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AXIS COMPANY ENCORE ENGAGEMENT: TWELFTH NIGHT

Axis puts a dark spin on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (photo by Pavel Antonov)

TWELFTH NIGHT
Axis Theatre Company
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Wednesday – Saturday, September 25 – October 26, $11-$44, 8:00
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

Following its initial run earlier this year, Axis’s dark and involving theatrical adaptation of Twelfth Night is back at the company’s Sheridan Square home for an encore engagement running September 25 to October 26. Below is twi-ny’s original review from May.

I described the last two productions I saw of William Shakespeare’s 1601–02 Twelfth Night as “light and lively,” “ecstatic,” “a joy to behold,” and “a pure delight.” I would not use any of those words to describe Axis Theatre Company’s streamlined new production, but that won’t stop me from heartily recommending it.

Shakespeare professor Marc Palmieri’s adaptation focuses on the darker side of this mistaken-identity romantic comedy about unrequited love, which has been trimmed to a fast-paced ninety minutes. David Zeffren’s lighting remains dim throughout on director Randall Sharp’s haunting stage, where actors are surrounded by large rectangular blocks and shadowy entrances; in one corner, guitarist and sound designer Paul Carbonara and pianist Yonatan Gutfeld (the keyboards are embedded in one of the blocks) perform Carbonara’s subtle Baroque-like score. Karl Ruckdeschel’s costumes — men’s suits and long coats, women’s gowns — are muted grays, lavenders, and earth tones; even Malvolio’s socks are a subdued yellow, not as garishly ridiculous as usual.

“If music be the food of love, play on / Give me excess of it,” Duke Orsino (Jon McCormick) declares as the show begins. The story is familiar to Shakespeare aficionados: In faraway Illyria, the wealthy countess Olivia (Katy Frame) rejects all suitors, including Orsino, who is in love with her. Her loyal steward, Malvolio (Axis producing director Brian Barnhart), also harbors a secret passion for the noblewoman. Twins Viola (Britt Genelin) and Sebastian (Eli Bridges) survive a shipwreck and wash up onshore, each ignorant that the other is still alive. One of the duke’s gentlemen, Curio (Robert Ierardi), explains to Viola, who has now disguised herself as a man named Cesario, that Olivia keeps repulsing Orsino’s advances. Viola quickly decides that she will convince Olivia to see Orsino in order to secure a place for herself in the duke’s employ.

Sebastian was rescued by Antonio (Jim Sterling), a sea captain who requests to be his servant. Believing his sister to be dead, Sebastian disguises himself as Roderigo and heads to the court of Orsino, where Antonio is not welcome.

Meanwhile, a group of conniving drunks hover around Olivia: her uncle, the raunchy Sir Toby Belch (George Demas); Sir Toby’s friend, the faux-elegant squire Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Andrew Dawson), who Sir Toby presents to Olivia as a potential suitor; Olivia’s chambermaid, Maria (Dee Pelletier); Olivia’s fool, Feste (Spencer Aste); and her servant Fabian (Brian Parks). “You must confine yourself within the modest limits of order,” Maria warns Sir Toby, who replies, “Confine! I’ll confine myself no finer than I am: these clothes are good enough to drink in; and so be these boots too.”

Axis Theatre Company’s Bard adaptation is back for an encore engagement (photo by Pavel Antonov)

After Malvolio chastises them for their ill behavior, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Feste, and Fabian, under Maria’s lead, concoct a plan to embarrass Malvolio in front of everyone. Maria explains, “Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind and affectioned ass / the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks / with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith / that all that look on him love him / and on that vice in him will my revenge find / notable cause to work.”

It all comes to a head in a grand finale that, while not as boisterous as in other iterations, is as satisfying in its exactitude.

Axis refers to Twelfth Night as “Shakespeare’s most painful comedy,” and that’s just what Sharp, Palmieri, and the superb cast deliver. The company’s dungeonlike space on Sheridan Square is tailor-made for eerie, chimeric stories bathed in gloom, doom, and gothic and apocalyptic humor. In such previous works as High Noon, Dead End, Last Man Club, and Worlds Fair Inn, Axis founding artistic director Sharp has presented stark, compelling productions heavy in dark atmosphere but not without comic moments.

In this Twelfth Night, Olivia is fretful, often edgy with anxiety. She has no friends, only those who want her wealth or favor. Many of the characters, from Malvolio and Olivia to Feste and Sir Toby Belch, have a slightly pathetic bent to them. When Sir Andrew proclaims, “Shall we set about some revels?” and Sir Toby replies, “What shall we do else?,” the revelries that follow are not exactly a fanciful, fun frolic. Feste sings “O Mistress mine where are you roaming?” and “When that I was and a little tiny boy (With hey, ho, the wind and the rain)” and Carbonara and Yonatan Gutfeld’s music ramps up, accompanied by Lynn Mancinelli’s period choreography, but it’s not quite a royal ball. A subtle cloud of desperation hangs over the festivities. In fact, sometimes it feels like a night on the Bowery. Even the revelation scenes are kept relatively low key.

Twelfth Night demonstrates precisely what Sharp and Axis do best, whether offering an original play or a fresh take on an old chestnut. As always, they also include a related window display at the bottom of the theater entry stairs, this time providing added ambience and some shipwreck Easter eggs but no cakes and ale.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ADAM DRESSNER: HELLO STRANGER

Mickey re-creates original pose at Adam Dressner opening in Grand Central Terminal (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

HELLO STRANGER
Grand Central Terminal, Vanderbilt Hall
89 East 42nd St. between Lexington and Vanderbilt
September 24-26, free, 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
www.adamdressner.com
grandcentralterminal.com

One can see a lot of fascinating faces and figures racing through Grand Central Terminal every day, but they seldom stop for close inspection, nor do commuters get to see a full-size portrait gallery of their fellow everyday New Yorkers. Yet that’s exactly what Adam Dressner’s new pop-up show, “Hello Stranger,” running September 24–26 on the east side of Vanderbilt Hall in GCT, provides.

After graduating from Yale Law School, New York City native Dressner briefly practiced as an attorney before turning to painting. He uses his studies of criminology, civil liberties, and facial recognition technology to create colorful, large-scale portraits of individuals he places in whimsical settings. For his latest show, he depicts people he met in Washington Square Park, relatives, and friends of friends; nearly all of them are not models and have never posed before.

Among the more than thirty works are paintings of his father, Robert, sitting cross-legged at a table, reading; the elegant Mr. Love, in hat and bowtie, dangling major bling; ABT dancer Georgia Duisenberg in the middle of a pose; Hannah, in fencing gear; a triptych of three people enjoying themselves in Averill Park in upstate New York; his favorite subject, his grandmother Sonia Segoda Dressner, who died in 2020 at the age of ninety-nine; and collaborations with artists De La Vega and Keion Kopper.

At the opening, I asked Dressner, who was dressed casually and wearing one of his many blue baseball caps, about how he chooses who to paint.

“Well, a lot of them were chance encounters,” he said. “That’s where I met [jeweler] Greg Yüna, who introduced me to many of the people who are in the paintings. It’s random chance. I have this umbrella that’s over here where I paint people from life; it’s self-selecting in the sense that people come over and ask to be painted, and if I think they’re a particularly interesting subject, I’ll ask them if they’d be interested. In some cases people ask me if I’d paint them; in many cases I ask them. I place people in imaginary environments where I think that they might want to be placed.”

He noted that Shar told him that she liked sharks, so he added a hammerhead hovering in the background. At the opening, Shar was sitting behind a table with another subject, Betty, handing out information about the show as well as postcards. Also on the table was a mixed-media cash register with the word Sales on top, although the postcards are free.

Jessie poses in front of one of two portraits of her in “Hello Stranger” show in Vanderbilt Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Several subjects were at the event, posing in front of their paintings, including Mickey, who mimicked his exuberant pose; Wendy, sitting next to her small cart with a stuffed red monkey attached to it; and Jessie, who is in two paintings, one of her reading on the beach, the other standing in a blue dress in front of a pink window.

Jessie said that she found the experience of posing for Dressner in his East Village studio “unnerving,” adding, “I love his work so much that I wanted to see what he would do with me, even though I was a little afraid. It’s a strange thing to see yourself captured on canvas, then against this strange background.”

In the center of the space is a Steinway piano, where live performances will take place during the three-day run of the show. I took a peek at the playlist on the piano and noticed several Christmas songs, “Amazing Grace,” “Ave Maria,” and two Johann Strauss pieces.

Dressner is inspired by classic works he’s seen at the Met and MoMA while also exploring his personal feelings and memory. Talking about his portrait of Shar, Dressner admitted, “It’s a little bit of an absurd painting, but that’s what I do. I draw with paint; I will paint the person on a white canvas, then I’ll figure out some shapes that make sense to me, and then after that I will figure out a story.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE BABADOOK: TENTH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

A mother (Essie Davis) and her young son (Noah Wiseman) must get past terrible tragedy in The Babadook

THE BABADOOK (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
Industry City, Courtyard 5/6, 51 Thirty-Fifth St., Brooklyn
Tuesday, September 17, $22.15, 7:45
rooftopfilms.com
www.ifcfilms.com

A hair-raising sleeper hit at Sundance that was named Best First Film of 2014 by the New York Film Critics Circle, The Babadook will be celebrating its tenth anniversary with a special Rooftop Films screening in Industry City on September 17, followed by a Q&A with director Jennifer Kent and a vodka-infused afterpaty.

The Babadook is a frightening tale of a mother and her young son — and a suspicious, scary character called the Babadook — trapped in a terrifying situation. Expanded from her 2005 ten-minute short, Monster, writer-director Kent’s debut feature focuses on the relationship between single mom Amelia (Essie Davis), who works as a nursing home aide, and her seemingly uncontrollable six-year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who is constantly getting into trouble because he’s more than just a little strange. Sam was born the same day his father, Oskar (Ben Winspear), died, killed in a car accident while rushing Amelia to the hospital to give birth, resulting in Amelia harboring a deep resentment toward the boy, one that she is afraid to acknowledge. Meanwhile, Sam walks around with home-made weapons to protect his mother from a presence he says haunts them. One night Amelia reads Sam a book that suddenly appeared on the shelf, an odd pop-up book called Mister Babadook that threatens her. She tries to throw it away, but as Sam and the book keep reminding her, “You can’t get rid of the Babadook.” Soon the Babadook appears to take physical form, and Amelia must face her deepest, darkest fears if she wants she and Sam to survive.

Writer-director Jennifer Kent brings out classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit THE BABADOOK

Writer-director Jennifer Kent explores classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit The Babadook

The Babadook began life as a demonic children’s book designed by illustrator Alex Juhasz specifically for the film — and one that was initially available for purchase from the movie’s official website, although anyone who bought the book hopefully thought twice before inviting the twisted tome into their house. The gripping film, shot by Polish cinematographer Radek Ladczuk in subdued German expressionist tones of black, gray, and white with bursts of other colors, evokes such classic horror fare as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, where place plays such a key role in the terror. The Babadook itself is a kind of warped combination of the villains from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Hideo Nakata’s The Ring. Kent, a former actress who studied at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art with Davis and has made one other feature, 2018’s The Nightingale, lets further influences show in the late-night television Amelia is obsessed with, which includes films by early French wizard Georges Méliès. But the real fear comes from something that many parents experience but are too ashamed or embarrassed to admit: that they might not actually love their child, despite trying their best to do so. At its tender heart, The Babadook is a story of a mother and son who must go through a kind of hell if they are going to get past the awful way they were brought together.

ASKING FOR MORE: THE ASK at the wild project

Greta (Betsy Aidem) and Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) face off in Matthew Freeman’s The Ask (photo by Kent Mesiter)

THE ASK
the wild project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Wednesday – Sunday through September 28, $58.59
thewildproject.com

In a two-minute television commercial for the American Civil Liberties Union that has been running since the fall of 2022, comedian, author, and actor W. Kamau Bell explains, “As Americans, there’s one thing we can all agree on: the promise of our Constitution — and the hope that liberty and justice is for all people.” In the ad, Bell, an ACLU ambassador, asks viewers to become members of the civil rights organization for $19 a month, a fee also requested to join No Kid Hungry, the World Wildlife Fund, St. Jude’s, the ASPCA, and other charitable institutions. (The amount is both for tax purposes and perception, keeping it under $20.)

In Matthew Freeman’s stimulating new play, The Ask, making its world premiere through September 28 at the wild project, an ACLU fundraiser is asking for a whole lot more from a longtime donor who is on the fence about her future support of the nonprofit that started in 1920 and “is committed to fight for freedom and the protection of constitutional rights for generations to come.”

Greta (Betsy Aidem) is a wealthy seventysomething widow and lifelong feminist, a successful photographer who lives in Florida and the Upper West Side (and just sold her home in Maine). Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) is an adopted nonbinary millennial who resides in Bushwick and is a gift planning officer for the ACLU.

It’s set in December 2022, five months before the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic no longer a public health emergency. The characters’ first discussion is about Tanner’s presence; they’ve replaced Greta’s longtime ACLU contact, Carol, under unclear circumstances. Greta is unhappy that she wasn’t notified of Carol’s departure, nor has she been told the reason, although she suspects Carol was part of recent layoffs, which the ACLU executive director referred to as “right-sizing.”

Tanner dances around the answer, which annoys Greta. It’s a theme that runs throughout the play: Greta feels free to share anything about herself and her views, while Tanner is stiff and reserved, careful what they say about the ACLU and, more critically, about themself as they delve into the First Amendment, hate speech, student debt, the Founding Fathers and slavery, the Supreme Court, hunger, high-speed internet for underserved communities, and reproductive rights. Greta is upset by the number of emails she gets from the ACLU and some members’ references to the Constitution as a white-supremacist document, while Tanner keeps trying to convince Greta that the ACLU’s purpose is as consequential and necessary as ever.

“You do plenty of good in the world,” Tanner says. Greta replies, “Thank you, you’re the one who does good. I just write proverbial checks.” Tanner encourages her, “Well, they matter.” To which Greta shoots back, “Yes yes, you have to say that.”

But the tide turns on Tanner’s inability to say one word, the very term that is most important to Greta.

Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) has an impossible mission on their hands in world premiere at the wild project (photo by Kent Mesiter)

At its core, The Ask is about personal and professional identity. Greta not only speaks her mind but makes her living as a photographer, taking pictures of other people and places that shape her view of the world. Her apartment is cluttered with books piled on and under tables, including art tomes on Vincent van Gogh, Alice Neel, Paul Gauguin, and Ninth Street Women in addition to such feminist and left-leaning literature as Gloria Steinem’s Revolution from Within; Diane di Prima’s Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years; Amy Goodman and David Goodman’s Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, about what one can do to fight for what they believe in; and Jodie Patterson’s The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation, about a mother whose toddler tells her that she is not a girl but a boy.

Greta’s cozy, intimate apartment is filled with photographs hung on black-and-white scallop-shell wallpaper, both her own and several taken by Pictures Generation artist Cindy Sherman, who reimagines herself as different personae in cinematic self-portraits that explore gender and identity. Tanner, who is clearly uncomfortable sharing certain personal information with Greta, expresses their admiration of Sherman. “I love her too; I think she’s a scream,” Greta says. Tanner responds, “I think she’s terrifying.”

Tanner is also enamored with a photograph of a dinosaur, which Greta refers to as her self-portrait, an ancient creature surrounded by real life. Tanner points out, “Except for Cindy Sherman. She’s not real life.” Greta, keeping their cat-and-mouse game going, counters, “She’s a little more real than a Brontosaurus.”

The play is intricately directed by Jessi D. Hill (Small, Ushuaia Blue), who makes the most of Craig Napoliello’s almost claustrophobic set, which has a small hallway in the back that leads to the unseen kitchen and bathroom, bringing some kind of respite to the tense proceedings occurring in the study, where Greta, in black pants, a loose-fitting purple blouse, and clogs, sits comfortably in a chair while Tanner, in brown pants, a V-neck sweater, a dark blazer, and sneakers, is rigid and uneasy in an opposite chair. (The costumes are by Nicole Wee, with sharp sound by Cody Hom and bright lighting by Daisy Long.)

Freeman (Silver Spring, Why We Left Brooklyn) writes with a refreshing assuredness, creating dialogue that could have become pedantic and self-serving but instead is through-provoking and, often, very funny even as it deals with serious situations. Tony nominee Aidem (Prayer for the French Republic, All the Way) is energetic and appealing as Greta, a wholly believable feminist who doesn’t want to see everything her generation accomplished just slip away, while Litchfield (The Summoning, The Heart of Robin Hood) stands firm as a much younger individual who has their own vision of the future but cannot say it out loud. (Both actors were in the original Broadway cast of Leopoldstadt, Aidem as Grandma Emilia, Litchfield as Hanna.)

Even at eighty minutes, the play is a bit too long, repeating several points and including one gratuitous monologue, but otherwise it expertly captures the changes that are evolving primarily on the left in today’s society. Greta and Tanner are battling each other instead of the other side, unwilling to compromise their values.

“I imagine in your life. Your individuality is important to you. Asserting your identity, your uniqueness, that’s been important to you. It might have even been a struggle. I don’t want to assume anything, but I imagine that’s true for you?” Greta says, adding, “But you see, I also want to be treated as an individual. As a woman, I mean, as a woman I’ve had to fight against the perception that I am a certain way, that I am defined by all these stereotypes about women.”

Tanner wants to change the subject, understanding that Greta might not like what they have to say — and it’s about a lot more than a charitable donation, whether $19 a month or a much higher figure.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ONE MORE TIME: THE CINEMA OF DANIEL POMMEREULLE

The film career of French artist Daniel Pommereulle is being celebrated at Metrograph this month

SIX MORAL TALES: LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (Eric Rohmer, 1967)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, September 14, 2:30
Sunday, September 15, 11:00 am
Series runs September 13-29
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

On September 12, the exhibit “Daniel Pommereulle: Premonition Objects” opens at Ramiken on Grand St. On September 13, Metrograph kicks off the two-week series “One More Time: The Cinema of Daniel Pommereulle,” consisting of seven programs featuring the French painter, sculptor, filmmaker, performer, and poet who died in 2003 at the age of sixty-six. First up is “Daniel Pommereulle X3,” bringing together Pommereulle’s shorts One More Time and Vite and Anton Bialas and Ferdinand Gouzon’s 2021 Monuments aux vivants, which documents the artist’s sculptural work; curators Boris Bergmann and Armance Léger will take part in a postscreening Q&A moderated by filmmaker Kathy Brew. “Pommereulle was one of those people who could stand firm against the all-consuming metropolis: someone who never compromised, who never sold his soul — even to America. We joyously return Pommereulle to New York: a necessary encounter, a poetic reward,” Léger and Bergmann said in a statement. The festival also includes Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, Marc’O’s Les Idoles, Jackie Raynal’s Deux Fois, serge Bard and Olivier Mosset’s Ici et maintenant and Fun and Games for Everyone, and Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse.

“Razor blades are words,” art critic Alain Jouffroy tells painter Daniel Pommereulle (Daniel Pommereulle) in one of the prologues at the start of La Collectionneuse, the fourth film in French master Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales (falling between My Night at Maud’s and Claire’s Knee). Words might have the ability to cut, but they don’t seem to have much impact on the three people at the center of the film, which offers a sort of alternate take on François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Needing a break from his supposedly strenuous life, gallerist Adrien (Patrick Bauchau, who also appeared in La Carrière de Suzanne, Rohmer’s second morality tale) decides to vacation at the isolated St. Tropez summer home of the never-seen Rodolphe. Daniel is also at the house, along with Haydée (Haydée Politoff), a beautiful young woman who spends much of the film in a bikini and being taken out by a different guy nearly every night. Adrien decides that she is a “collector” of men, and the three needle one another as they discuss life and love, sex and morality, beauty and ugliness. Adrien might claim to want to have nothing to do with Haydée, but he keeps spending more and more time with her, even though he never stops criticizing her lifestyle. He even uses her as a pawn when trying to get an art collector named Sam (played by former New York Times film critic Eugene Archer under the pseudonym Seymour Hertzberg) to invest in his gallery.

While everybody else in the film pretty much knows what they want, Adrien, who purports to understand life better than all of them, is a sad, lost soul, unable to get past his high-and-mighty attitude. Rohmer crafted the roles of Daniel and Haydée specifically for Pommereulle and Politoff, who improvised much of their dialogue; Bauchau opted not to take that route, making for a fascinating relationship among the three very different people. La Collectionneuse is beautifully shot in 35mm by Néstor Almendros, the bright colors of the characters’ clothing mixing splendidly with the countryside and ocean while offering a striking visual counterpoint to the constant ennui dripping off the screen. His camera especially loves Politoff, regularly exploring her body inch by inch. The film is both Rohmer’s and Almendros’s first color feature; Almendros would go on to make more films with the director, as well as with Truffaut, even after coming to Hollywood and shooting such films as Days of Heaven, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Sophie’s Choice. Winner of a Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize at the 1967 Berlinale, La Collectionneuse is screening September 14 and 15 at Metrograph.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ONE-TIMERS: WANDA

Barbara Loden wrote, directed, produced, and stars in Wanda

WANDA (Barbara Loden, 1970)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, September 13, 8:20 (with introduction)
Sunday, September 15, 2:50
Thursday, September 19, 3:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

“If you don’t want anything, you won’t have anything, and if you don’t have anything, then you’re as good as dead,” Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins) tells Wanda Goronski (Barbara Loden) in Wanda, which is screening September 13, 15, and 19 in the continuing Metrograph series “One-Timers.” The first theatrical feature written, directed, produced by, and starring an American woman, Wanda is a raw, naturalistic road-trip movie about an emotionally vacant woman who walks through life in a kind of stupor, wandering into situations to avoid being alone yet still trapped in an unrelenting alienation. Loden, who won a 1964 Tony for her portrayal of Maggie in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall — the play was directed on Broadway by Elia Kazan, whom she would marry four years later and remain with through her tragic death in 1980 — doesn’t try to turn Wanda into a feminist antihero, but she does take all the power away from her, making her completely dependent on other people, primarily men, an excellent counterpoint to Loden herself, who has all the power. Staying on her sister’s (Dorothy Shupenes) couch in the middle of Pennsylvania coal country, Wanda is almost zombielike as she slowly heads to court in curlers and a housecoat and lets the judge award custody of her two children to her soon-to-be-ex-husband (Jerome Thier). “I’m just no good,” she mumbles. Broke and apparently with no faith or hope in her future, she proceeds to get involved with some sketchy losers, including Mr. Dennis, who takes her on a minor crime spree that is a far cry from Bonnie and Clyde. All along the way, she rarely has anything of any interest to say to anyone; the only time she speaks clearly and definitively is when she explains that she likes onions on her hamburgers.

Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins) takes Wanda Goronski (Barbara Loden) for quite a ride in Wanda

Shot in a cinéma vérité style by documentary cinematographer Nicholas T. Proferes, Wanda — named Best Foreign Film at the Venice International Film Festival — is a riveting and infuriating exploration of the death of the American dream as the 1960s come to an end and the country reexamines itself, not necessarily liking what it sees. Apathy competes with melancholy as Wanda is unable and unwilling to take control of her life, dressed in the same white outfit and carrying the same white pocketbook throughout nearly the entire film, but she is more disconsolate than angelic. Much of the film is improvised and most of the characters are portrayed by nonprofessional actors or people who just happened to be in the area, like the scene in which Mr. Dennis and Wanda encounter a family flying a remote-control model airplane. (Higgins would go on to make more than fifty films, including The Conversation, The Stepford Wives, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan.) Coming on the cusp of the women’s liberation movement, Wanda is about a pouty sad-sack who barely ever changes emotion, always wearing the same blank stare. It’s not that she’s promiscuous, adventurous, or even unpredictable; she just is. You desperately want her to take action, to care about something or someone, but it’s just not going to happen. It’s almost as if Loden is setting the groundwork for such future films as Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver, which feature such strong, decisive female characters as Alice (Ellen Burstyn) in the former and Iris (Jodie Foster) in the latter, who at least attempt to take matters into their own hands; elements of Wanda can also be found in Aki Kaurismäki’s Match Factory Girl and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Wanda would end up being Loden’s only film as writer and director; she died in 1980 of cancer at the age of forty-eight. The September 13 screening will be introduced by Caryn Coleman, founder of the Future of Film Is Female.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JOHN FORD’S THE SEARCHERS: NEW 4K RESTORATION

John Wayne looks better than ever in new 4K restoration of The Searchers

THE SEARCHERS (John Ford, 1956)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 13-19
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

That’ll be the day when someone tries to claim there’s a better Western than John Ford’s ethnocentric look at the dying of the Old West and the birth of the modern era — and not it looks better than ever, in a 4K restoration opening at Film Forum September 13. Essentially about a gunfighter’s attempt to find and kill his young niece, who has been kidnapped and, ostensibly, ruined by Indians, The Searchers — based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May — is laden with iconic imagery, inside messages, and not-so-subtle metaphors. Hence, it is no accident that John Wayne’s son, Patrick, plays an ambitious yet inept officer named Greenhill. The elder Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, a tough-as-nails Confederate veteran seeking revenge for the murder of his brother’s family; he’s also out to save Debbie (Natalie Wood) from the Comanches, led by a chief known as Scar (Henry Brandon), by ending her life, because in his world view, it’s better to be dead than red.

In iconic Western, Jeffrey Hunter and Ethan Edwards search for Natalie Wood, with very different motives

Joining him on his trek is Debbie’s adopted brother, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who wants to save her from Edwards. The magnificent film balances its serious center with a large dose of humor, particularly in the relationships between Ethan and Martin and Ethan with his Indian companion, Look (Beulah Archuletta). And keep your eye on that blanket in front of the house. Born in Maine in 1894, Ford made some of the most dazzling Westerns and literary adaptations ever put on celluloid; he passed away in 1973 at the age of seventy-nine, having won four Best Director Oscars among his nearly 140 pictures.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]