Lois Smith will be at the Quad this week for a celebration of her long career, including her acclaimed performance in Marjorie Prime
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
December 12-14
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com
Topeka-born stage and screen actress Lois Smith will be at the Quad this week to celebrate her seven-decade career, which has featured such plays as The Grapes of Wrath, The Trip to Bountiful, Buried Child, and John, earning two Tony nominations and an Obie, and such films as East of Eden; Foxes; Five Easy Pieces; Next Stop, Greenwich Village; and this year’s Marjorie Prime and Lady Bird. Five of those films, with the exception of Lady Bird, make up the Quad series “Prime Lois Smith,” running December 12–14, with Smith either introducing or taking part in Q&As for every screening but one. Among the television programs she’s had recurring roles on are Desperate Housewives, True Blood, ER, and Grace and Frankie. Smith, who was on the November 21, 1955, cover of Life magazine with Judy Tyler, Jayne Mansfield, Susan Strasberg, and Diane Cilento, is still going strong at the age of eighty-seven, with more work on the horizon.
Cal Trask (James Dean) and Anne (Lois Smith) share a tender moment in Elia Kazan’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden
EAST OF EDEN (Elia Kazan, 1955)
Tuesday, December 12, 6:30
quadcinema.com
“I guess there’s just a certain amount of good and bad you get from your parents and I just got the bad,” Cal (James Dean) says in Elia Kazan’s cinematic adaptation of part of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, East of Eden, a modern retelling of the biblical Cain and Abel story. In his first starring role, Dean received a posthumous Oscar nomination for his moody, angst-ridden performance as Cal Trask, a troubled young man who discovers that the mother (Best Supporting Actress winner Jo Van Fleet) he thought was dead is actually alive and well and running a successful house of prostitution nearby. Cal tries to win his father’s (Raymond Massey as Adam Trask) love and acceptance any way he can, including helping him develop his grand plan to transport lettuce from their farm via refrigerated railway cars, but his father seems to always favor his other son, Aron (Richard Davalos). Aron, meanwhile, is in love with Abra (Julie Harris), a sweet young woman who takes a serious interest in Cal and desperately wants him to succeed. But the well-meaning though misunderstood Cal does things his own way, which gets him in trouble with his father and brother, the mother who wants nothing to do with him, the sheriff (Burl Ives), and just about everyone else he comes in contact with.
Set in Monterey and Salinas, East of Eden begins with a grand overture by Leonard Rosenman, announcing the film is going to be a major undertaking, and it lives up to its billing. Dean is masterful as Cal, peppering Paul Osborn’s script with powerful improvisational moments as he expresses his frustration with his family and life in general. His inner turmoil threatens to explode in both word and gesture as he just seeks to be loved. Dean would follow up East of Eden with seminal roles in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant before his death in a car crash in 1955 at the age of twenty-four, leaving behind a remarkable legacy that has influenced generations of actors ever since. Lois Smith makes her film debut as Anne, the young woman who works at the brothel and is charmed by Cal in a steamy scene. Smith will be on hand for a Q&A following the December 12 screening of the film at the Quad as part of the series “Prime Lois Smith.”
Lois Smith plays the sister of prodigal son Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) in Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces
FIVE EASY PIECES (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
Wednesday, December 13, 6:30
Thursday, December 14, 9:10
quadcinema.com
A key film that helped lead 1960s cinema into the grittier 1970s, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces is one of the most American of dramas, a tale of ennui and unrest among the rich and the poor, a road movie that travels from trailer parks to fashionable country estates. Caught in between is Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson), a former piano prodigy now working on an oil rig and living with a well-meaning but not very bright waitress, Rayette (Karen Black). When Bobby finds out that his father is ill, he reluctantly returns to the family home, the prodigal son who had left all that behind, escaping to a less-complicated though unsatisfying life putting his fingers in a bowling ball rather than tickling the keys of a grand piano. Back in his old house, he has to deal with his brother, Carl (Ralph Waite), a onetime violinist who can no longer play because of an injured neck and who serves as the film’s comic relief; Carl’s wife, Catherine (Susan Anspach), a snooty woman Bobby has always been attracted to; and Bobby’s sister, Partita (Lois Smith), a lonely, troubled soul who has the hots for Spicer (John Ryan), the live-in nurse who takes care of their wheelchair-bound father (William Challee).
Jack Nicholson, sitting next to Karen Black, is about to place the most famous sandwich order in film history
Rafelson had previously directed the psychedelic movie Head (he cocreated the Monkees band and TV show) and would go on to make such films as The King of Marvin Gardens, Stay Hungry, and Black Widow; written by Carole Eastman, Five Easy Pieces fits flawlessly in between them, a deeply philosophical work that captures the myriad changes the country was experiencing as the Woodstock Generation was forced to start growing up. The film suffers from some unsteady editing primarily in the earlier scenes, but it is still a gem, featuring at least two unforgettable scenes, one that takes place in a California highway traffic jam and the other in a diner, where Bobby places an order for the ages. And as good as both Nicholson, who earned the first of seven Best Actor Oscar nominations, and Black, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, are, Helena Kallianiotes nearly steals the picture as a crazy woman railing against the ills of the world from the backseat of Bobby’s car. Five Easy Pieces is screening December 13 and 14 in the Quad series “Prime Lois Smith,” with Smith taking part in a Q&A following the 6:30 screening on the 13th.