.
and TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
As Martin Rubin reminds us in the current Film Center gazette, Godard was inspired to shoot two films simultaneously in 1966 by William Faulkner's interwoven novellas "The Wild Palms"and "Old Man" (published together under the title of the first story, although Faulkner originally titled the work If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem). It's a popular bit of Godard mythology, but the decision is rarely considered as anything but than a formal one. Faulkner's influence on Godard's work—in its radical combination of poetry, prose and philosophy—cannot be understated: An author who claimed never to understand a subject until after he wrote about it, Faulkner recast history as art, finding within all events the eternal mysteries of human behavior. "The human heart in conflict with itself" is how he defined his lifelong subject; Godard's work, even at its most complicated, may be appreciated along similar lines. One thing that makes If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem so tantalizing is that "Old Man" registers as the lighter novella even though it's set against a national disaster, where the melodramatic love story of "Wild Palms" takes on the portent of Greek tragedy. (Faulkner exaggerates the contrast further by making the contemporary "Wild Palms" sound as though it happened long ago and endowing the period piece "Old Man" with the immediacy of an adventure story.) And so, Godard frames the human tragedy TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER as a sociological study of modern Paris and the Fuller-esque, ripped-from-the-headlines MADE IN U.S.A. (which overtly references the disappearance of Ben Barka and the growing threat of multi-national corporations) as though it were a B action movie. Taken together, the films create a detailed portrait of the Western World circa 1966; but what makes them endure is their attention to the human heart in conflict with itself. TWO OR THREE THINGS' main argument against late-capitalism is that, ultimately, it prevents a Parisian housewife from realizing her humanity (As in VIVRE SA VIE, prostitution registers as nothing more than a job, which may be more disheartening than explicit degradation); and MADE IN U.S.A.'s most discernible critique of the New World Order is that it makes for an incomprehensible story. But even at its most dehumanizing, Godard sees the modern world as constant spectacle, an exciting collage of images, sounds, and ideas that often fall into glorious patterns. Also, these features remain the last ones that Godard shot in 'Scope, which makes them evoke (however perversely) the MGM musicals of the 50s that he swooned over as a young film critic. (Both films: 1966, 85 min, 35mm widescreen) BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Ron Rice’s THE QUEEN OF SHEBA MEETS THE ATOM MAN (Experimental)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7pm
Temporarily exhumed from Film-makers’ Cooperative and screening locally in a calculated act of extreme rarity by the Doc Films programmers, this thoroughly preposterous 1963 anti-narrative—featuring the senseless journeys of the titular couple (an indolent Winifred Bryan; a spastic Taylor Mead)—is either critiquing the consumerist autism of a makeshift urbanity or reveling in it. Shot without sound, the wall-to-wall kitsch soundtrack à la SCORPIO RISING (added after Rice's death by Mead) favors an oppressively eclectic selection of 50s country, melancholy Chopin, ragtime piano, hard bop, and bombastic lounge instrumentals. The last reel is an apotheosis of living-room screwing-around which must have deeply influenced George Kuchar: the inverse of FLAMING CREATURES, an anti-erotic orgy featuring closet props, Ritz cracker boxes, and Jonas Mekas, set in part to a punishingly soulful excerpt from Traffic's 1974 "When the Eagle Flies." More pensive than it sounds. (1963/1982, 109 min, 16mm) MC
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More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Films by Joris Ivens and László Moholy-Nagy (Doc / Experimental)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 7pm
Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens is undoubtedly best known for his excellent lyrical experimental documentary RAIN (1929), so it may come as a surprise for some to learn that most all of his work since RAIN has centered on social activism. His left-wing aesthetic eventually landed him a chance to work in the Soviet Union during its heyday of poetic documentary making. To raise the funds for production, Ivens took on a commission by Philips Radio to create an industrial film of their flagship factory, which resulted in INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY (also known as PHILIPS-RADIO, 1931), a meditation on mechanical movement and beauty. After his stint in the Soviet Union, Ivens completed work on NEW EARTH (1934), his documentation of the draining of the Zuider Zee River. This film is perhaps his most overtly political—Ivens shows how the river was drained for more land to grow wheat, yet the crop is being dumped into the sea to keep market prices up, as all the while people go hungry. Doc Films has chosen to pair these two little-seen films with a selection of films from the Bauhaus artist turned Chicago resident László Moholy-Nagy. As with most artists associated with the Bauhaus school of design, Moholy-Nagy’s work tends toward abstracted minimalism, using geometric shapes to study pattern and movement. These investigations of form follow a similar logic as Joris Ivens’ INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY. While the list of Moholy-Nagy films to be screened has not been revealed, they are sure to compliment—in an abstracted way, of course—Ivens’ two films. (1926-1934, 115 min total, 16mm) DM
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More Info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Fritz Lang's SCARLET STREET (Classic Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Friday, 7 and 9:15pm
Edward G. Robinson is not merely an actor or performer. He's a force of nature. Much like Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson is both character and legend, a metatextual presence who charges the screen space around him. In SCARLET STREET he achieves a kind of nirvana: Playing against type, he's not a ruthless criminal but a meek, kind-hearted amateur painter, easily duped by femme fatale Joan Bennett because she seems to be the first person to pay any attention to him. In films such as LITTLE CAESAR, Robinson guns people down with the offhanded casualness of eating a hamburger; here, he's at the mercy of forces he cannot see or even imagine, and they gradually strip him of everything. We know that coiled deep inside him is the power and violence with which he could save himself. But it's not to be. Robinson is fated to wander the streets, penniless; forced to stare at his own priceless masterpieces, taunting him from art gallery windows with their inaccessibility; and finally, even have his sanity taken away from him. Lang's filmography is stuffed with majestic downers, but surely this is among his most bleak. (1945, 103 min, archival 35mm) RC
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More info at docfilms.uchicago.edu.
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (Contemporary Revival)
Chicago History Museum - Tuesday at dusk
Sometimes there is a moment of pure serendipity in one's life and, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it. Case in point: the Chicago History Museum is presenting the film that not only taught countless youngsters how to properly play sick, but also showcased our city as the playground for Matthew Broderick's understimulated Northshore slacker. In a performance that made him a bonafide leading man at the age of 23, Broderick creates a character so clever and charming that you can’t help but root for him. Beginning with a little white lie about a serious illness to get a final day off before going to college, Ferris schemes to cheer up his best friend Cameron with a VIP tour of the city. Wrigley Field, the Art Institute, Michigan Avenue, and the Sears Tower (“I think I see my dad”) are the backdrop for the greatest senior ditch day ever put on film. Its enduring appeal lies in the subplot, however, in which the evil dean of students, Edward Rooney (Jeffery Jones), vows to catch Ferris in the act and force him to repeat his senior year. The screening is free, and will take place on the lawn behind the museum starting at dusk. (1986, 103 min, DVD) JH
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More info at www.chicagohistory.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS:
At the Bank of America Cinema on Saturday is the great Josef von Sternberg’s SCARLET EMPRESS, one of several films he made featuring Marlene Dietrich.
Opening at the Music Box this week is Paolo Sorrentino’s IL DIVO; continuing is SERAPHINE. The midnight films Friday and Saturday are Sam Raimi’s DRAG ME TO HELL and INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. The matinee film Saturday and Sunday is the classic 1933 musical 42nd STREET, with the infectious Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler.
Facets Cinémathèque screens Howard Libov’s drama FAVORITE SON this week. The Facets Night School screening Saturday at midnight is Sergei Eisenstein’s IVAN THE TERRIBLE: PART ONE, with a talk by Brian Elza.
Also at the Film Center: the U.S. premiere of director Phil Grabsky’s new documentary IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN, which will have a four week run.
Saturday at Chicago Filmmakers are two screenings (7:30 and 9:30pm) of the new documentary LOOT.
On Tuesday at Grant Park, the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival kicks off at sunset with Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD.
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) continues its outdoor summer series with a 70th anniversary screening of WIZARD of OZ (from DVD).
The Chicago Cultural Center screens Sven Taddicken’s 2006 film EMMA’S BLISS on Wednesday (from DVD).
Friday at the Portage Theater is “Bang-a-thon,” which seems to be a screening of the film VAMPHOPPERS, at 8pm. On Saturday it’s a horror film bonanza with “Summer Slaughter”—seven hours of “slashers, psychos, and serial killers.”
Also at the Chicago History Museum this week: on Sunday it’s the documentary FOREVER LOYAL: A SALUTE TOT THE CUBS FANS AND THEIR FIELD; on Wednesday at 10am and 1pm it’s the Disney film NEWSIES. |
