Film Forum series pays tribute to Marlon Brando centennial with such films as On the Waterfront
BRANDO 100
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 13-26
212-727-8110 filmforum.org
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in April 1924 to a traveling salesman father and theater actress mother, Marlon Brando Jr. went on to become one of the greatest actors of all time — and the most-quoted screen star in cinema history.
“The horror. The horror.” —Marlon Brando as Col. Walter Kurtz, Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Film Forum is paying tribute to the eight-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner with “Brando at 100,” a two-week festival honoring the centennial of his birth, consisting of twenty-one of his films and one documentary.
“What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?” — Mildred (Peggy Maley) “Whaddya got.” —Marlon Brando as Johnny Strabler, The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953)
The series opens December 13 with five favorites, Julius Caesar,The Men,A Streetcar Named Desire,On the Waterfront, and The Wild One, and continues through December 26 with such other highlights as The Godfather,The Freshman,Last Tango in Paris,The Missouri Breaks, and Viva Zapata!
“Hey, Stella!” —Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)
Author and film historian Foster Hirsch (A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio,Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties) will introduce the 7:10 screening of On the Waterfront on December 13 and the 1:00 screening of Reflections in a Golden Eye on December 26.
Marlon Brando sings (!) in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1955 Guys and Dolls
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” —Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
On December 16 at 8:00, Film Forum will pair Fred Zinnemann’s 1950 The Men with Albert and David Maysles’s half-hour 1966 documentary Meet Marlon Brando.
“You don’t understand. I coulda’ had class. I coulda’ been a contender. I could’ve been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let’s face it.” —Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
While Brando, who died in 2004 at the age of eighty, was a controversial, iconoclastic figure for much of his career, Film Forum is focusing on his myriad successes.
“The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them.” —Marlon Brando
Boring? Not Marlon Brando. As his acting teacher and Method mentor, Stella Adler, wrote, “He has the ability to hold the reality of his character and the needs of the script simultaneously, making every performance electric.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Benshi star Ichiro Kataoka will narrate two silent masterpieces at Japan Society, with live shamisen music by Sumie Kaneko
THE BENSHI TRADITION AND THE SILVER SCREEN: A JAPANESE PUPPETRY SPIN-OFF
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, December 12, and Friday, December 13, $22-$31, 7:30
212-715-1258 www.japansociety.org
Japan Society’s “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry” began in September with Basil Twist’s mind-blowing Dogugaeshi and continued in October with National Bunraku Theater’s Date Musume Koi no Higanoko (Oshichi, the Greengrocer’s Daughter) and Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki) and in November with Sachiyo Takahashi/Nekaa Lab’s One Night in Winter and The Peony Lantern.
The fall series concludes with “The Benshi Tradition and the Silver Screen: A Japanese Puppetry Spin-Off,” two evenings of live music by Sumie Kaneko on the shamisen and benshi narration by contemporary “movie talker” Ichiro Kataoka, in Japanese with English subtitles, accompanying a pair of rarely screened silent masterpieces. On December 12, they will perform to Daisuke Ito’s 1927 jidaigeki A Diary of Chuji’s Travels, starring Denjirō Ōkōchi; originally a four-hour triptych, only 111 fragmented minutes now remain. That will be followed on December 13 by Shozo Makino’s 1910-17 ninety-minute work-in-progress Chushingura, an incomplete early cinematic adaptation of the story of the 47 ronin featuring Matsunosuke Onoe, who is said to have appeared in a thousand films by the time of his death in 1926 at the age of fifty, though only six survive, at least in part.
Both events will be preceded by a lecture at 6:30 by Princeton University professor Dr. Junko Yamazaki; there will be a postshow private gathering for artists and Japan Society members on December 12 and an artist Q&A on December 13. The previous productions in “Ningyo! A Parade of Puppetry,” being held in conjunction with the Japan Society exhibition “Bunraku Backstage,” sold out in advance, so act quickly if you want to catch what should be two rare, unique experiences.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Phantom Lady is one of seventeen films in Robert Siodmak retrospective at Lincoln Center
ROBERT SIODMAK: DARK VISIONARY
Film at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
144 West Sixty-Fifth St. at Amsterdam Ave.
December 11-19, All-Access Pass $119 www.filmlinc.org
In his 2010 essay “Dark Mirrors” for the Museum of the Moving Image, David Cairns wrote, “If film noir had not somehow coalesced from a miasma of influences floating in the atmosphere of ’40s America — postwar disillusion and anxiety, French poetic realism, German Expressionism, the gangster movie, and pulp fiction traditions — perhaps only Fritz Lang or Robert Siodmak could have invented it. Lang, because his work always carried a dark worldview, filtering sociopolitical tensions and focusing them into intense, ecstatic, tortured images. Siodmak, because his movies already followed two normally divergent paths — social realism and expressionist nightmare — which converge to make noir.”
While the Austrian-born German-American Lang is well known for such classics as Metropolis,M,You Only Live Once,Ministry of Fear,The Big Heat, and Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, made in Germany and Hollywood, Siodmak, who was born in Dresden and worked in Germany, Paris, and California, is far less well known despite making some all-time favorites in multiple genres and being denounced by Josef Goebbels as “a corrupter of the German family.”
Film at Lincoln Center is honoring the director with the seventeen-film retrospective “Robert Siodmak: Dark Visionary,” including new 4K restorations of 1943’s Son of Dracula, 1944’s Phantom Lady, 1945’s The Suspect, and 1946’s The Killers. The works range from 1930’s People on Sunday, codirected by Edgar G. Ullmer, through 1952’s The Crimson Pirate, and feature such stars as Ava Gardner, Lon Chaney Jr., Maria Montez, Charles Laughton, Olivia de Havilland, George Sanders, Dorothy McGuire, Burt Lancaster, Barbara Stanwyck, Victor Mature, Yvonne De Carlo, Lloyd Bridges, and Ella Raines.
Burt Lancaster makes a killer film debut in classic 1946 noir from Robert Siodmak
THE KILLERS (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
Thursday, December 12, 6:30
Friday, December 13, 8:30 www.filmlinc.org
In 1950, Edmond O’Brien starred as auditor Frank Bigelow in Rudolph Maté’s classic noir D.O.A., a story told in flashback as Bigelow tries to figure out why someone has poisoned him. Four years earlier, O’Brien dealt with another kind of fatalism in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, playing insurance agent Jim Reardon, who is investigating why a gas station attendant was brutally gunned down in his bed in suburban Brentwood, New Jersey. The film opens with cold-hearted contract killers Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad) arriving in town, looking for the Swede (Burt Lancaster), aka Pete Lund and Ole Andreson. They waltz into Henry’s Diner, giving orders and exchanging mean-spirited dialogue with no fears or worries. When Nick Adams (Phil Brown) warns the Swede that the men are coming to kill him, the former boxer knows there’s nothing he can do about it anymore; he’s tired of running, and he’s ready to meet his end. It’s a shocking way to begin a movie; up to that point, it’s a faithful version of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, but the rest is the splendid invention of writers Richard Brooks, Anthony Veiller, and John Huston and producer Mark Hellinger. Reardon soon finds himself meeting with a series of gangsters as they relate, through flashbacks, a plot to rob a payroll, perpetrated by a motley crew that includes “Dum Dum” Clarke (Jack Lambert), “Blinky” Franklin (Jeff Corey), the Swede, and mastermind Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), along with Big Jim’s gun moll, femme fatale extraordinaire Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). Reardon’s boss (Donald MacBride) wants him to forget about it, since it’s essentially about a meager $2,500 insurance claim, but Reardon is determined to find out what happened to a quarter million in cash, with the help of the Swede’s childhood friend, Lt. Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene).
Ava Gardner turns more than a few heads in The Killers
The Killers is an intense, passionate heist flick, structured like Citizen Kane, starting with a death and then putting everything together via interviews and flashbacks. Lancaster and Gardner are magnetic, he in his screen debut, she in the film that made her a star. Siodmak (The Dark Mirror, The Spiral Staircase) masterfully navigates the noir tropes, from Miklós Rózsa’s jazzy score, which jumps out from the opening credits, and Woody Bredell’s oft-angled black-and-white cinematography that maintains an ominous, shadowy sensibility throughout to deft characterizations and surprising plot twists. As it makes its way through the seven deadly sins, The Killers lives up to its fab billing as a “Raw! Rugged! Ruthless drama of a man who gambled — his luck — his love — his life for the treachery of a girl’s lips.” Nominated for four Oscars, for Best Director, Best Film Editing (Arthur Hilton), Best Music, and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Killers, which was also made into a 1958 student short by Andrei Tarkovsky and a 1964 crime drama by Don Siegel starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Norman Fell, and Ronald Reagan, is screening December 12 and 13 in a new 4K restoration in the Film at Lincoln Center series “Robert Siodmak: Dark Visionary.” Be on the lookout for such other gems and surprises as Inquest,The Burning Secret,Cobra Woman,The Spiral Staircase, and Criss Cross.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Christian Marclay’s twenty-four-hour masterpiece, The Clock, unfolds in real time (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art
11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through February 17, $17-$30 www.moma.org
In 2010, the Whitney presented “Festival,” a thrilling interactive retrospective of the work of Christian Marclay, featuring multiple multimedia site-specific installations and live performances. The New York–based multidisciplinary artist followed that up with a supreme work of utter brilliance, the captivating twenty-four-hour video The Clock, which premiered at White Cube in London, then won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Over the years in New York it has screened at the Paula Cooper Gallery, the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, and in 2012–13 at the Museum of Modern Art; it is now back at MoMA, where this must-see experience will be on view through February 19. “I can’t believe a decade has gone by since The Clock was last shown at MoMA,” Marclay said in a statement. “We’ve all aged except the actors on the screen, who never age. They may die but on the screen they live forever.”
Time is of the essence in Christian Marclay’s dazzling film The Clock (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)
The film, always presented in a large, dark space with roomy, comfortable seats, unfolds in real time, composed of approximately twelve thousand clips from movies and television that feature all kinds of timepieces showing the minutes ticking away. Masterfully edited so that it creates its own fluid narrative, The Clock seamlessly cuts from romantic comedies with birds emerging from cuckoo clocks to action films in which protagonists synchronize their watches, from thrillers with characters battling it out in clock towers to dramas with convicted murderers facing execution and sci-fi programs with mad masterminds attempting to freeze time. Marclay mixes in iconic images with excerpts from little-known foreign works so audiences are kept on the edge of their seats, wondering what will come next, laughing knowingly at recognizable scenes and gawking at strange, unfamiliar bits.
Christian Marclay’s The Clock premiered at White Cube Mason’s Yard in London in 2010 (photo by Todd-White Photography)
Part of the beauty of The Clock is that while time is often central to many of the clips, it is merely incidental in others, someone casually checking their watch or a clock visible in the background, emphasizing how pervasive time is — both on-screen and in real life. Americans spend an enormous amount of time watching movies and television — and now addictively glued to social media platforms and videos on their phones — so The Clock is also a wry though loving commentary on what we choose to do with our leisure time as well.
The Clock is open during MoMA’s regular hours, with members getting priority. It is not necessarily meant to be viewed in one massive gulp, but it will be shown in its entirety on December 21 at 7:00, in conjunction with the Winter Solstice, and again on New Year’s Eve; ticketing will be announced soon. Since the film corresponds to the actual time, midnight should offer some fascinating moments, although you might be surprised how exciting even three o’clock in the morning can be. Expect huge crowds whenever you go — capacity is limited, on a first-come, first-served basis, and you can stay as long as you want — so be prepared to do something with all that valuable time spent on the digital line. But wait you should — it’s well worth every second.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
JeCE! THE JEWISH COMIC EXPERIENCE CONVENTION
Center for Jewish History
15 West Sixteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 10, $15-$25, 9:00 am – 8:00 pm jewce.org www.cjh.org
Jews played key roles in the development of the comic book industry in the United States, as artists, illustrators, editors, and publishers. In 2006-7, the Jewish Museum presented with the Newark Museum the outstanding exhibit “Masters of American Comics,” which explored the work of fourteen artists, several of whom were Jewish.
On November 10, the Center for Jewish History is hosting the second annual “JewCE! The Jewish Comic Experience Convention,” focusing on Jewish history, culture, and identity as depicted in comic books. There is a full slate of lectures, panel discussions, workshops, artist booths, and more, and awards (the jewcies!) will be handed out Sunday night in such categories as Jewish Tradition and Folklore, Diverse Representation, Historical Narrative, Autobiographical/Biographical Content, Contemporary Topics, and Combatting Prejudice, hosted by Roy Schwartz, Danny Fingeroth, Miriam Mora, and Fabrice Sapolsk. There will also be a special tribute to Trina Robbins, winner of the 2023 inaugural JewCE Award for Career Achievement who passed away in April at the age of eighty-five.
“In its second year, JewCE is more than just a superpowered celebration of Jewish comics and culture — it’s a beacon of resilience and unity,” Center for Jewish History president Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld said in a statement. “With the troubling rise in antisemitism, it’s never been more crucial to tell our stories. Comics have always been a medium for the underdog, and JewCEshowcases the triumph of Jewish creativity over adversity.”
The impressive roster of speakers, awards judges, and artist alley participants include Chari Pere, Josh Edelglass, Fabrice Sapolsky, Tony Kim, Amit Tishler, Dean Haspiel, Emily Bowen Cohen, Paul Levitz, Miriam Mora, Danny Fingeroth, Koren Shadmi, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Ben and Max Berkowitz, Roy Schwartz, Neil Kleid, Barbara Willy Mendes, Mathew Klickstein, Barbara Slate, Athena Finger, Cheryl Rubin, Mike Reiss, Josh Neufeld, Terry LaBan, Chris Claremont, Arie Kaplan, Ari Richter, Uri Fink, Amy Hungerford, Sholly Fisch, Omri Rose, Dr. Sean Wise, Hilary Price, Peter Kuper, Jeff Newelt, Heidi MacDonald, Jenny Caplan, and Lillian Laserson.
Among the special events are “American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner,” “Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics,” “DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment,” “Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics,” and “Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7.” Below is the full schedule.
The Best-Known Comedy Writer You’ve Never Heard Of, with Mike Reiss, moderated by Mathew Klickstein, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 10:00
Drawing from Memory: From Archive to Graphic Novel, with Ari Richter, moderated by Amy Hungerford, Kovno-Shavl Room, 10:00
Jump into Drawing Comics!, with Josh Edelglass, Rennert Chapel, 10:00
American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, with Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Jeff Newel, Peter Kuper, and Arie Kaplan, moderated by Danny Fingeroth, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 11:30
Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics, with the Berkowitz Brothers and Amit Tishler, moderated by Neil Kleid, Kovno-Shavl Room, 11:30
Comic Strip Workshop, with Chari Pere, Rennert Chapel, 11:30
DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment, with Cheryl Rubin, Lillian Laserson, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Paul Levitz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 1:00
Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics, with Arie Kaplan, Chari Pere, Hilary Price, Terry LaBan, and Uri Fink, moderated by Jenny Caplan, Kovno-Shavl Room, 1:00
Jewish Comics Trivia Game, with Sholly Fisch, Rennert Chapel, 1:00
Batman at 85, with Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Athena Finger, Danny Fingeroth, and N. C. Christopher Couch, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 2:30
Leadership and Legacy: Trina Robbins Tribute, with Barbara “Willy” Mendes, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Heidi MacDonald, Kovno-Shavl Room, 2:30
JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience Documentary Special and Q&A, with Miriam Mora, Tony Kim, and Danny Fingeroth, Rennert Chapel, 3:00
An Xciting Conversation with Chris Claremont, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 4:00
Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7, with Uri Fink, Koren Shadmi, and Omri Rose, moderated by Sean Wise, Kovno-Shavl Room, 4:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Bruce Weber focuses in on Peter Johnson and others in cinematic hodgepodge
CHOP SUEY (Bruce Weber, 2001)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, November 3, 8:15
Wednesday, November 6, 8:50
Series runs November 1-7
212-727-8110 www.filmforum.org www.bruceweber.com
Fashion photographer Bruce Weber, who directed the seminal Chet Baker doc Let’s Get Lost a quarter century ago, made this entertaining hodgepodge of still photos, old color and black-and-white footage, and new interviews and voice-over narration back in 2001. You might not know much about Frances Faye, but after seeing her perform in vintage Ed Sullivan clips and listening to her manager/longtime partner discuss their life together, you’ll be searching YouTube to check out a lot more. The film also examines how Weber selects and treats his male models, who are often shot in homoerotic poses for major designers (and later go on to get married and have children). As a special treat, Jan-Michael Vincent’s extensive full-frontal nude scene in Daniel Petrie and Sidney Sheldon’s 1974 Buster and Billie is on display here, as are vintage clips of Sammy Davis Jr., adventurer Sir Wilfred Thesiger, former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, and Robert Mitchum singing in a recording studio with Dr. John.
The film is about model Peter Johnson and Weber as much as it is about the cult of celebrity; Weber gets to chime in on Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Arthur Miller, and dozens of other famous names and faces. Though an awful lot of fun, the film is disjointed, lacking a central focus, and the onscreen titles, end credits, and promotional postcards are chock-full of typos — perhaps emulating a Chinese takeout menu, hence the film’s title? Chop Suey is screening November 3 at 8:15, followed by a Q&A with Peter Johnson, and November 7 at 8:50 as part of Film Forum’s “Bruce Weber” series, which runs November 1-7 and also includes a new 4K restoration of Let’s Get Lost, followed by a talk with cinematographer Jeff Preiss; 1987’s Broken Noses, about former Olympian boxer Andy Minsker; 2018’s Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast, followed by a conversation with Carrie Mitchum and editor Chad Sipkin; 2004’s A Letter to True, a tribute to Weber’s dog; a compilation of shorts, videos, commercials, and works in progress; and The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo di Paolo.
Paolo di Paolo’s photograph of Pier Paolo Pasolini at Monte dei Cocci in 1960 is one of many highlighted in Bruce Weber documentary
THE TREASURE OF HIS YOUTH: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF PAOLO DI PAOLO (Bruce Weber, 2022)
Saturday, November 2, 1:00 www.filmforum.org
“The mystery of Paolo di Paolo to me is that he was able to give up photography, something he once had such passion for,” documentarian Bruce Weber says at the beginning of the fabulous The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo di Paolo, a warm and inviting film about one of the greatest photographers you’ve never heard of.
In 1954, Italian philosopher Paolo di Paolo saw a Leica III camera in a shop window and, at the spur of the moment, decided to buy it. That led to fourteen extraordinary years during which the self-taught artist took pictures for Il Mondo and Il Tempo, documenting, primarily in black-and-white, postwar Italy as well as the country’s burgeoning film industry. He was not about glitz and glamour; he captured such figures as Luchino Visconti, Anna Magnani, Ezra Pound, Simone Signoret, Marcello Mastroianni, Charlotte Rampling, Alberto Moravia, Sofia Loren, Giorgio Di Chirico, and others in private moments and glorying in bursts of freedom. He went on a road trip with Pier Paolo Pasolini for a magazine story in which the director would write the words and di Paolo would supply the images. His photos of the society debut of eighteen-year-old Princess Pallavincini are poignant and beautiful, nothing like standard publicity shots.
Paolo di Paolo’s relationship with the camera is revealed in lovely documentary (photo courtesy Little Bear Films)
Then, in 1968, just as suddenly as he picked up the camera, he put it away, frustrated by the growing paparazzi culture and television journalism. A few years ago, Weber and his wife went into a small gallery in Rome where Weber, who has had a “love affair” with Rome since he was ten, discovered magnificent photos of many of his favorite Italian film stars. The gallery owner, Giuseppe Casetti, told him that the pictures were by an aristocratic gentleman he had bumped into at flea markets and who one day came into the bookstore where he was working and gave him one for free, knowing he was a collector. Casetti wanted to know who had taken the photo; “I was once a photographer,” di Paolo told him unassumingly.
That set Weber off on a search to find out everything he could about di Paolo, who is now ninety-seven. Even his daughter, Silvia di Paolo, had no knowledge of her father’s past as a photographer until she found nearly a quarter of a million negatives in the basement of the family home and began organizing them about twenty years ago. Paolo had never spoken of this part of his life; he wrote books on philosophy, was the official historian of the Carabinieri, and restored antique sports cars, but his artistic career was an enigma even though it was when he met his wife, his former assistant.
The father of the bride watches the young couple as they head down a country road (photo by Paolo di Paolo)
Weber follows di Paolo as he meets with photographer Tony Vaccaro, film producer Marina Cigona, and his longtime friend (but not related) Antonio do Paola, visits his childhood home in Larino, is interviewed by the young son of Vogue art director Luca Stoppini, and attends his first-ever retrospective exhibition (“Il Mondo Perduto” at the Maxxi Museum in Rome). And he picks up the camera again, taking photos at a Valentino fashion show.
Cinematographer Theodore Stanley evokes di Paolo’s unpretentious style as he photographs the aristocratic gentleman walking up a narrow cobblestoned street, his cane in his right hand, an umbrella in his left over his head, and driving one of his sports cars. Editor and cowriter Antonio Sánchez intercuts hundreds and hundreds of di Paolo’s photos, several of which are discussed in the film: a spectacular shot of Pasolini at Monte dei Cocci, the director in the foreground, the famous cross atop a hill in the background; Visconti in a chair, fanning himself; a scene in which a father, hands in his pocket, watches his daughter and new son-in-law walking away on an empty country road. There are also clips from such classic films as Rocco and His Brothers,Accatone,Rome Open City,Marriage Italian Style, and 8½. It’s all accompanied by John Leftwich’s epic score.
As Cigona tells di Paolo about having ended his flourishing photography career, “People said, ‘Why did you do that? You were quite famous.’” It was never about the fame for di Paolo, but now the secret is out.
“For me, every object is a miracle,” Pasolini says in an archival interview. In The Treasure of His Youth, Weber treats every moment with di Paolo and his photographs as a miracle. So will you.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Nikita Khrushchev visits America and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Soundtrack to a Coup d’État
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP d’ÉTAT (Johan Grimonprez, 2024)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, November 1
212-727-8110 filmforum.org kinolorber.com
Two new documentaries opening November 1 in New York use music and poetry, respectively, to look at a pair of seminal moments in twentieth-century world history.
At Film Forum, visual artist Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is a 150-minute jazz epic, an exhilarating barrage of words, images, and music that delves deep into the January 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of what would become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1960, in a move that struck a blow against colonialism, sixteen African countries were admitted to the United Nations, and that year also saw the UN’s first peacekeeping operation on the continent. Amid espionage and international machinations, the cold war reaches new levels. Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev rhythmically bangs his shoe on a General Assembly table and US president Dwight D. Eisenhower befriends Belgian king Baudouin in an effort to secure uranium. The CIA gets involved in possibly nefarious operations in Africa, using unknowing jazz musicians as deflections.
Grimonprez (dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y,Shadow World) and editor Rik Chaubet interweave quotes by Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Malcolm X, Sukarno, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Fidel Castro, activist Léonie Abo, Irish diplomat and writer Conor Cruise O’Brien, CIA director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State John F. Dulles, activist Andrée Blouin, mercenaries “Mad” Mike Hoare and Bruce Bartlett, Belgian premier Gaston Eyskens, UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld, writer In Koli Jean Bofane, CIA station chief Larry Devlin, DRC president Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Voice of America broadcaster Willis Conover, Belgian colonel Frédéric Vandewalle, and others with songs by such legends as Nina Simone (“Wild Is the Wind”), Louis Armstrong (“Black and Blue”), Miriam Makeba (“Mbube”), Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane (“In a Sentimental Mood”), Miles Davis (“Blue in Green”), Ornette Coleman (“January”), Dizzy Gillespie (“And Then She Stopped”), and Duke Ellington (“Take the ‘A’ Train”), along with archival footage, album covers, and boldly designed graphics.
The musical centerpieces are drummer Max Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln (“Tears for Johannesburg,” “Freedom Day,” “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace”), who, at the UN Security Council in 1961, protested the murder of Lumumba, and Gillespie, who speaks with his trademark humor about the controversies. “This is what you might call a cool war,” Ellington tells Gillespie, who responds, “The weapon that we will use is the cool one,” holding up his horn. He also has fun teasing a television news journalist about the situation in Africa.
Powerful, poetic quotes are spoken or are blasted across the screen.
“One day independence will come to the Congo and the white will become black, and the black will become white.” — Congolese cleric Simon Kimbangu
“There is a limit to the usefulness of the past.” — Indian UN ambassador Krishna Menon
“The enemy is imperialism.” — Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah
“Any fool can start a war that even a wise man cannot end.” — Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev (over footage of a submarine rising through ice and Khrushchev petting his dog, looking like a Bond villain)
“Sure, I’d rather be a poet than a politician. . . . I’m suspicious of the written word; I prefer the spoken word. I trust it more in the world of politics.” — Belgian premier Paul-Henri Spaak
“If Africa is shaped like a revolver, then Congo is its trigger.” — French psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is like a multimedia jazz concert, every minute promising some kind of improvisatory surprise from many of the greatest singers and instrumentalists of the era. It’s a radical documentary with radical views; the scenes when Khrushchev and Castro come to America are unforgettable, and several of its positions on issues are controversial. But it moves and grooves to the rhythm of the beat in a way that will suck you into its world while making you reconsider much of what you know about the incidents it explores.
Grimonprez will be at Film Forum for Q&As following the 6:45 screening on November 1 and the 4:00 show on November 2.
After: Poetry Destroys Silence explores how poetry deals with such tragic events as the Holocaust
AFTER: POETRY DESTROYS SILENCE (Richard Kroehling, 2024)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, November 1 www.cinemavillage.com www.after.film
In the 2016 documentary The Last Laugh, director Ferne Pearlstein spoke with survivors as well as such comics as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Harry Shearer, David Steinberg, Susie Essman, and Rob Reiner in an attempt to find a connection between humor and the Holocaust “You can do jokes about Nazis,” Gilbert Gottfried says in the film, “but if you say ‘Holocaust,’ then it becomes bad taste.”
In After: Poetry Destroys Silence, writer, director, and editor Richard Kroehling looks at the relationship between poetry and the Holocaust, but, unsurprisingly, there is little humor to be found. It’s an intensely serious film that tries to tell its story in a form that mimics that of its subject. Just as Soundtrack to a Coup d’État unfurls like a jazz concert, After is told like an epic poem. But in this case, scenes of poignant purity and beauty are interrupted by self-congratulatory moments as experts feel the need not just to share poetry but to defend its existence as a necessary art form in interpreting history.
Following a projected quote from Theodor Adorno that reads, “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” poet Alicia Ostriker explains, “After Auschwitz, poetry is barbaric. It’s easy for people to think that and many people do, but they’re thinking that is part of the contempt for poetry; that is also contempt for the human soul.”
“After certain kinds of genocide and suffering, how can the world go on at all?” poet and critic Edward Hirsch asks. “I think it’s the obligation of poetry to respond to certain kinds of horror. The Holocaust is a kind of test case for poetry because of course it defies language. It defeats language. And yet language has to respond. It’s our job as poets to remember what happened.”
The film works better when it concentrates on the poems themselves, which are often accompanied by archival footage from Auschwitz, shots of nature (especially fire and water), whispers, and music from a violin, piano, and typewriter. Citing memories from his time in the camps, ninety-one-year-old survivor Walter Fiden proclaims, “Everything can be overcome. Nothing is hopeless.”
Hungarian poet and actor Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul,To Dust) recalls visiting an empty Auschwitz in 1986, using a map his grandfather made, and seeing various artifacts left behind, from toothbrushes and children’s toys to Hebrew letters and drawings on walls. He notes, “I felt that if I could not become six million, I will step into the shoes of one.”
There are other contributions from survivor Paul Celan, Yehuda Amichai, Christine Poreba, Taylor Mali, Sabrina Orah Mark, film producer Janet R. Kirchheimer, and Pulitzer Prize nominee Cornelius Eady, who performs an anonymous poem from the Warsaw Ghetto with a jazz sensibility. In a ten-minute segment in the middle of the film, Oscar winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter,Frozen River) and Bo Corre (Mulberry St.,Harrow Island) try to find meaning in a lost photograph from 1945. Tribute is paid to Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, and André Trocmé. The late photographer Charles Carter recites haunting poetry while contemporary shots of his are mixed in with historical footage. The beautiful cinematography is by Lisa Rinzler, with evocative sound by Helge Bernhardt.
In Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, Max Roach declares, “We do use the music as a weapon against man’s inhumanity toward man.” The same can be said for the poetry in After.
After: Poetry Destroys Silence opens November 1 at Cinema Village, with Kroehling on hand for a Q&A following the 1:00 screening. On November 3 at 5:00, Kroehling, Kirchheimer, Eady, and Röhrig will participate in a panel discussion and reception at Town & Village Synagogue, moderated by Rabbi Irwin Kula, and there will be a panel discussion with the same group on November 6 at Cinema Village after the 7:00 show.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
