Lee Marvin prepares for big trouble in Richard Fleischer’s VIOLENT SATURDAY
VIOLENT SATURDAY (Richard Fleischer, 1955)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, March 8, 9:00, and Thursday, March 13, 7:00
Series runs March 7-17
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
It’s been a half dozen years since the Film Society of Lincoln Center paid tribute to director Richard Fleischer with a Spotlight at its annual Film Comment Selects series (including screenings of 10 Rillington Place and Mandingo) and Film Forum presented a brand-new 35mm print of Fleischer’s 1955 CinemaScope noir flick Violent Saturday for a special one-week run. So it’s time for another look at the Brooklyn-born director who also made such diverse films as Doctor Dolittle, Fantastic Voyage, Compulsion, and Soylent Green (as well as The Jazz Singer remake with Neil Diamond and Amityville 3-D) and whose father was Max Fleischer and uncle was Dave Fleischer, the two men behind the early Popeye and Betty Boop movies. Critics Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold of Overdue have joined forces with Anthology Film Archives for an eleven-day festival of nine of Fleischer’s lesser-known works that show off his wide range.
On March 8 and 13, the 35mm print of Violent Saturday will be screened; “Fleischer, an ace with the long frame,” Pinkerton wrote in his 2008 Village Voice review, “composes scrolling studies in horizontality, grabbing one of the most ravishing train shots in cinema.” All is not as it seems in the small town of Bradenville, Arizona. The mousy librarian (Sylvia Sidney) is stealing to pay off her debts, the married bank manager (Tommy Noonan) walks his dog late at night so he can peep on a hot-to-trot single woman (Virginia Leth), the mine boss’s son (Richard Egan) is a drunk who suspects his ritzy wife (Margaret Hayes) of cheating on him with a country-club playboy (Brad Dexter), an Amish family (led by Ernest Borgnine!) that lives nearby tries to keep to themselves, and a young boy (Billy Chapin) is embarrassed that his father (Victor Mature) worked in the copper mines instead of becoming a war hero like his best friend’s dad. But when three bank robbers (Stephen McNally, J. Carrol Naish, and Lee Marvin, puffing on an inhaler like Frank Booth in Blue Velvet) come to town to rid the safe of all its cash, all hell soon breaks loose and things do indeed get rather violent. In Violent Saturday, Fleischer reveals the subtle underbelly of a postwar America undergoing radical change while still standing by its old values, at least on the surface. And it’s great seeing Borgnine and Marvin together, in lovely CinemaScope; twelve years later they would reunite for Robert Aldrich’s classic WWII flick, The Dirty Dozen. “Overdue: Richard Fleischer” runs March 7-17 and also includes Trapped, Armed Car Robbery, Barabbas, See No Evil, The New Centurions, Conan the Destroyer, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
Prepare to have your spirits lifted up and away in this sensational animated feature from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki. Ten-year-old Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) is unhappy about moving to a new home despite her parents’ best efforts to convince her otherwise. When her father (Takashi Naito) takes a wrong turn on the road, the family ends up in an oddly deserted village that Chihiro soon finds out is a lot more than it seems. Chihiro’s adventures through this dreamlike, surreal, magical place filled with bizarre characters and evil beings are unforgettable, with nuances and references from such diverse works as The Wizard Of Oz and The Seventh Seal. The sheer visual beauty of the animation is staggering; many of the backgrounds are reminiscent of Impressionism. Joe Hisaishi’s maudlin music is way overpraised, as usual, but this Japanese box-office champ deservedly won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and was named Best Asian Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards. As with the best animated films, you don’t have to be a kid to fall in love with Spirited Away, which explains why the Landmark Sunshine is screening the Japanese-language version, with English subtitles, on March 7-8 as part of its ongoing Sunshine at Midnight series, held in conjunction with the theatrical release of what might be Miyazaki’s swan song, The Wind Rises.
The prospect of sitting through a ninety-five-minute movie that primarily takes place in close quarters as a young hiker tries to break free of a rock that has pinned him near the bottom of an isolated crevice in Utah’s Blue John Canyon for five days is not exactly promising, whether you suffer from claustrophobia or can take only so much James Franco in one sitting. In addition, you’re likely to know pretty much everything that happens, since the story of Aron Ralston’s true-life fight for survival was all over the news back in 2003 and became a bestselling autobiography, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. But in the hands of Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle, the visual mastermind behind such films as Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, the underrated Sunshine, and Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours keeps the suspense in high gear, anchored by Franco’s raw, emotional, Oscar-nominated performance as adventurer Ralston. Over the course of more than five days, Ralston records video diary entries for his parents, carefully preserves his tiny water supply, gets excited when he can stick his foot out to catch a brief ray of sunlight, and uses a dull knife to try to cut through his arm. Every morning a raven flies overhead, as if waiting for him to die so he can scavenge his body. But Ralston immerses himself in fantasies and memories, attempting to keep his mind operating to come up with a way to get free. Watching the film is both agonizing and exhilarating; don’t be surprised if you feel guilty gulping your large soda and munching on your supersized popcorn while Ralston preciously measures his liquid intake by the milliliter. 127 Hours is another cinematic triumph by one of today’s most innovative directors, starring twenty-first-century-man Franco, who writes poetry and short stories, appears in avant-garde videos, curates art exhibitions, adapts classic novels into offbeat films, directs dance theater, is studying for his PhD at Yale and teaching at other colleges, is a novelist, and will soon be on Broadway playing George in Of Mice and Men — and he’s still only in his midthirties. The IFC Center is paying tribute to the unstoppable Franco — he is so ubiquitous that a few months ago, we were discussing his version of As I Lay Dying while we were on our way to see an off Broadway show, and when we sat down, it turned out that we were sitting right behind Mr. Franco. FrancoFest runs March 5-12 with screenings of 127 Hours, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl (in which Franco plays Allen Ginsberg), Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, William Friedkin’s Cruising, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, and such Franco-directed flicks as Sal, My Own Private River, Good Time Max, The Broken Tower, As I Lay Dying, The Ape, 
In his 2013 autobiography, The Friedkin Connection, writer-director William Friedkin delves into his controversial 1980 film, Cruising, explaining, “I cut at least half an hour from the club scenes and the murder scenes. I had purposely let these scenes of pornography and violence run long, knowing they’d be cut and I’d be left with the story I wanted to tell. Despite these cuts, the film pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in an R-rated film, something the critics were quick to point out.” Cruising, which stars Al Pacino as an undercover cop hunting a serial killer in New York City’s underground gay community, was a critical and financial flop; the Variety reviewer wrote, “If this is an R, then the only X left is actual hardcore.”
When French U.N. delegate Fèvre-Berthier goes missing in director Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1959 noir, Two Men in Manhattan, reporter Moreau (Melville) of the French Press Agency and freelance photographer Pierre Delmas (Pierre Grasset) go out on the town, trying to find out what happened. While Moreau is seeking the truth, Delmas is after a sensationalist photograph he can sell to the highest bidder. They meet up with several women who knew the married diplomat — some much better than others — including his secretary, Françoise Bonnot (Colette Fleury), actress Judith Nelson (Ginger Hall), stripper Bessie Reid (Michèle Bailly), and jazz singer Virginia Graham (Glenda Leigh). As the men make their way through Rockefeller Plaza, Times Square, Greenwich Village, Broadway, the subway, and the United Nations, Marial Solal’s and Christian Chevallier’s jazzy score dominates the outdoor scenes, soaking the viewer in the New York at night atmosphere. And all the while, the reporter and photographer are trailed by someone in a mysterious car. As they get closer to their destination, they are faced with some serious ethical choices, not just about journalism, but about life itself. Nearly fifty-five years after its release, Two Men in Manhattan feels as stiff and dated as Melville’s (Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Samouraï) lead performance, his only starring role and his sole appearance in one of his own films. It’s difficult to tell if Two Men in Manhattan is a serious procedural, an homage to classic noirs, a tribute to New York City, or a sly genre parody — perhaps it’s all of them, but far too many of the twists and turns are hard to swallow, especially when it comes to Delmas’s selfish decisions and Moreau’s often absurd brainstorms that seem to exist just to quicken the plot despite their incredulity. Still, it’s beautifully shot in shadowy darkness by Nicholas Hayer, and it was proclaimed by Jean-Luc Godard to be the second best film of the year. A digitally remastered version of Two Men in Manhattan is screening March 4 at 4:00 & 7:30 as part of the FIAF CinéSalon series “Remastered & Restored: Treasures of French Cinema”; the later screening will be presented by Phillip Lopate, and both shows will be followed by a wine reception. The three-month festival continues March 11 with Claire Denis’s Chocolat, introduced by African Film Festival founder Mahen Bonetti, before concluding March 18 with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Truth.
Loosely based on a Noël Coward play that was recently made into a film starring Colin Firth, Jessica Biel, and Kristin Scott Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Easy Virtue is another of the Master of Suspense’s cleverly told melodramas, a risqué tale of a woman unfairly placed in a lurid situation. Isabel Jeans stars as Larita Filton, a loving wife whose husband, Aubrey (Franklin Dyall), has commissioned her portrait by painter Claude Robson (Eric Bransby Williams). Just as Claude makes a play for Larita, she fights him off and Aubrey walks in. He misinterprets the scene, shots ring out, the artist is dead, and Claude files for a highly publicized divorce case in which Larita is found guilty of misconduct. Trying to put her notorious past behind her, she heads for the Mediterranean, where she meets John Whittaker (Robin Irvine), a wealthy mama’s boy who falls instantly in love with her and brings her back to his parents’ country estate. But once there, Whittaker’s nasty mother (Violet Farebrother) and conniving sisters (Dacia Deane and Dorothy Boyd) do everything they can to ruin the relationship, seeking to uncover Larita’s history while also attempting to put her son back together with longtime family friend Sarah (Enid Stamp Taylor). Easy Virtue, which features yet another Hitchcock blonde, is a gripping film about honesty, reputation, individuality, and character as an innocent woman is forced to face undeserved consequences in the superficial world of high society. Hitchcock, who makes his cameo holding a walking stick, gliding past Larita while she sits by a tennis court, includes several wonderful touches involving circles and ovals, from a close-up of a judge’s wig to a shot through a tennis racket’s strings to a dining room dominated by a group of elongated, haloed saints on one wall. Easy Virtue is also one of Hitchcock’s dourest silent melodramas, lacking any comic relief as a wronged woman desperately tries to right her life. Easy Virtue is screening on March 4 at 6:45 as part of the Film Forum series “The Hitchcock 9,” with live piano music by Steve Sterner. “The Hitchcock 9” continues through May 4 with Blackmail, The Pleasure Garden, Champagne, The Farmer’s Wife, The Ring, Downhill, and The Manxman (all featuring Sterner on piano), in conjunction with “The Complete Hitchcock,” which runs through March 27 and includes all of Sir Alfred’s feature narratives. In addition, the Paley Center will be hosting