this week in film and television

THE DISCREET CHARM OF GEORGE CUKOR: THE WOMEN

Mrs. Stephen Haines (Norma Shearer) learns the awful truth in George Cukor’s THE WOMEN

Mrs. Stephen Haines (Norma Shearer) discovers some awful truths in George Cukor’s THE WOMEN

THE WOMEN (George Cukor, 1939)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
144/165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Friday, December 13, Francesca Beale Theater, 1:15, 6:30
Saturday, December 14, Walter Reade Theater, 4:30
Series runs December 6-8
212-875-5050 / 212-875-5166
www.filmlinc.com

One of the cattiest movies ever made, The Women is a screwball comedy that has the distinction of not having a single man in it; it was written by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, based on Clare Booth’s 1936 Broadway play, and helmed by George Cukor, who is often considered “the women’s director.” (Even the animals in the film are female.) Set in Manhattan, the film follows the intrigue and gossip surrounding a group of socialite women who yap yap yap all day long while shopping in ritzy stores, eating in fancy restaurants, and getting their nails done in high-end salons. Their attention is suddenly turned to the sweetly innocent Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) when it is believed that her husband, Stephen, is having an affair with conniving perfume salesperson Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). Mary’s supposed best friends, Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell), Edith Potter (Phyllis Povah), and Peggy Day (Joan Fontaine), at first keep the story from her, but as the facts continue to pile up, Mary considers heading to Reno to get a quickie divorce, even as her mother (Lucile Watson) tells her to just live with the deception, as most women do. In Reno, Mary stays at a ranch with other wives trying to get out of their marriages, including a boisterous, oft-wed countess (Mary Boland), a tough-talking chorus girl (Paulette Goddard), and a few surprises. As the women discuss life and love, wealth and poverty, heartache and motherhood — Mary is desperate to protect her daughter, also named Mary (Virginia Weidler), from the nasty proceedings — relationships twist and turn, loyalty is questioned, and the possibility of true love is clouded in doubt.

An all-star cast discuss what went wrong with their marriages in THE WOMEN

The Women is a riotous, fast-paced romp that flies by despite clocking in at more than two hours. The opening title sequence sets the stage, with each of the main characters represented by a different animal: deer (Mary), leopard (Crystal), black cat (Sylvia), monkey (the countess), hyena (Miriam), sheep (Peggy), owl (Mary’s mother), cow (Edith), doe (Mary’s daughter), and horse (Lucy). The narrative mixes slapstick humor and tender moments with scenes of backstabbing bravado. Dennie Moore nearly steals the show as fabulously gossipy manicurist Olga, who unwittingly sets the main plot in motion and is responsible for painting many of the characters’ nails in the critical color Jungle Red. (Among the other highlights are an exercise class at the spa and the maid spying on a heated argument between Mary and Stephen.) The cast also features Hedda Hopper as gossip columnist Dolly Dupuyster, Butterfly McQueen as Crystal’s assistant, Lulu, and Marjorie Main as Lucy, who runs the Reno divorce ranch. Although the film was primarily shot in black-and-white, it has an oddball Adrian fashion show in Technicolor that feels out of place, and some of the ideas regarding a woman’s freedom versus her dependence on men don’t quite hold up, but The Women is still one of the greatest Hollywood pictures ever told from the perspective of the fairer sex. Amazingly, Cukor’s film did not receive a single Oscar nomination, having come out the same year as Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gone with the Wind, Ninotchka, Love Affair, Dark Victory, The Wizard of Oz, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. On December 13 & 14, The Women will kick off the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “The Discreet Charm of George Cukor,” which runs through January 7 and includes all fifty of the Lower East Side native’s films, from Grumpy and The Virtuous Sin to The Corn Is Green and Rich and Famous; in between are such unforgettable classics as Adam’s Rib, The Philadelphia Story, Holiday, Born Yesterday, Dinner at Eight, My Fair Lady, Little Women, A Star Is Born, and many others.

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: LATE AUTUMN

Nobuo Nakamura, Ryuji Kita, and Shin Saburi play a trio of matchmaking yentas in Ozu’s LATE AUTUMN

LATE AUTUMN (AKIBIYORI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1960)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, December 12, $12, 7:00
Series runs monthly through February
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Yasujirō Ozu revisits one of his greatest triumphs, 1949’s Late Spring, in the 1960 drama Late Autumn, the Japanese auteur’s fourth color film and his third-to-last work. Whereas the black-and-white Late Spring is about a widowed father (Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried adult daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplating their futures, Late Autumn deals with young widow Akiko Miwa (Hara again) and her daughter, Ayako (Yoku Tsukasa). At a ceremony honoring the seventh anniversary of Mr. Miwa’s death, several of his old friends gather together and are soon plotting to marry off both the younger Akiko, whom they all had crushes on, and twenty-four-year-old Ayako. The three businessmen — Soichi Mamiya (Shin Saburi), Shuzo Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), and Seiichiro Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) — serve as a kind of comedic Greek chorus, matchmaking and arguing like a trio of yentas, while Akiko and Ayako maintain creepy smiles as the men lay out their misguided, unwelcome plans. Mamiya makes numerous attempts to fix Ayako up with one of his employees, Shotaru Goto (Keiji Sada), but Ayako wants none of it, preferring the freedom and independence displayed by her best friend, Yoko (Yuriko Tashiro), who represents the new generation in Japan. At the same time, their matchmaking for Akiko borders on the slapstick. Based on a story by Ton Satomi, Late Autumn, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, is a relatively lighthearted film from the master, with sly jokes and playful references while examining a Japan that is in the midst of significant societal change in the postwar era. Kojun Saitô’s Hollywood-esque score is often bombastically melodramatic, but Yuuharu Atsuta’s cinematography keeps things well grounded with Ozu’s trademark low-angle, unmoving shots amid carefully designed interior sets.

Japan Society series honors Donald Richie (l.) with screening of film by Yasujiro Ozu (c.)

Late Autumn is downright fun to watch, and you can see it on December 12 — Ozu’s 110th birthday, as well as the 50th anniversary of his death — at 7:00 at Japan Society, introduced by director, writer, and producer Atsushi Funahashi, as part of the monthly tribute series “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” which honors Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February at the age of eighty-eight. Richie was a tireless champion of Japanese culture and, particularly, cinema, and the series features six works by five of his favorite directors. Here’s what Richie said about Late Autumn: “A daughter is reluctant to leave her widowed mother, even though it is time for her to marry. The story could be seen as a ‘remake’ of Late Spring — and though more autumnal, it is just as moving.” The Late Autumn screening will also be followed by a special Ozu birthday reception. The series continues in January with Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Himatsuri and concludes in February with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, appropriately on the one-year anniversary of Richie’s passing.

OZU AND HIS AFTERLIVES: STILL WALKING

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s STILL WALKING is a special film about a dysfunctional family that should not be missed

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s STILL WALKING is a special film that honors such Japanese directors as Mikio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu, and Shohei Imamura

STILL WALKING (ARUITEMO ARUITEMO) (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
144 and 165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Wednesday, December 11, Francesca Beale Theater, 8:30
Thursday, December 12, Walter Reade Theater, 1:30
Series runs December 4-12
212-875-5050 / 212-875-5166
www.filmlinc.com
www.aruitemo.com

Flawlessly written, directed, and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi, Nobody Knows), Still Walking follows a day in the life of the Yokoyama family, which gathers together once a year to remember Junpei, the eldest son who died tragically. The story is told through the eyes of the middle child, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), a forty-year-old painting restorer who has recently married Yukari (Yui Natsukawa), a widow with a young son (Shohei Tanaka). Ryota dreads returning home because his father, Kyohei (Yoshio Harada), and mother, Toshiko (Kirin Kiki), are disappointed in the choices he’s made, both personally and professionally, and never let him escape from Junpei’s ever-widening shadow. Also at the reunion is Ryota’s chatty sister, Chinami (You), who, with her husband and children, is planning on moving in with her parents in order to take care of them in their old age (and save money as well). Over the course of twenty-four hours, the history of the dysfunctional family and the deep emotions hidden just below the surface slowly simmer but never boil, resulting in a gentle, bittersweet narrative that is often very funny and always subtly powerful. The film is beautifully shot by Yutaka Yamazaki, who keeps the camera static during long interior takes — it moves only once inside the house — using doorways, short halls, and windows to frame scenes with a slightly claustrophobic feel, evoking how trapped the characters are by the world the parents have created. The scenes in which Kyohei walks with his cane ever so slowly up and down the endless outside steps are simple but unforgettable. Influenced by such Japanese directors as Mikio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu, and Shohei Imamura, Kore-eda was inspired to make the film shortly after the death of his parents; although it is fiction, roughly half of Toshiko’s dialogue is taken directly from his own mother. Still Walking is a special film, a visual and psychological marvel that should not be missed. It’s screening December 11-12 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center festival “Ozu and His Afterlives,” which honors the 110th anniversary of the master filmmaker’s birth and the 50th anniversary of his death; he died on his birthday at the age of sixty in 1963. The series features Ozu’s Equinox Flower and An Autumn Afternoon in addition to seven works that were either directly or indirectly inspired by Ozu and his unique style, including Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumiere, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, Aki Kaurismäki’s The Match Factory Girl, Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum, Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room, and Wim Wenders’s Tokyo-Ga.

FILM FEAST: A CHRISTMAS STORY

Nitehawk Cinema is serving up quite a tasty treat at special screening of A CHRISTMAS STORY

DECEMBER BRUNCH & MIDNITE — NAUGHTY AND NICE: A CHRISTMAS STORY (Bob Clark, 1983)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Wednesday, December 11, $75, 7:15
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Once upon a time, there was a little cult movie that so perfectly captured the real Christmas spirit that it was a special holiday gift for those few who knew of its myriad charms. But when word got out, it sure got out, making A Christmas Story more ubiquitous in December than It’s a Wonderful Life. In fact, TBS will once again host a twenty-four-hour marathon of the film beginning at 8:00 on Christmas Eve, and the stage musical is back in New York City, running December 11-29 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. In A Christmas Story — which is directed by Bob Clark, who also made Porky’s and another holiday favorite, 1974’s Black Christmas — radio legend Jean Shepherd narrates stories based on his own life, which deal with light-up leg lamps and crossword puzzles, saying fffffffffff-udge and eating soap, shopping for trees and visiting Santa, but mostly, of course, they’re about family. And this is one crazy family, with Darren (Kolchak) McGavin as the grumpy Old Man, Melinda Dillon as his much-too-sweet wife, Ian Petrella as younger brother Randy, and Peter Billingsley as Ralphie, who dreams of getting his very own official Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred-shot range model air rifle. And yes, little Scotty Schwartz, who plays Flick the pole licker, did indeed become a porn star, appearing in such naughty romps as New Wave Hookers 5, Dirty Bob’s Xcellent Adventures 35 & 36, and Still Insatiable. There are many ways to see A Christmas Story this holiday season, but the best might just be at Nitehawk Cinema’s “Naughty and Nice” Film Feast on December 11 at 7:15, when the movie will be shown along with a menu specially created for the screening. The four-course dinner begins with chestnut and cranberry stuffing bites with snap ginger liqueur whipped cream, paired with an Ovaltini (Lovely, Beautiful, Glorious Christmas), followed by bacon-wrapped meatloaf served with Yukon gold mashed potatoes and braised red cabbage, to be washed down with “Oh Fuuudddggggeee” chocolate stout (Mrs. Parker’s Comfort Food). Next up is roasted duck breast with Bumpuses’ egg roll in a spiced orange reduction, accompanied by hot mulled wine (Chinese Turkey). And finally, for dessert, there’s coconut snowball cake (Pink Nightmare). Now, that sounds like a Christmas dinner you’ll never forget.

THE CONTENDERS 2013: FRANCES HA

Frances (Greta Gerwig) has to reexamine her life when her best friend moves on in FRANCES HA

FRANCES HA (Noah Baumbach, 2012)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, December 9, 8:00
Series continues through January 16
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.franceshamovie.com
www.moma.org

Lena Dunham meets Woody Allen and François Truffaut in Noah Baumbach’s utterly delightful and frustratingly believable Frances Ha. Breakout mumblecore star Greta Gerwig (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights and Weekends) plays the title character, a twenty-seven-year-old New York dancer living with her best friend from college, Sophie (Mickey Sumner). They tell each other everything and even sleep in the same bed; “The coffee people are right — we are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore,” Frances playfully tells Sophie. But when Sophie suddenly announces that she’s moving in with her boyfriend, Patch (Patrick Heusinger), Frances’s life starts going off on a downward spiral, her childlike manner and carefree attitude no longer as charmingly quirky as it used to be. She first moves in with hot stud Lev (Girls’ Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), who nicknames her “Undateable.” She suffers a serious setback in the dance company where she apprentices, she’s running out of money, and Sophie is becoming more and more distant. But as Frances grows more and more desperate, she also finally starts taking a longer look at who she is — and who she wants to be. Shot in a deep, penetrating black-and-white by Sam Levy, Frances Ha wonderfully captures the life of today’s twentysomethings, from their dependence on texting and self-involvement to their often bewildering inability to think about a real future.

Greta Gerwig cowrote and stars in Noah Baumbachs delightful FRANCES HA

Greta Gerwig cowrote and stars in partner Noah Baumbach’s delightful FRANCES HA

Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) follows Frances as she moves around New York City and goes back to her alma mater, Vassar (which is Baumbach’s also), marking each location as a new phase in her life. Gerwig, who took dance as a child and studied the discipline at Barnard (the choreography in the film is by Max Stone and Travis Waldschmidt), cowrote the script with Baumbach — they are romantic partners as well. Although she initially did not consider herself for the title role, she is terrific as Frances, sort of the illegitimate daughter of Annie Hall and Antoine Doinel. The soundtrack features music by indie duo Dean + Britta — Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips also play the hosts of a dinner party Frances attends — in addition to Georges Delerue, the French composer of hundreds of films, including many by Truffaut. And yes, Gerwig’s real parents play her mother and father in the film. Frances Ha is one of the most honest coming-of-age comedies in years, an insightful examination of a perplexing generation. Frances Ha is screening December 9 at 8:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of exemplary films that MoMA believes will stand the test of time, continuing with such works as J. C. Chandor’s All Is Lost, Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, and Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring.

STANWYCK: NIGHT NURSE AND BABY FACE

NIGHT NURSE, involving child endangerment, alcoholism, murder, and Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell frolicking in their undergarments, is a great example of pre-Hays Code Hollywood

NIGHT NURSE (William A. Wellman, 1931)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, December 8: Baby Face 3:30, 6:50, 9:50, Night Nurse 5:20, 8:20
Series runs December 6-31
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

William A. Wellman’s rarely screened 1931 doozy, Night Nurse, is the first of five collaborations between Wellman and Barbara Stanwyck. Based on Dora Macy’s 1930 novel, Night Nurse stars Stanwyck as Lora Hart, a young woman determined to become a nurse. She gets a probationary job at a city hospital, where she is taken under the wing of Maloney (Joan Blondell), who likes to break the rules and torture the head nurse, the stodgy Miss Dillon (Vera Lewis). Shortly after treating a bootlegger (Ben Lyon) for a gunshot wound and agreeing not to report it to the police, Lora starts working for a shady doctor (Ralf Harolde) taking care of two sick children (Marcia Mae Jones and Betty Jane Graham) whose proudly dipsomaniac mother (Charlotte Merriam) is being manipulated by her suspicious chauffeur (Clark Gable). Wellman pulls out all the stops, hinting at or simply depicting murder, child endangerment, rape, alcoholism, lesbianism, physical brutality, and Blondell and Stanwyck regularly frolicking around in their undergarments. It’s as if Wellman is thumbing his nose directly at the soon-to-be-in-place Hays Code in scene after scene. Although far from his best film — Wellman directed such classics as Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), Beau Geste (1939), and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) — Night Nurse is an overly melodramatic, dated, but entertaining little tale with quite a surprise ending. Night Nurse is screening twice on December 8 as part of Film Forum’s epic “Stanwyck” series and will be shown in a double feature with the uncensored, dastardly sordid version of Alfred E. Green’s 1933 Baby Face, in which Stanwyck plays a woman who was pimped out by her father in her early teens and now knows how to use her body to get exactly what she wants. The festival is being held in conjunction with the first major biography of the glamorous star, Victoria Wilson’s A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940; Wilson will be introducing several films over the course of the series, which runs December 6-31, and will give the illustrated talk “Stanwyck Before Hollywood” on December 8 at 3:30 before the screening of Baby Face.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The Lewis clan is in for a very different Christmas in Anna Condo’s debut feature

MERRY CHRISTMAS (Anna Condo, 2013)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
December 6-26
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.merrychristmasthemovie.com

“I don’t think that this is going to be a boring weekend,” one character says early on in Anna Condo’s debut feature, Merry Christmas. It turns out she couldn’t be more wrong, for the misguided film feels like it goes on for a weekend, even though it’s a mere eighty-three minutes long. Hit hard by the financial crisis, a wealthy New York City family ends up spending its Christmas in a Pennsylvania B&B instead of Aspen, playing a murder-mystery game set in and around a 1974 disco lounge. As the family members move in and out of character, real feelings emerge as they discuss God and Satan, Freud and finance, Park Ave. and the ghetto, race and Fox News, and how much a homeless stranger looks like Charles Manson. Condo, who was born in Armenia, raised in France, and is married to artist George Condo, directed and edited Merry Christmas (and chose the crazy costumes); there is no writer credit because the film, shot in two and a half days on location, is completely improvised. Each actor was given a one-page outline of their character, and each scene was done in one take, without rehearsal. Condo then took three years to edit the film. If this is what she chose to include, we’d hate to see what ended up on the cutting-room floor. Part reality show, part Arrested Development rip-off, Merry Christmas is most severely hampered by a collection of characters you wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with, let alone nearly an hour and a half. The cast includes Alexandra Stewart as clueless family matriarch Maya Dawn Lewis, Antony Langdon as the bitterly annoying Ted, Elizabeth Jasicki as late arriver Janice Black, Eleonore Condo (daughter of Anna and George) as teenage Lily Lazarus, Martin Pfefferkorn as the homeless stranger (who actually looks a lot more like Denis Lavant’s character in Leos Carax’s Merde than Manson), Tibor Feldman as Lewis attorney Leon, and real-life innkeeper Darlene Elders as Kay, the owner of the B&B. In Suzi Forbes Chase’s Recommended Bed & Breakfasts: Mid-Atlantic States, the author writes, “Innkeeper Darlene Elders has a theme for her bed-and-breakfast, and it goes like this: ‘If every day were Christmas, our hearts would be filled with loving, giving, caring, and sharing every day — not just at Christmas.’” Unfortunately, there’s not much to love about Merry Christmas, which opens December 6 at Cinema Village; Anna Condo, Eleonore Condo, Feldman, and Jasicki will participate in a Q&A following the 3:15 screening on Sunday, December 8.