AMERICAN HARDCORE celebrates loud, fast, and angry music scene
AMERICAN HARDCORE: THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUNK ROCK 1980-1986 (Paul Rachman, 2006)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, July 13, and Sunday, July 14, 12 noon
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
www.sonyclassics.com/americanhardcore
A must-see for fans of loud, fast, angry music circa 1980-86, American Hardcore looks at one of the smaller but nonetheless influential movements in American music. A basic doc in the classic do-it-yourself sensibility that informed so much of the music scene it chronicles, American Hardcore features interviews with Henry Rollins, lead singer of Black Flag; H.R., the mercurial, difficult, but brilliant lead singer for the Bad Brains; Mike Watt of the Minutemen; and various personnel from the Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, and 7 Seconds. Tommy Stinson of the Replacements and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers weigh in as well. The abundance of old concert footage is fabulous, but director Paul Rachman and writer Steven Blush discovered much of it in shoeboxes in basements during their low-budget cross-country trip while making the movie, so the overall production quality is not high ― which in some ways works better overall. The film does a good job of lovingly showing just how home-grown and amateurish the scene was and debating the importance of the scenes in Houston, Minneapolis, DC, Boston, and Southern California. The finale with a graphic artist and cover designer calling for the next generation of hardcore is a riot. American Hardcore is screening July 13 and 14 at 12 noon as part of the Nitehawk Cinema series “Music Driven”; the Saturday show will be followed by a Q&A with director Rachman, while Blush will be on hand for a Q&A after Sunday’s screening. (In addition to writing the American Hardcore book, Blush has also created one of the great music sites, 24 Hours of Hardcore, where visitors can stream hundreds of the best, and often hardest-to-find, songs from the movement he has so thoroughly explored.) The Nitehawk series continues August 10-11 with Peter Glantz and Nick Noe’s Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad and September 14-15 with Shane Meadows’s This Is England.
No mere relic of the late 1960s counterculture movement, Easy Rider still holds up as one of the truly great road movies, inviting audiences to climb on board as two peace-loving souls search for freedom on the highways and byways of the good ol’ U.S. of A. Named after a pair of famous western gunslingers, Wyatt (producer and cowriter Peter Fonda), as in Earp, and Billy (director and cowriter Dennis Hopper), as in “the Kid,” make some fast cash by selling coke to a fancy connection (Phil Spector!), then take off on their souped-up bikes, determined to make it to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. Along the way, they break bread with a rancher (Warren Finnerty) and his family, hang out in a hippie commune, pick up small-town alcoholic lawyer George Hanson (an Oscar-nominated Jack Nicholson), don’t get served in a diner, and eventually hook up with friendly prostitutes Karen (Karen Black) and Mary (Toni Basil) in the Big Easy. “You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it,” George says to Billy as they start discussing the concept and reality of freedom. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.” The always calm Wyatt, who is also known as Captain America, and the nervous and jumpy Billy make one of cinema’s coolest duos ever as they personally experience the radical changes going on in the country, leading to a tragic conclusion. The Academy Award–nominated script, written with Terry Southern, remains fresh and relevant as it examines American capitalism and democracy in a way that is still debated today. And the soundtrack — well, it virtually defined the era, featuring such songs as Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher” and “Born to Be Wild,” Jimi Hendrix’s “If 6 Was 9,” the Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night),” the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air,” and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider.”
Loosely based on a Noël Coward play that was recently made into a film starring Colin Firth, Jessica Biel, and Kristin Scott Thomas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Easy Virtue is another of the Master of Suspense’s cleverly told melodramas, a risqué tale of a woman unfairly placed in a lurid situation. Isabel Jeans stars as Larita Filton, a loving wife whose husband, Aubrey (Franklin Dyall), has commissioned her portrait by painter Claude Robson (Eric Bransby Williams). Just as Claude makes a play for Larita, she fights him off and Aubrey walks in. He misinterprets the scene, shots ring out, the artist is dead, and Claude files a highly publicized divorce case in which Larita is found guilty of misconduct. Trying to put her notorious past behind her, she heads for the Mediterranean, where she meets John Whittaker (Robin Irvine), a wealthy mama’s boy who falls instantly in love with her and brings her back to his parents’ country estate. But once there, Whittaker’s nasty mother (Violet Farebrother) and conniving sisters (Dacia Deane and Dorothy Boyd) do everything they can to ruin the relationship, seeking to uncover Larita’s history while also attempting to put her son back together with longtime family friend Sarah (Enid Stamp Taylor). Easy Virtue, which features yet another Hitchcock blonde, is a gripping film about honesty, reputation, individuality, and character as an innocent woman is forced to face undeserved consequences in the superficial world of high society. Hitchcock, who makes his cameo holding a walking stick, gliding past Larita while she sits by a tennis court, includes several wonderful touches involving circles and ovals, from a close-up of a judge’s wig to a shot through a tennis racket’s strings to a dining room dominated by a group of elongated, haloed saints on one wall. Easy Virtue is also one of Hitchcock’s dourest silent melodramas, lacking any comic relief as a wronged woman desperately tries to right her life. A DCP restoration of Easy Virtue is being screened July 2 at 7:30 in the BAM Harvey Theater as part of “The Hitchcock 9,” with live piano music by Stephen Horne. The series continues through July 3 with such other rarely shown Hitchcock silents as The Farmer’s Wife, Downhill, Champagne, and The Pleasure Garden, Sir Alfred’s debut, which has been restored with an additional twenty minutes that have been missing since its initial release.
An underrated gem, The Manxman is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best early works from his British silent period. Based on an 1896 novel by Hall Caine, the 1929 melodrama, Hitchcock’s last fully silent film, tells the story of a romantic love triangle between two best friends, fisherman Pete Quilliam (Carl Brisson), lawyer Philip Christian (Malcolm Keen), and the woman they both love, Kate Cregeen (Anny Ondra). When Kate’s father, Caesar (Randle Ayrton), rejects Pete’s bid for his daughter’s hand, calling him a “penniless lout,” the fisherman takes to the sea, vowing to return from Africa a wealthy man worthy of marrying her. But while Pete is away, Philip and Kate grow much closer and contemplate whether they should break Kate’s promise to wait for Pete. When they learn of Pete’s death, they are ready to celebrate their love, but when the report turns out to be a mistake and Pete comes back a successful man, the drama heats up amid lies, betrayal, and public humiliation. Set on the Isle of Man but actually filmed on the Cornwall coast, The Manxman is a gripping tale that rises above pure soap opera through Hitchcock and cinematographer Jack E. Cox’s (Blackmail, The Lady Vanishes) intricate compositions and the German Expressionist acting style employed by Keen (The Lodger), who seems to have walked out of a von Sternberg film. One of the most memorable shots occurs with the three protagonists standing as if alone in Kate and Pete’s home, Kate leaning by a window, Philip bowed by the front door, and Pete in the front, head raised, confused and worried about the future. Hitchcock employs his mastery of suspense in several critical scenes, which he lets go on at length without any intertitles, forcing the viewer to wonder what is being said and then surprising them with what actually happens. Hitchcock sold The Manxman short when he told François Truffaut, “It was a very banal picture. . . . It was not a Hitchcock movie.” A DCP restoration of The Manxman, including a long-missing scene, is screening June 30 at 3:00 in the BAM Harvey Theater as part of “The Hitchcock 9,” with live music by pianist Stephen Horne and harpist Diana Rowan. The series continues through July 3 with such other rarely shown, carefully restored Hitchcock silents as The Farmer’s Wife, The Pleasure Garden, Downhill, and Champagne.