this week in film and television

MARXFEST

Multiple locations
May 1-31, free – $35
www.marxfest.com

As legend has it, during a card game in May 1914, vaudeville monologist and mimetic comedian Art Fisher rechristened Leonard, Arthur, Julius, and Milton Marx as Chicko (Chico), Harpo, Groucho, and Gummo, respectively. (Herbert was renamed Zeppo later.) So in May 2014, Marxfest will celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of that propitious event with a series of special programs in all five boroughs, paying tribute to the New York City natives with film screenings, panel discussion, plays, parties, and a reading of an upcoming musical production of the brothers Marx’s Broadway musical debut, which was never filmed and has not been revived, until now. In addition to the below highlights, there are free film screenings every Thursday afternoon (A Night at the Opera, Monkey Business, Room Service, A Day at the Races), a Barx Brothers Dogwalk costume contest, walking tours, and more.

Thursday, May 1
The Party of the First Part, opening night party at location where Harpo spent many a night with the likes of Heywood Broun, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and George S. Kaufman, Algonquin Hotel Blue Bar, 59 West 44th St., free admission (cash bar), 6:00 – 10:00 pm

Friday, May 2
From Angels to Anarchists: The Evolution of the Marx Brothers, with Trav S.D. discussing Marx Brothers’ transition from the singing group the Four Nightingales to a comedy act and Sarah Moskowitz performing early routines, Coney Island USA, 1208 Surf Ave., $7, 7:30

Sunday, May 4
An Evening with Groucho, starring Frank Ferrante, Williamson Theatre, College of Staten Island, $20-$25, 3:00

Wednesday, May 7
Marxes in Manhattan, with a theremin tribute by Rob Schwimmer, a re-creation of the Leroy Trio with Richard Pearson, Zachary Catron, and Kit Russoniello, a multimedia presentation on the Marx Brothers and their hometown by author and archivist Robert S. Bader, the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St., $24, 8:00

Friday, May 9
The Music of the Marx Brothers, with Marissa Mulder, Rebekah Lowin, Bill Zeffiro, Tonna Miller, Gelber & Manning, and special surprise guests, hosted by Dandy Wellington, 54 Below, 254 West 54th St., $25-$35 (plus $25 food and drink minimum), 11:00

Saturday, May 10
Anarchy in Astoria: The Making of the Marx Brothers’ First Two Pictures, with the American Vaudeville Theatre’s Trav S.D. discussing the making of The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, Greater Astoria Historical Society, Quinn Building, 35-20 Broadway, fourth floor, $10, 1:30

Saturday, May 17
“You Bet Your Ass,” quiz show with host Murray Hill and announcer Jonny Porkpie, with burlesque stars Anita Cookie, Lady Scoutington, and Trixie Little & the Evil Hate Monkey, the Cutting Room, 44 East 32nd St., $14.99 in advance, $19.99 at the door, 10:00

Sunday, May 18
An Elephant in Your Pajamas . . . at the Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, meet at the south gate at noon in your pajamas, zoo admission of $13-$17, 12 noon

Sunday, May 25
I’ll Say She Is, full-length reading of first Marx Brothers Broadway musical, followed by panel discussion, the Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St., $25, 5:00

Thursday, May 29
We’re All Mad Here: The Marx Brothers in Context, with Trav S.D. discussing the Marx Brothers’ vaudeville inspirations, Mid-Manhattan Library, 455 Fifth Ave., free, 6:30

THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO: THE MOOR OF VENICE

A new restoration of Orson Welles’s OTHELLO is running at Film Forum through May 8 (courtesy Carlotta Films)

OTHELLO (Orson Welles, 1952)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Daily through May 8
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.carlottafilms-us.com

Filmed in black-and-white over three years in multiple locations and ultimately employing five cinematographers, four editors, three Desdemonas, and two scores, it’s rather amazing that Orson Welles’s 1952 independent production of William Shakespeare’s Othello was ever completed — of course, many Welles projects were not. That the final work turned out to be a masterpiece that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes speaks yet more to Welles’s genius. A newly restored version of Othello is in the midst of a two week-run at Film Forum, in conjunction with “Celebrate Shakespeare 2014!,” a worldwide festival honoring the Bard’s 450th birthday. Welles, who directed the picture and plays the title character, streamlined the story into ninety-five minutes, getting to the heart of the most intense tale of jealousy and betrayal ever told. The film opens with shadowy shots of the dead Othello and his deceased wife, Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier), carried aloft on biers at their dual funeral, to the sounds of an ominous piano and a mournful vocal chorus. The credits soon follow, after which Welles returns to the beginning, as the villainous ensign Iago (Micheál MacLiammóir) plots with Roderigo (Robert Coote) to convince Othello that his loyal and devoted wife is actually in love with the heroic soldier Michael Cassio (Michael Laurence).

At first Othello brushes away Iago’s concerns, but soon he is caught in Iago’s trap and starts to question the fairy-tale love he shares with his beautiful and trusting bride. As the story proceeds, characters are shown in extreme close-up, in narrow passages and doorways, amid medieval rooms with large columns and intricately designed windows, shadows looming everywhere; the stunning architecture, shot at disorienting angles, is a character unto itself. Welles did whatever it took to finish the film, including using his own funds from acting jobs and filming a scene in a bathhouse when costumes were unavailable, lending the proceedings a fragmented feel that evokes the mirrors in the finale of The Lady from Shanghai. Unfortunately, the syncing of the dialogue track is still often off and numerous cuts are too shaky, but they detract only a bit from the overall power and majesty of the film, a bold and brave take on a familiar Shakespeare tale given a dark new life by a master auteur.

SCIENCE ON SCREEN: GRIZZLY MAN

Timothy Treadwell learns a rather painful lesson about living with bears in GRIZZLY MAN

GRIZZLY MAN (Werner Herzog, 2005)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Tuesday, April 29, 7:30
212-727-8110
www.bam.org
www.grizzlypeople.com

For thirteen straight summers, Timothy Treadwell ventured into the wilds of Katmai National Park in Alaska, where he lived among grizzly bears. For the last five of those years, he brought along a video camera and detailed his life with them and his battle to protect the bears (all of which he named) from poachers. “I have no idea if there’s a God, but if there’s a God, God would be very, very pleased with me,” Treadwell says into his camera in Werner Herzog’s brilliant documentary Grizzly Man, “because he can just watch me, how much I love them, how much I adore them, how respectful I am of them, how I am one of them. . . . Be warned: I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals. Thank you so much for letting me do this. Thank you so much to these animals for giving me a life. I had no life. Now I have a life.” In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were brutally killed and eaten by one of the bears. Herzog, who knows a little something about filming in treacherous locations (Fitzcarraldo, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Aguirre, the Wrath of God), made Grizzly Man from more than one hundred hours of tape, supplementing that with interviews with Treadwell’s friends and family. They all talk about a much-loved but troubled man who was desperate to be famous. His life with the bears got him onto television with Rosie O’Donnell and David Letterman, but it also got him killed, which some people think was what he deserved for crossing the line and thinking he could survive living with grizzlies. But Herzog shows him to be a thoughtful, compassionate man who just might have found his true purpose in life. (To find out more about Treadwell, check out The Grizzly Man Diaries here.). Although the film, which features a gorgeous score by Richard Thompson, won or was nominated for numerous awards (including editing, directing, and best documentary), it was curiously shut out at the Oscars. Grizzly Man is being shown April 29 at 7:30 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Science on Screen” and will be followed by a Q&A with wildlife journalist Jon Mooallem, moderated by science writer Robert Lee Hotz. The series concludes May 29 with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, followed by a Q&A with author Sonia Shah.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: VENUS IN FUR

The relationship between actor and director becomes an intense psychosexual battle in Roman Polanski’s VENUS IN FUR

VENUS IN FUR (Roman Polanski, 2013)
Saturday, April 26, AMC Loews Village 7, Rush, 7:00
www.tribecafilm.com

For his third stage adaptation in ten years, following 1994’s Death and the Maiden and 2011’s Carnage, Roman Polanski has created a marvelous, multilayered examination of the intricate nature of storytelling, consumed with aspects of doubling. David Ives’s Tony-nominated play, Venus in Fur, is about a cynical theater director, Thomas Novachek, who is auditioning actresses for the lead in his next production, a theatrical version of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s psychosexual novella Venus in Furs (which led to the term “sado-masochism”), itself a man’s retelling of his enslavement by a woman. In the film, as he is packing up and about to head home, Thomas (Matthieu Amalric) is interrupted by Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner), a tall blond who at first appears ditzy and unprepared, practically begging him to let her audition even though she isn’t on the casting sheet, then slowly taking charge as she reveals an intimate knowledge not only of his script but of stagecraft as well. An at-first flummoxed Thomas becomes more and more intrigued as Vanda performs the role of Wanda von Dunayev and he reads the part of Severin von Kushemski, their actor-director relationship intertwining with that of the characters’ dangerous and erotic attraction.

Roman Polanski directs wife Emmanuelle Seigner in thrilling stage adaptation of Tony-winning play

Roman Polanski directs wife Emmanuelle Seigner in thrilling stage adaptation of Tony-nominated play

Ives’s English-language play, which earned Nina Arianda a Tony for Best Actress, was set in an office, but Polanski, who cowrote the screenplay with Ives, has moved this French version to an old theater (the Théâtre Récamier in Paris, rebuilt by designer Jean Rabasse) where a musical production of John Ford’s Stagecoach has recently taken place, with some of the props still onstage, including a rather phallic (and prickly) cactus. Polanski has masterfully used the machinations of cinema to expand on the play while also remaining true to its single setting. One of the world’s finest actors, Amalric, who looks more than a little like a younger Polanski, is spectacular as the pretentious Thomas, his expression-filled eyes and herky-jerky motion defining the evolution of his character’s fascination with Vanda, while Seigner, who is Polanski’s wife, is a dynamo of breathless erotic power and energy, seamlessly weaving in and out of different aspects of Vanda. Venus in Fur was shot in chronological order with one camera by cinematographer Paweł Edelman, who has photographed Polanski’s last five feature films, making it feel like the viewer is onstage, experiencing the events in real time. Alexandre Desplat’s complex, gorgeous score is a character unto itself, beginning with the outdoor establishing shot of the theater. The film also contains elements that recall such previous Polanski works as The Tenant, Bitter Moon, Tess, and The Fearless Vampire Killers, placing it firmly within his impressive canon. Polanski was handed Ives’s script at Cannes in 2012, and this screen version was then shown at Cannes for the 2013 festival, a whirlwind production that is echoed in Seigner’s performance; perhaps what’s most amazing is that it is only now being presented in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival and will finally have its official U.S. theatrical release June 20.

THE GIRL AND DEATH

Nicolai (Leonid Bichevin) seeks to love and protect Elise (Sylvia Hoeks) in Jos Stelling’s THE GIRL AND DEATH

THE GIRL AND DEATH (HET MEISJE EN DE DOOD) (Jos Stelling, 2012)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
April 18-24
212-924-3363
www.hetmeisjeendedood.nl
www.cinemavillage.com

At first glance, Dutch filmmaker Jos Stelling’s The Girl and Death might seem like a costume drama period piece, but in actuality it’s a timeless and intimate look at true love and overwhelming heartbreak. As the film opens, an aging doctor (Sergey Makovetsky) lays flowers on a footstone in a graveyard, then enters a dilapidated building, casting his memories back to his younger self. A student traveling from Moscow to Paris, Nicolai (Leonid Bichevin) stops in a rural hotel on the outskirts of Leipzig. Upon first setting eyes on the beautiful Elise (Sylvia Hoeks), he becomes instantly smitten, despite her friend Nina’s (Renata Litvinova) warnings to stay away from her. The hotel, owned by an old count (German comedian Dieter Hallervorden), also serves as a brothel, and Elise is a courtesan who “belongs” to him. But Nicolai refuses to give up his pursuit of Elise, leading to real trouble for all concerned. Stelling (The Illusionist, Duska), who cowrote the script with Bert Rijkelijkhuizen, zeroes in on the central conflict, Nicolai and Elise’s desire to be together, avoiding subplots and overt social commentary (aside from the power of money). In fact, much of their relationship is spent gazing at each other, not even saying much; Stelling never shows either one outside the hotel grounds. It is as if they exist only in this singular context, with no past, and no other present save for what is shown on-screen. That conceit also works against the film, as the viewer is too often asked to take certain events for granted or simply accept them without question. But The Girl and Death, a German, Russian, and Dutch coproduction that won three Golden Calves at the Netherlands Film Festival (for Best Picture, Best Sound Design, and Best Cinematography), is gripping nonetheless, a painful, romantic portrait of love, jealousy, loyalty, innocence, dedication, and desperation.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS LIVE: PAST TENSE / FUTURE PERFECT

Carrie Mae Weems, “Untitled (Kitchen Table Series),” gelatin silver print and text, 1953 (© Carrie Mae Weems. Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
April 25-27, most events free with museum admission of $18-$22, evening concerts $15-$35
Exhibition continues through May 14
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

In her online biography, Carrie Mae Weems writes, “My work has led me to investigate family relationships, gender roles, the histories of racism, sexism, class, and various political systems. Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.” All this and more is evident in her current exhibition at the Guggenheim, ”Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video.” The show, which continues through May 14, is centered by her subtly powerful 1990 black-and-white “Kitchen Table Series,” which details the evolution of a woman photographed in the same domestic space, sometimes by herself, sometimes with children, sometimes with a man. In many ways it harkens back to painting series by Jacob Lawrence, capturing the African American experience, in this case with the focus on a woman. The show also includes photos from her “Colored People” grids, “Family Pictures and Stories” (accompanied by a voice-over by Weems), “Dreaming in Cuba,” “Roaming,” “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” “The Louisiana Project,” and “Sea Islands Series” in addition to such short films as Afro-Chic and ceramic commemoration plates, all of which explore elements of black history from an often extremely personal perspective.

Carrie Mae Weems will cohost three days of art and activism at the Guggenheim this weekend (photo by Scott Rudd)

The Portland, Oregon-born artist will be at the Guggenheim this weekend presenting “Carrie Mae Weems LIVE: Past Tense/Future Perfect,” three days of discussions, live music, processions, readings, and more, cohosted by Weems and multidisciplinary artist Carl Hancock Rux. On Friday, there will be a tribute to conceptual sculptor and saxophonist Terry Adkins, who passed away at the age of sixty in February, with Vijay Iyer, Vincent Chancey, Dick Griffin, Marshall Sealy, and Kiane Zawadi, followed by “The Blue Notes of Blues People,” consisting of four sets of presentations by such visual artists, curators, choreographers, and scholars as Julie Mehretu, Leslie Hewitt, Shinique Smith, Thomas Lax, Michele Wallace, Camille A. Brown, Shahzia Sikander, Mark Anthony Neal, Sanford Biggers, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Xaviera Simmons. Other programs include “Written on Skin: Posing Questions on Beauty,” “Slow Fade to Black: Explorations in the Cinematic,” and “Laughing to Keep from Crying: A Critical Read on Comedy,” with Nelson George. The first two nights will conclude with ticketed concerts and conversations, with Jason Moran and the Bandwagon (Friday, with Weems) and the Geri Allen Trio (Saturday, with Weems and Theaster Gates). on Sunday, visual artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons will lead the procession “Habla Lamadre” before Weems offers closing remarks. Select programs on Friday and Saturday will be streamed live here.

MARCO BELLOCCHIO — A RETROSPECTIVE: GOOD MORNING, NIGHT

Marco Bellocchio reimagines kidnapping of Aldo Moro in GOOD MORNING, NIGHT

Marco Bellocchio reimagines kidnapping of Aldo Moro in suspenseful GOOD MORNING, NIGHT

GOOD MORNING, NIGHT (BUONGIORNO, NOTTE) (Marco Bellocchio, 2003)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, April 25, 4:00
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
Series continues through May 7
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio reimagines the kidnapping of Aldo Moro from the inside in Good Morning, Night, a taut, slow-paced drama that won the Little Golden Lion at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. Moro, a former Italian prime minister and president of the Christian Democratic Party, was boldly grabbed by members of the radical Red Brigades, who left a bloody mess in their wake. Bellocchio focuses on the three men and one woman who orchestrated the plot and kept Moro locked in a hidden room inside their large rented apartment. While Mariano (Luigi Lo Cascio), Ernesto (Pier Giorgio Bellocchio), and Primo (Giovanni Calcagno) take turns guarding Moro and Mariano spews Socialist rhetoric at him, Chiaras (Maya Sensa), who is Primo’s girlfriend but is pretending to be Ernesto’s wife as a cover, goes to work every day, buys supplies and newspapers, and dreams at night of Moro coming to her as a father figure. Chiaras is the moral conscience of the movie, and a complete invention on the part of Bellocchio, who has said, “I’m not interested in the factual truth.” Even so, much of the real story is still not known, and like the JFK assassination, there are lots of conspiracy theories out there about an event that shocked a nation. Pink Floyd fans get a bonus by Bellocchio’s powerful use of “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” Good Morning, Night is screening on April 25 at 4:00 as part of the MoMA’s Bellocchio retrospective, held in conjunction with the upcoming U.S. release of his latest film, Dormant Beauty, which opens June 6 at Lincoln Plaza. The series continues through May 7 with such other Bellocchio works as Henry IV, The Devil in the Flesh, Fists in the Pocket, China Is Near, Vincere, and Dormant Beauty.