Asa Butterfield stars as a homeless orphan on a mission in Martin Scorsese’s 3-D adventure
SEE/CHANGE: HUGO (Martin Scorsese, 2011)
South Street Seaport
Corner of Front & Fulton Sts.
Saturday, August 10, free, dusk
www.southstreetseaport.com
www.hugomovie.com
Martin Scorsese wears his cinematic heart on his sleeve in his first family-friendly film, Hugo. Based on Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning 2007 illustrated historical-fiction novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the 3-D movie follows the adventures of the title character, a homeless orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) who survives by his wits in a Paris train station in the early 1900s. He spends his days stealing small bits of food, winding the big clock, avoiding Inspector Gustav (Sacha Baron Cohen), and trying to find parts for an automaton he is rebuilding, hoping it will have a message for him from his father (Jude Law). He soon makes his only friend, a girl named Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) who is being raised by her godparents, the bitter Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley) and his wife, Mama Jeanne (Helen McCrory). When it turns out that Papa Georges is the one and only Georges Méliès, who made the world’s first science-fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, among hundreds of others, then was thought to have died in obscurity, all of his work destroyed, Hugo and Isabelle, along with the help of film historian René Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), are determined to resurrect Papa Georges and his reputation. Gorgeously shot by Robert Richardson and featuring marvelous period sets by Dante Ferretti, Hugo is beautiful to look at, the camera roaming through the immense train station and up the tall clock tower like in a Jules Verne story. Such side plots as the budding romances between a café owner (Frances de la Tour) and the newspaper seller (Richard Griffiths) and between Gustav and a shy flower girl (Emily Mortimer) feel forced, and the main narrative meanders its way into treacly territory as all the parts slowly come together. At its heart, Hugo is a movie about the love of movies, paying tribute to the early cinema of Méliès, Harold Lloyd, and others but it gets too stuck on the underlying theme of the preservation of old films, one of Scorsese’s driving forces. Still, Hugo is a visual treat in which Scorsese makes the most of 3-D technology, particularly in the first half, before things get a little too sticky (and slickly) sweet, even for a children’s film. Hugo, which was nominated for eleven Oscars and won five technical awards — Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing — is screening August 10 as part of the South Street Seaport’s “Front/Row” “See/Change” series, which continues August 14 with The Amazing Spider-Man, August 17 with Chicago, and August 21 with Back to the Future. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.
Poor Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner). His mother (Geraldine Page) sends him locks of her hair and pays a prudish landlord (Julie Harris), aided by a tough cop (Dolph Sweet), to make sure no girls visit him in his new apartment. Bernard’s father (Rip Torn) rules over him with an iron fist in the basement of the New York Public Library. A nice, innocent young woman (Karen Black in her first major role) is interested in him, but he wants a psycho go-go dancer/actress (Elizabeth Hartman). Meanwhile, he is getting all the wrong advice from his best friend (Tony Bill). Francis Ford Coppola’s little-known romantic comedy — his second feature, following Dementia 13 — earned Page an Academy Award nomination, Kastner a BAFTA nomination as Most Promising Newcomer, and a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes. Coppola uses the New York City settings with a charming intelligence and wit, whether Bernard is chasing a kite across the Sheep Meadow, wandering through the Times Square peep shows, or being chased through the New York Public Library. The Lovin’ Spoonful supplies the fabulously sixties soundtrack. Based on David Benedictus’s novel, You’re a Big Boy Now kicks off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Fun City: New York in the Movies 1967-75,” with guest curator J. Hoberman on hand to introduce the film. The festival, which runs August 10 through September 1, includes a wide range of works made in and about the Big Apple, from such familiar favorites as Rosemary’s Baby, The French Connection, Superfly, Midnight Cowboy, and Dog Day Afternoon to such lesser-known treats as Bye Bye Braverman, The Angel Levine, Little Murders, The Landlord, and Dick Fontaine’s 1970 documentary, Norman Mailer vs. Fun City.
Based on Georges Simenon’s novel L’horloger de Saint-Paul, Bertrand Tavernier’s first feature-length film is a quiet, introspective triumph from start to finish. Philippe Noiret stars as the title character, Michel Descombes, a widowed clockmaker who is told by a police inspector (Jean Rochefort) that his son, Antoine (Jacques Denis), has killed a man and is on the run with a woman named Liliane (Christine Pascal). A despondent Michel struggles to understand what led his son to commit such a crime, examining deep inside himself in the process. The many scenes that center on the clockmaker and the inspector discussing life in general terms are simply wonderful, except when the cop talks about the movies, which takes the audience out of the film, especially when they mention La Grande Bouffe, Noiret’s previous work. Otherwise, The Clockmaker is an absolute gem, with Tavernier’s subtle narrative style guiding Noiret (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Le vieux fusil) to one of the greatest understated performances you’re ever likely to see. Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1974 Berlinale, The Clockmaker is screening August 8, 10, and 11 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “Cine-Simenon: Georges Simenon on Film,” consisting of fourteen cinematic adaptations of books by the Belgian-born French-language creator of Inspector Maigret, including Marcel Carné’s La Marie du Port and Three Rooms in Manhattan, Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire, Henry Hathaway’s The Bottom of the Bottle, Claude Chabrol’s Betty, and Burgess Meredith’s The Man on the Eiffel Tower.
