Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina star in Godard’s colorful crime musical, PIERROT LE FOU
CINÉMATUESDAYS: PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 21, $10, 7:30
Series continues through February 28
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org
Art, American consumerism, the Vietnam and Algerian wars, Hollywood, and the cinema itself get skewered in Jean-Luc Godard’s fab feaux gangster flick / road comedy / romance epic / musical Pierrot Le Fou. Based on Lionel White’s novel Obsession, the film follows the chaotic exploits of Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina, Godard’s then-wife), former lovers who meet up again quite by accident. The bored Ferdinand immediately decides to leave his wife and family for the flirtatious, unpredictable Marianne, who insists on calling him Pierrot despite his protestations. Soon Ferdinand is caught in the middle of a freewheeling journey involving gun running, stolen cars, dead bodies, and half-truths, all the while not quite sure how much he can trust Marianne. Filmed in reverse-scene order without much of a script, the mostly improvised Pierrot Le Fou was shot in stunning color by Raoul Coutard. Many of Godard’s recurring themes and style appear in the movie, including jump cuts, confusing dialogue, written protests on walls, and characters speaking directly at the audience, which is more or less along for the same ride as Ferdinand. And as with many Godard films, the ending is a doozy. Pierrot Le Fou is screening February 21 at 7:30 as part of FIAF’s “Cinema & Fashion: Carte Blanche to agnès b.” series, which also includes Godard’s Vivre sa vie the same day at 12:30 & 4:00 and concludes February 28 with Jacques Becker’s Casque d’or.
In 1885 Nevada, members of a small town hear that one of their own has been murdered and his cattle stolen. Led by Major Tetley (Frank Conroy), his son, Gerald (William Eythe), and Jeff Farnley (Marc Lawrence), an angry posse sets out to find the killer thieves. They are joined by a pair of drifters, Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and Art Croft (Henry/Harry Morgan), who don’t like what they’re seeing. The posse soon comes upon the trio of Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), Juan Martínez (Anthony Quinn), and Alva Hardwicke (Francis Ford), determining that they did the dirty deeds and must pay for their actions, leading to a heated debate over whether they should bring the three men in or hang them right there. Based on the 1940 novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, William Wellman’s harrowing classic is one of the greatest films ever made about frontier justice and mob vengeance. The scene in which the bold Martínez takes a bullet out of his body by all by himself is one of the most powerful moments you’re ever likely to see on-screen. In many ways, Fonda and Morgan play characters who are stand-ins for the audience, forcing viewers to examine what they would have done if ever put in similar circumstances. The Ox-Bow Incident is screening as part of Film Forum’s Wellman festival on February 17 at 1:00 by itself and three times on February 18 as part of a double feature with 1948’s Yellow Sky, a Western starring Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark.
Film Forum’s excellent William A. Wellman festival continues with one of the best examples of a pre–Hays Code film, the rarely screened 1931 doozy, Night Nurse. The first of five collaborations between Wellman and Barbara Stanwyck, Night Nurse, based on Dora Macy’s 1930 novel, 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 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 at Film Forum on February 16 as part of a triple feature with 1932’s The Purchase Price, starring Stanwyck and George Brent, and 1929’s The Man I Love, Wellman’s first all-talkie.
Swedish director Daniel Espinosa’s English-language debut roars out of the gate with the promise of the best of the Matt Damon / Bourne movies but ends up feeling like an average, dare we say “safe,” episode of 24. Ryan Reynolds stars as Matt Weston, a CIA newbie looking for a better gig than guarding a never-used safe house in Cape Town, complaining to his superior, David Barlow (Brendan Gleason), that he wants a chance to show his stuff. He quickly gets that opportunity when former agency star gone rogue Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) is brought to the house, having turned himself in to the U.S. Embassy after being hunted by gun-toting villains who are tracking down a microchip with damaging information on it. Frost’s been under the radar making secret, illegal deals for almost a decade, but Weston can’t help but still be in awe of the legendary figure, who is as cool as they come. Soon the two are on the run through the streets of Cape Town and Johannesburg, a sort-of riff on the classic 1958 drama The Defiant Ones but without any social relevance. The film then steadily devolves into an excuse for one inexplicable action scene after another until the last half hour, when Espinosa (Easy Money) slows things down a bit and David Guggenheim’s script — considered one of the hottest in Hollywood a few years ago — takes the easy way out every step of the way, from the revelation of the mole to what becomes of Frost and Weston (as well as CIA operatives played by Sam Shepard and Vera Farmiga). Reynolds (Green Lantern, The Proposal) more than holds his own going toe-to-toe with Washington, who gives a mesmerizing performance until the script lets him, and the audience, down at the end. It’s too bad that the story went haywire, because there was a lot to like through the first half of this well-made but ultimately disappointing espionage thriller.