this week in film and television

INGRID BERGMAN — A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION: PARIS DOES STRANGE THINGS

Count Henri de Chevincourt (Mel Ferrer) seeks a better view with Princess Elena Sokorowska (Ingrid Bergman) in Jean Renoir farce

ELENA AND HER MEN (PARIS DOES STRANGE THINGS) (Jean Renoir, 1956)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, September 6, 2:00
Series runs through September 10
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

MoMA’s “Ingrid Bergman: A Centennial Celebration” series includes several classic favorites featuring the immensely popular international star (Gaslight, Casablanca, Notorious), but the key to enjoying this festival lies in numerous lesser-known surprises. One of the most intriguing is the 1956 Jean Renoir “musical fantasy” Elena and Her Men, also known as Paris Does Strange Things. In this small gem of a film, Bergman plays Elena Sokorowska, a splendiferous Polish princess living the high life in fin de siècle Paris, quickly running out of money and strongly advised by her aunt to find a rich husband. After dispatching one lover, composer Lionel Villaret (Jean Claudio), the princess has a trio of suitors: the much older Martin-Michaud (Pierre Bertin), a stuffy, aristocratic shoe mogul; the heroic General François Rollan (Jean Marais, playing a character based on the real-life General Georges Boulanger), who is being celebrated on Bastille Day; and the playboy Count Henri de Chevincourt (Mel Ferrer), who instantly falls madly in love with her — and wishes to take her home the very day he meets her. It’s 1915, and the streets are filled with French men, women, and children singing the praises of General Rollan while wondering what will come next for the government, with talk of a coup and a dictatorship making the rounds. In the middle of it all is Princess Sokorowska, whose lavish charm beguiles nearly everyone she meets, except, of course, the general’s mistress, Paulette Escoffier (Elina Labourdette). As the men fight over her, the princess hands out daisies to bring various people good luck.

The people in Paris party in the streets in Jean Renoir farce about love, war, politics, and sex

Elena and Her Men was Bergman’s first film after leaving Roberto Rossellini, and French was the fourth language she’d spoken onscreen, following Swedish, English, and Italian. Renoir and cinematographer Claude Renoir, Jean’s nephew, bathe Bergman in an effervescent glow, as if she is an angel making her way through her would-be lovers and the always-crowded Paris. The film is not a musical in the traditional sense; no one suddenly bursts out into song to further the plot or flesh out characters. Instead, all of the singing is natural, from the princess playing piano to people singing in the streets to a visit to the opera. The color is sensational, with bright and cheerful rainbow hues popping up everywhere; the spectacular costumes — and oh, those amazing hats on Bergman — are by Rosine Delamare and Monique Plotin. This is Renoir, so there is plenty of social and political commentary as well, with a healthy dose of dark comedy and cynicism, evoking the auteur’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, but it’s primarily a wild farce that has fun playing with the image of Frenchmen as suave and sophisticated, especially when Eugène (Jacques Jouanneau), a goofball who’s engaged to Martin-Michaud’s daughter, Denise (Michèle Nadal), repeatedly chases after Elena’s alluring maid, Lolotte (Magali Noël), like he’s Harpo Marx. More than love and war, the film is about sex and power, as the men want it, and the women decide who is going to get it. It’s also about having faith in humanity, which is what drives the princess. “This is ridiculous! I’m ending this farce,” Henri says at one point; thank goodness Renoir keeps it going, full speed ahead, even if it often gets too silly. Elena and Her Men is the third in an unofficial trilogy, following 1953’s The Golden Coach and 1955’s French Cancan, that Criterion has packaged as “Stage & Spectacle,” as it’s also about art and the theatricality of film, which is by its very nature a fantasy, not reality. Selected for the MoMA series by Isabella Rossellini, one of Ingrid’s three daughters, Elena and Her Men is screening September 6 at 2:00; the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Bergman’s birth — and the thirty-third anniversary of her death — continues through September 10 with such other works as Fear, Stromboli, Journey to Italy, and Autumn Sonata.

ROBERT RYAN — AN ACTOR’S ACTOR: THE NAKED SPUR

Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, and Millard Mitchell have a lot of physical and psychological ground to cover in Anthony Mann’s THE NAKED SPUR

THE NAKED SPUR (Albert Mann, 1953)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, September 5, 4:30, Monday, September 7, 9:00, and Wednesday, September 9, 7:00
Series runs September 4-10
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org

Shortly after the Civil War, bounty hunter Howard Kemp (James Stewart) is determined to bring in wanted murderer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) and claim the reward. Joined by grizzled old prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) and dishonorably discharged Union lieutenant Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker), Kemp gets his man, along with Ben’s companion, the young Lina Patch (Janet Leigh), the daughter of Ben’s dead best friend. They tie up Ben’s hands, put him on a burro, and head out on the long, arduous trail to turn him over to the federal marshals. But the smug, wisecracking outlaw has other plans, continually planting various seeds to try to set Howard, Roy, and Jesse against one another. Directed by Anthony Mann (Winchester ’73, The Man from Laramie) and shot in the Rocky Mountains, The Naked Spur is not just another Western; it is a multilayered exploration of lust and greed, love and sexuality, with Lina at the center of it all. When Ben needs his sore back rubbed, he asks her, “Can you do me?” Roy thinks he can do anything he wants with any woman. And Howard can’t get over a part of his past, suffering from nightmares that haunt him. Unfortunately, the complex story is dragged down by overly conventional music — “Beautiful Dreamer”? Really? — and some ridiculously staged, hard-to-believe action scenes, but it’s still worth saddling up your horse and going along for the ride. The Naked Spur is screening September 5, 7, and 9 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “Robert Ryan: An Actor’s Actor,” which continues with such other Ryan flicks as Daniel Mann’s About Mrs. Leslie, Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground, John Sturges’s Bad Day at Black Rock, Fred Zinnemann’s An Act of Violence, and Mann’s God’s Little Acre. Select screenings will be followed by a discussion with Cheyney Ryan, Robert’s son, and professor J. R. Jones, the author of the new book The Lives of Robert Ryan. A Dartmouth grad who was born in Chicago, Ryan was an outspoken civil rights activist who made more than fifty films during his thirty-plus-year career, which ended when he died of lung cancer in 1973 at the age of sixty-four.

RIFIFI

Jo le Suédois (Carl Möhner) and Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) plan a big-time heist in Jules Dassin masterpiece

RIFIFI (DU RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES) (Jules Dassin, 1955)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 2-8
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

After being blacklisted in Hollywood, American auteur Jules Dassin (The Naked City, Brute Force) headed to France, where he was hired to adapt Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes, a crime novel by Auguste le Breton that he made significant changes to, resulting in one of the all-time-great heist films. After spending five years in prison (perhaps not uncoincidentally, Dassin had not made a film in five years after Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle declared him a communist to the House Un-American Activities Committee), Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) gets out and hooks up again with his old protégé, Jo le Suédois (Carl Möhner), who has settled down with his wife (Janine Darcy) and child (Dominique Maurin) for what was supposed to be a life of domestic tranquility. Joined by Mario Farrati (Robert Manuel), a fun-loving bon vivant with a very sexy girlfriend (Claude Sylvain), and cool and calm safecracker César le Milanais (Dassin, using the pseudonym Perlo Vita), the crew plans a heist of a small Mappin & Webb jewelry store on the Rue de Rivoli. Not content with a quick score, Tony lays the groundwork for a major take, but greed, lust, jealousy, and revenge get in the way in Dassin’s masterful film noir. The complex plan gets even more complicated as César falls for Viviane (Magali Noël), a singer who works at the L’Âge d’Or nightclub, which is owned by Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovici), who has taken up with Tony’s former squeeze, Mado (Marie Sabouret), and is trying to save his brother, Louis Grutter (Pierre Grasset), from a serious drug habit. (The club is named for Luis Buñuel’s 1930 film, which featured the same production designer as Rififi, Alexandre Trauner.)

A gang of thieves try to pull off an impossible heist in RIFIFI

As the plot heats up, things threaten to explode in Dassin’s thrilling black-and-white film, which takes a series of unexpected twists and turns as it goes from its remarkably tense, absolutely masterful music- and dialogue-free heist scene to a wild climax — and even includes a sly reference to what should happen to such rats as the men who gave him up to HUAC. Composer Georges Auric insisted on writing a soundtrack for the heist scene — which was a direct influence on such films as Mission: Impossible and was banned in several countries for being too much of a primer on how to pull off a robbery — but after Dassin showed him cuts with and without the score, Auric agreed that only natural sound was necessary for those critical thirty minutes. As a bonus, the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency officially condemned the film for its depiction of sex and violence, which features a hard-to-watch beating of a woman. Dassin, who went on to make another of the great caper movies, 1964’s Topkapi, was named Best Director at Cannes for the low-budget Rififi, a true gem of a film, which is playing September 2-8 at Film Forum in a new restoration.

THE ART OF THE SCORE: FILM WEEK AT THE PHILHARMONIC

Avery Fisher Hall
10 Lincoln Square, Broadway at 64th St.
September 18-21, $45-$155
nyphil.org/artofthescore

The New York Philharmonic’s annual “Art of the Score” presentation this year focuses on that master thespian, method actor extraordinaire Marlon Brando. The Nebraska-born Brando became an immediate star right out of the gates with such early films as The Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, Julius Caesar, and The Wild One, but it was his 1954 triumph, On the Waterfront, that established him as one of the all-time greats even though it was only his sixth picture. For this year’s “Film Week,” New York Philharmonic artistic advisor Alec Baldwin has selected the two Brando classics for which Mr. Mumbles won the Oscar for Best Actor. On September 18, David Newman will conduct Leonard Bernstein’s score for Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, often considered one of the greatest Hollywood films ever made, with TCM’s Robert Osborne serving as host. On September 19 and 21, Justin Freer will conduct Nino Rota’s score for what many consider the absolute greatest film ever made, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, with Paul Sorvino as the special guest the first night.

YOKO ONO: ONE WOMAN SHOW, 1960-1971

Yoko Ono’s “To See the Sky” offers visitors the chance to commune one-on-one with the heavens (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The International Council of the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through September 7, $25 (including audio program and film screenings)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

In December 1971, Yoko Ono staged an unofficial one-woman show at MoMA, which she called the “Museum of Modern [F]art,” in which she supposedly released a glass jar full of flies into the sculpture garden, scattering art everywhere, even though a sign inside noted, “This Is Not Here.” Ono now has an honest-to-goodness solo show at MoMA, an involving and affecting retrospective of her conceptual work from 1960 through 1971, and although it’s titled “One Woman Show,” it’s about as participatory as these things can get. Visitors are invited to walk right on “Painting to Be Stepped On,” although many people still opt to carefully tiptoe around it; play a game of chess in the sculpture garden on “White Chess Set,” in which all of the pieces are white; slip under a black sheet and perform on a small stage for “Bag Piece”; make physical contact with others in “Touch Poem for a Group of People,” although the room was empty the several times I passed by; climb a rickety spiral staircase in “To See the Sky” and privately commune with the outside world via a skylight at the top; and choose to carry out any of the myriad instructions that comprise Ono’s storied Grapefruit book, though not necessarily right on the premises. However, you should not do what John Lennon did when he first met Ono in 1966 and take a bite out of the green apple that sits on a transparent pedestal at the opening of the exhibit. “Ono’s art has uncovered not only often concealed aspects of the act of engaging with an artwork (revealing, for instance, the central role the viewer plays in its creation) but also the ways in which cultural, social, and political life influence and affect each other,” explains MoMA curator-at-large Klaus Biesenbach in his catalog essay, “Absence and Presence in Yoko Ono’s Work,” continuing, “Looking back on her conceptual 1971 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, we see that she knew long ago that her groundbreaking practice warranted a solo exhibition there. Forty-four years later, that show is finally a reality, with the same radicality and presence it had when she first imagined it.”

Yoko Ono’s “Half-a-Room” slices domesticity in half (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The MoMA exhibition also includes such other Ono works as “Cut Piece,” a film by Albert and David Maysles of her sitting calmly as audience members cut off parts of her outfit; “A Box of Smile,” small boxes in a wall that provide pleasant surprises; “Film No. 4,” an onscreen procession of derrières; a room of paraphernalia and music she made with the Plastic Ono Band; “Fly,” which follows flies making their way across a woman’s naked body; footage of political demonstrations she and Lennon led, including “Bed-In”; and other drawings, sculptures, films, posters, invitations, and installations. There’s more in the exhibition catalog, which contains a number of essays and letters written by Ono in the section entitled “Yoko’s Voice”; in November 2014’s “Don’t Stop Me!” she writes, “Let me be free. Let me be me! Don’t make me old, with your thinking and words about how I should be. You don’t have to come to my shows. I am giving tremendous energy with my voice, because that is me. Get my energy or shut up.” She might have been referring specifically to her live musical performances, but the admonition relates to this early-career retrospective as well. Many people come to Ono and her work with a preconceived notion of who she is and what she does, often negative; “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971” reveals her to be a much misunderstood artist who actually has a lot to say about the state of humanity, nearly universally positive, still seeking to attain world peace. And what’s wrong with that? (The final week of the show will feature the Gallery Sessions programs “Yoko Ono: From Grapefruit to Green Apple” on August 31 at 1:30 and September 2-3 at 11:30, “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971” on September 5 at 1:30, and “Make Your Own Yoko Ono Piece” on September 6 at 11:30, and museumgoers can sit down and play on Ono’s “White Chess Set” in the sculpture garden on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 1:00 to 4:00.)

INGRID BERGMAN: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

Ingrid Bergman makes sure everything is just right in her final film, AUTUMN SONATA

MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
August 29 – September 10
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

MoMA kicks off its two-week Ingrid Bergman retrospective on August 29, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of cinema’s most genuine movie stars, by showing her most famous work, Casablanca, along with her theatrical grand finale, Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, introduced by two of her children, Pia Lindström and Isabella Rossellini. As it turned out, she died on her birthday at the age of sixty-seven, so it’s also the thirty-third anniversary of her death in 1982 from breast cancer. The fourteen-film survey, several of which were specially chosen by Lindström, Isabella Rossellini, and Ingrid’s other daughter, Ingrid Rossellini, includes such other classic favorites as Gaslight, Notorious, Intermezzo, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Bells of St. Mary’s as well as such lesser-known fare as Fear, Paris Does Strange Things, Stromboli, and the short comedy We, the Women: Ingrid Bergman. Each of the three daughters will be back at MoMA individually to introduce select screenings August 30-31 and September 1 and 8-9.

WIM WENDERS: PORTRAITS ALONG THE ROAD

Extensive Wim Wenders retrospective at the IFC Center will feature numerous appearances by the eclectic auteur

IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
August 28 – September 24
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.wim-wenders.com

One of the most eclectic, iconoclastic auteurs in the history of cinema, German author, director, and photographer Wim Wenders has built an impressive film resume over the last forty-five years, from music and dance documentaries to road movies and postapocalyptic tales, from mysteries and fantasies to gripping emotional dramas and a Hawthorne adaptation. The IFC Center is celebrating his career with a wide-ranging four-week series featuring dozens of his full-length and short films, from 1972’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick to a sneak preview of his newest work, Every Thing Will Be Fine, including the New York City premiere of Palermo Shooting and the world premiere of the 4K restoration of The State of Things. Wenders will be at the IFC Center for Q&As following select screenings of The American Friend, Buena Vista Social Club, Kings of the Road, Pina, Tokyo-Ga, Paris, Texas, and other films; in addition, Wenders, who just turned seventy, will sign copies of his latest photography book, Wim Wenders: Written in the West, Revisited, after the Q&A following the 7:20 screening of Palermo Shooting on September 2, and he will participate in the special discussion “Liquid Space: A Conversation on 3D” on September 6.