Cary Grant gets caught in the middle of two sisters in George Cukor’s HOLIDAY
HOLIDAY (George Cukor, 1938)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Wednesday, December 18, 1:00, 5:00, 9:15
Series runs through January 7
212-875-5050 / 212-875-5166
www.filmlinc.com
Although the screwball romantic comedies are perhaps best loved for their madcap antics and fast-paced dialogue, there was also a fascinating underlying motif to many of them — as America came out of the Great Depression and WWII beckoned, the films tackled the theme of the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. George Cukor’s 1938 classic, Holiday, however, looks at the world from a slightly different perspective, pitting the rich vs. the super-rich. Based on the Broadway play by Philip Barry, which was turned into a 1930 film featuring Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Hedda Hopper, Robert Ames, and William Holden, Cukor’s version stars Cary Grant as Johnny Case, a self-made humble financial wizard who dreams of making just enough money to be able to afford to leave the business and go find himself. Following a whirlwind ten-day courtship with Julia Seton (Doris Nolan) while on vacation in Lake Placid, Johnny is shocked to find out that his fiancée is a member of the Seton clan, one of the richest families in America. Julia’s father, Edward (Henry Kolker), is not about to let his beloved daughter marry just anyone, so he puts Johnny through the ringer. Meanwhile, Johnny bonds with Julia’s sister, the black sheep Linda (Katharine Hepburn, who was the understudy for Linda on Broadway), who is desperate to live her own life but seems trapped in a fantasy, receiving only marginal support from their brother, Ned (Lew Ayres), who is never without a drink and a cynical word about the family, washing away his failure in cocktail after cocktail. “Walk, don’t run, to the nearest exit,” he advises Johnny. Honest, dependable, and a surprisingly good gymnast, Johnny finds solace from the crazy Setons in his longtime friends, Nick (Horton, reprising his role from the earlier film) and Susan (Jean Dixon), simpler folk with a fine sense of humor and little time for high society. As midnight on New Year’s Eve approaches, the main characters’ lives come together and fall apart in hysterical yet serious ways. Holiday is not your average screwball comedy, instead seeking to take on more personal, psychologically intimate issues and succeeding wildly, continually defying expectations and turning clichés inside out. Grant is as cool as ever, but he adds a seldom-seen vulnerability that adds to his charm. Holiday is screening December 18 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “The Discreet Charm of George Cukor,” which runs through January 7 and consists of all fifty of the Lower East Side native’s films, from Keeper of the Flame and Heller in Pink Tights to Our Betters and Tarnished Lady as well as such unforgettable classics as Sylvia Scarlett, Pat and Mike, It Should Happen to You, Camille, Gaslight, and many others.
“I left all my troubles in Poland, all the duties that occupied my days,” Malgosia says at the beginning of 1998’s The Siberian Lesson. “I really wanted to leave them all behind. I wanted a break.” As it turns out, spending a year in Usolye-Sibirskoye does not end up being much of a break for Malgosia, who arrives in a town out of time, looking more like 1956 than 1996. Malgosia has traveled to Siberia to teach her native language to the descendants of Polish exiles who fled the country during tsarist rule, men, women, and children who know little of their homeland; she is joined by her boyfriend, recent Polish Film Academy graduate Wojciech Staroń, who is documenting it all with his 16mm camera. Malgosia, who narrates the film in a dry monotone, immediately discovers that life is extremely difficult for this tight-knit community; the teachers are on strike, and poverty is rampant, the food of survival the potato, which she is told everyone must grow for themselves in order to make it through the hard winter. She meets some rather unique characters during her stay, including Tatar gym owner Zinat, Father Ignacy, and a night watchman named Walery who has dedicated his life to translating the Bible from Polish into Russian. Meanwhile, students of all ages come to her classes, seeking something they can’t otherwise find in their daily existence. Malgosia is also searching for something in her own life, and she finds it in her growing love for Wojciech, who adds beautifully poetic shots of the vast Siberian landscape to accompany Agata Steczkowska’s nearly elegiac piano score.
Ingmar Bergman’s Shame is a brilliant examination of the physical and psychological impact of war, as seen through the eyes of a happily married couple who innocently get caught in the middle of the brutality. Jan (Max von Sydow) and Eva Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann) have isolated themselves from society, living without a television and with a broken radio, maintaining a modest farm on a relatively desolate island a ferry ride from the mainland. As the film opens, they are shown to be a somewhat ordinary husband and wife, brushing their teeth, making coffee, and discussing having a child. But soon they are thrust into a horrific battle between two unnamed sides, fighting for reasons that are never given. As Jan and Eva struggle to survive, they are forced to make decisions that threaten to destroy everything they have built together. Shot in stark black-and-white by master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Shame is a powerful, emotional antiwar statement that makes its point through intense visual scenes rather than narrative rhetoric. Jan and Eva huddle in corners or nearly get lost in crowds, then are seen traversing a smoky, postapocalyptic landscape riddled with dead bodies. Made during the Vietnam War, Shame is Bergman’s most violent, action-filled film; bullets can be heard over the opening credits, announcing from the very beginning that this is going to be something different from a director best known for searing personal dramas. However, at its core, Shame is just that, a gripping, intense tale of a man and a woman who try to preserve their love in impossible times. Ullmann and von Sydow both give superb, complex performances, creating believable characters who will break your heart. Shame is screening December 14 and 18 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Liv & Ingmar: The Films,” being held in conjunction with the theatrical release of Dheeraj Akolkar’s poetic new documentary, Liv & Ingmar; the festival continues with such other Ullmann/Bergman pairings as Scenes from a Marriage, Saraband, The Passion of Anna, and Persona.
