June 7th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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Francois Truffaut's fictional alter ego, irrepressible scamp Antoine Doinel, suffers childhood's 400 BLOWS as part of MOMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film series. Truffaut's debut pretty much kicked off the Nouvelle Vague, and remains perhaps the most knowing, and haunting, depiction of childhood the cinema has ever offered. What it isn't is today's Pick, having snagged said honor yesterday. Shame, the weather's perfect for it.
Also at MOMA today their exhaustive tribute to Allan Dwan, the career director who resides somewhere between journeyman and auteur depending on who you ask, leaps into the second day of its month-long residence. Today we are favored with screenings of three silent shorts from Dwan's tenure at the pioneering Flying "A" Studios, all shot in 1912; THE THIEF'S WIFE, A MAN'S CALLING and CALAMITY JANE'S WARD, as well as 1917's THE FIGHTING ODDS which is presented, sadly, incomplete. Later tonight Dwan's tale of fatherly sins visited upon the sons MAN TO MAN unspools. How I'd love to move into the museum sleeping bag in tow for the duration of ths fest, but alas a separate but no less massive retrospective devoted to an important filmmaker, some say the medium's greatest, begins today, and my focus is thusly pulled easterly. We got the month, Dwan, I'll be back.
The Rubin Museum presents the single most appropriate classic flick tonight as part of their Cabaret Cinema series. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's SINGIN' IN THE RAIN will put a smile back on your face, as will the saffron and gym sock infused gin martini you'll purchase as world's greatest movie ticket. I can't believe I'm saying this but this misses as my Pick today. Always, dignity.
Excellent midnight fare this sopping wet eve offers scares aplenty, as the IFC Center screens Tery Gilliam's ferocious adap of Lewis Carroll's JABBERWOCKY and Ridley Scott's adap of IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, 1979's ALIEN. Linclon Center's Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center hosts JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING, and the Nitehawk Cinema responds with Stanley Kubrick's killing machine H.A.L. 9000 in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Okay the Kubrick's not much of a horror flick. You try tying all these screenings together.
All tempting offerings, but a truly monumental retrospective kicks off today, one dedicated to a master filmmaker, one of the medium's most celebrated and considered by some to be the greatest all-time. I've been known sometimes to discuss a filmmaker's CV based more on what I've read that what I've seen, particularly when it comes to foreign film, so this upcoming fest is manna from Goldstein to a Bucket List checker-offer like me. So it's with great enthusiam I dive into the filmography, in the venue intended, of one Yasujiro Ozu.
Ozu fell madly in love with cinema in his early teens, and despite a brief career detour as substitute teacher he maintained a steely focus on a career in film. Beginning as camera assistant in Shochiku Studios in 1923 he quickly rose through the ranks, despite interruptions caused by stints in the military, until he landed firmly in the director's chair for feature debut SWORD OF PENITENCE, now sadly a lost film. Fifty-two more films would follow before his untimely death in 1963, and his headstone bears not his name but the Japanese character mu, which translates literally as "nothingness". Sounds like a happy kid, huh?
Between the years 1927 and 1960 Ozu produced a body of work that was met in his homeland with varying degrees of success both critically and commercially. It wasn't until his films found audiences abroad, however, that his name ascended to the ranks of the finest filmakers the world had known, a status unthreatened today. The bulk of the credit for that exposure goes to film scholar Donald Richie, who first became enamored of Japanese culture in general and film in particular working as a writer for Pacific Stars and Stripes during the American occupation. Kashito Kawakita, a prominent film curator instrumental in exhibiting Japanese cinema for foreign markets and vice versa, became a friend, and introduced the writer to Ozu in 1948. That meeting spawned a friendship, and that friendship spawned into one of the great legacies shared by writer and subject, as the greatness of Ozu's oeuvre was served mightily, as was the output of Japanese cinema in total, by Richie's efforts analytic and drum-beating. Fittingly this retrospective is dedicated, indeed was initiated, as tribute to the great scholar of film, who sadly left us last February. A special day devoted solely to Richie is in the planning, so check back for the exacts regarding that event. Don't wait, however, to explore the craft of one of the most revered storytellers the film world's ever known. LATE SPRING gets the ball rolling and screens all day, but I reserve as my Pick an earlier work, one that serves as example of the filmmaker's style fully forming and his first Kinema Jumpo, Japan's Best Pic prize. More importantly though it may just offer a clear window to the director's childhood, which always answers plenty of questions about the man who survives it.
Ysujiro Ozu's I WAS BORN, BUT... screens tonight at 7:30pm at the Film Forum as part of the theater's trib to the filmmaker. Live piano accompaniment from Steve Sterner. How do I sneak sushi into a movie theater?
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Be sure to check with the good folks at Occupy Sandy and the Red Cross to volunteer/donate to their cause.
Be safe and sound and make sure the next so-and-so is too. Back tomorrow with a new Pick. So when's June gettin' here?
-Joe Walsh
