A lodger (Ivor Novello) is a prime suspect in a series of grisly murders in early Alfred Hitchcock film
THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (Alfred Hitchcock, 1926)
BAMcinématek, BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Sunday, June 30, $25, 7:30
Series runs June 29 – July 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
For seven successive Tuesday nights, a serial killer who calls himself the Avenger has murdered a golden-haired woman. When a lodger (Ivor Novello) comes to rent a room from Mr. and Mrs. Bunting (Arthur Chesney and Marie Ault), the landlady soon suspects that the curious character might just be the murderer, especially when he shows an interest in their daughter, a golden-haired fashion model named Daisy (the one-named June), which angers Daisy’s beau, Joe (Malcolm Keen), a cop just assigned to the case. Based on a novel and play by Marie Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s first films; he uses very few title cards in the silent work, allowing the story to tell itself. He serves up a heavy dose of red herrings in the Jack the Ripper-like tale, which drags on for quite a bit before shifting gears in the later scenes. The mediocre picture is most notable for the groundwork it lays for Hitchcock’s future films, investigating such themes as sexual obsession and innocent men on the run while displaying the director’s never-ending — and rather frightening — cinematic relationship with blondes. A DCP restoration of The Lodger is being screened June 30 at 7:30 in the BAM Harvey Theater as part of “The Hitchcock 9,” with live music by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The series continues through July 3 with such other rarely shown Hitchcock silents as The Manxman, The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, and Champagne.
Based on the play by Charles Bennett, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 thriller, Blackmail, is both his last silent picture as well as his first sound film. The transition is evident from the very beginning, eight glorious minutes of a police arrest with incidental music only, highlighted by an unforgettable mirror shot (courtesy of cinematographer Jack E. Cox) as the cops close in on their suspect. After those opening moments, the film switches to a talkie in the nonsilent version, as New Scotland Yard detective Frank Webber (John Longden) gets into a fight with his girlfriend, Alice White (Anny Ondra, later to become the longtime Mrs. Max Schmeling), who goes off on a secret rendezvous with a slick artist named Crewe (Cyril Ritchard). When things go horribly wrong at Crewe’s studio, Frank assures Alice that he will help her, but slimy ex-con Tracy (Donald Calthrop) has other ideas, thinking he can use some inside information to make a small killing. After shooting the picture with sound — including having Ondra’s dialogue spoken off-screen by Joan Barry because Ondra’s Eastern European accent was too thick — Sir Alfred filmed some scenes over again in silence, resulting in two versions of this splendid psychological thriller, both laced with elements of German Expressionism and early film noir as well as flashes of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Look for the Master of Suspense as the man on the subway being menaced by a young boy. A DCP restoration of the silent version of Blackmail is being screened June 29 at 7:30 in the BAM Harvey Theater as part of “The Hitchcock 9,” with live music by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The series continues through July 3 with such other rarely shown Hitchcock silents as The Manxman, The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, and Champagne.
Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes, Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways is an epic Canadian romance about the sexual and emotional bond between two people in the midst of complex change. Montréal teacher Laurence Alia (Melvil Poupaud) and actress Frédérique Belair (Suzanne Clément) are madly in love, sharing a unique worldview — one of the things they do is regularly list things that minimize their pleasure. But when Laurence suddenly tells Fred that he was born in the wrong body and wants to live life as a woman, their relationship is profoundly challenged. At first, Fred tries to accept Laurence as a woman, helping him choose clothes and defending him in public, but soon it gets to be too much for her as she considers what lies ahead. Meanwhile, Laurence loses his job — although the students are fine with his change, the parents aren’t — and so decides to focus on his writing career. Over the course of twelve tumultuous years, Laurence and Fred pursue life both together and apart, with drama following them everywhere they go. Former child actor Dolan, who turned twenty-four this past March, wrote, directed, and edited Laurence Anyways, already his third feature film, following 2009’s I Killed My Mother and 2010’s Heartbeats. At 168 minutes, it is at least a half hour too long, but it regularly takes intriguing, unexpected twists and turns that makes it worth sticking with, even as Dolan tries to squeeze in too much. Clément, who was named Best Actress at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar, gives a dynamic performance as Fred; her hairstyles alone, as the story moves between 1987 and 1999, are worth the price of admission, especially when seen in Dolan’s stunning compositions, which center on lush reds and whites. Poupaud (A Christmas Tale, Genealogies of a Crime) is beautifully restrained as Laurence as he deals with Fred and her family, his colleagues at work, and his mother (Nathalie Baye), who shockingly admits that she never bonded with him when he was a child. Dolan, who also did the costumes, includes several visually dazzling scenes reminiscent of MTV video interludes, as water crashes down and clothing flies through the air in slow motion; the soundtrack features songs by Fever Ray, Kim Carnes, the Cure, Duran Duran, and Depeche Mode as well as Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Vivaldi. Although it takes some dedication on the part of the viewer, Laurence Anyways is a startlingly different kind of romance, from an emerging young filmmaker with a bright future.
Yasujirō Ozu revisits one of his greatest triumphs, 1949’s 
Ever since he was a boy growing up on a farm in South Carolina, Isaiah Owens, the son of a sharecropper, has been burying the dead, beginning with small animals. As a teenager, he moved to New York City to train to become a funeral director, and for the last forty years, he has run the Owens Funeral Home in Harlem, where he continues to be a longtime pillar of the community, known for the great care and consideration he gives each family as they deal with the loss of a loved one. His company motto is “Where Beauty Softens Your Grief,” and that is evident throughout Christine Turner’s new documentary, Homegoings. Turner followed Owens over the course of four years as he and his staff — his wife, son, daughter, and mother all work in the family business — set up funerals for such clients as Walter Simons, whose octogenarian grandparents died within two days of each other; Queen Petra’s children, who want something special for their mother, including a horse and carriage; and Linda “Redd” Williams-Miller, who is planning her funeral in advance, wanting to get every detail right. And details are what Owens is all about, not only working hard to make sure the deceased look their best in their coffin but guaranteeing that every aspect of the funeral is handled with great thought and humanity. Owens narrates the documentary, sharing his views on life and death as well as the history of mourning in the African-American community. He is an inspiring man who is not what most people expect in funeral directors, who are often portrayed as being dark and morose. Williams-Miller says that homegoings should be “a happy occasion,” and Owens is ready, willing, and able to ensure that the experience is precisely what each individual family wants and needs. Homegoings, which was made in conjunction with PBS’s POV program and features an original score by Daniel Bernard Roumain, is having its U.S. theatrical premiere June 24-30 at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem, not very far from the Owens Funeral Home itself, as part of guest curator Livia Bloom’s continuing “Documentary in Bloom” series. The hour-long film will be preceded by StoryCorps Shorts: A Tenth Anniversary Program, a twenty-minute collection of animations the Rauch Brothers have made with the organization that has been amassing an oral history of America for a decade. The June 25 and 28 screenings of Homegoings will be followed by a Q&A with Turner and members of the cast, with a reception as well on June 28.