this week in film and television

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) and Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) have little time for each other in Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 25-31
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Jimmy Stewart’s most famous Christmas movie might be It’s a Wonderful Life, but that doesn’t mean it’s his best. That distinction belongs to the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch black-and-white romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner, which is having a special holiday run December 25-31 at Film Forum. Stewart stars as Alfred Kralik, a serious-minded longtime clerk at the Budapest gift shop Matuschek & Co., serving as the right-hand man to owner Hugo Matuschek (The Wizard of Oz’s Frank Morgan), who relies on his star employee’s honesty and expertise. Also working at the store is Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), a timid family man who hides every time Mr. Matuschek asks for an opinion; the shy Flora Kaczek (Sara Haden); the brash, ambitious delivery boy Pepi Katona (William Tracy); and the self-involved would-be bon vivant Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut). When Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) shows up looking for a job, Kralik tries to quickly dismiss her, but she ends up charming Mr. Matuschek and getting hired. She and Kralik, her direct superior, bicker constantly, each one hoping that a romantic pen pal will make their dreary lives much brighter, especially as Christmas approaches. But little do they know the love letters that they are so carefully crafting are actually to each other, their secretive literary relationship a far cry from their actual daily one.

Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan) and Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) prepare for Christmas in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

The Shop Around the Corner is based on Miklós László’s 1937 play, Parfumerie, and it very much has a claustrophobic feel, as events occur primarily in the small store. Stewart and Sullavan channel some of that Cary Grant / Irene Dunne magic as they go about their private and professional business, even if they don’t even make attempts at Hungarian accents. (Neither does Morgan, who gives one of his finest performances.) “There might be a lot we don’t know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth,” Mr. Kralik says to Miss Novak, who replies, “Well, I really wouldn’t care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I’d find. Instead of a heart, a handbag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter . . . which doesn’t work.” The central object in the shop is a cigarette box that plays the Eastern European folk song “Ochi Tchornya” every time it is opened; while Mr. Kralik thinks that smokers will tire of hearing the same tune over and over, Miss Novak convinces a customer that it is a candy box and that the repetition of the song will turn her away from opening the box again and again to eat more; meanwhile, Mr. Matuschek just wants to sell the darn things, delineating the three characters’ approach to life in general. Written by Samson Raphaelson, who adapted other plays and novels for Lubitsch, including The Smiling Lieutenant, Trouble in Paradise, and Heaven Can Wait, The Shop Around the Corner is a sweetly innocent film with just the right amount of edginess, a fun frolic through human nature and love, a fanciful confection set in the rococo interior of a shop selling little luxuries in a now-lost Hungary between the world wars. The story was also turned into the 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime with Van Johnson and Judy Garland (Johnson also appeared in a 1945 radio version with Phyllis Thaxter) and Nora Ephron’s popular 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the latter playing a woman who runs a New York City bookstore called the Shop Around the Corner. (On New Year’s Eve, Film Forum will be pouring free champagne for the 7:00 and 9:15 shows.)

LET THERE BE LIGHT — THE FILMS OF JOHN HUSTON: THERE WILL BE BLOOD

A desperate man (Daniel Day-Lewis) goes on a dark journey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic THERE WILL BE BLOOD

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, December 27, 5:45
Festival runs December 19 – January 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.miramax.com

In the fall of 2007, Paul Thomas Anderson talked to Directors Guild of America Quarterly about his latest film, There Will Be Blood, explaining how it was influenced by John Huston’s classic Western The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “I was trying to find something that was one-hundred percent straightforward, old-fashioned storytelling. I definitely tried to mimic that approach. My natural instincts as a writer may be more scattered, so in an effort to be more traditional I used a book, just like they did. Sierra Madre is as direct as you can get — nothing clever, nothing structurally new or different — and I mean that as a high compliment. It’s harder than anything else to be completely straightforward.” There Will Be Blood has been called a lot of things since its release, but “traditional” and “completely straightforward” are probably not among them. But it does explain why Anderson’s film is one of only a handful of works not directed by Huston in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston.” In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis, in remarkable voice (“I drink your milkshake!”), gives a spectacular, Oscar-winning performance as an independent oil man, absolutely embodying Daniel Plainview, a determined, desperate man digging for black gold in turn-of-the-century California. His first strike comes at a heavy price as he loses one of his men in a tragic accident, so he adopts the worker’s infant son, raising H.W. (Dillon Freasier) as his own. The growth of his company leads him to Little Boston, a small town that has oil just seeping out of its pores. But after not allowing Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), the charismatic preacher who runs the local Church of the Third Revelation, to say a prayer over the community’s first derrick, Plainview begins his descent into hell.

Paul Dano and Daniel Day-Lewis in THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) and Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) face off in THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Using Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! as a starting point (and employing echoes of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons in addition to the obvious reference, George Stevens’s classic 1956 oil flick, Giant), writer-director Anderson (Boogie Nights, The Master) has created a thrilling epic about greed, power, and corruption as well as jealousy, murder, and, above all, family, where oil gushes out of the ground with fire and brimstone. Robert Elswit’s beautiful, Oscar-winning cinematography is so gritty and realistic, audiences will be reaching for their faces to wipe the oil and blood off. The piercing, classically based score, composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, builds to a mind-blowing crescendo by the end of the film — a finale that is likely to be much talked about and widely criticized. Filmed in the same location — Marfa, Texas — where Giant was set, There Will Be Blood is an unforgettable journey into the dark heart of one man’s soul. The film is screening December 27 at 5:45 at the Walter Reade Theater; “Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston,” which continues through January 11, consists of forty films directed by the master, from The African Queen and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and The List of Adrian Messenger, from The Red Badge of Courage and Victory to A Walk with Love and Death and The Kremlin Letter, in addition to a few movies Huston either appeared in (Chinatown, Tentacles!) or that demonstrate his lasting influence, as is the case with There Will Be Blood. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre will be shown December 23, 25, and 27.

SAGRADA: THE MYSTERY OF CREATION

The glory, passion, and mystery of La Sagrada Familia is explored in documentary

SAGRADA: THE MYSTERY OF CREATION (Stefan Haupt, 2012)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
December 19 – January 1
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.sagrada-film.ch

Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia is perhaps the most spectacular long-running architectural work-in-progress in the world, and arguably the most beautiful and inspiring. Construction began on the cathedral, which sits in the center of the cosmopolitan city, in March 1882, under diocesan architect Francisco del Paula del Villar, but a young man named Antoni Gaudí took over at the end of 1883 and spent the next forty-three years designing and building the expiatory church, incorporating a unique mix of styles as well as a whole new architectural philosophy. Swiss filmmaker Stefan Haupt (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Facing Death, The Circle) takes viewers behind the scenes of this ongoing project in the dry but elegant documentary Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation. Haupt delves into the history of the grand building and looks into its future as he speaks with chief architect Jordi Bonet, sculptors Etsuro Sotoo and Josep Subirachs, stained-glass artist Joan Vila-Grau, priest Lluís Bonet, religious studies professor Raimon Panikkar, and others about the house of worship, most of them singing the praises of the proud Catalan Gaudí, who also built such dazzling structures in his home region as Casa Batlló, Park Güell, and La Pedrera. “We owe it to him to finish this temple and show the world his genius,” foreman Jaume Torreguitart says. The film features extended sections in which cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier lovingly shoots the inside and outside of the basilica, lingering over the intricate beauty of the myriad details, from the Nativity and Passion Facades to the spires, nave, apse, transept vaults, and Gaudí’s own crypt. La Sagrada occasionally feels like a clever way to raise money to continue work on the project, as it was made with the full support of the Sagrada Família Foundation, which needs funds to finally finish the ornate structure, and the narration (spoken by Hanspeter Müller-Drossaart) lacks the poetry of the visuals. But even as beautiful as the visuals are, it’s still difficult to capture, in words and pictures, the captivating essence of La Sagrada Familia, which overwhelmed me when I visited it a few years ago. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is screening Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation from December 19 to January 1; as a bonus, they are also showing Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1984 documentary, Antoni Gaudí, December 19-25.

THALIA DOCS — BORN TO FLY: ELIZABETH STREB vs. GRAVITY

Documentary reveals how Elizabeth Streb and her Extreme Action Company (including Jackie Carlson, seen here) take dance to a whole new level

BORN TO FLY: ELIZABETH STREB vs. GRAVITY (Catherine Gund, 2014)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, December 21 & 28 and January 4, $14, 4:30
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.borntoflymovie.com

Over the last several years, New Yorkers have gotten the chance to see Elizabeth Streb’s Extreme Action Company perform such dazzling works as Ascension at Gansevoort Plaza, Kiss the Air! at the Park Avenue Armory, and Human Fountain at World Financial Center Plaza as her team of gymnast-dancer-acrobats risk their physical well-being in daring feats of strength, stamina, durability, and grace. In addition, Streb herself walked down the outside wall of the Whitney as part of a tribute to one of her mentors, Trisha Brown. Now Catherine Gund takes viewers behind the scenes in the exhilarating documentary Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, going deep into the mind of the endlessly inventive and adventurous extreme action architect and the courage and fearlessness of her company. Gund follows Streb as she discusses her childhood, her dance studies, the formation of STREB in 1985, and her carefully thought out views on space, line, and movement as her work stretches the limits of what the human body can do. “I think my original belief and desire is to see a human being fly,” Streb says near the beginning of the film, which includes archival footage of early performances, family photos, and a warm scene in which the Rochester-born Streb and her partner, Laura Flanders, host a dinner party in their apartment, cooking for Bill T. Jones, Bjorn Amelan, Anne Bogart, Catharine Stimpson, and A. M. Homes.

Elizabeth Streb and her partner, Laura Flanders, prepare for a dinner party in new documentary

Gund also speaks with current and past members of the talented, ever-enthusiastic company — associate artistic director Fabio Tavares, Sarah Callan, Jackie Carlson, Leonardo Giron, Felix Hess, Samantha Jakus, Cassandre Joseph, John Kasten, and Daniel Rysak — who talk about their dedication to Streb’s vision while using such words as “challenge,” “velocity,” “endurance,” “magic,” “invincibility,” and “risk” to describe what they do and how they feel about it. Gund focuses on the latter, as virtually every one of Streb’s pieces is fraught with the possibility of serious injury, as evidenced by their titles alone: Fly, Impact, Rebound, Breakthru, and Ricochet, not to mention the use of such materials as spinning I-beams, plastic barricades, dangling harnesses, and a rotating metal ladder. “I have to be able to ask someone to do that and be okay about it. Those aren’t easy requests,” Streb explains. “Knowing where you are is how you survive the work,” adds former STREB dancer Hope Clark. Gund goes with Streb to her doctor, where the choreographer describes what happened to her gnarled feet, and also meets with former dancer DeeAnn Nelson Burton, who had to retire after breaking her back. The film concludes with an inside look at STREB’s spectacular “One Extraordinary Day,” a series of hair-raising site-specific events staged for the 2012 London Olympics at such locations as the Millennium Bridge, the London Eye, and the sphere-shaped city hall, photographed by documentary legend Albert Maysles. In her Kickstarter campaign, Gund (Motherland Afghanistan, A Touch of Greatness) said, “Action architect Elizabeth Streb has reinvented the language of movement. [Born to Fly] will rewrite the language of documentary.” That’s a bold declaration, but the film does have a lot of the same spirit that Streb displays in her awe-inspiring work. Born to Fly is screening December 21 & 28 and January 4 at 4:30 as part of Symphony Space’s ongoing Thalia Docs series.

LET THERE BE LIGHT — THE FILMS OF JOHN HUSTON: BEAT THE DEVIL

Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones star as would-be married lovers in film noir parody

BEAT THE DEVIL (John Huston, 1953)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, December 20, 4:00, Thursday, December 25, 10:15, and Friday, December 26, 4:45
Festival runs December 19 – January 11
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com

Oscar-winning director John Huston pokes fun at some of his previous films in the sly, dry crime noir parody Beat the Devil. Written by Huston and Truman Capote, who furiously typed out pages every day on set, the 1953 black-and-white film teams Huston with Humphrey Bogart for the sixth and final time, following such successes as The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen, elements from all of which can be found in this jumbled tale of a gang of crooked men looking to score big in the uranium mines of Kenya. Bogart stars as Billy Dannreuther, a cool customer married to Italian firebomb Maria (Gina Lollobrigida). They are stranded in an Italian port town while waiting for a ship to take them and his associates — Peterson (Robert Morley), O’Hara (Peter Lorre), Ravello (Marco Tulli), and Major Jack Ross (Ivor Barnard) — across the Mediterranean to Africa. Also along for the ride is the prim and proper Harry Chelm (Edward Underdown) and his hotsy-totsy wife, Gwendolen (Jennifer Jones), who quickly falls for the smooth, confident Billy. Throw in a murder, a drunk captain (Saro Urzi), and some neat twists and turns and you have yourself an amusing little exercise, even if it does have its share of plot holes, story jumps, and inconsistencies.

Robert Morley and Humphrey Bogart get down to business in BEAT THE DEVIL

Morley (subbing for the late Sydney Greenstreet), Lorre, and Tulli are like the Three Stooges of film noir, while Bogart riffs on himself as a leading man and Jones has a ball chewing the scenery as a blonde beauty. It’s a confusing film, randomly mixing humor with pathos, but even if it’s the least successful of the Huston-Bogart canon, it’s still more than just an interesting trifle. Beat the Devil is screening December 20, 25, and 26 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series Let There Be Light: The Films of John Huston, which runs December 19 to January 11 and consists of forty films directed by the master, from The Maltese Falcon and The Night of the Iguana to Key Largo and Moby Dick, from Prizzi’s Honor and Sinful Davey to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The List of Adrian Messenger, in addition to a handful of other works he either appeared in (Tentacles!) or that demonstrate his lasting influence (There Will Be Blood.)

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) hides the Arkenstone from Thorin in the last installment of THE HOBBIT

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (Peter Jackson, 2014)
Opens Wednesday, December 17
www.thehobbit.com

Peter Jackson’s sixteen-year adventure through J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth comes to its inevitable conclusion with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the third film in the prequel trilogy that began with An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. The story picks up as the enormous fire-breathing flying dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) is laying waste to the island of Lake-town as the thirteen Dwarves of Erebor watch from the Lonely Mountain. But soon after the brave Bard (Luke Evans) dispatches the evil beast in spectacular fashion, the Men of the Lake, the Orcs, the Elves, and the Goblins all descend on Erebor seeking either refuge, revenge, or the massive amount of gold that fills the abandoned castle. However, Dwarves king Thorin Oakenshield II (Richard Armitage) has been overcome with dragon-sickness, an unbounded greed that has him protecting every single piece of the vast treasure, refusing to share it with anyone but his thirteen cohorts as he searches for the powerful Arkenstone that Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is hiding. Meanwhile, Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), and Saruman (Christopher Lee) take on Sauron the Necromancer (voiced by Cumberbatch); the Elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and the Dwarf Kíli (Aidan Turner) explore their forbidden love; and a stream of frightening creatures join the fray. Also along for this final ride is Legolas (Orlando Bloom), his father, Thranduil (Lee Pace), Thorin’s cousin Dáin (Billy Connolly), the brutal, scimitar-armed Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett) and his brutal son, Bolg (John Tui), and the pompous, greedy Master of Lake-town (Stephen Fry).

All-out war is at the center of THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

“This was the last move in a master plan, a plan long in the making,” Gandalf says at one point, and he could be referring to Jackson’s two trilogies, which began with the three Lord of the Rings films in 2001, 2002, and 2003 and has at last come to an end now. But while The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King brought audiences into a magical, dazzling world with well-developed characters and intense tales, The Hobbit winds down with a surprisingly lifeless narrative built around battle scenes that grow tiresome quickly. It is as if Jackson decided that after all the other movies, everyone knows all the characters and their motives, but one of the many things that made the first trilogy so successful was that each of the films worked on their own; The Battle of the Five Armies was made by a huge Tolkien fan who might have forgotten that most people are not as familiar with the details of Middle-earth as he is. Even in Imax 3-D and clocking in at a mere 144 minutes, 17 minutes shorter than any of the other five films, this last entry drags on, making one long for it to end. In many ways it’s reminiscent of the Star Wars franchise, where the first three films worked so well but the three prequels were disappointing. But while there might be more Star Wars films coming, this is it for the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, which is not necessarily a bad thing, so we can all go back to the first trilogy, among the best fantasy-adventure stories ever told — and, of course, the books themselves.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: CHOPPING MALL AT NITEHAWK CINEMA

Who: Kelli Maroney (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Night of the Comet), Tony O’Dell (Head of the Class), Russell Todd (Another World), Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, Castle Freak), and Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov (Eating Raoul, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) in cult classic
What: Chopping Mall (Jim Wynorski, 1986)
Where: Nitehawk Cinema, 136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave., 718-384-3980
When: Friday, December 19, and Saturday, December 20, $11, 12:15 am
Why: Nitehawk Cinema’s December Midnite: Xmas Chopping series concludes with a premonition of the future that became Black Friday