this week in film and television

NITEHAWK BRUNCH SCREENINGS: THIS IS ENGLAND

Thomas “Tommo” Turgoose packs quite a punch in film debut, THIS IS ENGLAND

THIS IS ENGLAND (Shane Meadows, 2006)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, September 14, and Sunday, September 15, 11:30 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

Based on elements from his own childhood, Shane Meadows’s This Is England is a powerful drama set in the tempestuous 1980s in the UK during the controversial Falklands War. Thirteen-year-old Thomas “Tommo” Turgoose makes a stunning debut as Shane, a twelve-year-old boy whose father recently died in the war and who gets picked on because he is short — and never backs away from the chance to defend himself and his dad. Shane is “adopted” by a goofy group of skinheads led by Woody (Joe Gilgun) who like to hang out at a local coffee shop and occasionally perform minor forms of anarchy. Shane also gets a small taste of romance from Smell (Rosamund Hanson), a sweetly innocent teen who dresses like a Boy George groupie. But when Combo (Stephen Graham) shows up, just released from prison, he causes a split among the friends, asking them to join him in his crazed nationalistic fervor fueled by hatred and racism. At that point, the film turns from a charming coming-of-age drama to an angry, politically charged story. Turgoose, a street-savvy underprivileged kid himself, is unforgettable as Shane, who learns fast about the hard, cold world. Graham (Snatch) is frightening as Combo, a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any moment. The excellent soundtrack features Culture Club, Percy Sledge, Soft Cell, the Specials, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, UK Subs, and several songs by Toots & the Maytals. Be sure not to show up late — the opening montage, beautifully summarizing Thatcher’s England, is simply awesome. Winner of the 2008 BAFTA for Best British Film, This Is England is being shown September 14 & 15 at 11:30 am as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s brunch series and will be followed by a Skype discussion with Robert “Bucket” Hingley of the ska band the Toasters.

JOHN ZORN SELECTS: THE CONVERSATION

Gene Hackman traps himself in a corner in Francis Ford Coppola’s gripping psychological thriller, THE CONVERSATION

THE CONVERSATION (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Thursday, September 12, 6:45, and Sunday, September 15, 4:15
Series runs September 12-30
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

While changing the face of Hollywood cinema with The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, American auteur Francis Ford Coppola snuck in yet another 1970s masterpiece, the dark psychological thriller The Conversation. Gene Hackman gives a riveting performance as Harry Caul, an audio surveillance expert who has been hired to record a meeting between two people (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest) in Union Square in San Francisco. Thinking that he might have stumbled onto a murder plot, Caul soon finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conspiracy that threatens the lives of all those involved. The Conversation is a gripping, taut examination of obsession, paranoia, and loneliness as well as an exploration of language and communication. Caul might spend most of his time listening in on the intimate conversations of others, but he is an intensely private individual who is extremely uncomfortable in his own skin. A deeply religious man who also plays the saxophone, Caul has trouble relating to other people; Hackman is particularly outstanding in a party scene where Caul is forced to talk shop with fellow surveillance expert Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield), who wants to know Caul’s secrets, but the always nervous Caul isn’t about to share everything. The film also examines how people hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see, and it takes on even more meaning in a twenty-first century dominated by public and private surveillance, from store security cameras and government monitoring to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The supporting cast, which also features Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Teri Garr, and John Cazale, is exceptional, but this is Hackman’s show all the way, leading to one of the great endings in the history of cinema.

A recorded conversation between a mysterious couple (Talia Shire and Frederic Forrest) triggers a possible conspiracy in Coppola masterpiece

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, The Conversation is screening September 12 and 15 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “John Zorn Selects,” comprising a dozen works chosen by the master experimental musician and Anthology composer-in-residence on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, focusing on the soundtracks. “Along with Murder by Contract, The Third Man, and a very few others, The Conversation is a perfect example of restraint, modesty, and intimacy in film scoring — the entire film scored by a single instrument!” Zorn explains. “With an incredible economy of means [David] Shire provides tension, release, excitement, and melancholy to this masterful tale of Harry Caul, the surveillance expert. Originally scored for a small jazz ensemble, Coppola wisely decided to use the solo piano score instead throughout the entire picture. The music was composed first and played to the actors before shooting to get them into the mood. A modern classic.” The festival runs September 12-30 and includes such other films as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Michael Winner’s The Mechanic, Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower, and Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. From September 20 to 28, Anthology will present “A Pocketful of Firecrackers: The Film Scores of John Zorn,” consisting of such films as Marc Levin’s Protocols of Zion, Michael Glawogger’s Workingman’s Death, and Joseph Dorman’s Sholom Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, but the real highlight are two nights of Zorn performing live to short films.

FIAF OPEN HOUSE

The Nature Theater of Oklahoma will be presenting an exhibit of drawings as well as episodes 4.5 and 5 of LIFE AND TIMES at FIAF this fall

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall and Tinker Auditorium, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Le Skyroom and FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, September 10, free, 6:00 – 8:00
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

The French Institute Alliance Française is getting ready for the fall season, highlighted every year by its multidisciplinary Crossing the Line festival, with a free open house on September 10. From 6:00 to 8:00, visitors will be able to sample French wine and cheese in Tinker Auditorium, check out the Nature Theater of Oklahoma drawings exhibit “10fps” in the FIAF Gallery, receive beauty treatments in Le Skyroom, explore the new digital library Culturethèque, meet author-artist Gwenaëlle Gobé (The Diary of Stephanie: Electoral Surge) in the Haskell Library, watch Ruben Toledo’s short animated film Fashionation in Florence Gould Hall (with Toledo introducing the 7:00 screening), and take mini-French classes in the sixth-floor Language Center. Look for twi-ny’s preview of the 2013 Crossing the Line Festival next week.

AN AUTEURIST HISTORY OF FILM REPRISE: TO CATCH A THIEF

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly turn up the glamor quotient in Hitchcock thriller set on the French Riviera

TO CATCH A THIEF (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, September 8, 2:30
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.moma.org

Is he or isn’t he? In Alfred Hitchcock’s glamorous thriller set on the French Riviera, Cary Grant stars as John Robie, a famous burglar known as the Cat who has supposedly retired but is suddenly believed to be responsible for a rash of new jewelry thefts. Determined to prove his innocence and catch the real thief, he enlists the help of Lloyd’s of London insurance agent H. H. Hughson (John Williams), who supplies him with a list of women on the Riviera who have expensive baubles ripe for the taking. At the top of the list are the Americans Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her gorgeous daughter, Francie (a radiant Grace Kelly), who teases Robie, hinting that she might in fact be the Cat — if he isn’t. As Robie avoids the cops and looks to his old friends in the French Resistance for further help, the tension heats up, leading to a climax that takes place on the rooftops of the French Riviera. Grant’s third of four outings with Hitchcock and Kelly’s third and final turn with the suspense master is an exciting “who’s doing it” featuring the dream pairing of two of Hollywood’s most beautiful and talented superstars, filled with just the right amount of comedy and romance in a glorious setting. Look for Alfie to make his appearance early on, causing Grant to do a double take in the back of a bus. To Catch a Thief is screening September 8 at 2:30 as part of MoMA’s “An Auteurist History of Film Reprise,” which gives film enthusiasts a second chance to catch works that have previously been shown at MoMA during weekday afternoons, when many people cannot see them.

THE COMPLETE HOWARD HAWKS: TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogard fall in love onscreen and off in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (Howard Hawks, 1944)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, September 7, free with museum admission, 2:00
Series runs September 7 – November 10
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Bogie and Bacall’s first film together is a ripping WWII yarn liberally adapted from the Ernest Hemingway novel by Hemingway, director and producer Howard Hawks, longtime screenwriter Jules Furthman, and future Pulitzer Prize winner William Faulkner. In To Have and Have Not, Humphrey Bogart stars as Captain Steve Morgan, a man’s man who owns a fishing boat in Martinique, which is under Vichy rule. Morgan is determined to avoid getting involved in the war and its complex politics, but when hotel owner Frenchy (Marcel Dalio) offers him some much-needed cash in exchange for making a secret middle-of-the-night ocean pickup of French Resistance fighter Paul de Bursac (Walter Surovy) and his wife, Helene (Dolores Moran), Morgan relents, bringing along his perpetually drunk sidekick, Eddy (Walter Brennan). Morgan is being closely watched by police captain Renard (Dan Seymour) and his small gangster-like crew, but he decides this time to take the risk and heads out to sea. Meanwhile, he is spending more and more time with the mysterious young woman across the hall, Marie “Slim” Browning (Lauren Bacall), who can be both tender and alluring and as tough as nails. If a lot of this sounds like Casablanca, that’s because it is, with Warner Bros. trying to repeat the success of their Oscar-winning hit. The similarities are many, from Morgan’s reluctance to get involved helping an important married couple in the Resistance movement to his potential romance with a beautiful blonde, from Vichy police captains named Renard and Renault to actors such as Seymour and Dalio, who appear in both pictures, and the inclusion of a piano player serenading the locals (Dooley Wilson in Casablanca, Hoagy Carmichael in To Have and Have Not.)

Marie Browning (Lauren Bacall), Frenchy (Marcel Dalio), and Steve Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) get immersed in a dangerous situation in Vichy-run Martinique in Hawks classic

It is perhaps the two films’ parallelism that prevented To Have and Have Not from receiving even a single Oscar nomination, especially considering Bacall’s spectacular debut, a bold, confident performance filled with nuance, whether she’s singing with Carmichael, lifting a bar patron’s wallet, lighting a cigarette with Bogart (with whom she started a long romance), or teaching him to whistle. Even with the Casablanca comparisons, To Have and Have Not works on its own, a thrillingly entertaining noir that also features wonderful cinematography by Sidney Hickox, especially one marvelous scene that casts ominous shadows from louvered blinds across Bogie and Bacall. To Have and Have Not is screening September 7 at the Museum of the Moving Image, kicking off the two-month series “The Complete Howard Hawks,” comprising more than three dozen works by the legendary Hollywood director and producer who conquered multiple genres; the films range from the famous (Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep, Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Red River, Ball of Fire, Sergeant York, His Girl Friday, The Thing from Another World, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) to the more obscure, including his silent films (Trent’s Last Case, Fig Leaves, A Girl in Every Port, Fazil).

CONTEMPT

Brigitte Bardot shows off both her acting talent and beautiful body in Jean-Luc Godard’s CONTEMPT

CONTEMPT (LE MEPRIS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 6-19
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

French auteur Jean-Luc Godard doesn’t hold back any of his contempt for Hollywood cinema in his multilayered masterpiece Contempt, which is being shown September 6-19 in a fiftieth-anniversary restoration at Film Forum. Loosely based on Alberto Moravia’s Il Disprezzo, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as Paul Javal, a French screenwriter called to Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance ) to perform rewrites on Austrian director Fritz Lang’s (played by Lang himself) adaptation of The Odyssey by ancient Greek writer Homer. Paul brings along his young wife, the beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot), whom Prokosch takes an immediate liking to. With so many languages being spoken, Prokosch’s assistant, Francesca Vanini (Giorgia Moll), serves as translator, but getting the various characters to communicate with one another and say precisely what is on their mind grows more and more difficult as the story continues and Camille and Paul’s love starts to crumble. Contempt is a spectacularly made film, bathed in deep red, white, and blue, as Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard poke fun at the American way of life. (Both Godard and Coutard appear in the film, the former as Lang’s assistant director, the latter as Lang’s cameraman — as well as the cameraman who aims the lens right at the viewer at the start of the film.)

Producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) doesn’t always have the kindest of words for director Fritz Lang in CONTEMPT

Bardot is sensational in one of her best roles, whether teasing Paul at a marvelously filmed sequence in their Rome apartment (watch for him opening and stepping through a door without any glass), lying naked on the bed, asking Paul what he thinks of various parts of her body (while Coutard changes the filter from a lurid red to a lush blue), or pouting when it appears that Paul is willing to pimp her out in order to get the writing job. Palance is a hoot as the big-time producer, regularly reading fortune-cookie-like quotes from an extremely little red book he carries around that couldn’t possibly hold so many words. And Lang, who left Germany in the mid-1930s for a career in Hollywood, has a ball playing a version of himself, an experienced veteran willing to put up with Prokosch’s crazy demands. Vastly entertaining from start to finish, Contempt is filled with a slew of inside jokes about the filmmaking industry and even Godard’s personal and professional life, along with some of the French director’s expected assortment of political statements and a string of small flourishes that are easy to miss but add to the immense fun, all set to a gorgeous romantic score by Georges Delerue.

THE COMPLETE HOWARD HAWKS: RIO BRAVO

Dean Martin and John Wayne have their hands full in Howard Hawks’s RIO BRAVO

RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, September 7, free with museum admission, 4:30
Series runs September 7 – November 10
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Howard Hawks’s anti-High Noon is a surprisingly sensitive, extremely clever exploration of interpersonal relationships disguised as a Western genre picture. John Wayne stars as Sheriff John T. Chance, a big, bold small-town Texas lawman who arrests local bully Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) for committing cold-blooded murder. The cocky Burdette doesn’t expect to be in jail long, not with his brother, Nathan (John Russell), being the most powerful — and potentially dangerous — man in Rio Bravo, and what with Chance’s deputies being useless drunk Dude (Dean Martin) and an old cripple known as Stumpy (Walter Brennan). Despite offers of help from such friends as businessman Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond), Chance is determined to go it with just Dude and Stumpy as they attempt to hold Joe until the federal marshal arrives. But Nathan and his hired band of bounty hunters are just as determined to free Joe, whatever the cost. Chance is not so foolish as to think that he can take Burdette’s crew on just by himself; he actually doesn’t want anyone else to die for something he considers his responsibility. Meanwhile, he is keeping his eyes on Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a tough-talking young woman with a sordid past, and Colorado (Ricky Nelson), a sharpshooting young stud only out for himself. The set-up is merely an excuse for Hawks to delve into some serious male bonding and potential romance as Dude, called Borrachón (“Drunk”), tries to put down the bottle, Feathers attempts to prove that she’s not all bad, and Colorado eventually replaces his guns for a few minutes with a guitar to sing with Dude and Stumpy. Wayne plays it all marvelously, portraying Chance as a complex individual who understands the fears and desires, limitations and possibilities inherent in everyone he meets, yet always remaining cool. Appropriately enough, the local hotel, run by the always helpful Carlos (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez) and his wife, Consuela (Estelita Rodriguez), is named the Alamo, not boding well for Chance and his meager team. Even at its 141-minute running time, Rio Bravo feels far more intimate than epic. Rio Bravo is screening September 7 in a restored 35mm print at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of the two-month series “The Complete Howard Hawks,” comprising more than three dozen works by the legendary director and producer, from the famous (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Red River, Ball of Fire, Sergeant York, His Girl Friday, The Thing from Another World, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) to the more obscure, including his silent films (Trent’s Last Case, Fig Leaves, A Girl in Every Port, Fazil).