***MONDAY, DECEMBER 15***
DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Billy Wilder
Film Forum
“I killed Dietrichson,” dictates Fred MacMurray’s insurance man Walter Neff, and then the flashbacks begin: prospective client Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson, clad only in bath towel and ankle bracelet, exchanges double entendres, then swiftly turns the discussion from auto to accident insurance. But, after her husband’s “accident,” insurance investigator Edward G. Robinson just won’t let it rest. Wilder and Chandler adapted Cain’s then-notorious novel.
THE FIGHT, William Greaves
BAM
Greaves chronicles a legendary fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1971 at Madison Square Garden. From the White corporate machine capitalizing on Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier’s every move out of the ring to the fight itself, the film captures events with punch-for-punch technical prowess and flair never before applied to the sport.
MOMMY’S FOOL, Mama es Boba
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Martín (Jose Luis Lago) is a self-conscious young boy living in a provincial Castilian town where nothing ever happens. He bears the brunt of his classmates’ bullying at school, but his biggest problem is his parents, Gema and Toribio, whose grotesque behavior certainly doesn’t go unnoticed in their sad, gray hometown. But when a new TV station arrives and offers Gema the position of lead anchorwoman, everything changes. Gema and Toribio’s fame skyrockets, but given their status as the town’s laughingstocks, they end up being treated like traveling carnival puppets, and Martín is ostracized ever more severely. Produced on a shoestring budget, with a visual style accentuating the cruelty of its content, Santiago Lorenzo’s satirical feature debut is a comedy that evokes both raucous laughter and smiles of recognition.
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, Tay Garnett
Film Forum
“Give me a kiss or I’ll sock ya,” Screen-combusting lovers John Garfield and Lana Turner – dressed more for Park Ave. than the greasy spoon she slings hash in – plot to do away with her nice old husband. Heavily censored from Cain’s novel, but as director Garnett crowed, “We still managed to get the sex across.”
STILL A BROTHER, William Greaves
BAM
Commissioned to make a documentary about “good negroes” for public television during a time of growing unrest, Greaves bucked the assignment to deliver an investigation of the mental revolution that was transforming the consciousness of black people of all classes. One of the most underseen essential films of all time, Greaves’ film is a portrait of the many faces of empowerment.
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***TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16***
CALIFORNIA SPLIT, Robert Altman
MoMA
Set against the gambling subculture of racetracks and casinos, this character study of a freewheeling habitué (Gould) and a rabidly codependent businessman (Segal) is the director’s most successful early experiment in blending scripted dialogue and improvisation, aided by new eight-track technology. The film was shot in sequence, and the matter-of-fact existentialism of its ending was decided on the set when Altman suddenly discarded the remaining script pages.
THE CROWD, King Vidor
IFC Center
“Certainly one of Vidor’s best films, a silent masterpiece which turns a realistically caustic eye on the illusionism of the American dream. A young man (‘born on America’s 124th birthday’) arrives in the big city convinced that he is going to set the world on fire, only to find that life isn’t quite like that. A humble but steady job leads to love, marriage, kids and a happiness arbitrarily cut short by an accident (one of the children is run over and killed) which leads to the loss of his job, despairing unemployment, and impossible tensions starting to erode the marriage. The performances are absolutely flawless, and astonishing location work in the busy New York streets (including a giddy tour of Coney Island on a blind date) lends a gritty ring of truth to his intensely human odyssey, bounded by his eager arrival among the skyscrapers (the camera slowly panning up the side of a vast office block to discover him at work, lost in a sea of identical desks), and the last shot that has him merging as just another face in the crowd. Simple but superb.” – Time Out (London)
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***WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17***
EYES WIDE SHUT, Stanley Kubrick
IFC Center
“Stanley Kubrick’s last feature (1999) skillfully portrays the dark side of desire in a successful marriage. Since the 60s he’d thought about filming Arthur Schnitzler’s novella ‘Traumnovelle,’ about a young doctor contemplating various forms of adultery and debauchery after discovering that his wife has entertained comparable fantasies. It has a Kafkaesque ambiguity, wavering between dream and waking fantasy, and all the actors do a fine job of traversing this delicate territory. Yet the story has been altered to make the doctor (Tom Cruise) more of a hypocrite and his wife (Nicole Kidman) feistier; Kubrick’s also added a Zeus-like tycoon (played perfectly by Sydney Pollack) who pretends to explain the plot shortly before the end but in fact only summarizes the various mysteries; his cynicism and chilly access to power reveal that Kubrick was more of a moralist than Schnitzler. This is a gripping, suggestive, and inventive piece of storytelling that, like Kubrick’s other work, grows in mystery over time.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
THE NYLON CHRISTMAS TREE, Rezo Esadze
MoMA
This particularly strong ensemble film follows the stories and dreams of different characters trying to get home to celebrate the New Year. The chaotic jostling for space on the few busses that actually show up at the station in Tbilisi gives way to a more extended focus on individuals thrown together from across a wide social spectrum. By turns scary, funny, and moving, the director’s ability to illuminate a character with a few strokes is uncanny, and his control of space and rhythm distinguishes this revealing group portrait of the Georgian people during Perestroika.
FOUR BY ROLF FORSBERG
BAM
Swedish-American auteur Rolf Forsberg employs a singular blend of humanist allegory, spiritual symbolism, and expressionist imagery, revealing a daring, idiosyncratic vision nestled within the oft-misunderstood milieu of sponsored “educational” films. These rarely seen shorts showcase Forsberg’s range of influences—from Fellini and Bergman to scientific macro-photography—while dismantling preconceived notions of cinematic “work for hire.”
3 WOMEN, Robert Altman
MoMA
Wide-eyed Pinky, newly employed at a geriatric center, latches on to a fellow nurse, the chatty and self-styled sophisticate Millie Lammoreaux. When the pair become roommates, Pinky’s idolization quickly irritates Millie until an act of desperation gives way to a sinister reversal of roles. Spacek and Duvall each brilliantly deliver their own portrait of modern loneliness, played out to the muted colors of the Southern California desert, in this strange and gripping psychodrama.
THE WINDOW, Ted Tetzlaff
Film Forum
A tall-tale-telling tenement kid’s eyewitness account of a sailor’s murder is believed by nobody but the killers themselves. From a Cornell Woolrich story, with a special Oscar to child star Bobby Driscoll, whose body would be discovered twenty years later in the rubble of an abandoned New York building. “Edgar” for Best Mystery Film of its year.
THE CERTIFICATE, Vincente Lluch
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Though Vicente Lluch has somehow faded from Spanish cinema history, his eventual rediscovery is inevitable. He directed only three features over the course of a 40-year career, but his films reveal a campy take on uniquely Spanish subjects astonishingly achieved amid the Franco regime. In The Certificate, he draws on the Mediterranean farce (as Carles Mira would later do) in order to hurl scathing criticism at the ethically reproachable and socially ridiculous Barcelona bourgeoisie. As in his other work, the story hinges on a strong, determined female character who grows increasingly empowered as it goes
DEADLINE AT DAWN, Harold Clurman
Film Forum
“Actress” Susan Hayward and cabbie Paul Lukas (uttering nutty Sweet Smell-worthy dialogue by Clifford Odets) sail around the mean streets of Manhattan in the wee small hours to help clear sailor Bill Williams of a murder rap. Sole film directing job by stage legend Clurman, based on a novel by Woolrich, aka “William Irish.”
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***THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18***
A WEDDING, Robert Altman
MoMA
The society wedding of “Muffin” Brenner and Dino Sloan Corelli goes from fiasco to farce in this comedy of manners. Altman purportedly set out to double the 24-person cast count from Nashville, giving himself ample subjects on both sides of the family—including Lillian Gish, as the bed-ridden matriarch—for the revelation of secrets throughout the day. No taboos are spared as secret pregnancies, radical politics, and drug habits come to the fore in this delightful free-for-all.
CITY STREETS, Rouben Mamoulian
Film Forum
Carny worker Gary Cooper is roped into crime by his love for gangster’s daughter Sylvia Sidney, in Hammett’s sole original screenplay; with an alibi established by cigar ash length, two stone cats looking on at a bitchy argument, and ten murders, “none of them actually seen.”
STREET OF CHANCE, Jack Hively
Film Forum
Burgess Meredith, waking up in a strange part of town, finds a year that has passed, a fiancée he’s never met, and a murdered boss. From yet another Woolrich story and “an important early entry in the Noir cycle” (Robert Porfirio).
