Tag Archives: film forum

FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD — NEW YORK IN THE 70s: THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE

Walter Matthau tries to get to the bottom of a bizarre subway heist in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Saturday, July 8, 4:45, Sunday, July 16, 6:20, Friday, July 21, 5:00 & 10:00
Series runs through July 27
212-727-8110
filmforum.orgg

On October 29, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford refused to grant a federal bailout of New York, resulting in one of the all-time-great headlines in the Daily News: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Film Forum is looking back at that rather unique decade in Big Apple history in the fab series “Ford to City: Drop Dead — New York in the 70s.” Running through July 27, the festival features more than three dozen Gotham classics, beginning with Midnight Cowboy and Taking Off and continuing with such favorites as Mean Streets (shown with Film Forum master programmer Bruce Goldstein’s Les Rues de Mean Streets), Serpico, Saturday Night Fever, Network, Klute, and Marathon Man. With all the recent problems with the subway system, it’s definitely time to revisit Joseph Sargent’s underground thriller, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Loosely adapted from the book by John Godey, the film wonderfully captures the cynicism of New York City in the 1970s. Four heavily armed and mustached men — Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Gray (Hector Elizondo), and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman), colorful pseudonyms that influenced Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs — hijack an uptown 4 train, demanding one million dollars in one hour from a nearly bankrupt city or else they will kill all eighteen passengers, one at a time, minute by minute. The hapless mayor (Lee Wallace) is in bed with the flu, so Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle (Tony Roberts) takes charge on the political end while transit detective Lt. Zachary Garber (a great Walter Matthau) and Inspector Daniels (Julius Harris) of the NYPD team up to try to figure out just how in the world the criminals expect to get away with the seemingly impossible heist. Sargent (Sybil) offers a nostalgic look back at a bygone era, before technology radically changed the way trains are run and police work is handled.

The film also features a very funny, laconic Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone and the beloved Kenneth McMillan as the borough commander. It was remade as a television movie in 1998, starring Edward James Olmos, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lorraine Bracco, and as an embarrassingly bad big-budget bomb in 2009 by Tony Scott. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is screening on July 8 (introduced by Goldstein), 16, and 21; the Film Forum series also includes such inspired double features as Shaft and Super Fly, Across 110th Street and Cops and Robbers, Dressed to Kill and Death Wish, Three Days of the Condor and The Eyes of Laura Mars, and The Warriors and Escape from New York. In addition, director Jerry Schatzberg will introduce The Panic in Needle Park on July 7, William Friedkin will introduce The French Connection via Skype on July 8, and New York Times media editor Bill Brink — whose father, William, wrote the infamous Daily News headline — will introduce Dog Day Afternoon on July 9.

RESTLESS CREATURE: WENDY WHELAN

Ballet star Wendy Whelan invites audiences it to watch her attempt to get back onstage in Restless Creature

RESTLESS CREATURE: WENDY WHELAN (Linda Saffire & Adam Schlesinger, 2016)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Opens Wednesday, May 24
www.facebook.com/restlesscreatureww

“I’ve always been extremely devoted to what I do, and I love being a part of the New York City Ballet. But I do feel the ticking clock, and at times I’ve thought, if I don’t dance, I’d rather die. I’ve actually said that,” longtime New York City principal dancer Wendy Whelan says in the intimate and revealing documentary Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan. Whelan gave directors and producers Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger remarkable access as she faces a turning point in her life and career. In 2013, she began to notice she wasn’t getting the parts she used to excel in and decided to get reconstructive hip surgery, hoping that she could return to dancing full-time, at top level. She allows Saffire and Schlesinger into the operating room as Dr. Marc J. Philippon performs the procedure on her torn right labrum. “Ballerinas are probably God’s best athletes,” Dr. Philippon, says. The film then documents her hard-fought battle to return to the stage, as it’s unclear that she will ever regain her skills — or if Peter Martins and the New York City Ballet will even want her back. “What the fuck is this gonna be like when I can’t do this anymore,” she wonders, later adding, “I need to get back in the game, because I don’t have a ton of time left at my game.” With an inspiring dedication, brave honesty, and self-deprecating sense of humor, Whelan, who turned fifty earlier this month, works with physical therapists Marika Molnar and James Gallegro and discusses options with her husband, choreographer and creative director David Michalek; her manager, Ilter Abramowitz; her mother, Kay; and friends Adam Barrett and Maria Scherer, holding nothing back about the choices she must make. Concerned that soon she will not physically be able to be at her best in ballet, she starts the “Restless Creature” contemporary dance project with choreographers Kyle Abraham, Josh Beamish, Brian Brooks, and Alejandro Cerrudo. But she still aches to return to her home of thirty years, the New York City Ballet, where decades of balletomanes, twi-ny included, have thrilled to her technical precision, insight, musicality, and breathtakingly beautiful line.

Wendy Whelan faces a crossroads in her career in intimate and revealing documentary

Saffire and Schlesinger, who previously collaborated on such documentaries as Smash His Camera and Sporting Dreams, combine home movies and photos with lovely clips of Whelan in pieces by Christopher Wheeldon, George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Jerome Robbins, and Alexei Ratmansky. They mix in scenes of her being interviewed by dance writers, partying with friends and colleagues, talking with former dancers Jock Soto and Philip Neal, and rehearsing with NYCB soloist Craig Hall and principal dancer Tyler Angle. Only once during the year-and-a-half shoot did Whelan ask for privacy; otherwise, her life is an open book, and it’s both exhilarating and heartbreaking to watch, as the film is about much more than just one artist’s struggle to remain relevant; it’s an inherently relatable story about the effects of age, how each of us might react to the inevitable decline of the body. Whelan expresses how hard it is to know that there are certain moves she will never be able to perform again, no matter how well her rehab goes, so there is an underlying sadness throughout the film even as we cheer her on to accomplish her lofty goals. But what really makes the film work is Whelan herself; all of the behind-the-scenes intrigue and personal reflections are fascinating, but Whelan proves to be an extraordinary human being. “You changed how people behave in this profession,” former principal dancer and current Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Peter Boal tells her. Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan will likely make many viewers take a good look at their own future with new enthusiasm as they approach critical crossroads. The film opens May 24 at Film Forum and Lincoln Center; there will be Q&As with Whelan, Saffire, and Schlesinger (sometimes joined by executive producer Diana DiMenna) at the former on May 25 and May 26 at 7:00 and May 27 at 4:40 and at the latter on May 24 at 7:00, May 25 at 5:00, May 27 at 7:00, and May 28 at 1:00.

OBIT.

Bruce Weber discusses the intricacies of writing obituaries in surprisingly charming documentary

OBIT.: LIFE ON DEADLINE (Vanessa Gould, 2016)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Wednesday, April 26
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Vanessa Gould’s surprising charmer, Obit., might primarily be about the documentation of individual death by the New York Times obituaries desk, but at its heart it’s a celebration of life. “It’s almost never depressing because we’re almost always writing about someone in his or her eighties or nineties who has died after a long, rich, creative, fulfilling life,” obituaries senior writer Margalit Fox explains. “In an obit of eight hundred words or so, maybe a sentence or two will be about the death and the other ninety percent is about the life. So it’s counterintuitive, ironic even, but obits have next to nothing to do with death and, in fact, absolutely everything to do with the life.” Inspired by an obituary the New York Times ran about a friend of hers at her urging, Gould spent about a week in the Times offices, capturing the obit writers and editors in action as they do extensive research (online and on the phone), work hard on the lede, carefully fact check, and get just the right photo for what they consider legitimate news stories, not simply memorials to the deceased. “It’s a once-only chance to make the dead live again,” obituaries writer (and former food critic) William Grimes notes. They are shown deciding whose life was newsworthy, keeping to a specific word count, and pitching for better placement of their story while attempting to capture the essence of the individual they are writing about. When researching the death of typewriter repairman Manson Whitlock, Fox hits the keys of an old Royal, attempting to incorporate the sound and feel of the instrument in her article. In addition to the obviously famous and influential, they also cover such people as Slinky creator Richard T. James, Bill Haley bass player Marshall Lytle, television remote inventor Gene Polley, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka plaintiff Zelma Henderson, aviatrix Elinor Smith, advertising executive Richie Rich, Skylab saviour Jack A. Kinzler, and William P. Wilson, the JFK aide who helped orchestrate John F. Kennedy’s critical televised debate win over Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Gould’s film includes archival photographs and film footage of many of the obituary subjects and the times in which they lived, although some of the clips are not completely relevant. Still, they are cool to see and flesh out the documentary with visual splendor and fun details.

Archivist Jeff Roth runs the massive New York Times archives known as the morgue

The film also features obituaries desk editor William McDonald, who points out that they are writers who never get to meet or speak directly with their subjects; former obituaries writer Paul Vitello, who refers to himself as an obituarist; assistant obituaries editor Peter Keepnews; chief pop music critic Jon Pareles; former deputy obituaries editor Jack Kadden; former obituaries writer Douglas Martin; and Jeff Roth, who for nearly a quarter of a century has overseen the morgue, the vast archives filled with tens of thousands of files of newspaper clippings and photographs as well as nearly two thousand advance obituaries. Gould often asks the writer to read the obituary they have written while she shows film footage and rare photos of the subject: one memorable scene highlights Fox and her poetic obituary of British rower and adventurer John Fairfax. “This was an obit that broke all the rules and proudly announced obits in the twenty-first century can be just as rollicking and swaggering as their subjects,” she says. And the discussion about how to cover sudden, unexpected celebrity deaths — Michael Jackson, Prince, David Foster Wallace, Philip Seymour Hoffman, attempting to get something up on the Times website quickly while battling the six o’clock deadline for the next day’s print edition — is downright exciting. The film primarily works because the writers and editors themselves are intellectual eccentrics who love what they do even as it makes them consider their own mortality. “Literally, I show up in the morning and I say, ‘Who’s dead?’” Weber explains. “And somebody puts a folder on my desk and that’s what I do that day.” Obit. opens April 26 at Lincoln Plaza and Film Forum; Gould will be at Film Forum for Q&As with Weber at the 7:00 screenings on April 27 and 28, with Roth after the 7:00 show on April 29, and with Grimes at the 4:45 show on April 30, in addition to several introductions, while at Lincoln Plaza Fox and producer Caitlin Mae Burke will discuss the film on April 26 and 28, followed by Gould and obituary writer Dan Slotnik on April 29.

THE INCIDENT WITH DIRECTOR LARRY PEERCE IN PERSON

Tony Musante terrorizes Bea Bridges and others aboard a New York City subway train in THE INCIDENT

Joe Ferrone (Tony Musante) terrorizes Pfc. Felix Teflinger (Beau Bridges) and others aboard a New York City subway train in THE INCIDENT

THE INCIDENT (Larry Peerce, 1967)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, November 3, $7, 11:00 am
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

One of the ultimate nightmare scenarios of 1960s New York City, Larry Peerce’s gritty black-and-white The Incident takes viewers deep down into the subway as two thugs terrorize a group of helpless passengers. Joe Ferrante (Tony Musante) and Artie Connors (Martin Sheen, in his first movie role) are out for kicks, so after getting some out on the streets, they head underground, where they find a wide-ranging collection of twentieth-century Americans to torture, including Arnold and Joan Robinson (Brock Peters and Ruby Dee), Bill and Helen Wilks (Ed McMahon and Diana Van der Vlis), Sam and Bertha Beckerman (Jack Gilford and Thelma Ritter, in her last role), Douglas McCann (Gary Merrill), Muriel and Harry Purvis (Jan Sterling and Mike Kellin), Alice Keenan (Donna Mills), soldiers Felix Teflinger and Phillip Carmatti (Beau Bridges and Robert Bannard), and others, each representing various aspects of contemporary culture and society, all with their own personal problems that come to the surface as the harrowing ride continues. It’s a brutal, claustrophobic, highly theatrical film that captures the fear that haunted the city in the 1960s and well into the ’70s, with an all-star cast tackling such subjects as racism, teen sex, alcoholism, homosexuality, war, and the state of the American family. A DCP restoration of the rarely shown drama, some of which was filmed in the actual subway system against the MTA’s warnings, is screening April 26 at Film Forum, with the Bronx-born Peerce, who made such other films as A Separate Peace, Two-Minute Warning, The Bell Jar, and Goodbye, Columbus, on hand to discuss the work.

KARL MARX CITY

Documentarian Petra Epperlein investigates her father’s mysterious suicide in KARL MARX CITY

KARL MARX CITY (Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
March 29 – April 11
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
karlmarxcity.com

In 1999, filmmaker Petra Epperlein’s fifty-seven-year-old father, Wolfgang, thoroughly washed his company car, burned all of his personal papers and photographs, and then hanged himself from a tree in the family garden in their home in Chemnitz, which was known as Karl Marx City in what was formerly communist East Germany from shortly after the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Much like Karl Marx City, her father set out to erase himself,” narrator Matilda Tucker, Epperlein’s daughter, says near the beginning of the intricately plotted and gripping documentary Karl Marx City. “All that he left behind were questions.” Fifteen years later, Epperlein, who has made such sociopolitical films with her husband, Michael Tucker, as Gunner Palace, The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, and Bulletproof Salesman — the duo call themselves Pepper & Bones — returned to Chemnitz to try to answer some of those questions and find out whether her father had killed himself because, as was rumored, he had collaborated with the Stasi, the much-feared East German secret police. Between 1950 and 1990, the German Democratic Republic employed 92,000 officers and 200,000 informants to spy on their own friends, neighbors, and family, using audio and video to track their every move in order to identify supposed enemies of the state. Written, directed, edited, and produced by Epperlein and Tucker — Petra also did the audio recording and Michael served as cinematographer and sound designer — Karl Marx City features declassified surveillance tapes, broadcast intercepts, and propaganda films from the Ministry for State Security (the Stasi, or Staatssicherheit) along with striking new black-and-white footage of Epperlein’s quest as she poignantly retraces her father’s steps. She meets with such current and former employees of the Stasi Archive as Lothar Raschker, Dr. Juliane Schütterle, and Dagmar Hovestadt, Cold War and GDR expert Dr. Douglas Selvage, and Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial director Dr. Hubertus Knabe to examine the history of the Stasi and detail the effects it had on the psyche of the German people.

Poignant documentary looks into Stasi control of Karl Marx City during the Cold War era

Epperlein also speaks with former classmate Jana X and her parents, Stasi collaborators R. and S., and historian and suicide-letter expert Dr. Udo Grashoff, who examines a note and postcard that Wolfgang sent Petra just before he killed himself. “The main question of the Stasi was, Who is the enemy, and how can we prove that he is an enemy or she is an enemy?” Dr. Grashoff points out. “But you and I, we have different questions. And we find in the files empirical material that allows us to answer our different questions, and this is the value of the Stasi files for me. I’m not interested in the questions of the Stasi. You can find your own truth.” Petra’s twin brothers, Uwe and Volker, and their mother, Christa, also talk about their father, with Christa sometimes hesitant and emotional. Visiting sites from her family’s past, Epperlein travels everywhere wearing headphones and carrying a large fur-covered microphone, emphasizing how her, and our, world is still under constant surveillance. “No aspect of society escaped their gaze,” Tucker narrates early on, referring to the Stasi. “Everyone a suspect. The enemy is everyone.” Epperlein occasionally addresses the camera directly, creating boundary-shattering moments between filmmaker and audience while evoking the ability of the camera and microphone to make us all subjects, particularly in this surveillance-heavy age. In addition, Karl Marx City offers a vocabulary lesson, defining such words as Die Wende (“the change”), Ostalgie (“the feeling for home”), Erinnerungskutlur (“the culture of remembrance”), and Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“the process of coming to terms with the past”), the letters shown onscreen in torn red-and-white strips as if ripped from tabloid headlines or ransom notes. Karl Marx City is an eye-opening look at a frightening past as well as a potent reminder of what can always happen again — if it isn’t already. The film opens March 29 at Film Forum and will be preceded by Alexander Lahl and Volker Schlecht’s seven-minute animated short, Broken — The Women’s Prison at Hoheneck; Epperlein and Tucker will participate in Q&As following the 7:00 shows on March 29 and 31 and the 4:40 show on April 1.

OZU’S PASSING FANCY WITH LIVE BENSHI

Takeshi Sakamato makes the first of many appearances as Kihachi in Yasujirō Ozu’s PASSING FANCY

PASSING FANCY (DEKIGOKORO) (出来ごころ) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1933)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, March 19, $20, 4:30
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Yasujirō Ozu might not have been keen on the latest technology — he made silent films until 1936, and his first color film was in 1958, near the end of his career — but there’s nothing old-fashioned about his mastery of camera and storytelling, as evidenced by one of his lesser-known comedy-dramas, Passing Fancy. On March 19 at 4:30, Film Forum is screening a 35mm print of the 1933 masterpiece, accompanied by a live benshi performance by Ichiro Kataoka and composer and pianist Makia Matsumura. Takeshi Sakamato stars as Kihachi, a character that would go on to appear in such other Ozu works as A Story of Floating Weeds, An Inn in Tokyo, and Record of a Tenement Gentleman. The film opens at a rōkyoku performance, where the audience is sitting on the floor on a hot day, mopping their brows and fanning themselves; Kihachi has an ever-present cloth on his head, looking clownish, a small boy with an injured eye who turns out to be his son, Tomio (Tokkankozo), sleeping by him. Foreshadowing Bresson-ian precision, Ozu and cinematographers Hideo Shigehara and Shojiro Sugimoto follow a small, lost change purse as several men inspect it, hoping to find money in it, then toss it away when it comes up empty. The scene establishes the pace and tone of the film, identifies Kihachi as the protagonist, and shows that there will be limited translated text and dialogue; in fact, Ozu never reveals what happened to Tomio’s eye. After the performance, Kihachi and his friend and coworker at the local brewery, Jiro (Den Obinata), meet a destitute young woman named Harue (Nobuko Fushimi). An intertitle explains, “Everyone years for love. Love sets our thoughts in flight.” Kihachi, a poor, single father, helps Harue get a place to stay and a job with restaurant owner Otome (Chouko Iida), hoping that Harue will become interested in him, but she instead takes a liking to the younger Jiro, who wants nothing to do with the whole situation, believing that Harue is using them.

The relationship between father (Takeshi Sakamato) and son (Tokkankozo) is at the heart of (PASSING FANCY

Ozu follows them all through their daily trials and tribulations — with hysterical comic bits, including how Tomio wakes up Kihachi and Jiro to make sure they’re not late for work — but things take a serious turn when the boy becomes seriously ill and Kihachi cannot afford to pay for the care he requires. Winner of the 1934 Japanese Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film — Ozu also won in 1933 for I Was Born, But . . . and 1935 for A Story of Floating Weeds — Passing Fancy is filled with gorgeous touches, as Ozu reveals the stark poverty in prewar Japan, focuses on class difference and illiteracy, and displays tender family relationships, all built around Kihachi’s impossible, very funny courtship of Harue and his bonding with Tomio, since love trumps all. And yes, that man on the boat is Chishū Ryū, who appeared in all but two of Ozu’s fifty-four films. For the special Film Forum screening, Kataoka will provide narration in Japanese; the event is sold out, but a standby line will start at 4:00 for this very rare and special experience.

A TRIBUTE TO TONY ROBERTS

Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, and Tony Roberts form quite a team in ANNIE HALL

ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, March 13, $14, 7:00
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

“You’re an actor, Max. You should be doing Shakespeare in the Park,” Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) says to his best friend, Rob (Tony Roberts), in Annie Hall. “Oh, I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max. I got mugged. I was playing Richard the Second and two guys with leather jackets stole my leotard,” Rob responds. Tony Roberts is indeed an actor, with a fifty-five-year stage and screen career that includes six Allen films (Play It Again, Sam, Annie Hall, Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Radio Days) and two Woodman plays (Don’t Drink the Water, Play It Again, Sam). Now seventy-seven, Roberts will be at Film Forum on March 13 for a special tribute; the evening begins with a screening of Annie Hall, which won four Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress for Diane Keaton), followed by a conversation between Roberts and actor/producer John Martello, the former longtime executive director of the Players Club who was fired over a financial dispute in April 2013.

Best friends Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Rob (Tony Roberts) play tennis in ANNIE HALL

In Annie Hall, the steadfast, skirt-chasing Roberts stars as an actor on a hit TV series who is loving life in California, which disappoints Singer. During the film, Rob dons a sharp white suit, a space outfit, and tennis gear; however, unlike in the Broadway show Doubles, Roberts keeps his clothes on. The New York City native and two-time Tony nominee has also appeared in such films as Serpico, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Amityville 3-D, and Switch and such Broadway productions as Barefoot in the Park, They’re Playing Our Song, The Sisters Rosensweig, and Promises, Promises. He also starred in an all-star two-part Love Boat episode as cruise director Julie McCoy’s (Lauren Tewes) long-lost love; the cast also included Lorne Green, Mark Harmon, Eleanor Parker, Ray Milland, Julia Duffy, Donny Most, and Lisa Hartman. It should be a splendid event honoring this character actor extraordinaire, who gets to play a leading role for a night.