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INGMAR BERGMAN CENTENNIAL RETROSPECTIVE: THE MAGICIAN

A traveling troupe of illusionists is forced to defend itself in Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician

THE MAGICIAN (ANSIKTET) (Ingmar Bergman, 1958)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, February 16, 2:00, 6:00, 10:00; Saturday, February 17, 4:20, 8:15; Sunday, March 4, 12:30
Series runs February 7 – March 15
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Film Forum’s Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective continues with Bergman’s darkly comic 1958 film The Magician, one of the Swedish auteur’s lesser-known, underrated masterpieces, an intense yet funny, and fun, work about art, science, faith, death, and the power of the movies themselves. When Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater comes to town, the local triumvirate of Dr. Vergérus (Gunnar Björnstrand), police commissioner Starbeck (Toivo Pawlo), and Consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) brings the traveling troupe in for questioning, forcing them to spend the night as guests in Egerman’s home. The three men seek to prove that mesmerist Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max von Sydow), his assistant, Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin), a witchy grandmother (Naima Wifstrand), and their promoter, Tubal (Åke Fridell), are a bunch of frauds. The interrogations delve into such Bergmanesque topics as science vs. reason, good vs. evil, life and death, and the existence of God. As various potions are dispensed to and tricks played on a staff that includes maid Sara (Bibi Andersson), cook Sofia Garp (Sif Ruud), and stableman Antonsson (Oscar Ljung) in addition to Starbeck’s wife (Ulla Sjöblom) and Egerman’s spouse (Gertrud Fridh), a series of romantic rendezvous take place, along with some genuine horror, leading to a thrillingly ambiguous ending.

Max von Sydow is mesmerizing as mesmerist and Ingmar Bergman alter ego Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Magician

Von Sydow is mesmerizing as the mesmerist, a silent, brooding man in a sharp beard and mustache, his penetrating eyes a character all their own. (The original title of the film is Ansiktet, which means “Face.”) His showdowns with Dr. Vergerus serve as Bergman’s defense of the art of film itself, an illusion of light and shadow and suspension of belief. Meanwhile, Tubal and wandering drunk Johan Spegel (Bengt Ekerot) add comic relief and a needed level of absurdity to the serious proceedings. The film is superbly shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Gunnar Fischer, maintaining an appropriately creepy and mysterious look throughout. It also introduces character names into Bergman’s canon, appellations such as Vogler, Vergérus, and Egerman, that will show up again in such future works as Persona (with Liv Ullmann as actress Elisabet Vogler, who has stopped speaking, and Björnstrand as Mr. Vogler), Hour of the Wolf (with Thulin as Veronica Vogler, a former lover haunting von Sydow’s painter Johan Borg), Fanny and Alexander (with Jan Malmsjö as Bishop Edvard Vergérus), and After the Rehearsal (with Josephson as theater director Henrik Vogler and Lena Olin as actress Anna Egerman). Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, The Magician is screening February 16-17 and March 4 in Film Forum’s fab Bergman series, which keeps providing magic through March 15 with such other treasures as Shame, Persona, The Virgin Spring, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Passion of Anna, and The Touch (with Elliott Gould!).

INGMAR BERGMAN CENTENNIAL RETROSPECTIVE: FRENZY / THE SEVENTH SEAL

A sadistic teacher (Stig Järrel) torments a student (Alf Kjellin) in Ingmar Bergman–written Frenzy

FRENZY (TORMENT) (HETS) (Alf Sjöberg, 1944)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, February 7, 4:00 & 8:20; Tuesday, February 27, 6:30
Series runs February 7 – March 15
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Film Forum is celebrating the centennial of Swedish master Ingmar Bergman’s birth with a five-week retrospective of nearly four dozen films he directed and/or wrote, forty of which are new restorations from the Swedish Film Institute. The series, running from February 7 through March 15, kicks off with one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, 1957’s The Seventh Seal, in which an errant knight played by Max von Sydow sits down for a game of chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot), as well as the intense 1944 expressionistic noir, Frenzy. Although directed by Alf Sjöberg, Frenzy, also known as Torment, was written by Bergman, who also served as assistant director and made his directing debut in the final scene, which Bergman added at the insistence of the producers when Sjöberg was not available. A kind of inversion of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, the film is set in a boarding school where high school boys are preparing for their final exams and graduation. They are terrified of their sadistic Latin teacher, whom they call Caligula (Stig Järrel), a brutal man who wields a fascistic iron fist. He particularly has it out for Jan-Erik Widgren (Alf Kjellin), the son of wealthy parents (Olav Riégo and Märta Arbin) who think he should be doing better in school. One night Jan-Erik helps out a troubled woman in the street, tobacco-shop clerk Bertha Olsson (Mai Zetterling), who is being mentally and physically tormented by an unnamed man who ends up being Caligula. The stakes get higher and the teacher becomes even harder on Jan-Erik when he finds out the young man is having an affair with the wayward woman. When tragedy strikes, Jan-Erik’s soul is in turmoil as lies, threats, and danger grow.

Tobacco-shop clerk Bertha Olsson (Mai Zetterling) is terrified of life in Alf Sjöberg’s Frenzy

The twenty-five-year-old Bergman was inspired to write his first produced film script by his experience in boarding school, which led to a public disagreement with the headmaster. In a public letter to the headmaster, Bergman explained, “I was a very lazy boy, and very scared because of my laziness, because I was involved with theater instead of school and because I hated having to be punctual, having to get up in the morning, do homework, sit still, having to carry maps, having break times, doing tests, taking oral examinations, or to put it plainly: I hated school as a principle, as a system and as an institution. And as such I have definitely not wanted to criticize my own school, but all schools.” Throughout his career, Bergman would take on institutions, including religion and marriage, but his defiance began with this hellish representation of education, which oppresses all the boys in some way, including Jan-Erik’s best friend, self-described misogynist Sandman (Stig Olin), and the geeky Pettersson (Jan Molander). While the headmaster (Olof Winnerstrand) knows how frightened the boys are of Caligula, he is willing to go only so far to protect them. The opening credits are shown over a dreamlike sequence of Jan-Erik and Bertha desperately holding on to each other, but Frenzy is so much more than a treacly melodrama, as if Sjöberg (Miss Julie, Ön) is setting us up for one film before switching gears into an ominous, haunting thriller.

Järrel, who played an evil, jealous teacher in his previous film, Hasse Ekman’s Flames in the Dark, is indeed scary as the devious, malicious Caligula, while adding more than a touch of sadness. Zetterling, in her breakthrough role — she would go on to star in such other films as Frieda and The Witches and direct such feminist works as Loving Couples and The Girls — brings a touching vulnerability to Bertha, a young woman who can’t find happiness. It’s all anchored by Kjellin’s (Madame Bovary, Ship of Fools) central performance, so rife with emotion it evokes German silent cinema. Frenzy suffers from Hilding Rosenberg’s overreaching score, although it is usually offset by Martin Bodin’s cinematography, filled with lurching shadows and deep mystery. The film was produced by Victor Sjöström, the legendary director of The Phantom Carriage, The Divine Woman, The Wind, and so many others in addition to his work as an actor, starring as Professor Isak Borg in another Bergman masterpiece, 1957’s Wild Strawberries, and as the conductor in 1950’s To Joy. (Film Forum is also presenting the five-film series “Victor Sjöström: The Screen’s First Master” February 11 through March 5, with live piano accompaniment at each show.) A Grand Prix winner at Cannes, Frenzy is screening February 7 and 27; among the many other highlights of Film Forum’s Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective are Crisis, his full-length directorial debut; All These Women, his first color film, being shown with a detergent commercial he shot with Bibi Andersson; the 1969 and 1979 documentaries Fårö Document; and his last feature film, After the Rehearsal, and last short, Karin’s Face.

Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) sits down with Death (Bengt Ekerot) for a friendly game of chess in Bergman classic

THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Film Forum
February 7-10
filmforum.org

It’s almost impossible to watch Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal without being aware of the meta surrounding the film, which has influenced so many other works and been paid homage to and playfully mocked. Over the years, it has gained a reputation as a deep, philosophical paean to death. However, amid all the talk about emptiness, doomsday, the Black Plague, and the devil, The Seventh Seal is a very funny movie. In fourteenth-century Sweden, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) is returning home from the Crusades with his trusty squire, Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand). Block soon meets Death (Bengt Ekerot) and, to prolong his life, challenges him to a game of chess. While the on-again, off-again battle of wits continues, Death seeks alternate victims while Block meets a young family and a small troupe of actors putting on a show. Rape, infidelity, murder, and other forms of evil rise to the surface as Block proclaims “To believe is to suffer,” questioning God and faith, and Jöns opines that “love is the blackest plague of all.” (Bergman fans will get an extra treat out of the knight being offered some wild strawberries at one point.) Based on Bergman’s own play inspired by a painting of Death playing chess by Albertus Pictor (played in the film by Gunnar Olsson), The Seventh Seal, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, is one of the most entertaining films ever made, and you can bask in its glory February 7-10 when it screens in Film Forum’s Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective.

BEUYS

Joseph Beuys declares that everything is art and everyone is an artist in new documentary (copyright zeroonefilm/bpk _ErnstvonSiemensKunststiftung_StiftungMuseumSchlossMoyland_Foto: UteKlophaus)

BEUYS (Andres Veiel, 2017)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, January 17
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

About ten years ago, I was visiting Chelsea galleries on a sunny afternoon when a car pulled up on the corner of Eleventh Ave. and Twenty-second St. A father and a young boy of about five or six got out, and the man led the child to one of the stone sculptures that make up Joseph Beuys’s “7000 Oaks.” The boy relieved himself on the stone; the pair then returned to the car and the family drove off. I always thought that the German avant-garde artist would have gotten a kick out of that scene; after watching Andres Veiel’s new documentary, Beuys, I’m sure of it. If you’re going to make a documentary about Beuys (pronounced boys), one of the most influential artists of the postwar generation, it had better not be a straightforward, talking-heads film but something that pushes the boundaries and challenges the viewer, much like his art. Award-winning director Veiel (Balagan, Black Box Germany) does just that with the film, which concentrates primarily on rarely shown and never-before-seen archival footage of Beuys, including radio and television interviews, art openings, panel discussions, live performances, photographs, and home movies, mostly in black-and-white. Veiel conducted approximately twenty new interviews and met with more than five dozen people who knew Beuys, but he only uses spare clips from art historian Rhea Thönges-Stringaris, publisher Klaus Staeck, collector Franz Joseph van der Grinten, and critic, curator, and writer Caroline Tisdall, who wrote seven books about Beuys and worked with him on several major exhibitions and lecture tours. “The anonymous viewer is back there, yeah?” Beuys says early on, looking straight into the camera, and it’s a critical moment, as the documentary emphasizes how important it was to him that his work be seen. “I want to inform people about the true culprits in our system. I want to inform and educate people,” he says. Beuys, who also taught at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is eminently quotable, his speech filled with manifesto-like declarations. “Forget the conventional idea of art. Anyone can be an artist. Anything can be art, especially anything that conserves energy,” he explains. “I’m not an artist at all. Except if we say that everyone is an artist,” he opines. “The concept of what art is has expanded to such a degree that, for me, there’s nothing left of it,” he offers.

Joseph Beuys. (Image copyright zeroonefilm_bpk_Stiftung MuseumSchloss_Moyland_UteKlophaus)

Wearing his trademark outfit, Joseph Beuys shares his thoughts about art and life (copyright zeroonefilm_bpk _ Stiftung_MuseumSchloss_Moyland_UteKlophaus)

Veiel, cinematographer Jörg Jeshel, and editors Olaf Voigtländer and Stephan Krumbiegel begin many scenes by scanning a contact sheet of photos of Beuys and zeroing in on one, which suddenly comes to life. Among Beuys’s projects they focus on are 1969’s “The Pack” (das Rudel), sleds tied to the back of a VW bus; the 1974-75 installation “Show Your Wound,” which might have been inspired by the injuries he suffered as a pilot in WWII; the 1965 performance piece “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”; “Boxing Match: Joseph Beuys & Abraham David Christian”; “Honey Pump in the Workplace,” an example of what Beuys called “social sculpture”; and the expansive “7000 Oaks,” in which he paired stone sculptures with tree plantings. Usually smoking a cigarette, baring his big, white teeth, and wearing his vest and trademark hat — perhaps to cover up war injuries — Beuys is always aware he is being watched, on exhibit himself, and it’s something he toys with, tongue often in cheek as he expounds on concepts about life and art and plays around with interlocutors. The film touches on his childhood, his war experience, his association with the Green Party, and his descent into a deep, dark depression, but it evades various controversies, from possible Nazi ties to shamanism to his oft-told tale of a plane crash in which he was supposedly saved by Tartars. Veiel also doesn’t delve into Beuys’s personal relationships or the illness that led to his death in 1986 at the age of sixty-four. Instead, he gives us a Beuys who is ever-present, an iconoclastic, often inscrutable, and wildly intelligent artist and innovative provocateur who constructed his own mythology that continues to tantalize us today — even when his work is used as a public toilet. Beuys is making its U.S. theatrical premiere January 17 at Film Forum; Veiel will participate in a Q&A with MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach following the 7:00 show on January 19.

HANK AND JIM: 12 ANGRY MEN / MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

The long friendship Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart is the focus of terrific three-week series at Film Forum

Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 27 – November 16
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

If only America were more like the long relationship between Nebraska-born Oscar winner Henry Jaynes Fonda and Pennsylvania-born Oscar winner James Maitland Stewart. Fonda, who served in the Navy during WWII and passed away in 1982 at the age of seventy-seven, was a liberal Democrat who was married five times; Stewart, who served in the Army during WWII and passed away in 1997 at the age of eighty-nine, was married to the same woman for forty-four years. Not only did Hank and Jim disagree on politics, which they early on decided never to talk about in each other’s company, but they also went head-to-head for the Best Actor Oscar in 1941, when Stewart (The Philadelphia Story) beat Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath). Still, they remained best buddies, which is documented in Scott Eyman’s new book, Hank and Jim: the Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart (October 24, Simon & Schuster, $29), a tome that serves as the inspiration behind the fab Film Forum series “Hank and Jim,” running October 27 through November 16, consisting of more than three dozen movies made by the two actors, who both experienced success on Broadway as well as in Hollywood. (The onetime roommates met while trying to establish their careers in New York City.) Eyman will be at Film Forum to introduce several screenings and sign copies of his book.

The series begins October 27 with an Alfred Hitchcock double feature, The Wrong Man, starring Fonda as a jazz musician accused of murder, and Rope, in which Stewart plays a professor invited to a dinner party with an unexpected guest. That is followed October 28 with Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men and Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which Fonda and Stewart both portray men with consciences who care about fairness and the truth. Other double features with films made by each man include The Ox-Bow Incident and Broken Arrow, Call Northside 777 and The Boston Strangler, The Moon’s Our Home and Next Time We Love, and Destry Rides Again and Daisy Kenyon, in addition to double features with just one of them and individual screenings of some of their greatest solo films. Fonda and Stewart made only three movies in which they appeared together, On Our Merry Way, Vincent McEveety’s Firecreek, and Gene Kelly’s The Cheyenne Social Club, but, oddly, none of them is part of this festival, nor is How the West Was Won, which stars both of them but they are never in the same scene.

Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men explores the consciences and more of a dozen jurors deciding a murder case

12 ANGRY MEN (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
Film Forum
Saturday, October 28, 3:00, 7:30
www.filmforum.org

The fate of an eighteen-year-old boy charged with the murder of his father is at stake in Sidney Lumet’s first film, the gripping, genre-defining 12 Angry Men. After a series of establishing shots, a judge sends a dozen New Yorkers into the jurors room, where they need to come to a unanimous verdict that could lead to the execution of the teen. Over the course of about ninety minutes, an all-star cast examines and reexamines the case — and their own personal biases — as the heat increases, both literally and figuratively. At first, the nameless dozen men make small talk, trying to be friendly, but it’s not long before some of them are at others’ throats, primarily the gruff Lee J. Cobb, who has it in for the calm and thoughtful Henry Fonda, who is ready to stand alone if necessary for what he believes in. The other uniformly excellent actors playing a very specific cross-section of white, male America are John Fiedler, Martin Balsam, Robert Webber, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Ed Begley, Joseph Sweeney, and George Voskovec. “I tell you, we were lucky to get a murder case,” Webber tells Fonda, but he won’t feel the same as the tension reaches near-violent proportions. 12 Angry Men is a searing examination of the criminal justice system as well as basic human instincts, behavior, and common decency. The Philadelphia-born Lumet, whose parents were both in the Yiddish theater, is able to tell the story in cinematic ways despite its taking place mostly in one small, sweaty room, letting the intense acting drive the narrative; the director, who was nominated for an Oscar for the film, would go on to make such other classic New York City dramas as The Pawnbroker, The Anderson Tapes, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Prince of the City. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin, 12 Angry Men, based on an original teleplay by Reginald Rose, is screening October 28 as part of a double feature with Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in the Film Forum series “Hank and Jim”; the 7:30 show will be introduced by Scott Eyman, author of Hank and Jim: the Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, and followed by a book signing.

Jimmy Stewart takes filibustering to a whole new level in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (Frank Capra, 1939)
Film Forum
Saturday, October 28, 12:30, 4:55
www.filmforum.org

We love Jimmy Stewart; we really do. Who doesn’t? But a few years ago we had the audacity to claim that Jim Parsons’s performance as Elwood P. Dowd in the 2012 Broadway revival of Harvey outshined that of Stewart in the treacly 1950 film, and now we’re here to tell you that another of his iconic films is nowhere near as great as you might remember, although it still has its place in the Hollywood canon. Nominated for eleven Academy Awards, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington caused quite a scandal in America’s capital when it was released in 1939, depicting a corrupt democracy that just might be saved by a filibustering junior senator from a small state whose most relevant experience is being head of the Boy Rangers. (The Boy Scouts would not allow their name to be used in the film.) Stewart plays the aptly named Jefferson Smith, a dreamer who believes in truth, justice, and the American way. “I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules,” Smith says of the Senate, “if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too.” He’s shocked — shocked! — to discover that his mentor, the immensely respected Sen. Joseph Harrison Paine (played by Claude Rains, who was similarly shocked that there was gambling at Rick’s in Casablanca), is not nearly as squeaky clean as he thought, involved in high-level corruption, manipulation, and pay-offs that nearly drains Smith of his dreams. Having recently celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is still, unfortunately, rather relevant, as things haven’t changed all that much, but Capra’s dependence on over-the-top melodrama has worn thin. It’s a good film, but it’s no longer a great one. Just in time for election day, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is screening October 28 as part of a double feature with Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men in the Film Forum series “Hank and Jim”; the 4:55 show will be introduced by Scott Eyman, author of Hank and Jim: the Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, and followed by a book signing.

CHAVELA

The extraordinary life and career of Chavela Vargas is documented in revelatory documentary

CHAVELA (Catherine Gund & Daresha Kyi, 2017)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 4-17
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.musicboxfilms.com

The extraordinary story of beloved Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas is intricately documented in Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s warm and intimate Chavela, opening at Film Forum today. Chavela’s life might seem an all-too-familiar archetype, the tale of a powerful female vocalist, a lesbian performer whose career was wrecked by the lethal combination of a heterosexual macho society, personal demons, and addiction, but Chavela avoids stereotypes and instead delivers a very human portrait. Born in Costa Rica in 1919, Chavela had an unhappy childhood and ran away to Mexico when she was fourteen to pursue a singing career and live a freer life, able to explore her sexual orientation as she grew older. “Her own parents saw her as a strange girl. They realized she was a boyish girl,” composer Marcela Rodríguez says. “Her movement, her hands, and her body language were manly.” Her longtime partner, human rights lawyer Alicia Pérez Duarte, adds, “Chavela created her persona in a very macho world.” Chavela dedicated her life to her music while keeping much of her personal life private — the film drops little more than tantalizing hints about her relationship with artist Frida Kahlo and an evening with Ava Gardner — and her commanding presence and powerful vocal style quickly made her a star in the 1940s and ’50s. “Hers wasn’t a sweet, crystal clear voice,” says cabaret owner Jesusa Rodríguez. “And she always sounded like she’d been torn apart, as if she’d been born with the wounds of life and death.” But at the height of her fame, those wounds started catching up to her as she began drinking heavily, resulting in a fifteen-year hiatus during which many people thought she was dead. The film centers around a never-before-seen 1991 interview Gund conducted with Chavela upon her return to singing, as she speaks more openly and honestly about her sexuality, her family, and her career. She’s a riveting figure, confident and determined, ready to face the world again. “We all have to live in the present. Don’t think about yesterday or tomorrow. Today,” she says.

Editor Carla Gutiérrez seamlessly weaves between archival film and photographs of Chavela performing onstage and in movies, complete with English translations of the heartfelt lyrics; interviews from 1991 and later, as she revels in being a star again; and new interviews with cabaret owners Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe, singers Tania Libertad and Miguel Bosé, Federico García Lorca Foundation president Laura García Lorca, artist Martirio, composer and singer José Alfredo Jiménez Jr., whose father wrote many of the songs that made Chavela famous, and Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who used her music in his movies and played a major role in her comeback, which took Chavela around the globe, including to her beloved Madrid and to Carnegie Hall. “In her voice, I’ve found one of my best collaborators. And a faithful reflection of myself,” he says in an old clip, a feeling that is shared by many who knew her. Producer-directors Gund (Born to Fly, A Touch of Greatness) and Kyi (Land Where My Fathers Died; Thugs, the Musical) clearly love their subject, and their love is contagious, welcoming viewers into the pure majesty that is Chavela Vargas. (The 6:15 show on October 7 will be followed by a Q&A with Gund and Kyi, moderated by LGBT activist Eliel Cruz; the 2:20 show on October 8 will be followed by a Q&A with Gund and Kyi; the 8:10 show on October 10 will be followed by a Q&A with Gund, moderated by NewFest’s Nick McCarthy; and the 8:10 show on October 17 will be followed by a Q&A with Carnegie Hall show producer Claudia Norman, moderated by Cinema Tropical executive director Carlos Gutiérrez. In addition, Stephanie Trudeau is bringing her one-woman docu-cabaret show Chavela: Think of Me back to the Pangea Restaurant & Supper Club on November 2, 19, and 16.)

TIME TO DIE

Juan Sáyago (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) finds himself cornered in Arturo Ripstein’s Time to Die

TIME TO DIE (TIEMPO DE MORIR) (Arturo Ripstein, 1966)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, September 15
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

The setup for the 1966 Mexican Western Time to Die is just about as standard as they come. But there’s little else that is standard for Arturo Ripstein’s startling debut, a tense, atmospheric tale that has been called a neo-Western, a chile-Western, and even a kreplach Western. The screenplay was written by Colombian film journalist Gabriel Garciá Márquez — whose breakthrough magical realism novel One Hundred Years of Solitude would be published the following year — assisted by Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes (Terra Nostra, The Old Gringo), who focused on the dialogue. Ripstein was only twenty-one when he made the film and had already worked with Luis Buñuel, serving as his personal assistant on The Exterminating Angel; Ripstein’s father, Alfredo, was a major player in the Mexican film industry and produced Time to Die, known as Tiempo de Morir in Spanish, with César Santos Galindo. Shot in a lustrous black-and-white by Alex Phillips and featuring a poignant soundtrack by Carlos Jiménez Mabarak, the film is in many ways as much a noir as a Western. Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, who played Hilario in John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven, stars as Juan Sáyago, a gunfighter who returns to his remote village after eighteen years in prison. He’s older, moves slower, and now needs reading glasses, but he wants to go back to the life he led, ready to reclaim his horse, his saddle, his house, and his fiancée, Mariana Sampedro (Marga López).

He tells the son of the late Don Diego Martín Ibañez that his father had told him, “Don’t worry, once you’ve paid your dues with the law, come see me. Your job will be waiting for you.” But Don Diego Jr. (Quintin Bulnes) alerts him that his life is in danger and to “take your fight somewhere else.” The two sons of the important and powerful man Sáyago killed, Pedro (Enrique Rocha) and Julián Trueba (Alfredo Leal), have been waiting for this moment for nearly two decades, prepared to avenge the death of their beloved father. The younger Pedro is not as hard-hearted as his older brother, who has convinced everyone in town, including Pedro’s girlfriend, Sonia (Blanca Sánchez), that Juan brutally murdered his father in cold blood, although there are rumblings that it was actually in self-defense and completely justified — and that Sáyago is bulletproof, unable to be shot and killed. Despite all the warnings to get out of town, though, he is not about to turn and run. “My grievance is not with them,” he tells the bartender. “It’s with the eighteen years I’ve lost.”

A behind-the-scenes look at Arturo Ripstein (center) on set of Time to Die

No surprise, Time to Die is an extremely literate tale, beautifully told with terrific set pieces, including Sáyago’s meeting with his old pal Casildo (Carlos Jordán), the sheriff jailing Sáyago for his own protection, and Sáyago declaring, “I don’t want to die” after being bloodied on the street. And he knits too, glasses hanging at the end of his nose. Like William Munny (Clint Eastwood) in Unforgiven, he doesn’t want to draw his gun anymore, but he is also a moral man who will do what’s necessary. The locations switch from narrow, claustrophobic passages to vast mountain landscapes as swirling winds beckon the final shoot-out. Ripstein would go on to become one of Mexico’s leading filmmakers, writing and directing such well-regarded works as Hell without Limits, The Beginning and the End, and The Virgin of Lust. (His most recent film is 2015’s Bleak Street.) A fiftieth anniversary restoration of Time to Die premiered at Cannes last year and is now having its inaugural American theatrical release, opening September 15 at Film Forum. Don’t miss this lost classic of Mexican cinema.

SUMMER DOUBLE FEATURES! LITTLE FUGITIVE / SPEEDY

Joey Norton goes on the adventure of a lifetime in Coney Island in underground indie classic Little Fugitive

LITTLE FUGITIVE (Morris Engel, Ray Ashley, and Ruth Orkin, 1953)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, September 4, 12:30 & 4:00
Series continues through September 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Labor Day is the traditional end of summer, and Film Forum gets in on the fun with an inspired double feature of two Coney Island specials. Screening at 12:30 and 4:00, Morris Engel’s charming Little Fugitive is one of the most influential and important — and vastly entertaining — works to ever come out of the city. The underground classic won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1953, was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar, and was entered into the National Film Registry in 1997. Written and directed with Ray Ashley and Ruth Orkin, Engel’s future wife, Little Fugitive follows the gritty, adorable exploits of seven-year-old wannabe cowboy Joey Norton (Richie Andrusco, in his only film role), who runs away to Coney Island after his older brother, Lennie (Richard Brewster), and his brother’s friends, Harry (Charlie Moss) and Charley (Tommy DeCanio), play a trick on the young boy, using ketchup to convince Joey that he accidentally killed Lennie. With their single mother (Winifred Cushing) off visiting her ailing mother, Joey heads out on his own, determined to escape the cops who are surely after him. But once he gets to Coney Island, he decides to take advantage of all the crazy things to be found on the beach, along the boardwalk, and in the surrounding area, including, if he can get the money, riding a real pony.

A no-budget black-and-white neo-Realist masterpiece shot by Engel with a specially designed lightweight camera that was often hidden so people didn’t know they were being filmed, Little Fugitive explores the many pleasures and pains of childhood and the innate value of home and family. As Joey wanders around Coney Island, he meets all levels of humanity, preparing him for the world that awaits as he grows older. Meanwhile, Engel gets into the nooks and crannies of the popular beach area, from gorgeous sunrises to beguiling shadows under the boardwalk. In creating their beautifully told tale, Engel, Ashley, and Orkin use both trained and nonprofessional actors, including Jay Williams as Jay, the sensitive pony ride man, and Will Lee, who went on to play Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street, as an understanding photographer, while Eddie Manson’s score continually references “Home on the Range.” Rough around the edges in all the right ways, Little Fugitive became a major influence on the French New Wave, with Truffaut himself singing its well-deserved praises. There’s really nothing quite like it, before or since. The 12:30 show will be introduced by Mary Engel, the daughter of Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin.

Harold Lloyd has a crazy time in Coney Island in Speedy

SPEEDY (Ted Wilde, 1928)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, September 4, 2:00
Series continues through September 13
212-727-8110
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In between the two showings of Little Fugitive is another delightful treat, Ted Wilde’s Speedy, with live musical accompaniment by pianist Steve Sterner. Much like the end of the silent film era itself, the last horse-drawn trolley is doomed in Harold Lloyd’s final silent film. Big business is playing dirty trying to get rid of the trolley and classic old-timer Pop Dillon. Meanwhile, Harold “Speedy” Swift, a dreamer who wanders from menial job to menial job (he makes a great soda-jerk with a unique way of announcing the Yankees score), cares only about the joy and wonder life brings. But he’s in love with Pop’s granddaughter, Jane (Ann Christy), so he vows to save the day. Along the way, he gets to meet Babe Ruth. Wilde was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, Comedy, for this thrilling nonstop ride through beautiful Coney Island and the pre-depression streets of New York City. Film Forum’s second annual Festival of Summer Double Features continues through September 5 with such other sweet pairings as Panique and Peeping Tom, Point Blank and The Killers, and The Big Lebowski and The Last Picture Show.