13th ANNUAL EUROPEAN UNION FILM
FESTIVAL
Gene Siskel Film Center - March 5 - April 1
Week two has the E.U. festival in full swing, with Catherine Breillat's
new film BLUEBEARD; Tilda Swinton in the critically-acclaimed
Italian film I AM LOVE; KONT DIGA, the first indigenous
film from Malta; and more. Check our blog for reviews of selected film
for this week.
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Cine-File will be providing greatly expanded coverage of the festival
on our blog this year. Check there each Friday for reviews
of many of that week's films. There may also be occasional additions
throughout the week each week.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Bela Tarr's THE MAN FROM LONDON
(New International)
Facets Cinémathèque - Check venue website showtimes
By the late 2000s, we finally found a place for Bela Tarr movies.
But maybe not for new Bela Tarr movies. When Facets finally put
SATANTANGO (1994) out on DVD in 2008, it was that release that was heralded
while THE MAN FROM LONDON was ignored on the festival circuit. Many
have complained that the film is "style for the sake of style,"
as though cinema consists of something other than style and that a tracking
shot represents less substance than dialogue. At this point, Tarr's
style can't be separated from what he means to express: he isn't trying
to bend the world to fit a set of techniques, but using those techniques
(slow zooms, long takes, black-and-white film stock, post-synced sound)
as a launching point for the creation of a world; every movement of
the dolly establishes a new geography. If you're gonna complain that
the action of a Tarr is "unrealistically" slow, you might
as well complain about the coincidences of a Hitchcock or the rapport
police and thieves enjoy in a Mann. The film's soundtrack, which is
as musique concrete as PLAYTIME's, combines Mihaly Vig's synth
strings with Tarkovsky's (or are they Fassbinder's? or maybe even Welles'?)
post-synced voices. Yeah, sure, even the current version of THE MAN
FROM LONDON, re-dubbed following complaints about the voice-acting at
Cannes, is as jarring in its mismatch of voices as an Americanized giallo.
But that isn't a deficiency. There are no deficiencies in a movie where
everything is intentional. THE MAN FROM LONDON's capriccio is a glum
French port, populated with little lost men imported wholesale from
the opening shot of WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. Maloin (Miroslav Krobot),
his jacket collar permanently turned up, operates a railroad switchyard
by the docks. The half-hour opening sequence, a virtuoso example of
Tarr's directing, has more than a little of De Palma's SNAKE EYES to
it: the first visible cut occurs roughly 13 1/2 minutes in, and this
dialogue-less series of dollies, zoom-ins, zoom-outs, and measured movements
of the camera crane creates a tiny universe of half-noticed intrigues
and sleepy tension, introducing every mystery the remainder of the film
unpacks, if not solves. There's a suitcase, a ship (as menacing as that
ferry in THE GHOST WRITER) and a few men who hide in the shadows. Whatever
you may think of the slow movement of camera in THE MAN FROM LONDON,
you can never be completely sure where that camera will go. THE MAN
FROM LONDON restores mystery to mysteries. The wind, fog and rain, which
always arrive on cue, may be fake, but the sense of wonder is genuine.
(2007, 139 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.facets.org.
Shirley Clarke's THE CONNECTION
(American Revival)
Film Studies Center (University
of Chicago) - Friday, 7pm
Often when a play is adapted for the
cinema there are complaints that that the resulting film is "too
stagy," that it hasn't been "opened up for the movies."
Those kinds of criticisms completely miss the point, for when it's done
correctly, a faithful adaptation of a theatrical piece can be the most
cinematic of all movies. Certainly, suspense films like WAIT UNTIL DARK
and ROPE show exactly how restricting the action to a single set can
ratchet up the tension, using a play's claustrophobia as its greatest
asset. Clarke's shamefully underappreciated THE CONNECTION is also a
study in claustrophobia. By trapping us in a dingy loft apartment with
several junkies,
and some documentary filmmakers, while they wait for their dealer to
arrive, every tiny shift in mood and behavior becomes a change writ
large. We're given the time and space to study every aspect of the loft,
every curl of peeling paint and black scrape on the wall; to "live" there for two hours. That includes hanging out with legendary Blue Note
jazz musicians like Freddie Redd and Jackie
McLean. Their argot may be dated ("This
cat is corroded!") but the opportunity to watch them jam is priceless.
(1961, 110 min, archival 35mm print) RC
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More info at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
Fritz Lang's THE BIG HEAT (American
Revival)
Music Box - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
One of the most iconic of Fritz Lang's films and one of the most
brutal American films of its time, with Lee Marvin playing his most
memorable villain before Liberty Valance. In its sadism, THE BIG HEAT
sets the stage for Don Siegel's late-50s work (THE LINE-UP, BABY FACE
NELSON); its equally chilly dolly shots anticipate Preminger's films
of the 1960s. The story itself is below par for Lang: The upstanding
cop (Glenn Ford) breaking up a crime ring must have been old hat by
1953. But Lang's investigative, levelheaded approach makes it resonate
with the force of allegory. For Lang, criminality was often the expression
of mankind at its worst and organized crime was the institutionalization
of bad faith. Marvin's gangster may be irredeemable, but Lang finds
counterpoint in the character of his mistress, Debby Marsh. Debby is
the prospect of villainy (Lang's filmmaking was too atheistic to suggest
the word evil), a spoiled moll who comes to help the police.
Lang may be underrated as a director of women: His three films with
Joan Bennett remain exceptional in their three-dimensional in their
exploration of the actress's intelligence, confidence and vulnerability,
and he achieves similar feats with Gloria Grahame here. Notwithstanding
her performance in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, this may be Grahame's most
iconic performance. Regardless, it's the beating heart of an often-despairing
film. (1953, 89 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Videos by Lynne Sachs (Experimental
Documentary/Narrative)
Chicago Filmmakers - Friday, 8pm
Film Studies Center - Saturday,
7pm
For twenty-five years Lynne Sachs has
been making work that seek to explain the universal elements of human
experience that emerge from documenting first person perspectives. History,
or at least the knowledge of historical events, shapes how each of us
views life, and it is this connection between past and present that
remains central in her newest works. Her films acknowledge the limitations
inherent in the documentary genre, and perhaps no more so than in her
decade-long five-film series I AM NOT A WAR PHOTOGRAPHER. This weekend
she will present the most recent installment in the series, LAST HAPPY
DAYS (2009, 37 min, DVD), at Chicago Filmmakers and the Film Studies
Center at University of Chicago. Sachs paints a picture of a distant
relative whose life story encompasses both the best and worst qualities
of life in the twentieth century. Originally a doctor in his native
Hungary, Sandor Lenard fled the Nazis in 1938, first to Rome where he
worked for the US Army reconstructing the bones of dead soldiers. Eventually
he settled in the Brazilian Amazon and gained brief fame after translating
Winnie the Pooh into Latin. Reflecting on our collective obsession
with genealogy, Sachs approaches her portraiture as an essay on the
horrors of war as well as the motivation behind artistic practice. To
complete each evening, Chicago Filmmakers pairs this film with Sachs
first narrative film, WIND IN OUR HAIR (2009, 42 min, DVD), inspired
by the writings of Julio Cortazar, and the FSC pairs it with a new piece
about Iraqi burial rituals translated into Latin, COSMETIC SURGERY FOR
CORPSES (2010, 10 min, DVD). Lynne Sachs in person at both screenings.
JH
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org and filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
William Wellman's A STAR IS BORN
(American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Tuesday, 6pm
William Wellman was a personal, consistently engaging filmmaker
and perhaps a great one. His quickly-produced films of the 1930s anticipate
Samuel Fuller in their grittiness, cynicism, and front-page relevance;
the closest equivalent among his contemporaries, Raoul Walsh, may have
shared his feistiness but not his odd, quasi-art-movie flourishes. Wellman's
formalism reached its peak with TRACK OF THE CAT (1954), a Technicolor
Western designed in black-and-white, and there are similarly fascinating
ideas throughout his prolific 30s work. Like NOTHING SACRED (also 1937),
A STAR IS BORN is an early experiment in Technicolor played out in genre,
as opposed to epic, storytelling. The film is a remake of George Cukor's
WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?, a behind-the-scenes story about a rising actress'
affair with an older actor whose star is fading. Aside from the two-strip
color photography, STAR is a curious item for the pairing of this brusque
director with such melodramatic material. Wellman excelled in proletarian
dramas: His tough-love approach to characterization, which made him
an ideal storyteller for the Depression, typically denied the sympathy
expected in love stories. The results, if not quite extraordinary, are
certainly fascinating--the sort of great, instructive experiment that
regularly emerged from studio assignations in this era. Lecture by
Virginia Wright Wexman. (1937, 111 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Rian Johnson's BRICK (American
Contemporary Revival)
Facets Cinémathèque
- Saturday, Midnight
The logline for BRICK is that it's
like one of those god-awful John Hughes movies played dead straight,
a high school clique story conceived as terse neo-noir. It's been accused
of being a calling card film (which it probably is), but it's one of
the finest films to ever belong to that unfashionable category. There
are the usual trappings of a calling card: the film school compositions,
the endless fade-ins, an over-use of shallow depth-of-field, a high
concept, vintage-store production design, resourceful use of a tiny
budget (half-a-million dollars isn't much to shoot a 35mm feature on)
in order to entice future financiers. It's a feature-length cinematography
reel and a showcase for Rian Johnson's range as a screenwriter, director,
and editor, for his cousin Nathan's abilities as a composer, and for
the talents of its actors. In its mad rush to prove itself, in the low-budget
insecurity that pushes it to immodestly use its modest means, and, above
all, in its desire to impress us, BRICK takes routes a less ambitious
movie never would. To show how serious he can be, Johnson treats his
subject matter with more maturity than a mature filmmaker ever would;
to show how exciting BRICK can be, he invests more kinetic energy into
a pan of the camera than a better-funded filmmaker would put into his
car chases. By making every role showy, the film gives its cast the
depth of a classic studio production. It seems like Johnson aspired
to nothing more than the chance to direct bigger and "better" films
but, then again, that's what Polanski aspired to in making KNIFE IN
THE WATER. Johnson's like a man who, while trying to impress a potential
employer, blurts out something beautiful. Mercenary aspirations are
often the first step to poetry. Showing in Facets' "Night School" series, with a talk by Lauren Whalen. (2005,
110 min, DVD projection) IV
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More info at www.facets.org.
Andrea Arnold's FISH TANK (New International)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University)
- Friday, 7pm
The sophomore feature from Andrea Arnold
is a raw and unsettling portrait of 15 year-old Mia, a girl living in
a dismal UK housing project with her dysfunctional mom and little sister.
Katie Jarvis delivers a robust portrayal as her character confronts
her developing sexuality and personal independence. Much like her first
film, the BAFTA-sweeping RED ROAD (2006), Arnold doesn't pull any punches
when it comes to the flaws of her female characters. Mia's teenage experience
is disconcerting and made even dangerous at times by her surroundings.
She is foul-mouthed and cagey, but to Arnold's credit we don't hesitate
to identify with her. The scope of the movie is completely Mia's experience;
the camera moves with her in almost every shot. When her mother gets
an attractive new boyfriend, played by Michael Fassbender, things start
to spiral downward fast. FISH TANK fits well in the British tradition
of social realism movies, but banishes any sentimentality in exchange
for allowing its characters to respond fully to their ever-worsening
circumstances. Still, in all that goes wrong, Arnold provides Mia, and
thereby the audience, small moments of rest, beauty, and limited transcendence.
(2009, 122 min, 35mm) CL
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Roots & Culture Gallery (1034 N. Milwaukee) presents New
Acquisition from the Video Data Bank on Saturday at 7pm. The program
highlights new work from the venerable Chicago-based video art distributor
and includes Chicagoan Jesse McLean's terrific THE ETERNAL QUARTER INCH,
former Chicagoans Sterling Ruby (TRIVIALITY) and Jim Finn (GREAT MAN
AND CINEMA), and critic favorite Dani Levanthal (54 DAYS THIS WINTER
36 DAYS THIS SPRING FOR 18 MINUTES) and additional work Susan Youssef,
Wynne Greenwood & K8 Hardy, Nicholas Provost, and a 1993 video interview
with Pat Steir.
The student-run Experimental Film
Society at the School of the Art Institute screens a program of
landscape films on Monday at 4:15pm (112 S. Michigan Ave., Rm. 1307).
Showing are two masterpieces, Peter Kubelka's UNSERE AFRIKAREISE and
Bruce Baillie's VALENTIN DE LAS SIERRAS; Bruce Conner's rarely shown
LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS; Chick Strand's ANSELMO AND THE WOMEN; Oskar Fischinger's
MUNICH-BERLING WANDERUNG; and former SAIC student Robert Fulton's LESSER
ANTILLES.
Jacques Audiard's A PROPHET and Roman Polanski's THE GHOST
WRITER continue at Landmark's Century Centre Cinema. Don
Argot's documentary THE ART OF THE STEAL opens Friday.
Bank of America Cinema screens the underrated Joseph M Mankiewicz's
1946 film DRAGONWYCK on Saturday at 8pm.
Doc Films (University of Chicago) concludes its winter schedule
this weekend with Anne Fontaine's COCO BEFORE CHANEL (Friday
night and Sunday afternoon) and Wes Anderson's FANTASTIC MR. FOX
(Saturday night and Sunday afternoon). The spring schedule starts March
29.
Also at the Music Box this week: the three film RED RIDING
TRILOGY opens; NORTH FACE and AJAMI both continue;
Danny Perez's experimental music film with Animal Collective, ODDSAC,
screens Wednesday at 7pm and 9pm (with Perez and members of AC in person);
the second Saturday and Sunday matinee is NORTH FACE; and the Friday
and Saturday midnight films are Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS and
Terry Gilliam's THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS.
The Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) hosts a lunchtime
lecture (Tuesday, 12:30pm) by Italian film teacher, novelist, and screenwriter
Giaime Alonge titled "Hacks and Authors: Ben Hecht, the politique
des auteurs and scriptwriting in classical Hollywood."
Also at Chicago Filmmakers this week is the lesbian-detourned
video mash-up BABES IN B-MOVIES, for which local editor Sharon
Zurek has removed all the extraneous plot from three "classic" B
films to find the hidden Sapphic core. Showing Saturday at 8pm (social
hour at 7pm) as part of the Dyke Delicious monthly series.
The Portage Theater presents "Monster Madness" on Sunday with screenings of ABBOTT & COSTELLO
MEET DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE, the 1925 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA,
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and Don Knotts in THE GHOST AND MR.
CHICKEN.
