March 7th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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MOMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series offers up two more days of George Cukor's THE ACTRESS, based on Ruth Gordon's autobiographical script and starring Jean Simmons. If you ever write as well as Ruth Gordon did you get to cast somebody as glamorous as Jean Simmons to play you too. Also starring a little day player named Spencer Tracy and the pre-taxidermy Tony Perkins. Not my Pick.
Over at the Clearview Chelsea Cinemas, the lone first run Manhattan multiplex that routinely screens classic films, Dolly Parton shows off her attributes artistic and otherwise in THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS. Okay, it's no masterpiece, but it is now a quaint reminder of how the 80's dealt with 70's subject matter in changing times. Plus Dolly's a babe. Not my Pick and for good reason; while Dolly remains a very desirable fallen women indeed the Film Forum unveils THREE-count-'em-THREE fallen women for the price of ONE on the final day of their glorious month-long trib to the year in Hollywood 1933. So it's all about sheer bang for your buck. As it were. Read on.
Bruce Goldstein's lovingly crafted retrospective devoted to the best and most notable of pre- and post-Code films in the year of its institution closes on a fitting and entertainingly seamy note. The influence of European cinema coupled with the escapist demands of a Depression era public created new narrative avenues of film storytelling, more adult and some felt morally challenged avenues. The men got more violent and the women more promiscuous. Both displayed, onscreen anyway, less and less fealty to any social contract, which caused some rumbling in the more pious circles of society. Eventually the compromise made resulted in the Motion Picture Production, or "Hays", Code, and Hollywood would tone down the tomfoolery for a couple of decades. Thankfully a generous portion of movies made prior to the new restrictions remain for public consumption, which brings us to tonight's salacious proceedings.
Things get started with Michael Curtiz's FEMALE, which finds Ruth Chatterton's auto tycoon taking liberties not contractually defined with her male employees. Events steam up in James Cruze's I COVER THE WATERFRONT, which finds Claudette Colbert standing between her dock smuggler father and the earnest reporter pursuing the crook. Guess who she picks? The sauna reaches its sweaty pitch with Phil Goldstone's THE SIN OF NORA MORAN, wherein Zita Johann finds herself caught in an undertow of vice, scandal and murder. These three ladies of lewd wrote the rules on how to break them in a time when moral outrage was something to contend with indeed, and even though the studios would mellow their shenanigans going forth the efforts of Chatterton, Colbert and Johann remain indelible and even brave in hindsight. Today they represent not merely the end of a film fest, but of an era of filmmaking as well. Hope to see ya at the Forum later!
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