twi-ny recommended events

FIAF OPEN HOUSE

The Nature Theater of Oklahoma will be presenting an exhibit of drawings as well as episodes 4.5 and 5 of LIFE AND TIMES at FIAF this fall

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall and Tinker Auditorium, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, September 10, free, 6:00 – 8:00
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

The French Institute Alliance Française is getting ready for the fall season, highlighted every year by its multidisciplinary Crossing the Line festival, with a free open house on September 10. From 6:00 to 8:00, visitors will be able to sample French wine and cheese in Tinker Auditorium, check out the Nature Theater of Oklahoma drawings exhibit “10fps” in the FIAF Gallery, receive beauty treatments in Le Skyroom, explore the new digital library Culturethèque, meet author-artist Gwenaëlle Gobé (The Diary of Stephanie: Electoral Surge) in the Haskell Library, watch Ruben Toledo’s short animated film Fashionation in Florence Gould Hall (with Toledo introducing the 7:00 screening), and take mini-French classes in the sixth-floor Language Center. Look for twi-ny’s preview of the 2013 Crossing the Line Festival next week.

LOWER EAST SIDE OPENING NIGHT: ART AND FASHION

Strange Loop group show focuses on fashion design and photography (photo by Ryan Burke)

Orchard St. at Grand St. and other locations
Sunday, September 8, free, 4:00 – 8:00 pm
www.lowereastsideny.com

The Lower East Side says goodbye to the summer season and welcomes the new fall shows at the second annual Lower East Side Opening Night: Art + Fashion, taking place on Sunday, September 8, from 4:00 to 8:00. More than fifty galleries will be participating in the free block party, with opening receptions for such shows as Jella Gueramian’s “Let’s Go Further” at Allegra LaViola, “Vaginascope: Sijae Byun’s Solo Exhibition” at Tally Beck Contemporary, Katherine Bradford’s “Small Ships” at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, Brian Leo’s “Party’s Over, If You Want It” at S&J Project(s), and the group exhibit “dots, stripes, liquid cyber, and other platitudes: Fashion Design — Fashion Photography” at Strange Loop, which provides an excellent segue into the evening’s other highlight, the “Looks of the LES” fashion show. Curated by Amy Odell of cosmopolitan.com, the fashion show features hairstyling by Adel Atelier and makeup by Dustin Knoblauch, with presentations from such local stores as Any Old Iron, the Cast, the Dressing Room, Old Hollywood, the Great Frog, Earnest Sewn, Urban Cricket, By Robert James, and others. In addition, there will be live music by DJ Onda Skillet, Nancy, Countdown Love, DJ Anton Bass, Heaven, and Threats.

AN AUTEURIST HISTORY OF FILM REPRISE: TO CATCH A THIEF

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly turn up the glamor quotient in Hitchcock thriller set on the French Riviera

TO CATCH A THIEF (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, September 8, 2:30
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Is he or isn’t he? In Alfred Hitchcock’s glamorous thriller set on the French Riviera, Cary Grant stars as John Robie, a famous burglar known as the Cat who has supposedly retired but is suddenly believed to be responsible for a rash of new jewelry thefts. Determined to prove his innocence and catch the real thief, he enlists the help of Lloyd’s of London insurance agent H. H. Hughson (John Williams), who supplies him with a list of women on the Riviera who have expensive baubles ripe for the taking. At the top of the list are the Americans Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her gorgeous daughter, Francie (a radiant Grace Kelly), who teases Robie, hinting that she might in fact be the Cat — if he isn’t. As Robie avoids the cops and looks to his old friends in the French Resistance for further help, the tension heats up, leading to a climax that takes place on the rooftops of the French Riviera. Grant’s third of four outings with Hitchcock and Kelly’s third and final turn with the suspense master is an exciting “who’s doing it” featuring the dream pairing of two of Hollywood’s most beautiful and talented superstars, filled with just the right amount of comedy and romance in a glorious setting. Look for Alfie to make his appearance early on, causing Grant to do a double take in the back of a bus. To Catch a Thief is screening September 8 at 2:30 as part of MoMA’s “An Auteurist History of Film Reprise,” which gives film enthusiasts a second chance to catch works that have previously been shown at MoMA during weekday afternoons, when many people cannot see them.

THE COMPLETE HOWARD HAWKS: TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogard fall in love onscreen and off in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (Howard Hawks, 1944)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, September 7, free with museum admission, 2:00
Series runs September 7 – November 10
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Bogie and Bacall’s first film together is a ripping WWII yarn liberally adapted from the Ernest Hemingway novel by Hemingway, director and producer Howard Hawks, longtime screenwriter Jules Furthman, and future Pulitzer Prize winner William Faulkner. In To Have and Have Not, Humphrey Bogart stars as Captain Steve Morgan, a man’s man who owns a fishing boat in Martinique, which is under Vichy rule. Morgan is determined to avoid getting involved in the war and its complex politics, but when hotel owner Frenchy (Marcel Dalio) offers him some much-needed cash in exchange for making a secret middle-of-the-night ocean pickup of French Resistance fighter Paul de Bursac (Walter Surovy) and his wife, Helene (Dolores Moran), Morgan relents, bringing along his perpetually drunk sidekick, Eddy (Walter Brennan). Morgan is being closely watched by police captain Renard (Dan Seymour) and his small gangster-like crew, but he decides this time to take the risk and heads out to sea. Meanwhile, he is spending more and more time with the mysterious young woman across the hall, Marie “Slim” Browning (Lauren Bacall), who can be both tender and alluring and as tough as nails. If a lot of this sounds like Casablanca, that’s because it is, with Warner Bros. trying to repeat the success of their Oscar-winning hit. The similarities are many, from Morgan’s reluctance to get involved helping an important married couple in the Resistance movement to his potential romance with a beautiful blonde, from Vichy police captains named Renard and Renault to actors such as Seymour and Dalio, who appear in both pictures, and the inclusion of a piano player serenading the locals (Dooley Wilson in Casablanca, Hoagy Carmichael in To Have and Have Not.)

Marie Browning (Lauren Bacall), Frenchy (Marcel Dalio), and Steve Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) get immersed in a dangerous situation in Vichy-run Martinique in Hawks classic

It is perhaps the two films’ parallelism that prevented To Have and Have Not from receiving even a single Oscar nomination, especially considering Bacall’s spectacular debut, a bold, confident performance filled with nuance, whether she’s singing with Carmichael, lifting a bar patron’s wallet, lighting a cigarette with Bogart (with whom she started a long romance), or teaching him to whistle. Even with the Casablanca comparisons, To Have and Have Not works on its own, a thrillingly entertaining noir that also features wonderful cinematography by Sidney Hickox, especially one marvelous scene that casts ominous shadows from louvered blinds across Bogie and Bacall. To Have and Have Not is screening September 7 at the Museum of the Moving Image, kicking off the two-month series “The Complete Howard Hawks,” comprising more than three dozen works by the legendary Hollywood director and producer who conquered multiple genres; the films range from the famous (Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep, Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Red River, Ball of Fire, Sergeant York, His Girl Friday, The Thing from Another World, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) to the more obscure, including his silent films (Trent’s Last Case, Fig Leaves, A Girl in Every Port, Fazil).

ADOPTAPALOOZA 2013

Union Square Park
Sunday, September 8, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
www.adoptapaloozanyc.org

Nearly three hundred dogs, cats, and rabbits will be available for adoption on Sunday afternoon in Union Square Park for the annual Adoptapalooza. Sponsored by the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, Adoptapalooza will make available four-legged friends from approximately three dozen animal shelters and rescue groups, including All About Spay Neuter, Anarchy Animal Rescue, Animal Care & Control of NYC, Animal Haven, the ASPCA, Bideawee, the Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition, City Critters, Four Paws Sake, Grateful Greyhounds, KittyKind, Liberty Humane Society, the Pet Adoption League of New York, Rescuzilla, the SaveKitty Foundation, Sean Casey Animal Rescue, Social Tees Animal Rescue, and Zani’s Furry Friends. There will also be special activities, from pet photographers and pet health-care booths to raffles and grooming demonstrations. Among the animals you can eventually go home with are the domestic long-hair black Acacia, the domestic short-hair tabby Adeline, the domestic short-hair orange and black Alfredo, the cocker spaniel Angel, the Maltese Shih Tzu Ariel, the Siberian husky Azul, the Harlequin Athena, the dwarf mix Belle, and the Angora Cantinflas.

CONTEMPT

Brigitte Bardot shows off both her acting talent and beautiful body in Jean-Luc Godard’s CONTEMPT

CONTEMPT (LE MEPRIS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 6-19
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

French auteur Jean-Luc Godard doesn’t hold back any of his contempt for Hollywood cinema in his multilayered masterpiece Contempt, which is being shown September 6-19 in a fiftieth-anniversary restoration at Film Forum. Loosely based on Alberto Moravia’s Il Disprezzo, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as Paul Javal, a French screenwriter called to Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance ) to perform rewrites on Austrian director Fritz Lang’s (played by Lang himself) adaptation of The Odyssey by ancient Greek writer Homer. Paul brings along his young wife, the beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot), whom Prokosch takes an immediate liking to. With so many languages being spoken, Prokosch’s assistant, Francesca Vanini (Giorgia Moll), serves as translator, but getting the various characters to communicate with one another and say precisely what is on their mind grows more and more difficult as the story continues and Camille and Paul’s love starts to crumble. Contempt is a spectacularly made film, bathed in deep red, white, and blue, as Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard poke fun at the American way of life. (Both Godard and Coutard appear in the film, the former as Lang’s assistant director, the latter as Lang’s cameraman — as well as the cameraman who aims the lens right at the viewer at the start of the film.)

Producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) doesn’t always have the kindest of words for director Fritz Lang in CONTEMPT

Bardot is sensational in one of her best roles, whether teasing Paul at a marvelously filmed sequence in their Rome apartment (watch for him opening and stepping through a door without any glass), lying naked on the bed, asking Paul what he thinks of various parts of her body (while Coutard changes the filter from a lurid red to a lush blue), or pouting when it appears that Paul is willing to pimp her out in order to get the writing job. Palance is a hoot as the big-time producer, regularly reading fortune-cookie-like quotes from an extremely little red book he carries around that couldn’t possibly hold so many words. And Lang, who left Germany in the mid-1930s for a career in Hollywood, has a ball playing a version of himself, an experienced veteran willing to put up with Prokosch’s crazy demands. Vastly entertaining from start to finish, Contempt is filled with a slew of inside jokes about the filmmaking industry and even Godard’s personal and professional life, along with some of the French director’s expected assortment of political statements and a string of small flourishes that are easy to miss but add to the immense fun, all set to a gorgeous romantic score by Georges Delerue.

THE COMPLETE HOWARD HAWKS: RIO BRAVO

Dean Martin and John Wayne have their hands full in Howard Hawks’s RIO BRAVO

RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, September 7, free with museum admission, 4:30
Series runs September 7 – November 10
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Howard Hawks’s anti-High Noon is a surprisingly sensitive, extremely clever exploration of interpersonal relationships disguised as a Western genre picture. John Wayne stars as Sheriff John T. Chance, a big, bold small-town Texas lawman who arrests local bully Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) for committing cold-blooded murder. The cocky Burdette doesn’t expect to be in jail long, not with his brother, Nathan (John Russell), being the most powerful — and potentially dangerous — man in Rio Bravo, and what with Chance’s deputies being useless drunk Dude (Dean Martin) and an old cripple known as Stumpy (Walter Brennan). Despite offers of help from such friends as businessman Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond), Chance is determined to go it with just Dude and Stumpy as they attempt to hold Joe until the federal marshal arrives. But Nathan and his hired band of bounty hunters are just as determined to free Joe, whatever the cost. Chance is not so foolish as to think that he can take Burdette’s crew on just by himself; he actually doesn’t want anyone else to die for something he considers his responsibility. Meanwhile, he is keeping his eyes on Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a tough-talking young woman with a sordid past, and Colorado (Ricky Nelson), a sharpshooting young stud only out for himself. The set-up is merely an excuse for Hawks to delve into some serious male bonding and potential romance as Dude, called Borrachón (“Drunk”), tries to put down the bottle, Feathers attempts to prove that she’s not all bad, and Colorado eventually replaces his guns for a few minutes with a guitar to sing with Dude and Stumpy. Wayne plays it all marvelously, portraying Chance as a complex individual who understands the fears and desires, limitations and possibilities inherent in everyone he meets, yet always remaining cool. Appropriately enough, the local hotel, run by the always helpful Carlos (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez) and his wife, Consuela (Estelita Rodriguez), is named the Alamo, not boding well for Chance and his meager team. Even at its 141-minute running time, Rio Bravo feels far more intimate than epic. Rio Bravo is screening September 7 in a restored 35mm print at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the two-month series “The Complete Howard Hawks,” comprising more than three dozen works by the legendary director and producer, from the famous (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Red River, Ball of Fire, Sergeant York, His Girl Friday, The Thing from Another World, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) to the more obscure, including his silent films (Trent’s Last Case, Fig Leaves, A Girl in Every Port, Fazil).