September 27th 2014. Pick of the Day.
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Look, I've got a lot, I mean a LOT to say about today's Pick, so forgive me if I've short-changed the header today. The ending should be better than the start anyway, shouldn't it?
New and continuing series today include 1939 - Hollywood's Golden Year at IFC Center, the Tennessee Williams retrospective at Film Forum, Retro Metro at BAM Cinématek, New York Film Festival - Revivals at Lincoln Center, and Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien at Museum of the Moving Image. The wim wam as follows;
IFC Center
1939 - Hollywood's Golden Year
DARK VICTORY (1939) Dir; Edmund Goulding
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) Dir; John Carpenter
Nitehawk Cinema
THE HAUNTING (1963) Dir; Robert Wise
VAMPYR (1932) Dir; Carl Theodore Dreyer
Film Forum
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) Dir; Elia Kazan
THE FUGITIVE KIND (1960) Dir; Sidney Lumet
ROME OPEN CITY (1945) Dir; Roberto Rossellini
BAM Cinématek
BEAT STREET (1984) Dir; Stan Lathan
Film Society of Lincoln Center
New York Film Festival - Revivals
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA - NEWLY RESTORED EXTENDED CUT (1984) Dir; Sergio Leone
Museum of the Moving Image
Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien
THE GREEN GREEN GRASS OF HOME (1982) Dir; Hou Hsiao-hsien
Anthology Film Archives
LAUREL AND HARDY SHORTS PROGRAM (1932-35) Various directors
Landmark Jersey Loews
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1951) Dirs; Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
SUNSET BOULEVARD (1960) Dir; Billy Wilder
Today's Pick? I'm gearing up for a very, very special day today. So I first and foremost wanna thank the Film Society for extending me a most gracious courtesy, in particular one David Ninh, publicist extraordinaire for the hallowed institution, as well as George Nicholis from the prestigious PMK-BNC agency. Their extra-mile effort has secured me a ticket to today's must-attend. For the first time, however, I'll be taking my seat as a member of the press. It's the little things, folks, that keep this film fanatic's heart beating.
Sergio Leone regarded the genre he invoked in much the same way iconic horror directors view the grindouse arena they produced their initial masterpieces in, as entry-level gig in which to produce calling card works they prayed would elevate them to grander planes. Like those filmmakers, like Carpenter and Romero and Hooper, directors who worshipped Leone by the by, they not only never escaped their so-called cinematic ghettos, they didn't need to. Their work was so assured, even groundbreaking, that the film world would ultimately bend to them, their fans growing up to be filmmakers who stole whole swaths of their influence and brandished them unabashedly. In art and culture, lowbrow always eventually becomes the highbrow. In the case of certain artists, however, their work, deceptively, was never lowbrow to begin with.
Leone invented the beloved subgenre known as the Spaghetti Western, and also created what many still regard as the brand's finest iterations: A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Upon completing FEW DOLLARS MORE, he'd already grown bored of his creation, and sought something he deemed more important, something that would establish him not merely as a crafter of grand entertainment, but as an artist, to be recognized as such by the men he deemed his peers. By the end of GB&U, somebody had passed a copy of a little known American potboiler on to him, The Hoods by Harry Grey. He desperately pushed it to every studio as his next project (this well before Coppola got around to crafting THE GODFATHER), but he received the same response from every studio head; we'll bankroll whatever project you pursue. As long as it features clacking hooves, six-shooters and dubbed voices. He was the ulitmate victim of his own success. This led him, however, to transfer his pent up ambitions into a script he shared with Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, the aforementioned ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Not a bad consolation prize, most would agree.
Yet he never abandoned the pursuit. He manuevered his way through a rights-issue quagmire, he sought funding and met with actors over several periods to play the principals, he made DUCK, YOU SUCKER (a title he based on what he erroneously thought popular American slang), he actually, rumor has it, turned down the assignment of translating Puzo's mafia masterwork before Frankie Ford made something eternal of it. He never gave up. And in the early 80's, nearly a decade removed from his last turn in the director's chair, a neophyte producer flush with oil money came to Hollywood looking to break in in a big way. Arnon Milchan was looking for names, BIG names that he could back, in doing so simultaneously increasing his own cache and requiting a dream of working with the greats. It came to his attention that the man who'd invented the Spaghetti Western wanted to make a gangster pic. Badly.
Things moved pretty quickly after that. Casting was swift, the pairing of Robert De Niro and James Woods not merely lucky but inspired. A young William Forsythe got to strut. James Russo brought his unhinged menace. Elizabeth McGovern tried on Daisy Buchanan's heels. Jennifer Connelly twirled dreamlike as McGovern's younger self. Treat Williams showed why his should've been a much more formidable career once again. Indeed, Tuesday Weld reminded of wasted brilliance's pain. And Danny Aiello played Danny Aiello. There's not a damn thing wrong with that.
Longtime collaborators Tonino Delli Colli and Ennio Morricone directed the photography and composed and conducted the music, respectively. It seemed a can't miss. And then the 80's intervened. And any residual taste and bravery remotely sniffing of 70's New Hollywood was meddled with, mucked up or shelved. Such was the legacy of Michael Cimino's vastly underrated HEAVEN'S GATE that no one dared risk resembling that debacle. Leone's original cut was reduced by almost 1/2, from 229 minutes to 139. The resulting theatrical release rearranged the time jump structure to a more linear one, removed whole subplots and by proxy subtexts, and generally made a mess of affairs.
Critics, those who'd seen the unscissored version at Cannes earlier that year, pitched a fit, which they were able to do at one point, believe it or no, and the film's parent financiers relented, allowing the 229 minute version a home video release. It was then that the public finally got to see Leone's last, and best according to many, grand statement of the cinema. It wasn't enough to salve his wounds though. He died five years later feeling he'd never truly gotten his due, his chance to show what he was made of, and subsequently what the movies were made of. The only justice to be had from this tale is that movie audiences did witness his genius one last time, did hoist a work of cinematic art on its collective shoulders to parade about the square, and that Leone's CV is among the very few considered just about perfect.
But Wait! There's More! If you buy now you get an extra 22 minutes of Leone's last masteriece! I love invoking infomercial poetry!
A couple of years ago even more missing footage from Leone's preferred longer cut of his film surfaced, and through the restorative efforts funded by Gucci and Scorsese's Film Foundation, that now 4-plus hour version of an already collossal work of celluloid bravura arrives on our shores for the first time ever. And guess who's gonna be there? C'mon guess. I'll give you a hint, his initials are me.
The restored, extended cut of Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA screens today at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the New York Film Festival's sub-series Revivals. I'm damn well not gonna slip.
For more info on these and all NYC's remaining classic film screenings in September '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. For the monthly overview and other audio tomfoolery check out the podcast, and follow me on SoundCloud! For reviews of contemporary cinema and my streaming habits (keep it clean!) check out my Letterboxd page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back tomorrow with a brand new Pick, til then safe, sound, make sure the next knucklehead is too.
-Joe Walsh
P. S. We're swiftly returning to the winter climate, and believe it or not some of our fellow NY'ers have still yet to be made whole in the wake of the 2012 storm. Should you be feeling charitable please visit the folks at OccupySandy.net, follow their hammer-in-hand efforts to restore people's lives, and donate/volunteer if you have the inclination and availability. Be a collective mensch, Stockahz!
