CRUCIAL VIEWING
Eric Rohmer's SUMMER and THE FOUR
ADVENTURES OF REINETTE AND MIRABELLE (French Revivals)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
Perhaps it has also recently happened
to you: a group conversation about the merits of Louis C.K.'s TV show
Louie, now in its second season. Inevitably someone mentions how
revelatory certain episodes are by virtue of entirely avoiding the possibility
of humor, by taking plausible human situations not as jokes but with
genuine sincerity; and you want to ask: "have you ever seen...
movies?" When pressed, it's hard not to recommend Eric Rohmer (specifically,
say, 1972's CHLOE IN THE AFTERNOON, remade by C.K. and Chris Rock as
2007's I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE). But it remains to be seen if the narcissistic,
Manhattan-bound, and relentlessly phallic C.K. will ever achieve the
level of narrative experimentation and overt femininity of Rohmer's
1980s Comédies et Proverbs series, of which the improvisational
SUMMER (1986, 98 min, 35mm) and THE FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE
AND MIRABELLE (1987, 95 min, 35mm) are playing at the Siskel all
week in a double-feature antidote. The first takes the perspective of
the anxious and antisocial Parisian depressive Delphine (Marie Rivière)
during her July vacation, unconsciously seeking a moment of transcendence;
the second has as its subject the narrowing opposition between Reinette
(Jöelle Miquel) from the country and Mirabelle (Jessica Forde) from
Paris. While Rohmer is unambiguously aligned with the latter character,
the film's opening immersion in a rustic land devoid of the inequality,
conflict, and grift of the city is conceptually reminiscent of Malick's
THE NEW WORLD; and no other metropolitan auteur has shown more interest
in the countryside's tourist economy of recreation and aleatory romance.
REINETTE AND MIRABELLE, however, is also remarkable in its inverse commitment
to the dictums of the Bechdel Test: here is a movie that consists of
nothing other than two women talking to each other about something
other than men. Where SUMMER's Delphine struggles with the ennui of
heteronormative superstition, Reinette and Mirabelle have a greater
task: to resolve through play the meaning of honor, justice, fairness,
and aesthetic judgment within an unforgiving—and yet somehow, as you
know, sublime—urban landscape. MC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Michael Powell's and Emeric Pressburger's
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!
(British Revival)
Northwest Chicago Film Society at
the Portage Theater - Wednesday, 7:30pm
A rebuke of materialism and the wonton
acquisition of wealth, Powell and Pressburger's atmospheric romance
is also a soft-sell for British wartime bonhomie. Set in the Hebrides
of Scotland, a determined woman intends to meet her industrialist fiancé
on the Island of Kiloran, but is held on shore by fate and bad weather.
When the woman meets the Laird of Kiloran—an upstanding man on leave
from active duty, unconcerned with the value of his land—her faith
in upper class wealth is undermined. The film plays like a parable,
with the Laird acting as the romantic lead and a model for its war-weary
audience: honorable, selfless, moralistic, and satisfied with what he
has. I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! is never didactic and its precisely paced
romance leads its characters gently to its theme. Complete with its
own mythology of curses and legends, the film uses the island's people
to mirror the woman's conflict. Gaelic is spoken casually and an affecting
Scottish dance ritual celebrating a couple's enduring marriage provokes
her further. Both picturesque and portentous, the Hebrides' fog gives
way to gales, then to heavy seas and a massive ocean whirlpool. Through
an enveloping sound design and striking photography, Powell and Pressburger's
mastery of the elemental is on full display. The effect is a profound
diagnosis of their audience's restlessness with war's humbleness and
sacrifice, and a lyrical romance that simultaneously allows them to
escape. Showing with the 1946 George Pal Puppetoon TOGETHER IN THE WEATHER,
in a 16mm Kodachrome print. (1945, 91 min, 35mm) BW
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More info at www.nothwestchicagofilmsociety.org.
Chris Sullivan's CONSUMING SPIRITS
(Experimental Animation)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center — Thursday,
6pm
Chris Sullivan's otherworldly animation is full of tiny, odd, and potent
details: the tremor of a hand, the turn of a radio dial, a bird on a
tree limb. It is this world of small things that draws one in slowly. CONSUMING
SPIRITS, local filmmaker and SIAC professor Chris Sullivan's work in progress, a decade in the making so far, is an Appalachian gothic with four main
characters—all trapped by some problem of their own making and held
together by a sad and inescapably interconnected past. It is a remarkable
achievement that such a simple story isn't overwhelmed by the fractured
visual world Sullivan builds. CONSUMING SPIRITS glides through stop-motion
animation, pencil drawing, collage animation, and Sullivan's signature
style of cutout animation, and the movement is fragile and corporeal.
While all of the characters in his film are grotesquely rendered, it
is hard to imagine them as lifeless pieces of paper. The film is something
akin to the magical animation of Yuri Norstein—more cinematic than cartoonish. It
often delivers surprising moments of translucence or a mystifying depth
of field or a strange spot of light, which all seem to be more captured
than constructed. It is also often ruthlessly funny and gruesome, deepening
our look at these troubled characters as they attempt to deal with their
individual tragedies and disappointments. CONSUMING SPIRITS is exactly
as advertised—a consumption. (2011, 125 min, 16mm on HDCam Video)
CL
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More info at blogs.saic.edu/cate.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Larry Peerce's THE INCIDENT (American
Revival)
Northwest Chicago Film Society at Cinema Borealis — Tuesday, 8pm
New York City. Round midnight. A subway car filled with weary passengers.
Two young hoodlums, who have just mugged an old man at knifepoint, board
the train. And they decide they're hungry for more. This tense docudrama
from 1967, never released on DVD, is an intriguing precursor to both
THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE in its
gritty evocation of NYC as urban hellhole. It articulates the anxiety
underlying the "white flight" of urban dwellers to the suburbs
that was already in progress. Cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld was
master at capturing the textures of Manhattan; a few years later he
shot COTTON COMES TO HARLEM and DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE. On THE INCIDENT
he was denied permission to film anywhere on New York Transit Authority
property. So naturally he hid his camera in a bag and got some shots
guerrilla-style, which was later blended with footage staged in the
studio on a meticulously recreated subway car. The once-in-a-lifetime
cast includes Martin Sheen (in a very early role as one of the hoodlums),
Beau Bridges, Brock Peters, Ruby Dee, Ed McMahon (!), and Gary Merrill.
And, crucially, Thelma Ritter—can you imagine a film like this without
her? Also showing is the 1951 Hanna/Barbera cartoon JERRY'S COUSIN.
(1967, 107min, 16mm) RC
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.
Alan Schenider's WAITING FOR GODOT and FILM (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 3pm and Wednesday, 6pm
While the Film Center is advertizing this revival as a rare opportunity
to see the work of Samuel Beckett on the big screen, these are also
significant as a record of the work of Alan Schneider, the credited
director on both films. Schneider was not only one of Beckett's favorite
collaborators; he was one of the leading stage directors of his time,
responsible for the American premieres of Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?, Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and numerous
works by Harold Pinter. Surely, a man with that résumé knew the ins
and outs of alienation and the pregnant pause. Those qualities are central
to Beckett's most famous work, WAITING FOR GODOT (1961, 101 min, DigiBeta Video), which Schneider directed on Broadway
and then again for public television, starring Burgess Meredith and
Zero Mostel. (This is the version that the Siskel will be screening.)
The play takes place in an environment devoid of past or future, a decrepit
nowhere abandoned by time. If the Theater of the Absurd got its metaphysical
heft from the trauma of World War II (whose vision of total annihilation
rendered all human society absurd), it got its mechanics from movie
comedy: Eugene Ionesco cited the Marx Brothers as a chief influence,
while Beckett—whose drama drew power from gestures as much as it did
language—was long fascinated by silent comedy. So, it was dream come
true for Beckett when he got to collaborate with Buster Keaton on the
experimental short FILM (1965, 20 min, 35mm). Considering how
withholding Beckett's prose could be, it should be fascinating to see
the kind of writing he created out of boyish fandom. BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand's NATIVE
LAND (Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 5:30pm and Monday, 8pm
In 1936, Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand founded Frontier Films, a nonprofit
documentary production company that produced political and social activist
documentaries. The best known of these is their 1942 film NATIVE LAND.
Hurwitz and Strand's film begins with the great actor, singer, and activist
Paul Robeson narrating the history of America—from the settlement of
Jamestown in 1607 to the present day—as it was shaped by the people.
Robeson eloquently recounts the various hard-fought struggles for liberty,
in particular those of American labor in the 1930s. The film recreates
the heinous crimes against organizing attempts across the United States
through fictional episodes, since newsreels from the era did not report
these abuses of civil rights to the public. Hurwitz and Strand based
the scenes upon information obtained through the LaFollette Committee's
governmental hearings about crimes perpetrated by corporations against
fledgling unions and their members and supporters. While NATIVE LAND
deftly mixes different types of footage to tell its (hi)story, Strand
makes the most important contribution to the film's visual aesthetic.
It is no wonder considering his still photography helped to define the
canon of early American modernism. The traditional humanist genres of
landscape, architecture, and portraiture inspired both his photography
and filmmaking. In the film, Strand moves from the natural landscape
to the modern city, its industries, and its inhabitants, remarkably
capturing the details of everyday life that frequently escape us. Although
NATIVE LAND screened briefly at small art houses in 1942, the filmmakers
were blacklisted for their political beliefs in the McCarthy era, and
audiences did not see the film again until Hurwitz bought the rights
back in the 1960s. Showing in a newly restored print from the UCLA Film
and Television Archive. (1942, 80 min, 35mm) CW
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (American
Revival)
Music Box — Sunday, 11:30am
A crucial film in Robert Altman's filmography, if not necessarily
one of the best, this is significant for being Altman's first major
commercial success, thereby paving the way for one of the most fascinating—and
downright unpredictable—careers of any Hollywood director. The movie
marks Altman's first experiment with overlapping dialogue: some scenes
have as many as four conversations going on at once. As in subsequent
Altman features, the organized cacophony was achieved through an atmosphere
of much improvisation. By some accounts, less than one-quarter of the
dialogue that made it into the final cut had been scripted. (Ironically,
the movie still won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.)
The movie's success has less to do with its technical innovation, however,
than with Altman's anti-authoritarian views, which struck a deep chord
with the anti-war movement of the time. Though M*A*S*H was set during
the Korean War, Altman removed all references to Korea during editing
so that the setting might be mistaken for Vietnam. The jivey and often
sick humor—which, in hindsight, screams late-60s counterculture—only
makes things blurrier. (1970, 116 min, 35mm widescreen) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Robert Wiene's THE CABINET OF DR.
CALIGARI (Silent German Revival)
Music Box — Saturday, 12pm
This classic film begins with a young
man named Francis (Friedrich Feher) telling the story of the eerie Dr.
Caligari (Werner Krauss) to his friend. One day, Caligari (similar to
Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse) arrives in the small town of Holstenwall to
present his somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt), who sleeps in a coffin-like
cabinet, at their fair. When the fair ends, the first in a series of
mysterious crimes occurs with the murder of the town clerk, and Francis
determines to find the culprit. Not only is THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI
the first feature horror film, but also it is the earliest key example
in cinema of German Expressionism, deeply influential in the development
of film noir. Designed by the exceptionally talented Hermann Warm, Walter
Reimann, and Walter Rohrig, the film's studio sets, comprised of painted
canvas backdrops, distort one's sense of space to heighten the fear
and anxiety experienced by both the characters and audience. Wiene favors
the iris shot in capturing the actors and their exaggerated actions,
but he uses rectangles and diamonds in addition to circles, mirroring
the fundamental shapes seen in the fantastical sets and costumes; these
same shapes or combinations thereof appear in the images that the intertitles
are set against. Also, the sets inform the stylization of acting, particularly
by Krauss and Veidt who previously worked in Expressionist Theater. In
The Haunted Screen, film critic and historian Lotte Eisner perfectly
described the greatness of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and the first
films of Richard Oswald, "These works blithely married a morbid
Freudianism and an Expressionistic exaltation to the romantic fantasies
of Hoffmann and Eichendorff, and to the tortured soul of contemporary
Germany seemed, with their overtones of death, horror and nightmare,
the reflection of its own grimacing image, offering a kind of release." Live
organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott. (1920, 71 min, 35mm) CW
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Michael Gordon's PILLOW TALK (American
Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday and Tuesday, 6pm
This revival marks the second week of Pamela Robertson Wojcik's
lecture series at the Siskel Center, which is inspired by her recent
book, The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular
Culture, 1945 to 1975. The book analyzes how various mid-century
films and TV shows depicted apartment life, with an emphasis on the
genre's potential for subversive ideas. In a sharp review for Senses
of Cinema, John Fidler identifies Wojcik's thesis
as follows: "The apartment plot offers a vision of home—centered
on values of community, visibility, contact, density, friendship, mobility,
impermanence and porousness—in sharp contrast to more traditional views
of home as private, stable and family based. The apartment is key, of
course, to the imaginary of single and queer life, but it also offers
alternative visions of urban married life and child rearing." Wojcik
will surely have plenty to say about PILLOW TALK, an epochal film about
American single life containing some legendary homophobic gags. (For
further discussion of the film's subversive merit, check out Mark Rappaport's
1992 essay film ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES.) PILLOW TALK concerns the
romance between jet-setting singles Rock Hudson and Doris Day, who "meet"
over a party line. Hudson's aware of Day's flesh-and-blood identity,
but keeps his secret from her since he's worried she'll balk over his
swinging bachelor lifestyle. Movies don't get much more vanilla than
this, but there's a lot to swoon over if you're a sucker for bright
color CinemaScope. Wojcik lectures at the Tuesday screening.
(1959, 102 min, 35mm widescreen) BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
John Hughes' SIXTEEN CANDLES, WEIRD
SCIENCE, and FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (Contemporary American Revivals)
Music Box — Showtimes noted below
On a hot streak after penning the screen gems that were NATIONAL
LAMPOON'S VACATION and MR. MOM, John Hughes started a three year directorial
run that would redefine the Teen Movie, and made a splash with his 1984
debut, SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984, 93 min, DVD Projection; Thursday,
7pm). A romantic comedy with a heavy dose of slapstick, it is best remembered
for two things: making the 15 year old stars of the film, Molly Ringwald
and Anthony Michael Hall, into overnight sensations, and featuring Gedde
Wantanabe as Japanese foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong. As far
as Ringwald and Hall are concerned, this was their first major step
in becoming teen idols of the 80s. Both turned in great performances
in what would turn out to be the first of a multi-movie partnership
with Hughes, and made this teen oriented movie funnier, if not smarter,
than it deserved to be. Ringwald is the awkward sophomore who is madly
in love with a popular senior, and Hall is "the Geek." Despite having
lengthy, and still active, careers, the characters they played here
have cast a long shadow over the two, pigeonholing them for years to
come. Wantanabe has carved out a living through bit and supporting parts
(most notably on the TV series ER), but he too is irrevocably
tied to his role here—he is still being accosted by strangers for his
over-the-top portrayal of "the Donger." There is a thin line between
funny and offensive when depicting a racial stereotype and, almost 30
years later, it's still not clear where his portrayal lands. Despite
this ongoing controversy (NPR did a 2008 story on the cultural reaction
to the character), Hughes' knack for crafting memorable comic sidebars
was on full display here, as it would be in his 1985 effort, WEIRD
SCIENCE (1985, 94 min, DVD Projection; Thursday, 9:30pm). Again
casting Hall as the geek, this lighthearted tale is to computer pornography
as TRON was to computer gaming. Taking creative license from the Frankenstein
films (which the boys watch in the movie), Hall and his nerdy cohort
use a computer to create the perfect woman. Through the power of a military
mainframe and the perfect timing of a lightning bolt, these two uptight
virgins accidentally spawn Kelly LeBrock, and comedy ensues. Though
not featuring the most sophisticated of storylines (basically, nerds
use virtual woman to gain popularity and meet girls), the film is noteworthy
as the further development of Hughes' career and commercial success.
Beyond that, its focus on two insecure high-school outcasts who learn
to be comfortable in their own skin is a theme that Hughes would return
to time and again. The appeal of both these films lies in their relatable
teenage heroes, at once shy and smart, just waiting to grow up. In contrast,
there is the picaresque tale of FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (1986,
103 min, 35mm; Friday and Saturday, Midnight), about a confident young
man doing what he can to postpone adulthood. In a performance that made
him a bonafide leading man at the age of 23, Matthew 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.
In the film that not only taught countless youngsters how to properly
play sick, but also showcased our city as the playground for Broderick's
under stimulated Northshore slacker, there are moments of cinematic
greatness. Along with 1985's THE BREAKFAST CLUB, these films mark the
high point of Hughes' career as a director, and the popularity of the
teen movie. SIXTEEN CANDLES and WEIRD SCIENCE show as part of the
Chicago United Film Festival. JH
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.org and here.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
On Friday at 8pm, Chicago Filmmakers
presents New Documentary Showcase, featuring the films DISH:
WOMEN, WAITRESSING AND THE ART OF SERVICE (Maya Gallus), SACRET TRANSFORMATIONS
(Justine Nagan), and IRMA (Charles Fairbanks).
On Saturday, from 3-11pm, The Nightingale
hosts Power Up, a daylong pairing of a workshop and performance
event to benefit Playpower (www.playpower.org). On tap are an 8bit game design workshop
w/ no-carrier (3-6pm, $25 registration fee) and public events starting
at 8pm with an 8-bit open mic followed at 8:30pm with audio/visual performances
by Environmental Sound Collapse, Saskrotch, Kkrusty, Stagediver, Nom
Star, & Ungertron (chiptunes) and no-carrier, jon.satrom, & E.S.C (realtime video).
Opening on Friday at the Carrie
Secrist Project Space (835 W. Washington Blvd.) is HEALING,
a new video installation by local artist Todd Mattei.
On Monday at 8pm, Beauty Bar Chicago (1444 W. Chicago Ave.) presents an installment of their "Salonathon" series, with The Ones That Got Away, Part 1. Curated by the Chicago
Underground Film Festival, the program features work that the fest wished
they could have shown, but didn't have enough space for. Screening are
THE NATURAL (Ted Kennedy), RED RIDER'S LAMENT (Jeremy Bessoff), SEDIMENTING
(Emilie Crewe), RIVER, COME BACK (Nina Barnett), I GIVE YOU LIFE (Latham
Owen Zearfoss), and GOOD HOUSEKEEPING (Emily Oscarson).
Opening at the Landmark's Century
Centre Cinema this week are Maryam Keshavarz's Iranian/French/US
drama CIRCUMSTANCE and Mona Achache's French film THE HEDGEHOG.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Mike Ott's 2011 drama LITTLEROCK has five screenings;
and Paul Marino and Kurt Norton's new documentary on the National Film
Registry, THESE AMAZING SHADOWS, is on Sunday at 5pm.
Also at the Music Box this week:
René Féret's 2010 French drama MOZART'S SISTER opens; the documentary
SHOLEM ALEICHEM: LAUGHING IN THE DARKNESS has a final screening
on Friday at 3pm; and the Chicago United Film Festival features
a lineup of new narrative and documentary features and shorts and retrospective
screenings of John Hughes' SIXTEEN CANDLES and WEIRD SCIENCE (see above),
John Landis' THE BLUES BROTHERS (Friday, Midnight), and Tom Holland's
1988 horror film CHILD'S PLAY (Saturday, Midnight).
At Facets Cinémathèque this week is Krisztina Goda's 2007 Hungarian drama CHILDREN OF GLORY.
Also at the Portage Theater this week: Roberto Sneider's 2008 Mexican drama TEAR THIS HEART OUT screens on Thursday at 7:30.
At the Chicago Cultural Center this week: Cinema/Chicago's summer series continues with a screening
of Lillian Lieberman's 2010 Mexican
film VISA TO PARADISE (from DVD) on Wednesday at 6:30pm and Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat's
2009 Argentinean film THE MAN NEXT DOOR (from DVD) has a repeat
screening on Saturday at 2pm. Also on display at the Cultural Center
through September 18 is the exhibit Movie Mojo: Hand-Painted Posters
from Ghana.
The DuSable Museum screens the
2008 documentary FAUBOURG TREME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF BLACK NEW ORLEANS on Sunday at 2pm.
The Logan Square International Film
Series (Comfort Station Logan Square, 2579 N. Milwaukee) screens
George Cukor's 1940 comedy THE PHILADELPHIA STORY on Tuesday at 8pm. From DVD.
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
(800 S. Halsted) screens the documentaries A PLACE TO LIVE (2008)
and CARMEN'S PLACE (2009) in the Sex+++ Film Series on Tuesday
at 7pm.
On Monday at 8pm, Transistor
(3819 N. Lincoln Ave.; note new address) presents Ben Sombogaart's
2002 Dutch film TWIN SISTERS (from DVD). |
