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UGETSU

Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) makes his pottery as son Genichi (Ikio Sawamura) and wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) look on in UGETSU

UGETSU (UGETSU MONOGATARI) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
March 3-9
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Film Forum is presenting a new 4K restoration of one of the most important and influential — and greatest — works to ever come from Japan. Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 1953 Venice Film Festival, Kenji Mizoguchi’s seventy-eighth film, Ugetsu, is a dazzling masterpiece steeped in Japanese storytelling tradition, especially ghost lore. Based on two tales by Ueda Akinari and Guy de Maupassant’s “How He Got the Legion of Honor,” Ugetsu unfolds like a scroll painting beginning with the credits, which run over artworks of nature scenes while Fumio Hayasaka’s urgent score starts setting the mood, and continues into the first three shots, pans of the vast countryside leading to Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) loading his cart to sell his pottery in nearby Nagahama, helped by his wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka), clutching their small child, Genichi (Ikio Sawamura). Miyagi’s assistant, Tōbei (Sakae Ozawa), insists on coming along, despite the protestations of his nagging wife, Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), as he is determined to become a samurai even though he is more of a hapless fool. “I need to sell all this before the fighting starts,” Genjurō tells Miyagi, referring to a civil war that is making its way through the land. Tōbei adds, “I swear by the god of war: I’m tired of being poor.” After unexpected success with his wares, Genjurō furiously makes more pottery to sell at another market even as the soldiers are approaching and the rest of the villagers run for their lives. At the second market, an elegant woman, Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō), and her nurse, Ukon (Kikue Mōri), ask him to bring a large amount of his merchandise to their mansion. Once he gets there, Lady Wakasa seduces him, and soon Genjurō, Miyagi, Genichi, Tōbei, and Ohama are facing very different fates.

Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō) admires Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) in Kenji Mizoguchi postwar masterpiece

Written by longtime Mizoguchi collaborator Yoshitaka Yoda and Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Ugetsu might be set in the sixteenth century, but it is also very much about the aftereffects of World War II. “The war drove us mad with ambition,” Tōbei says at one point. Photographed in lush, shadowy black-and-white by Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Floating Weeds, Yojimbo), the film features several gorgeous set pieces, including one that takes place on a foggy lake and another in a hot spring, heightening the ominous atmosphere that pervades throughout. Ugetsu ends much like it began, emphasizing that it is but one postwar allegory among many. Kyō (Gate of Hell, The Face of Another) is magical as the temptress Lady Wakasa, while Mori (The Bad Sleep Well, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) excels as the everyman who follows his dreams no matter the cost; the two previously played husband and wife in Rashomon, which kicked off the Asia Society series. Mizoguchi, who made such other unforgettable classics as The 47 Ronin, The Life of Oharu, Sansho the Bailiff, and Street of Shame, passed away in 1956 at the age of fifty-eight, having left behind a stunning legacy, of which Ugetsu might be the best, and now looking better than ever.

THE SETTLERS

Settler recites Jewish prayer in compelling documentary about ongoing battle between Israelis and Palestinians over land ownership and governance

THE SETTLERS (Shimon Dotan, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, March 3
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.facebook.com

Shimon Dotan’s The Settlers opens with purposefully shaky, uneasy shots from a car speeding down a highway and through a tunnel, then cuts to a calm, peaceful view of a vast, beautiful landscape interrupted by a community of bland houses, creating just the right mood shifts for this compelling documentary, which traverses the history of the controversial Israeli settlements that have been a pivotal part of a possible peace treaty between Israelis and Palestinians. Dotan speaks with Rabbi Hanan Porat, the Israeli man considered to be one of the founders of the settlement movement; Palestinian human rights activist Raja Shehadeh, esq.; and a wide range of settlers who defend their right to live where they want to. Dotan also traces the political history of the region over the last century, examining several wars and how the map of the area has continued to change. The film opens March 3 at Film Forum, with writer-director Dotan, whose previous award-winning films include Hot House and The Smile of the Lamb, participating in Q&As following the 7:30 show Friday night, the 7:15 show on Saturday, and the 2:50 show on Sunday.

PIRANDELLO 150: SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Who: Stacy Keach, Norman Lloyd
What: Free screening and Skype Q&A
Where: Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
When: Sunday, January 15, free, 1:20
Why: In 1976, actor Stacy Keach directed a modern-day version of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, set in a television studio. Adapted by soap opera writer Paul Avila Mayer (Ryan’s Hope), the PBS TV movie starred Julie Adams as the Mother, Andy Griffith as the Father, Patricia Hitchcock as the Character Lady, John Houseman as the Director, Beverly Todd as the Stepdaughter, and James Keach as, appropriately enough, the Son. The film is getting a rare public showing on Sunday, January 15, at 1:20, at Film Forum, and admission is free. And as an even more special treat, Stacy Keach (Fat City, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer) and executive producer Norman Lloyd — yes, that Norman Lloyd, the 102-year-old stage and screen actor, director, and producer who played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur, starred as Dr. Daniel Auschlander on St. Elsewhere, was the fool in the 1950-51 National Theatre production of King Lear directed by Houseman, was a Cavalcade of America radio regular during WWII, and was most recently seen as Amy Schumer’s father’s hospice friend in Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck — will be taking part in a live Skype Q&A following the screening, which is part of the Film Forum series “Pirandello 150,” a celebration of the 150th birthday of the Nobel Prize-winning dramatist that continues through January 19 with such other rarities as Paolo & Vittorio Taviani’s Kaos and Tu Ridi, Marcel L’Herbier’s The Late Mathias Pascal, Marco Bellocchio’s The Nanny and Henry IV with Marcello Mastroianni, and Alessandro Blasetti’s Liolà.

MARCEL PAGNOL’S MARSEILLE TRILOGY

Fanny (Orane Demazis) and César (Raimu) share a moment of happiness in MARIUS (courtesy Janus Films)

MARIUS (Alexander Korda, 1931)
FANNY (Marc Allégret, 1932)
CÉSAR (Marcel Pagnol, 1936)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
January 4-12
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

One of the great trilogies in the history of cinema, Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy will be playing at Film Forum January 4-12 in a new 4K restoration, including marathon viewings of Marius, Fanny, and César on January 7, 8, 11, and 12. French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and director Pagnol penned all three scripts, the first two based on his stage plays, as he investigated love, honor, betrayal, friendship, religion, scandal, and social ritual among the petit bourgeois, the lower-middle-class citizens of the port town of Marseille. Shot on location, the three films, also known as the Fanny Trilogy, center on the big, boisterous César (Raimu in a marvelous comedic tour de force), who runs a local bar with his ne’er-do-well son, Marius (Pierre Fresnay). Marius is childhood friends with the sweet Fanny (Orane Demazis), who declares her love for him only after the rich, successful older merchant Honoré Panisse (Fernand Charpin) requests her hand in marriage. As Fanny’s mother, Honorine (Alida Rouffe), and aunt, Claudine (Milly Mathis), contemplate the potential match, Fanny tries to convince Marius to marry her instead, but he is hesitant, drawn instead to the sea despite his love for Fanny. Directed by Alexander Korda (Rembrandt, The Private Life of Henry VIII), Marius is a rollicking good romance with a surprising dash of naughtiness and featuring an outstanding group of minor characters, including Paul Dullac as Félix Escartefigue, Alexandre Mihalesco as Piquoiseau, Robert Vattier as Albert Brun, and Edouard Delmont as Dr. Félicien Venelle. The camaraderie among the characters is infectious — many of the actors previously played the same roles onstage — with César leading the way, a big, boisterous man whose bravura mix of insults and praise is as potent as the drinks in his bar.

Things get serious for César (Raimu), Fanny (Orane Demazis), and Honoré Panisse (Fernand Charpin) in FANNY (courtesy Janus Films)

It’s a great start to the trilogy, which continues with 1932’s Fanny, directed by Marc Allégret (Zouzou, Lady Chatterley’s Lover). If you don’t want to know what happens next, don’t read on, but make sure to see all three films, as each one is a gem. Marius has headed out to sea for five years, leaving behind a pregnant Fanny, who is shocked but delighted when Panisse agrees to marry her anyway, raising the child as if he were his own. César is overjoyed to have a grandson, who is named after him, Césariot, even though all have decided to keep everything secret in order to avoid scandal. But when Marius shows up during a brief layover, he is curious about the baby and is determined to find out the truth. Most of the cast returns for Fanny, except Auguste Mouries now plays Escartefigue, along with such new characters as Mangiapan (Marcel Maupi) and the local priest, Elzéar Bonnegrâce (Louis Boulle).

Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy concludes with CÉSAR (courtesy Janus Films)

The conclusion, directed and written for the screen by Pagnol, César was made four years later but takes place twenty years in the future. As Panisse lies dying in bed, Father Elzear (Thommeray) presses him to confess his sins and, most important, reveal the truth about his son’s birth to the boy himself, Césariot (André Fouche). Meanwhile, Marius toils away in a garage in another town, having been out of everyone’s life for fifteen years. (If the plot of the entire trilogy sounds very familiar, then you must have seen Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.) The setup makes for some hysterical battles between the priest, the doctor, and Panisse, as organized religion takes some heavy hits. Pagnol also explores different reactions to death, sharing clever insight as well as sharp humor. The trilogy, which was restored by Compagnie Méditerranéenne de Film — MPC and the Cinémathèque Française and has been remade (in part or whole) by such directors as James Whale, Joshua Logan, and Daniel Auteuil, is thoroughly charming, a realistic depiction of life with all its grace and indignities. It won’t take long until you feel like you’re a member of this dysfunctional but enchanting family.

3-D AUTEURS: THE GREAT GATSBY

Nick (Tobey Maguire), Jay (Leonardo DiCaprio), Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and Tom (Joel Edgerton) are caught up in matters of the heart in THE GREAT GATSBY

THE GREAT GATSBY (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, November 16, 4:10; Saturday, November 19, 5:10; Monday, November 21, 12:30
Series runs November 11-29
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com

Baz Luhrmann’s sumptuous version of The Great Gatsby is a dazzling reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of old and new money and the American dream. The Australian director and his wife, costume and production designer extraordinaire Catherine Martin, have turned the classic tale into a lush spectacle without losing focus on the main story of life and love during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the male lead in Lurhmann’s contemporary take on Romeo + Juliet, is superb as Jay Gatsby, the mystery man previously portrayed by Warner Baxter in 1926, Alan Ladd in 1949, Robert Redford in 1974, and Toby Stephens in 2000, adding a compelling level of vulnerability to the character. Gatsby has built a magnificent palace for himself on Long Island, hosting wild parties that he doesn’t care about; all he truly wants is Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a former love who has married successful businessman Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and lives in a mansion right across the bay. The villainous Tom is having an affair with the lower-class Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), whose unaware husband, George (Jason Clarke), runs a gas station and garage in the Valley of Ashes. Although a loner, Gatsby befriends his neighbor, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a young, innocent bond trader who rents a modest home at the base of Gatsby’s enormous estate and whose cousin just happens to be Daisy. As Carraway is sucked into this glamorous, debauched society, which also includes wild and elegant golf champion Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), he is forced to reexamine his own hopes and dreams as he tries to find his place in the world.

Baz Luhrmann throws one helluva party in his reimagining of THE GREAT GATSBY

Luhrmann and cowriter Craig Pearce have framed the tale by putting Carraway, the narrator of the book and film, in a sanitarium, where a doctor (Jack Thompson) convinces him that writing down what happened with Gatsby will help him overcome his alcoholism and depression; the device, which is not part of the novel, is based on Fitzgerald’s own time spent in a sanitarium. Luhrmann and Pearce, who did extensive research for the project, also include elements from Fitzgerald’s Trimalchio, the first draft of The Great Gatsby, which will certainly anger purists. Purists are also likely to be furious at the soundtrack, which features songs by Jay Z (one of the film’s producers), his wife, Beyoncé, André 3000, will.i.am, Lana Del Rey, Gotye, and the xx alongside Jazz Age re-creations by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug.” But this is not your high school English teacher’s Gatsby; instead, it’s F. Scott Fitzgerald for the twenty-first century, not meant to be seen through the billboard spectacles of oculist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg but through 3-D glasses that invite viewers into the oh-so-fashionable goings-on in eye-popping ways. “Is all this made entirely from your own imagination?” Daisy asks Gatsby at one point. In this case, it’s made from the minds of two wildly inventive men, Luhrmann and Fitzgerald, who together throw one helluva party. Winner of two Academy Awards, for Best Costume Design (Catherine Martin) and Best Production Design (Martin and Beverley Dunn), The Great Gatsby is screening November 16, 19, and 21 in “3-D Auteurs,” which runs November 11-29 at Film Forum and consists of approximately three dozen 3-D feature films and shorts, including Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Takashi Miike’s Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, Three Stooges and Méliès shorts, and the wacky double feature of Johnnie To’s Office and George Sidney’s Kiss Me Kate.

3-D AUTEURS: GRAVITY

Space debris from a Russian satellite threatens an American shuttle crew in GRAVITY

GRAVITY (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Saturday, November 12, 9:20, Monday, November 14, 5:30,
Thursday, November 17, 12:30, Friday, November 25, 2:30
Series runs November 11-29
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
gravitymovie.warnerbros.com

Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a breathtaking thriller that instantly enters the pantheon of such classic space fare as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and The Right Stuff. And if you haven’t seen it in 3-D, how it’s being shown in the Film Forum series “3-D Auteurs” this month, well, you haven’t really seen it. While medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is fixing a computer glitch outside the shuttle Explorer, veteran astronaut and wisecracker Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), on his final mission before retirement, is playing around with a new jetpack and Shariff (voiced by Paul Sharma) is having fun going on a brief spacewalk. But disaster strikes when debris from a destroyed Russian satellite suddenly comes their way, killing Shariff and the rest of the crew and crippling the shuttle, leaving Stone and Kowalski on their own in deep space, their communication with Mission Control in Houston (voiced by Ed Harris, in a nod to his participation in Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff) gone as well. Kowalski is cool and calm, listening to country music as he tries to come up with a plan that will get them to the International Space Station, but the inexperienced Stone is running out of oxygen fast as she tumbles through the emptiness, Earth in the background, so close yet so far. Written by Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men) with his son Jonás, Gravity is spectacularly photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, the master behind numerous works by Cuarón and Terrence Malick (The New World, The Tree of Life), among others. Lubezki and his team even created a new LED light box to increase the film’s realism, which is nothing less than awe-inspiring and mind-bending as it takes place in real time. Despite the vastness of space, Gravity often feels claustrophobic, particularly as Stone struggles to get a breath or attempts to operate a foreign module.

Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) try to remain together in Alfonso Cuarón’s masterful space epic

Close-ups of Stone and Kowalski reveal reflections of the shuttle and Earth, emphasizing the astronauts’ dire situation as they engage in a very different kind of pas de deux. Gravity also succeeds where directors like James Cameron often fail, as a solid, relatively unsentimental and unpredictable script accompanies the remarkable visuals, which evoke both harrowing underwater adventures as well as dangerous mountain-climbing journeys. (Cuarón also manages to bring it all in in a terrifically paced ninety minutes.) Cuarón and Lubezki favor long takes, including an opening shot lasting more than thirteen minutes, immersing the viewer in the film, further enhanced by being projected in 3-D and IMAX 3-D, which is not used as merely a gimmick here. Stephen Price’s score increases the tension as well until getting melodramatic near the end. Clooney is ever dapper and charming and Bullock is appropriately nervous and fearful in their first screen pairing, even though they only make contact with each other through bulky spacesuits, their connection primarily via speaking. Cuarón, who also edited Gravity with Mark Sanger, has made an endlessly exciting film for the ages, a technological marvel that should continue to have a tremendous impact on the future of the industry. Winner of seven Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Visual Effects, Gravity is screening November 12, 14, 17, and 25 in “3-D Auteurs,” which runs November 11-29 at Film Forum and consists of approximately three dozen 3-D feature films and shorts, including Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Takashi Miike’s Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, Three Stooges and Méliès shorts, and the wacky double feature of Johnnie To’s Office and George Sidney’s Kiss Me Kate.

DON’T CALL ME SON

Pierre (Naomi Nero) watches his mother get taken away in Anna Muylaert’s DON’T CALL ME SON

DON’T CALL ME SON (MÃE SÓ HÁ UMA) (Anna Muylaert, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, November 2
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
zeitgeistfilms.com

Brazilian writer-director Anna Muylaert once again intricately explores the nature of class, identity, and family in her fifth feature film, the powerful and poignant Don’t Call Me Son. In last year’s award-winning The Second Mother, Muylaert told the story of a live-in housekeeper who was like a surrogate mother to the family she works for, but things change when her estranged teenage daughter comes to stay with her. In Don’t Call Me Son, a family is torn apart when it is discovered that the mother, Arcay (Dani Nefusi), actually stole her children, son Pierre (Naomi Nero) and daughter Jaqueline (Lais Dias), when they were babies, and the kids’ biological parents have been searching desperately for them ever since and have now found them. Pierre is a seventeen-year-old gender-bending bisexual musician who seems relatively comfortable in his own skin, at least for a seventeen-year-old gender-bending bisexual musician, until Arcay is arrested and imprisoned for kidnapping. She might not have been a model mother, but she was his mother, and he is devastated when he is suddenly forced to move in with his biological parents, Glória (also played by Nefusi) and Matheus (Matheus Nachtergaele), who are overjoyed to have him back but were expecting someone a little bit more traditional; however, Pierre’s new younger brother, Joca (Daniel Botelho), appears to be happy he now has such a cool, if tortured, sibling. Meanwhile, Jaqueline is taken away to live with her real parents. As Glória and Matheus persist in calling Pierre by the name they gave him at birth, Felipe, the teen acts out as he tries to figure out who he is and redefine his place in a world that has been turned upside down and inside out.

Jaqueline (Lais Dias) and Pierre’s (Naomi Nero) life together is suddenly thrown into upheaval in poignant Brazilian drama

Based on a true story, Don’t Call Me Son is a sensitive and honest exploration of just what family means, with intimate handheld camerawork by cinematographer Barbara Alvarez, taking viewers inside each character’s mind as it bounces between excitement and frustration. Nero makes an impressive debut as Pierre, lending complexity to a troubled teen that goes beyond the standard generational angst and ennui; his scenes in front of a mirror are simply dazzling. In an ingenious casting move, Muylaert (Collect Call, É Proibido Fumar) has Nefusi play Pierre’s birth mother and the woman who raised him, questioning just what it means to be a mother, which is further complicated because it is not obvious that the actress is performing the two parts, looking completely different in each role. Another star is Diogo Costa’s wardrobe, particularly after Pierre has moved in with his biological parents and decides to test their loyalty. There are too many plot holes and loose ends, but there’s also just the right amount of ambiguity as Muylaert considers the notion of home in clever and subtle ways.