September 8th 2015. 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.
Welcome back from your various Labor Day diversions, Stockahz! Here's hoping yer getaways & BBQ's & suntannings & ablutions both oceanic and poolianic were soul-mending, head-clearing, foot-cleansing moments of the casually miraculous. Summer '15 might be officially considered the stuff of folklore at this arbitrary point, but we still got a lotta weather upcoming most accomodating to the subway-setting rep film aficionado. Actually, we got a minor heat wave upcoming this week, and what better way to cool off after setting off on the sweltering subway than to cool yer jets under the pale and frosty glow of the projector's bulb? Oh, and the theater's AC? We got a lot to cover this upcoming month of September, so let's get to it.
New and coninuing series this day include Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road and Celluloid Dreams at IFC Center, Gloria Grahame: Blonde Ambition at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Ingrid Bergman: A Centennial Celebration at MoMA, and the tribs to filmmaker Edgar Reitz and actor Robert Ryan at Anthology Film Archives. The kino kerfuffle be thus;
IFC Center
Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road
KINGS OF THE ROAD (1975) Dir; Wim Wenders
THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1976) Dir; Wim Wenders
WORKING GIRL (1988) Dir; Mike Nichols
Film Forum
RIFIFI (1955) Dir; Jules Dassin
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Gloria Grahame: Blonde Ambition
A WOMAN'S SECRET (1949) Dir; Nicholas Ray
MACAO (1952) Dir; Josef von Sternberg
CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER (1979) Dir; Joan Micklin Silver
THE COBWEB (1955) Dir; Vincente Minnelli
MoMA
Ingrid Bergman: A Centennial Celebration
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941) Dir; Victor Fleming
JOURNEY TO ITALY (1954) Dir; Roberto Rossellini
Anthology Film Archives
TABLE OF LOVE (1967) Dir; Edgar Reitz
ZERO HOUR (1977) Dir; Edgar Reitz
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955) Dir; John Sturges
ACT OF VIOLENCE (1948) Dir; Fred Zinnemann
Today's Pick? I've very recently chosen the Robert Ryan, Ingrid Bergman and Gloria Grahame tribs, so as always I'd like to space these series out. I'd like to hoist IFC Center's wonderful Celluloid Dreams series on my shoulders, but I just can't get behind Nichols' middling effort, and there are older and worthier efforts more deserving of the Kliegs today. So I'm going with a masterpiece of the German New Wave, one of the best adaps of Patricia Highsmith source material. Alfred Hitchcock was first to translate her inky moral compass to the big screen with the essential STRANGERS ON A TRAIN in 1950. Rene Clement followed with PURPLE NOON, what might remain the best screen version of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. Then in 1977 Dennis Hopper, flitting through various periods of employment, was summoned to Germany to essay Highsmith's iconic anti-hero, an assignment he dove into with great relish, and with his usual eccentric committment. In his hands Tom Ripley became a twisted source of moral support, loyal to the most haunting degree. He retained his talents of manipulation and opportunistic zeal, but exuded a genuine desire to provide a dying man his final moments of exhilaration, of life-affirmation. There is a genuine bond formed between him and Bruno Ganz's dying Zimmermann, a shared taste for death's temptation, that is never quite fully realized in the later adap RIPLEY'S GAME. Here perhaps is the essential difference between the versions; John Malkovich may fascinate in ways no other actor might boast, but Hopper seduces. And the essence of Tom Ripley is his casual way with our so-called innocence, and our desire to defile it. Perhaps it took the cultural abandon of 70's Germany, a wild boundary-testing free-for-all that also fostered Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, to fully understand the philosophical quagmire that remains Highsmith's greatest creation. In any event, this may be his finest screen iteration.
Wim Wenders' THE AMERICAN FRIEND unspools its digital 1's and 0's in a glorious new 4K DCP resto at IFC Center, as part of their ongoing trib Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road! Beware Texans sporting corduroy suits and powder-blue eyeglass lenses. Oh hell, beware Wes Anderson!
For more info on these and all NYC's rep film screenings in September '15 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. 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 soon with new Picks 'n perks, til then safe, sound, make sure the next knucklehead is too!
P. S. The warmer, fiercer cuddle of the sun's sunnier disposition has begun its annual wane, but 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!
