The Film Society of Lincoln Center places Raquel Welch front and center for long-overdue tribute
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
February 10-14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
Chicago-born actress Raquel Welch was the embodiment of the Hollywood superstar, the supreme sex symbol of the late 1960s and 1970s. A tougher, more physical version of Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, Welch made a series of films in multiple genres, from the sci-fi cult classic Fantastic Voyage to the shoot-’em-up Western 100 Rifles, from the literary bomb Myra Breckinridge to the caveman stomp One Million Years B.C., from the period comedy Mother, Jugs, and Speed to the sports favorite Kansas City Bomber. Her costars included Burt Reynolds, Bill Cosby, Jim Brown, Christopher Lee, James Coburn, Oliver Reed, and Harvey Keitel — in addition to Dyan Cannon, Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, and Farrah Fawcett — but when Welch was on-screen, her impressive assets took over. Welch made more than three dozen movies, ten of which will be shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the long-deserved tribute “Cinematic Goddess,” including all of the above works in addition to Hannie Caulder, The Last of Sheila, The Three Musketeers, and The Wild Party, with Welch on hand for several Q&As before or after the screening, moderated by the likes of Simon Doonan and Dick Cavett.
One of the all-time-great spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone’s dusty three-hour operatic oater stars Clint Eastwood as the Good (Blondie), Lee Van Cleef as the Bad (Angel Eyes), and Eli Wallach as the Ugly (Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, whose list of criminal offenses is a riot), three unique individuals after $200,000 in Confederate gold buried in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere. Nearly 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage added to the film a few years ao, with Wallach and Eastwood overdubbing brand-new dialogue, so if you haven’t seen it in a while, it might just be time to catch it again, this time on the big screen as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big!” series. Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable score and Torino delli Colli’s gorgeous widescreen cinematography were also marvelously enhanced; their work in the scene when Tuco first comes upon the graveyard will make you dizzy with delight. And then comes one of the greatest finales in cinema history. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is screening at the museum on February 10 at 7:00, with the series continuing with such classics as Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns on February 19 (introduced by Dan Callahan), The Sound of Music on March 3, North by Northwest on March 9-10, Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror on March 11 (introduced by Geoff Dyer), and Touch of Evil on March 16-17.
Avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia) collaborated with Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in the elegiac The Miners’ Hymn, a tribute to the now-gone collieries, or coal mines, of Northeast England. The fifty-two-minute documentary opens with new aerial shots of the locations where the Durham coal mines were, since replaced by luxury housing and megastores. The film shows the birth and death dates of several collieries going back to the nineteenth century, then seamlessly blends into archival black-and-white footage of the miners at work underground, the community coming together for a local fair, and a union rally during a strike that includes a confrontation with the police. There is no text and no narration in The Miners’ Hymn; instead, Morrison’s savvy editing of the found footage, consisting of both moving pictures and still photographs primarily acquired through the British Film Institute and the BBC, brings the old-fashioned town and its old-fashioned ways to vibrant life even though they roll across the screen in slow motion. Jóhannsson’s score punctuates the proceedings with an occasional brassy flare when not sounding more funereal. Despite the lack of text and narration, Morrison’s point of view is clear and all too obvious, paying homage to something that has been lost, and he is never quite able to make an emotional or personal connection with the viewer. However, The Miners’ Hymns contains remarkable footage that still manages to tell an important story, even if it is one-sided and lacking at least a little more historical context. The Miners’ Hymns is playing February 8-14 at Film Forum, along with Morrison’s short films Release (2010), featuring footage of Al Capone’s release from prison, Outerborough (2005), which looks at the Brooklyn Bridge, and The Film of Her (1996), a documentary about a Library of Congress copyright office employee who finds a vault full of old paper movies. Morrison will be at Film Forum for the 8:00 show on February 8, which will also feature live violin by Todd Reynolds.