December 10th 2013. Pick of the Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
John Carpenter's THEY LIVE, the filmmaker's takedown of Reagan-era middle class evisceration, continues at the IFC Center for the remainder of the week, until it's replaced on Friday by Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. For reasons that defy my eloquence, this seems all too utterly appropriate.
Ongoing series today include the Film Forum's month-long trib to Barbara Stanwyck, the Film Society's coda to the year of Yasujiro Ozu, and the French Institute's Cinema Tuesdays, this month dedicated to maverick silent film comedian Max Linder. The full bill of fare;
IFC Center
THEY LIVE (1988) Dir; John Carpenter
French Institute/Alliance Francais
MAX LINDER SHORTS PROGRAM (1911-21) Dir; Max Linder
Film Forum
THE PURCHASE PRICE (1932) Dir; William Wellman
SO BIG! (1932) Dir; William Wellman
Film Society of Lincoln Center
AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (1962) Dir; Yasujiro Ozu
EQUINOX FLOWER (1957) Dir; Yasujiro Ozu
Today's Pick? The MAX LINDER SHORTS PROGRAM at the French Institute/Alliance Francais. I'll admit it'd been years since I'd even heard the name Max Linder before Quentin Tarantino dropped it in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS ('cause lookit the big brain on Brad), but all posturing aside QT does have a way of jazzing up a Cinegeek's interest over a particular film or an entire CV. So it was in the wake of his '09 WW2 flick that I actually sought out the silent comic's works to view for the first time, and of course the resulting education merited not merely gut-chuckles but appreciation for the early formative days of the cinema. I'd always known of the Chaplin comparisons, but I'd never known that Linder got his start in film nearly ten years before Chaplin, or that he'd essayed one of the first recognizable continuing characters in the advent of the cinema, long before the Little Tramp became CC's indelible worldwide persona. Linder has enjoyed something of a revival these last few years, his debauched aristocratic ne'er-do-well catching on with cinephile newbies like myself, and while his acrobatic abilities and sophistication with the unfolding language of cinema may not have matched the heights reached by Chaplin or Keaton or Lloyd, he is nonetheless worth a viewing if only to marvel at the efforts of perhaps their closest celluloid antecedent.
For more info about these and all NYC's classic screenings in December '13 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter! Back tomorrow with another jar of the Mott's, til then brush up and down and not side to side, floss thoroughly, and advise the other kids to do likewise. Excelsior!
-Joe Walsh
