January 3rd 2013. First Pick Of the Day Of The Year.

Garbo's barbaric NINOTCHKA must depart Paris, and the Film Forum, this Thursday. The bolshevik beaut shines in her brand new 35mm print!

James Dean at least got to see the final cut of EAST OF EDEN before his tragic car accident, and one hopes he was pleased with Kazan's epic take on small town Americana and the sins handed down generationally therein. MOMA screens the CinemaScope Steinbeck for two more days.

Speaking of MOMA they apparently can't quite get enough of the whimsical Pier Paolo Pasolini, as their excellent and comprehensive retropsective begins to wind down with today's screenings of PIGSTY and THEOREM this grey and brisk January day, conditions which would suit the director just fine thinks me.

Margo Channing instantly knows ALL AOUT EVE. The rest of us slobs have to watch the movie to find out. Poor us.

Finally MOMA, in a none too rare Hat Trick, provides a third bag of classic cinema goodness as thier Dickens On Film series nearly comes to its end. The David O. Selznick produced DAVID COPPERFIELD offers a game William Claude Dukenfield as the hero's beneficent landlord Mr. Micawber, as well as the talents of Freddie Bartholomew and Maureen O'Sullivan in front of the camera and the great George Cukor behind it. Sturdy and entertaining, but ultimately underwhelming, and the latter screening this day in this series is, I believe, the finest Dickens iteration Hollywood ever produced. So I make it my first Pick Of The Day 2013.

David O. Selznick had a knack for the flickers that saw him bounce around the studios as story editor before he took over as RKO's head of production. Wooed by MGM's Louis B. Mayer as a bulwark against Irving G. Thalberg's immense power and influence, Selznick was granted free reign during a period of Thalberg's illness to greenlight whatever he chose. In 1935 he picked the classics he so loved, bringing ANNA KARENINA to the screen with none other than Greta Garbo in the role, the aforementioned COPPERFIELD helmed by the already prestiged George Cukor, and then his second Dickens offering of the year, arriving just after Christmas and offering esteemed cast and crew. Only director Jack Conway, cinematic journeyman from film's earliest days who'd carved out a niche as small budget romcom helmer, seemed out of this project's depths.

Hence the involvement of Selznick's chief story editor and the man's favored second unit director. Val Lewton knew old world scale and opulence, his family having fled his native Russia before the revolution, and was able to transpose not merely the decadence of his Old World but also its nobility onto Dickens' own transposition of his Brit Empire onto revolutionary France. A neat trick all around, greatly enforced by the 2nd unit camerawork of the brilliant Jacques Tourneur. Lewton and Tourner would soon go on to prove exactly how brilliant they were with their names on the credits in a series of RKO horror classics that would save that studio. Not to steal any credit away from Conway, but I can't help but feel Selznick, Lewton and Tourner were the essential ingredients that propelled this classic to its cinematic peaks which remain lofty, employing the full strength of the studio system at its height to project the epic tumult of a revolution and the effects on people great and small. It begins with peace and the heartbreak which accompanies it, and concludes with chaos and madness and the claiming finally of one's humanity. It is that most romantic of films that posits that love and politics may not be so far removed after all. And it screens today for a final time in a 35mm print at MOMA.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES unspools at 7pm tonight. Believe me it will warm a cold heart this bleak January evening.

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