this week in film and television

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS

(images courtesy of MGM / Cineteca di Bologna / Park Circus)

Clint Eastwood introduces the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (photo courtesy MGM / Cineteca di Bologna / Park Circus)

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (PER UN PUGNO DI DOLLARI) (Sergio Leone, 1964)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
May 25-31
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Clint Eastwood made a name for himself on the big screen playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s 1964 spaghetti Western, A Fistful of Dollars, which is being shown in a new 4K restoration at Metrograph May 25-31. In his first lead movie role, Eastwood, the costar of the television series Rawhide, is a gunslinger draped in a poncho and smoking a small cigar who rides on a mule into San Miguel, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, home to an ongoing feud between the gun-running Baxters and the liquor-dealing Rojos. The stranger decides to play both sides against the middle, caring only that he earns lots of cash. “Never saw a town as dead as this one,” the stranger tells saloon owner Silvanito (Jose Calvo), who explains, “The place is only widows. Here you can only get respect by killing other men, so nobody works anymore.” The stranger hears the sound of banging outside and says, “Somebody doesn’t share your opinion.” Silvanito opens the window to reveal old man Piripero (Joe Edger) making coffins. “You’ll be a customer,” Silvanito tells the stranger with assurance. The stranger goes back and forth between the Baxters, led by the sheriff (W. Lukschy), and the Rojos, who follow the dangerous, unpredictable Ramón (Gian Maria Volontè). Also caught up in the Hatfield-McCoy battle are the sheriff’s wife, Consuelo (Margherita Lozano), and brother, Antonio (Bruno Carotenuto), along with Rojo brothers Benito (Antonio Prieto) and Esteban (S. Rupp) and their enforcer, Chico (Richard Stuyvesant). Ramón, meanwhile, has his eyes set on Marisol (Marianne Koch), who is married to Julio (Daniel Martín), who does not want to get involved in any fighting. Carefully watching it all is Juan de Díos (Raf Baldassarre), who rings the church bell at every death.

The Italian-German-Spanish production is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which led to legal entanglements when the Japanese auteur demanded, well, a fistful of dollars in financial compensation. According to Christopher Frayling’s Sergio Leone — Something to Do with Death, Leone received a note from Kurosawa that read, “Signor Leone — I have just had the chance to see your film. It is a very fine film, but it is my film. Since Japan is a signatory of the Berne Convention on international copyright, you must pay me.” Frayling also suggests that Leone was influenced by Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters and did not feel he was stealing only from Kurosawa. In The BFI Companion to the Western, Frayling quotes Leone as saying, “Kurosawa’s Yojimbo was inspired by an American novel of the serie-noire so I was really taking the story back home again.” (For a montage of similarities between the two films, check out this video.). Regardless, A Fistful of Dollars, made for about two hundred grand, set the standard for the new genre, and Eastwood was its antihero. He and Leone would team up again on the sequel, For a Few Dollars More, which is not a direct remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo follow-up, Sanjuro, as well as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the best of the Dollars Trilogy.

Clint Eastwood watches his back in first of the Dollars Trilogy (photo courtesy MGM / Cineteca di Bologna / Park Circus)

Fistful is steeped in violence and death, from Iginio Lardani’s rad title sequence of silhouettes in black, white, and blood red to an early shot of the stranger riding under a noose and giving it a long look. Whereas Toshirô Mifune played the bodyguard in Yojimbo with a devilish glee, Eastwood — in a role that had been previously offered to Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and others — is much more serious as the Man with No Name, who would become more sympathetic in future outings. The extremely poor dubbing only adds to the film’s magnificence. To enhance its foreign appeal to American audiences, several members of the cast and crew appear under pseudonyms in the credits, including Leone (Bob Robertson), cinematographer Massimo Dallamano (Jack Dalmas), actor Gian Maria Volontè (John Wells), and composer Ennio Morricone (Leo Nichols or Dan Savio). There is no mention of Kurosawa or Yojimbo anywhere.

LA CINÉMATHÈQUE FRANÇAISE PRESENTS — FRENCH MELODRAMA: THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE . . .

The Comtesse Louise de . . . (Danielle Darrieux) reflects on her life in The Earrings of Madame De . . .

THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE . . . (Max Ophüls, 1953)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, May 20, 4:50, and Tuesday, May 22, 9:05
Series runs through May 22
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

Max Ophüls’s The Earrings of Madame de . . . (also known as just Madame de . . .) is a marvelously told tale, a majestic cinematic achievement that Andrew Sarris considered the greatest movie ever made and Dave Kehr called “one of the most beautiful things ever created by human hands.” In 1950, the German-born auteur made La Ronde, a merry-go-round of romance in which one of the two lovers from one scene moves on to someone else in the next. Three years later, Ophüls again follows a series of current, past, and potential lovers in The Earrings of Madame de . . . , but this time via a pair of diamond earrings whose meaning and importance are altered every time they change hands. The film opens with the Comtesse Louise de . . . (a radiant Danielle Darrieux) looking through her personal possessions, from jewelry to furs to a Bible. During a two-minute continuous shot with a handheld camera, Ophüls shows only her hands and the side of her face until she sits down and looks at herself in the mirror; it not only immediately establishes the woman’s character — like her fancy things, she has become merely another object, an empty reflection — but lets the audience know that they are in the grip of a master, that the very motion of the camera itself will play a central role in what we’re about to experience.

And indeed, Christian Matras’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, composed of wonderfully orchestrated close-ups and sweeping montages, guides us along as we follow the travels of a pair of diamond earrings that, through various circumstances, keeps coming back to the countess. Louise, whose last name we never learn through clever blocks made in sound and image, needs money, but she is afraid to let her husband, Général Andre de . . . (a stern Charles Boyer), know. She decides to sell the diamond earrings he gave her as a wedding present — she not only wants the cash but also is seeking to rid herself of what the jewelry represents, a love that is not what it once was. Meanwhile, her husband is saying goodbye to his lover, Lola (Lia Di Leo), shipping her off to Constantinople as if she were a piece of jewelry he no longer requires. But when Louise’s playful flirtation with the graceful Italian diplomat Baron Fabrizio Donati (Neorealist director Vittorio De Sica) threatens to become more serious, Andre gets more serious as well, and the heart-wrenching melodrama reaches epic dilemmas.

Général Andre (Charles Boyer) takes a newfound interest in his wife (Danielle Darrieux) in Max Ophüls classic

Loosely adapted by Ophüls with Marcel Achard and Annette Wademant from the novel by Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin, The Earrings of Madame de . . . is a ravishing film, every moment a gem. Darrieux, who also appeared in Ophüls’s House of Pleasure and La Ronde and only passed away this past fall at the age of one hundred, is bewitching as the countess, a long-unsatisfied woman attempting to break out of the shell she has been held captive in. Boyer, who had previously starred in Anatole Litvak’s Mayerling with Darrieux, is beguiling as the general, a proud man who is protective of certain possessions. And De Sica, who appeared in more than 150 films but is best known as the director of such Italian stalwarts as The Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D., and Miracle in Milan, is enchanting as the baron, who has fallen passionately in love with Louise and doesn’t care who knows it. Their courtship is breathlessly depicted in a whirling, swirling series of dances at various balls where they are the last to leave. James Mason, who starred in Ophüls’s Caught and Letters from an Unknown Woman, famously wrote, “A shot that does not call for tracks / Is agony for poor old Max, / Who, separated from his dolly, / Is wrapped in deepest melancholy. / Once, when they took away his crane, / I thought he’d never smile again.” Ophüls, who died in 1957 at the age of fifty-four during the making of Les Amants de Montparnasse, goes all out in The Earrings of Madame de . . . , an unforgettable movie with a spectacular ending. The film is screening May 20 and 22 in the Quad Cinema series “La Cinémathèque française presents: French Melodrama,” a dozen films running through May 22 selected by French critic Jean-François Rauger that also includes Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie, François Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door, Alain Resnais’s Mélo, and André Téchiné’s Hôtel des Amériques.

VULTURE FESTIVAL 2018

Maggie Gyllenhaal will be at the Vulture Festival to discuss The Deuce and four other projects

A POP CULTURE EXTRAVAGANZA
Milk Studios (and other venues)
450 West Fifteenth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Saturday, May 18, and Sunday, May 19, free – $160
vulturefestival.com/ny

New York magazine’s fifth annual Vulture Festival takes place this weekend at Milk Studios and other locations, celebrating pop culture. Below are only some of the nearly three dozen events that encompass film, music, comedy, art, podcasts, books, and more; all tickets include complimentary access to the Vulture Lounge following the event. Among the other participants are Julianna Margulies, Rachel Bloom, Adam Pally, Sutton Foster, Hilary Duff, Debi Mazar, Darren Star, Wendy Williams, Johnny Knoxville, Cameron Esposito, Marti Noxon, Rachael Ray, Adam Platt, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Groff, Liev Schreiber, David Edelstein, Bo Burnham, and Wyatt Cenac.

Saturday, May 19
John Leguizamo: In Conversation, moderated by Matt Zoller Seitz, followed by a book signing, Milk Studios — Penthouse, $30, 11:30 am

One Book, One New York, One Event: Jennifer Egan in conversation with Adam Moss, Milk Studios — Studio 1, free with advance registration, 2:30

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Five Acts, conversation focusing on five of her projects, Milk Studios — Penthouse, $30, 4:00

Roxane Gay and Amber Tamblyn Present Feminist AF, with special guests Jennine Capó Crucet, Sharon Olds, and Morgan Parker, Milk Studios — Studio 1, $30, 6:45

Tracy Morgan in Hilarious Conversation, moderated by Matt Zoller Seitz, Milk Studios — AT&T Studio, $30, 8:00

Claire Danes and Jim Parsons will be at Milk Studios on May 20 to discuss their new film, A Kid Like Jake

Sunday, May 20
Jerry Saltz’s Masterly Tour of the Met Breuer, tour of the Met exhibit “Like Life” led by Jerry Saltz, Met Breuer, $150, 9:00 am

Boozy Brunch with Your Best Friends Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, and Phoebe Robinson, conversation with stars of new Netflix film Ibiza, moderated by Michelle Buteau, Milk Studios — Studio 4, $30, 12 noon

Claire Danes and Jim Parsons’s A Kid Like Jake, discussion of new movie with actors Claire Danes and Jim Parsons, director Silas Howard, and writer Daniel Pearle, Milk Studios — Studio 1, $30, 2:15

In Conversation with Samantha Bee, the Full Frontal Team, and Rebecca Traister: discussion with Samantha Bee, Melinda Taub, Ashley Nicole Black, Allana Harkin, Mike Rubens, and Amy Hoggart, moderated by Rebecca Traister, Milk Studios — AT&T Studio, $40, 5:45

Ava DuVernay and the Cast of Queen Sugar, with Ava DuVernay, Rutina Wesley, Dawn-Lyen Gardner, and Kofi Siriboe, Milk Studios — Studio 4, $30, 6:45

ONE OCTOBER

Clay Pigeon interviews construction worker Mark Paris in One October

ONE OCTOBER (Rachel Shuman, 2017)
Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd., between 127th & 128th Sts.
May 11-17, 7:30
212-537-6843
oneoctoberfilm.com
www.maysles.org

In October 2008, in the midst of the Barack Obama / John McCain presidential election and the mortgage crisis, filmmaker Rachel Shuman took to the streets of New York City with Clay Pigeon, host of The Dusty Show on WFMU, interviewing people as they made their way across Manhattan and other boroughs. The Boston-born, Beacon-based Shuman intended to capture a moment in time and not release the film until after Obama’s second term ended to see how life in the city changed. The result is One October, a kind of love letter to who we were, are, and will be. Inspired by Chris Marker’s 1963 film Le Joli Mai, in which the French director interviewed people on the streets of Paris, Shuman follows Pigeon, Radio Shack mini tape recorder in hand, as he wanders through Central Park, Harlem, Washington Square Park, the Lower East Side, Madison Square Park, the Financial District, the Brooklyn Bridge, Willets Point, Tompkins Square Park, and other locations, approaching a series of men and women who share fascinating details about their personal and professional lives; the Iowa-born Pigeon has an innate knack for quickly understanding his subjects, asking intuitive questions that often surprise them. He speaks with a former freelance photographer who now works construction to make more money for his family, an ambitious lawyer who wants to work at the UN, a mixed-race couple sitting on a bench, a woman railing against the gentrification of Harlem, and a homeless man who turns the tables on the soft-spoken Pigeon. “It’s always interesting to see how the random collection of souls falls together and how the next chapter bears fruit or lies fallow,” he says on his radio show.

In between interviews, cinematographer David Sampliner beautifully photographs trees, buildings, storefronts, statues, the Halloween Parade, political rallies, the Columbus Day Parade, a housing protest, the Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, birds flying across blue skies, Muslims praying at the end of Ramadan, and Jews performing the ritual of Tashlich, casting away their sins by throwing pieces of bread into the East River. The shots, which include classic New York restaurants as well as institutions that have since closed, are accompanied by a bittersweet score by Paul Brill, featuring cellist Dave Eggar. Director, editor, and producer Shuman (Negotiations) has created a loving warning about the future of a city that has been undergoing major changes since October 2008. Executive produced by three-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton, the hour-long One October runs May 11-17 at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, where it will be shown with Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr.’s ten-minute short The Monolith, about artist Gwyneth Leech’s reaction when a new high-rise hotel threatens her view of the city skyline from her studio window. Most screenings will be followed by a special Q&A and/or panel discussion, including a behind-the-scenes interview with Pigeon and a Q&A with Shuman and Leech on May 11, a Q&A with Shuman and Pigeon on May 12, a Q&A with Shuman, Sampliner, and Monolith cinematographer Andy Bowley on May 13, an editing panel with Shuman and Monolith editor Rosie Walunas on May 15, and a hyper-gentrification panel with Michael Henry Adams and Nellie Hester Bailey on May 16.

FILMWORKER

Leon Vitali sits next to Stanley Kubrick doll while sharing stories of toiling for the master in Filmworker

FILMWORKER (Tony Zierra, 2017)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Opens Friday, May 11
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
filmworker.com

British actor Leon Vitali was already carving out a successful career for himself in the swinging London of the late 1960s and early ’70s when he landed a key role in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 epic, Barry Lyndon. Vitali was doing such a good job as Lord Bullingdon that Kubrick wrote additional scenes for him. But it turns out that what Vitali really wanted to do — ever since he first saw A Clockwork Orange — was work for Kubrick behind the scenes, to learn the art of filmmaking at the foot of the master. So Vitali gave up acting in 1977 and spent the next two decades as Kubrick’s right-hand man, doing whatever he was asked, whatever was needed. Documentarian Tony Zierra details Vitali’s long, strange journey in Filmworker, which opens May 11 at Metrograph; on opening weekend Zierra and Vitali will participate in several Q&As with special guests such as Alec Baldwin and The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick coauthor Dr. Rodney Hill. “When someone would say to Stanley, I’d give my right arm to work for you, he would kind of smile, because I actually think he thought, ‘Well, why are you lowballing me? What, just the right arm?’” Vitali, who refers to his occupation as “filmworker,” says in the film. Over the years, Vitali became involved in casting, cutting, sound mixing, marketing, shipping, sales, dubbing, trailers, licensing, video transfers, color correcting, inventory, frame-by-frame restoration, and archiving, among myriad other responsibilities. “Leon did for Stanley what half a dozen executive producers and associate producers and production managers and drivers and tailors do on other movies for directors,” says former Warner Bros. SVP Julian Senior. “You have to understand Stanley Kubrick before you can even begin to understand what Leon Vitali did, does, went through, what’s imprinted on his soul and mind. It’s only when you understand that this remarkable man, a genius, a nightmare, warm, caring, distant, cold, expansive, funny, hugely intelligent, totally driven man would do to make his movies.”

Stanley Kubrick, flanked by Leon Vitali and Jack Nicholson, appears to like what he sees on the set of The Shining

Zierra (Carving Out Our Name, My Big Break) incorporates archival photographs, home movies, letters, notebooks, diaries, and original interviews with a vast array of men and women who have worked with Kubrick and Vitali, most of whom are in awe of what the latter did for the former. “What Leon did was a selfless act, a kind of crucifixion of himself,” Full Metal Jacket star Matthew Modine says. “This industry has been built on people like that,” technical services EVP Beverly Wood says of Vitali. Among the others singing Vitali’s praises are Barry Lyndon star Ryan O’Neal; Oscar-winning Full Metal Jacket gunnery sergeant R. Lee Ermey; Daniel Lloyd, who played Danny in The Shining; Stellan Skarsgård and Pernilla August, who worked with Vitali on Ingmar Bergman’s production of Hamlet; and Vitali’s siblings and three grown children. It took Zierra a year to convince Vitali, who also played Red Cloak in Eyes Wide Shut, to share his story, since he prefers being in the background. But once he opens up, there’s no stopping him as he describes the highs and lows of working for Kubrick while clarifying that he was not merely the master’s assistant or protector. “I never handled Stanley. I handled myself so I could exist in Stanley’s world,” he explains. The scenes of Vitali interacting with Kubrick, Lloyd, and others on sets make this a must-see for Kubrick fans as well as anyone who just loves the art of the movies. “I don’t have an obsession for creativity,” Vitali notes. “It just is a necessary requirement. You either love it so much you can’t help it, or you’re a fucking idiot, or you’re a mixture of both.” (In conjunction with Filmworker, Metrograph is presenting “Stanley Kubrick x 8” May 11-27, consisting of eight works by Kubrick, several of which are featured in the documentary.)

STANLEY KUBRICK X 8

Leon Vitali, Stanley Kubrick, and Jack Nicholson on the set of The Shining, as seen in documentary Filmworker

Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
May 11-27
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

In conjunction with the release of Tony Zierra’s Filmworker, a vastly entertaining documentary about Leon Vitali, an actor who gave up his career in order to be Stanley Kubrick’s right-hand man and jack-of-all-trades for many years, Metrograph is presenting “Stanley Kubrick x 8,” consisting of eight of the Bronx-born ex-pat’s classic films. The series includes Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, which are featured extensively in Filmworker, in addition to Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, The Killing, Paths of Glory, and Dr. Strangelove.

The sumptuous Barry Lyndon is a treat for the eyes and ears

BARRY LYNDON (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
Saturday, May 12, 3:30 & 9:30
Friday, May 25, 6:30
metrograph.com

Stanley Kubrick’s lush, romantic epic, Barry Lyndon, is one of the most elegantly visual pictures ever made. Based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 serialized picaresque novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, Kubrick’s extravagant three-hour tale follows the shenanigans of one Redmond Barry, played with endless charm by Ryan O’Neal. The man soon to be known as Barry Lyndon has a remarkable knack for survival — or maybe it’s just plain old Irish luck — as he rises in English society via a series of duels (with epees, guns, and bare knuckles), military battles (the Seven Years’ War), and, most prominently, sexual conquests. Consisting of two sections, “By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon” and “Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon,” the film features glorious music by Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, and the Chieftains in addition to absolutely divine locations that lay the groundwork for the sumptuous Oscar-winning art direction by Ken Adam, Vernon Dixon, and Roy Walker and cinematography by John Alcott; virtually every scene contains beautiful shots based on famous paintings, a treat for the eyes and the ears. (Leonard Rosenman took home an Academy Award as well for his adapted score.) The overly long story does drag at times, but it flows better once you get used to O’Neal in the title role. The underappreciated film also has a great supporting cast, with Marisa Berenson as Lady Lyndon, Patrick Magee as the Chevalier de Balibari, Hardy Krüger as Captain Potzdorf, Steven Berkoff as Lord Ludd, Leonard Rossiter as Captain John Quin, Gay Hamilton as Nora Brady, and Leon Vitali as Lord Bullingdon.

Peter Sellers has some grand plans for the end of the world as Dr. Strangelove in classic Kubrick cold war comedy

DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I STOPPED WORRYING AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE BOMB (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Sunday, May 13, 3:30 & 7:45
Wednesday, May 16, 3:00
Friday, May 18, 7:00
metrograph.com

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb is one of the grandest satires ever made, the blackest of black comedies. With the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over the United States and the Soviet Union, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has a meltdown, becoming obsessed with protecting the country’s “precious bodily fluids” and threatening to launch the bombs. While President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) tries to make nice with the Soviets, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) gets caught up in all the military excitement, Colonel Bat Guano (Keenan Wynn) defends the Coca-Cola Company, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) can’t get anyone to listen to him, and Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) prepares for the ride of his life. Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert and written by George, Kubrick, and Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove is hysterically funny and wickedly prescient, an absolute hoot from start to finish, featuring razor-sharp dialogue, inspired slapstick, and just enough truth to scare the hell out of you. (Be sure to watch for Peter Bull not being able to stop laughing as Sellers goes crazy in a wheelchair at the end.)

All work and no play makes Jack Nicholson far from a dull boy in The Shining

THE SHINING (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Sunday, May 13, 9:45
Thursday, May 17, 4:00 & 6:45
metrograph.com

All work and no play makes Jack a not-so-quite dull boy in Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror story, based on the Stephen King novel. One of the all-time-great frightfests, The Shining is a truly scary movie about a writer named Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson at his overacting best) who has agreed to become the caretaker of the old Overlook Hotel in Colorado during the snowy winter when the enormous mountain resort closes down for the season. He is joined by his perpetually nervous wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their young son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who seems to have brought along his invisible friend, Tony, who speaks through Danny’s finger. Between taking care of the Overlook and working on his novel, Jack finds a whole bunch of other folks to hang out with, people who have populated the place during the ritzy establishment’s golden age, including a strange woman in room 237. Kubrick plays with horror conventions as he seeks to scare the crap out of the audience, something he accomplishes time and time again as Jack grows more disturbed, Wendy’s shrieks become more and more ear piercing and annoying, and Danny’s visions get more and more bloody. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, it still gets you, even when you know exactly what’s lurking around that corner. Only those who went to the film during its opening weekend, as we did, got to see the two-minute finale that Kubrick cut out immediately thereafter, which involved the iconoclastic director riding his bicycle to various theaters, armed with a pair of scissors.

Kirk Douglas discovers that war is indeed hell in Paths of Glory

PATHS OF GLORY (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
Friday, May 18, 4:30
Saturday, May 19, 6:30 & 10:15
Monday, May 21, 7:35
metrograph.com

Stanley Kubrick’s harrowing Paths of Glory, based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb, is quite simply the best English-language antiwar film ever made, one of the most emotional, powerful stories ever put on celluloid. Kirk Douglas stars as Colonel Dax, a French military man who disagrees with his superiors’ insistence on sending his men into certain annihilation in order to take a worthless hill during World War I. Dax’s verbal battles with Generals Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) and Mireau (George Macready) are unforgettable, as are the final scenes, in which three random men are chosen to pay the price for what the generals call cowardice. Filmed in stunning black and white, Paths of Glory puts you right on the front lines of the folly of war. Kubrick, who wrote the unrelenting script with Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson, also made the best film about the cold war (Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), the Roman slave revolt (Spartacus), and, arguably, the Vietnam War (Full Metal Jacket).

ORIGIN STORIES: PAUL SCHRADER’S FOOTNOTES TO FIRST REFORMED

Paul Schrader will be at the Quad for series of film screenings he has selected (photo courtesy Paul Schrader)

In conjunction with the theatrical release of his new thriller, First Reformed, which opens May 18, and the publication of an updated edition of his 1972 book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Michigan-born auteur Paul Schrader — who, curiously, has never been nominated for an Oscar despite writing and/or directing such films as Taxi Driver, Blue Collar, Raging Bull, and Affliction — will be at the Quad for several screenings in the upcoming series “Origin Stories: Paul Schrader’s Footnotes to First Reformed.” Running May 11-15, the series comprises fourteen films selected by Schrader that impacted his life and career, with Schrader present for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet on May 11 at 6:45, Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest on May 11 at 9:25, Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light on May 12 at 4:15, and Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida on May 12 at 7:00. The impressive lineup also includes Yasujirō Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Budd Boetticher’s The Tall T, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, and Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, among other international gems.

Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns surprising things about her family from her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) in Ida

IDA (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, May 12, 7:00 (with Schrader), and Monday, May 14, 4:30
Series runs May 11-15
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com
www.musicboxfilms.com

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida is one of the most gorgeously photographed, beautifully told films of the young century. The international festival favorite and Foreign Language Oscar winner is set in Poland in 1962, as eighteen-year-old novitiate Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is preparing to become a nun and dedicate her life to Christ. But the Mother Superior (Halina Skoczyńska) tells Anna, an orphan who was raised in the convent, that she actually has a living relative, an aunt whom she should visit before taking her vows. So Anna sets off by herself to see her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a drinking, smoking, sexually promiscuous, and deeply bitter woman who explains to Ida that her real name is Ida Lebenstein and that she is in fact Jewish — and then reveals what happened to her family. Soon Ida, Wanda, and hitchhiking jazz saxophonist Dawid Ogrodnik are on their way to discovering some unsettling truths about the past.

Lis (Dawid Ogrodnik) and Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) discuss life and loss in beautifully photographed Ida

Polish-born writer-director Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love), who lived and worked in the UK for more than thirty years before moving back to his native country to make Ida, composes each shot of the black-and-white film as if it’s a classic European painting, with Oscar-nominated cinematographers Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski’s camera remaining static for nearly every scene. Pawlikowski often frames shots keeping the characters off to the side or, most dramatically, at the bottom of the frame, like they are barely there as they try to find their way in life. (At these moments, the subtitles jump to the top of the screen so as not to block the characters’ expressions.) Kulesza (Róża) is exceptional as the emotionally unpredictable Wanda, who has buried herself so deep in secrets that she might not be able to dig herself out. And in her first film, Trzebuchowska — who was discovered in a Warsaw café by Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska — is absolutely mesmerizing, her headpiece hiding her hair and ears, leaving the audience to focus only on her stunning eyes and round face, filled with a calm mystery that shifts ever so subtly as she learns more and more about her family, and herself. It’s like she’s stepped right out of a Vermeer painting and into a world she never knew existed. The screenplay, written by Pawlikowski and theater and television writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, keeps the dialogue to a minimum, allowing the stark visuals and superb acting to heighten the intensity. Ida is an exquisite film whose dazzling grace cannot be overstated.

The beautifully minimalist Silent Light is part of Paul Schrader festival at the Quad

SILENT LIGHT (STELLET LICHT) (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
Saturday, May 12, 4:15 (with Schrader, and Monday, May 14, 8:30
quadcinema.com

Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light is a gentle, deeply felt, gorgeously shot work of intense calm and beauty. The film opens with a stunning sunrise and ends with a glorious sunset; in between is scene after scene of sublime beauty and simplicity, as Reygadas uses natural sound and light, a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, and no incidental music to tell his story, allowing it to proceed naturally. In a Mennonite farming community in northern Mexico where Plautdietsch is the primary language, Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) is torn between his wife, Esther (Miriam Toews), and his lover, Marianne (Maria Pankratz). While he loves Esther, he finds a physical and spiritual bond with Marianne that he does not feel with his spouse and their large extended family. Although it pains Johan deeply to betray Esther, he is unable to decide between the two women, even after tragedy strikes. Every single shot of the spare, unusual film, which tied for the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival (with Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis), is meticulously composed by Reygadas (Japon, Battle in Heaven) and cinematographer Alexis Zabe, as if a painting. Many of the scenes consist of long takes with little or no camera movement and sparse dialogue, evoking the work of Japanese minimalist master Yasujirō Ozu. The lack of music evokes the silence of the title, but the quiet, filled with space and meaning, is never empty. And the three leads — Fehr, who lives in Mexico; Toews, who is from Canada; and Pankratz, who was born in Kazakhstan and lives in Germany — are uniformly excellent in their very first film roles. Silent Light, which was shown at the 2007 New York Film Festival, is a mesmerizing, memorable, and very different kind of cinematic experience.

Michel (Martin LaSalle) eyes a potential target in Robert Bresson’s highly influential masterpiece Pickpocket

PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson, 1959)
Saturday, May 12, 1:00
718-636-4100
quadcinema.com

Robert Bresson’s 1959 Pickpocket is a stylistic marvel, a brilliant examination of a deeply troubled man and his dark obsessions. Evoking Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Martin LaSalle made his cinematic debut as Michel, a ne’er-do-well Parisian who lives in a decrepit apartment, refuses to visit his ailing mother (Dolly Scal), and decides to become a pickpocket. But it’s not necessarily the money he’s after; he hides the cash and watches that he steals in his room, which he is unable to lock from the outside. Instead, his petty thievery seems to give him some kind of psychosexual thrill, although his pleasure can seldom be seen in his staring, beady eyes. As the film opens, Michel is at the racetrack, dipping his fingers into a woman’s purse in an erotically charged moment that is captivating, instantly turning the viewer into voyeur. Of course, film audiences by nature are a kind of peeping Tom, but Bresson makes them complicit in Michel’s actions; although there is virtually nothing to like about the character, who is distant and aloof when not being outright nasty, even to his only friends, Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) and Jeanne (Marika Green), the audience can’t help but breathlessly root for him to succeed as he dangerously dips his hands into men’s pockets on the street and in the Metro. Soon he is being watched by a police inspector (Jean Pélégri), to whom he daringly gives a book about George Barrington, the famed “Prince of Pickpockets,” as well as a stranger (Kassagi) who wants him to join a small cadre of thieves, leading to a gorgeously choreographed scene of the men working in tandem as they pick a bunch of pockets. Through it all, however, Michel remains nonplussed, living a strange, private life, uncomfortable in his own skin. “You’re not in this world,” Jeanne tells him at one point.

Michel (Martin LaSalle) can’t keep his hands to himself in Bresson classic chosen by Paul Schrader for Quad series

Bresson (Au hasard Balthazar, Diary of a Country Priest) fills Pickpocket with visual clues and repeated symbols that add deep layers to the narrative, particularly an endless array of shots of hands and a parade of doors, many of which are left ajar and/or unlocked in the first half of the film but are increasingly closed as the end approaches. Shot in black-and-white by Léonce-Henri Burel — Bresson wouldn’t make his first color film until 1969’s Un femme douce — Pickpocket also has elements of film noir that combine with a visual intimacy to create a moody, claustrophobic feeling that hovers over and around Michel and the story. It’s a mesmerizing performance in a mesmerizing film, one of the finest of Bresson’s remarkable, and remarkably influential, career.