J. Hoberman looks at the invasion of Cold War fears in Hollywood at BAM festival
BAMcinematek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
February 18 – March 28
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Way back in 1977, J. Hoberman reviewed Eraserhead for the Village Voice. More than thirty-three years later, he’s still there, serving as their longtime senior film critic. The author of such previous books as The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, On Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and Other Secret-Flix of Cinemaroc, and Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds, Hoberman is poised to release his latest tome, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War, due from the New Press on March 15. In conjunction with the book’s release, Hoberman has been once again invited by BAM to curate a film series, this one dealing with movies made during the Cold War era. “An Army of Phantoms” begins Friday, February 18, with the granddaddy of them all, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the ultimate exercise in paranoia starring Kevin McCarthy as a man whose friends are turning into loveless pod people. Hoberman will introduce the 6:50 screening and sign books afterward. On Saturday, Pickup on South Street (1953) follows three-time loser Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark), who gets more than he bargained for when he lifts femme fatale Candy’s (Jean Peters) wallet on the subway, landing him in trouble with mysterious Joey (Richard Kiley) and the Feds in Samuel Fuller’s fab Cold War noir set in New York City. On Sunday, Hoberman delivers the extremely tongue-in-cheek Cold War Western Johnny Guitar (1954), Nicholas Ray’s tale of a butch nighclub owner (Joan Crawford), a six-string-strumming former gunslinger (Sterling Hayden), and campy subtext galore. Opening weekend concludes on Presidents’ Day with a double feature of alien gems, Invaders from Mars (William Cameron Menzies, 1953) and The Thing from Another World (Christian Nyby, 1951), provocative parables of potential Soviet attacks. The series continues through March 28 with such other great flicks — including ones that you might not have thought about within a Cold War context before — as a double bill of Them! (Gordon Douglas, 1954) and The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953), The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949), Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan, 1950), and Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955).