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CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Restoration of Orson Welles’s CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT is playing special engagement at Film Forum

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (FALSTAFF) (Orson Welles, 1965)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
January 1-19
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

“Jesus, the days that we have seen,” Justice Shallow (Alan Webb) says to Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) several times at the beginning of Chimes at Midnight, as the two old friends walk through a snowy forest. “We have heard the chimes at midnight,” Falstaff replies. Welles’s career as a writer, director, and actor in theater, television, radio, and film was fraught with conflict as budget problems, scheduling issues, and fights with producers led to a slew of unfinished projects and works edited against his wishes. Welles might have achieved his legendary status with such classic films as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Touch of Evil, but his own personal favorite was the 1965 black-and-white Chimes at Midnight (aka Falstaff). Welles spent decades working on his unique retelling of the story of the big, bawdy Sir John, attempting various stage productions before finally making the film in Spain in 1964-65. The script was adapted from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, with historical narration by Sir Ralph Richardson from the sixteenth-century Holinshed’s Chronicles. Welles is both boisterous and sad as Falstaff, a larger-than-life braggadocio who is both friend and father figure to Hal (Keith Baxter), the Prince of Wales, whose father, Henry IV (Sir John Gielgud), gained the throne by murdering Richard II. Hal would rather cavort with Ned Poins (Tony Beckley), Falstaff, and Falstaff’s rogue circle, which includes Pistol (Michael Aldridge), Bardolph (Patrick Bedford), and Peto, than serve the king at the castle. Meanwhile, Richard II’s supporters, led by the Earl of Worcester (Fernando Rey), Henry Percy, known as Hotspur (Norman Rodway), and the Earl of Northumberland (José Nieto), plot to take back the crown. Much of the film is set in the Boar’s Head Tavern, which is run by the elderly Mistress Quickly (Margaret Rutherford) and where Falstaff engages with prostitute Doll Tearsheet (Jeanne Moreau). Everything comes crashing together during the Battle of Shrewsbury, one of the most exciting, breathtaking battle scenes ever filmed, a nearly ten-minute spectacle of fierce fighting interlaced with Falstaff’s comic bumbling and concluding with Hal and Hotspur’s climactic face-off.

Lines are drawn for classic battle after the Earl of Northumberland (Fernando Rey) meets with Prince Hal (Keith Baxte) and King Henry IV (Sir John Gielgud) in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Lines are drawn for classic battle after the Earl of Northumberland (Fernando Rey) meets with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) and King Henry IV (Sir John Gielgud) in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Chimes at Midnight, which Welles called his “greatest film ever,” is one of the grandest Shakespeare adaptations ever committed to celluloid, a staggering achievement despite all of the usual roadblocks in Welles’s way, including limited time with the actors (resulting in many pick-up shots of stand-ins for Gielgud and others, seen from the back — Welles has boasted about one scene in particular in which seven actors are all played by stand-ins), continual funding dilemmas (to the point where Welles convinced one producer that he was actually making Treasure Island), location issues, and poor audio dubbing (with Welles sometimes providing the dialogue for other characters; even the great Fernando Rey’s voice is dubbed in by someone else because of the Spanish actor’s strong accent). Welles plays Falstaff with a gluttonous lust for life that is intoxicating and infectious, even as his certain fate nears, echoing Welles’s personal life and professional career. “What is difficult about Falstaff, I believe, is that he is the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all drama,” Welles explained about the role, which he called “the most difficult part I ever played,” one he performed onstage, on film, and even on The Dean Martin Show. “He was a spokesman, you might say, for Merrie England, the old Merrie England of May mornings and midsummer eves, when even villainy was innocent,” Welles added. “The film was not intended as a lament for Falstaff, but for the death of Merrie England. . . . It is more than Falstaff who is dying. It’s the old England, dying and betrayed.” Cinematographer Edmond Richard (The Trial, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) gets right up close to Welles, exploiting his massive face and girth, while shooting other scenes from a distance, using a depth of focus that highlights the loneliness of the king in empty, shadowy rooms as he ponders his future; Richard makes the scenes in the tavern feel almost claustrophobic, concentrating on low angles and swirling movement. Baxter, who is eerily reminiscent of Anthony Perkins (Perkins, who had previously starred in Welles’s adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, actually wanted the role, but Welles had already promised it to Baxter, who performed it onstage as well), plays Hal with a childlike delight until things start getting serious during and after the intense, mind-blowing Battle of Shrewsbury, which directly influenced such films as Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan and is still as powerful as ever. In many ways, Chimes at Midnight is the culmination of Welles’s career as a writer, director, actor, and producer, his last fiction film to be released theatrically. “If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that’s the one I would offer up,” he said. “I think it’s because it is to me the least flawed; let me put it that way. It is the most successful for what I tried to do. I succeeded more completely in my view with that than with anything else.”

The film has been little seen over the decades, in part because of rights issues as well as the quality of the available prints. But in honor of its fiftieth anniversary and the centennial of Welles’s birth, a beautiful digital restoration of Chimes at Midnight, more than twenty years in the making (courtesy of Janus Films and the Criterion Collection), is now touring the country, screening January 1-12 at Film Forum. “There is no film we have waited longer for or worked harder to free up, and none we are prouder to present,” Criterion president Peter Becker recently told Wellesnet. Chimes at Midnight, in which Welles’s daughter, Beatrice, also appears, now looks better than ever, as if it’s a brand-new film, earning reconsideration as the masterpiece it truly is. And there’s more to come, as work continues on a full 4K restoration and preservation that, Becker noted, will take years to complete. The film, which won the Grand Technical Prize at Cannes and a Twentieth Anniversary Prize for Welles, takes on new meaning all these years later, knowing what became of Welles and his legacy. It’s very much a film about family, friendship, loyalty, and aging; even though Welles was only forty-nine at the time he made the film, he was already considered old and past his prime. This new restoration of Chimes at Midnight, however, shows the film to be an ageless classic, Welles firmly at the height of his estimable powers. (Baxter will be at Film Forum on January 6 to introduce the 7:30 screening and participate in a Q&A after.)

PIERROT LE FOU

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina are excited about brand-new restoration of Jean-Luc Godard classic

PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 18-24
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Art, American consumerism, the Vietnam and Algerian wars, Hollywood, and cinema itself get skewered in Jean-Luc Godard’s fab faux gangster flick / road comedy / romance epic / musical Pierrot Le Fou. Based on Lionel White’s novel Obsession, the film follows the chaotic exploits of Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina, Godard’s then-wife), former lovers who meet up again quite by accident. The bored Ferdinand immediately decides to leave his wife and family for the flirtatious, unpredictable Marianne, who insists on calling him Pierrot despite his protestations. Soon Ferdinand is caught in the middle of a freewheeling journey involving gun running, stolen cars, dead bodies, and half-truths, all the while not quite sure how much he can trust Marianne.

Filmed in reverse-scene order without much of a script, the mostly improvised Pierrot Le Fou was shot in stunning color by Raoul Coutard. Many of Godard’s recurring themes and styles appear in the movie, including jump cuts, confusing dialogue, written protests on walls, and characters speaking directly at the audience, who are more or less along for the same ride as Ferdinand. And as with many Godard films, the ending is a doozy. Two years ago, when the film was shown at Anthology Film Archives as part of a series selected by John Zorn, the avant-garde musician explained, “Pierrot holds a special place in my heart — I am really a Romantic, not a Postmodern — and this film’s music never ceases to reduce me to tears.” You can see and hear for yourself December 18-24 when Film Forum unveils the brand-new fiftieth-anniversary restoration of this Nouvelle Vague favorite.

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT

Documentary examines the extraordinary interview sessions between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock (photo by Philippe Halsman)

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (Kent Jones, 2015)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
December 2-17
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
cohenmedia.net/films

“In 1962, while in New York to present Jules and Jim, I noticed that every journalist asked me the same question: ‘Why do the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma take Hitchcock so seriously? He’s rich and successful, but his movies have no substance,’” French Nouvelle Vague auteur François Truffaut wrote in the preface to the second edition of what he called “the hitchbook,” the seminal film bible Truffaut/Hitchcock. “In the course of an interview during which I praised Rear Window to the skies, an American critic surprised me by commenting, ‘You love Rear Window because, as a stranger to New York, you know nothing about Greenwich Village.’ To this absurd statement, I replied, ‘Rear Window is not about Greenwich Village, it is a film about cinema, and I do know cinema.’” Truffaut was determined to change the prevailing belief that British director Alfred Hitchcock was a maker of studio fluff. “In examining his films,” Truffaut continued, “it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics’ approach to Hitchcock. That is what this book is all about.” The tome compiled a weeklong series of conversations between the thirty-year-old Truffaut and the sixty-three-year-old Hitchcock — the talks began on Hitch’s birthday — in the latter’s Hollywood studio office, with Helen Scott serving as translator. Although the interviews were recorded for audio, no film was shot; instead, Philippe Halsman took still photos. The story of the unique relationship between Truffaut, who as of 1962 had made only The 400 Blows and Shoot the Piano Player (he was in the midst of finalizing Jules and Jim), and Hitchcock, who was preparing his forty-eighth film, The Birds, is told in the splendid documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, which cleverly reverses the order of their names from the book it’s based on. Writer-director Kent Jones (head of the New York Film Festival), cowriter Serge Toubiana (former editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinéma) and editor Rachel Reichman lovingly combine Halsman’s pictures, audio clips from the original sessions, scenes from many of Hitchcock’s films (and a few of Truffaut’s), close-ups of dozens of pages from the book, rare archival footage, and new interviews with ten directors from around the world who weigh in on what makes Hitchcock’s work so special, so illuminating, so influential.

Sharing their praise are Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Arnaud Desplechin, James Gray, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Richard Linklater, and Paul Schrader, as they shed light on such classic films as Vertigo, Psycho, I Confess, The Wrong Man, Sabotage, Marnie, Rear Window, and others, with detailed shot-by-shot analysis while also praising the importance of “the hitchbook” itself. It all makes for an eye-opening crash course in cinema, and it’s likely to change the way you look and think about motion pictures. “It was a window into the world of cinema that I hadn’t had before, because it was a director simultaneously talking about his own work but doing so in a way that was utterly unpretentious and had no pomposity,” Gray (Little Odessa, Two Lovers) says about the book. “There was starting to be these kind of erudite conversations about the art form, but Truffaut was the first one where you really felt that they were talking about the craft of it,” Schrader (American Gigolo, Mishima) points out. “It’s not just that Truffaut wrote a book about Hitchcock. The book is an essential part of his body of work,” Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria, Carlos) explains. “I think it conclusively changed people’s opinions about Hitchcock, and so Hitchcock began to be taken much more seriously,” Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon) asserts. And Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) sums up, “It was almost as if somebody had taken a weight off our shoulders and said yes, we can embrace this, we could go.” Of course, the book not only created a critical reassessment of Hitchcock but also helped Truffaut’s budding career. Narrated by Bob Balaban, the film places the work of the two men, who remained good friends until Hitchcock’s death in 1980 at the age of eighty (sadly, Truffaut died four years later at the age of fifty-two), in context of the history of cinema. “Why do these Hitchcock films stand up well? Well, I don’t know the answer,” Hitchcock is heard saying at the beginning of the documentary. By the end of the documentary, you will surely know the answer. Following its recent screening at DOC NYC with Jones and Scorsese present, Hitchcock/Truffaut will be playing at Film Forum December 2-17.

DEMOCRATS

Douglas Mwonzora and Paul Mangwana try to find common ground when drafting Zimbabwe’s new constitution in DEMOCRATS (photo courtesy of Upfront Films)

DEMOCRATS (Camilla Nielsson, 2014)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
November 18 – December 2
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Danish filmmaker Camilla Nielsson’s gripping thriller of a documentary, Democrats, is how unsurprising all of the revelations are, how we all have become inured to the pervasive power of the dictatorships that control so much of the world. Following the controversial 2008 reelection of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, who had been in power since 1980, when the country officially gained its independence from the British-led Rhodesia, Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front), and election runner-up Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition party, MDC-T (Movement for Democratic Change), agreed to form an inclusive coalition government and collaborate on a new constitution, to be drafted by COPAC, a committee co-chaired by former minister of information Paul Mangwana of ZANU-PF and human rights lawyer and parliament member Douglas Mwonzora of MDC-T. On the advice of Danish journalist Peter Tygesen, Nielsson requested access to the intense negotiations, and what she was given was an amazing, exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the process. Over the course of twelve shoots of between one and three weeks from 2010 to 2013, Nielsson alternately follows Mangwana and Mwonzora as they take their case to the people of Zimbabwe, traveling to rural communities and cities as their teams organize nearly six thousand town-hall-style meetings. Mangwana is a big, jolly fellow who believes Mugabe and his government are untouchable, that they will do anything and everything they can to maintain their leadership status. “Be seen as a man of peace. Even if you are not,” he brazenly says to the camera, adding, “The game of politics is pretending.” Meanwhile, Mwonzora, a much more deliberate man, explains, “We never imagined that a black man could suppress his own people.” As he makes his way across Zimbabwe, Mwonzora supports fighting back using pen and brains, not violence, imploring people to “tell us how much power we should have.” Amid claims of illegal busing and harassment by military veterans and the secret police on behalf of Mugabe, the entire constitution-making process is on the verge of falling apart, but the absurdity reaches a whole new level when the safety and freedom of Mangwana and Mwonzora are threatened.

Mangwana and Mwonzora find their own personal safety and freedom threatened in DEMOCRATS (photo courtesy of Upfront Films)

Nielsson (Good Morning Afghanistan, The Children of Darfur) and editor Jeppe Bødskov tell the eye-opening story like a fictional police procedural, with scenes beautifully shot by cinematographer Henrik Bohn Ipsen, underscored by composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen’s subtle score that keeps the tension mounting. Of course, Democrats is not a fictional police procedural but the very real tale of a young nation’s desperate attempt to end the suffocating rule of a military dictatorship determined to keep all of its power, despite its lip service in support of a new constitution. “Democracies in Africa . . . It’s a difficult proposition. Because always the opposition will want much more than what it deserves,” Mugabe is shown saying at the beginning of the film. But as Ernest Nyamukachi, Mwonzora’s personal assistant, says, “Everywhere you are you are afraid.” (Most of the dialogue is in English, with occasional forays into various Zimbabwe languages, sometimes within the same sentence.) In her director’s statement, Nielsson notes, “We in the West sometimes have a hard time understanding why it is so difficult to create a viable democracy in other parts of the world. The democratic values we ourselves accept in a democracy as a matter of course . . . are not taken for granted everywhere on the globe. Democrats is a sort of a primer, a form of basic research, into how difficult it is to create democracy.” What is happening in Zimbabwe might be extremely hard to swallow, but it makes for one hell of an important film. Named Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, Democrats begins a two-week run at Film Forum on November 18, with Nielsson in person at the 7:10 show opening night.

HEART OF A DOG

Laurie Anderson meditates on life and death in intimately personal HEART OF A DOG

HEART OF A DOG (Laurie Anderson, 2015)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 21 – November 3
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.heartofadogfilm.com

Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson’s first full-length film in nearly thirty years, Heart of a Dog, is a deeply personal poetic meditation on death, yet it avoids being mournful and melancholy and is instead a wistful tribute to life. Anderson, who directed her concert film, Home of the Brave, in 1986, details the story of her beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, as the “mall dog” ages, goes blind, and dies. Using clips from home movies, archival footage, animation, and re-creations, Anderson delves into the nature of time, memory, beauty, and the process of grieving, referencing Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and David Foster Wallace as she narrates the tale in her familiar dramatic voice. The film is also about communication and language, two of her favorite topics, which come to the fore when she describes going to the mountains in Northern California with Lolabelle. “The idea was to take a trip and spend some time with her and do a kind of experiment to see if I could learn to talk with her. Now, I’d heard that rat terriers could understand about five hundred words, and I wanted to see which ones they were.” The story takes a fascinating turn when Anderson recognizes that Lolabelle, who she identifies as a painter, a pianist, and a protector, understands that circling hawks are a threat to her, that the dog is prey to them, a direct reference to Americans’ fear in a post-9/11 world, where armed soldiers are everywhere to guard against terrorist attacks, especially from the sky. Anderson goes back to her past, talking about a horrific childhood accident that almost left her paralyzed and led her to realize “that most adults have no idea what they’re talking about.” She also discusses her awkward relationship with her mother, subversive software, her obsession with JFK, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, ghosts, dreams, and sadness, explaining that her Tibetan teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, once told her that “you should try to learn how to feel sad without being sad,’” which, Anderson notes, “is actually really hard to do.”

Avoiding over-self-indulgence, Anderson tells this autobiographical “story about a story” with a diverse range of compelling imagery, from lovely scenes of snowy woods and birds in trees to scratched, distorted avante-garde footage and many scenes of rain, as if the camera is gently crying. The soundtrack, primarily Anderson on violin, is mostly elegiac, tinged with heartbreak as she philosophizes about life and death, though it is ultimately an uplifting experience. Anderson dedicates the film “to the magnificent spirit of my husband Lou Reed,” who makes a brief appearance as a doctor and is shown later on the beach, his bare feet in the sand; he also sings “Turning Time Around,” a song from his 2000 album, Ecstasy, over the closing credits, in which the punk godfather, who passed away in 2013 at the age of seventy-one, explains, “My time is your time when you’re in love / and time is what you never have enough of / You can’t see or hold it / It’s exactly like love.” Following its special screening at the New York Film Festival, Heart of a Dog is playing October 21 through November 3 at Film Forum, with Anderson, whose stunning immersive multimedia installation “Habeas Corpus” recently finished its short run at the Park Avenue Armory, present to talk about the film at select screenings on October 21, 23, 24, and 25.

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Roy Dupuis plays a heroic woodsman in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnsons unpredictably strange and wonderful homage to early cinema, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

Roy Dupuis plays a heroic woodsman in Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s unpredictably strange and wonderful homage to lost early cinema, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson, 2015)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 7-20
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
theforbiddenroom-film.com

Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s The Forbidden Room is a deliriously mesmerizing epic tone poem, a crafty, complex avant-garde ode to cinema as memory, and memory as cinema. An homage to the lost films of the silent era, it is the illegitimate child of Bill Morrison and David Lynch, of Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger, of D. W. Griffith and Josef von Sternberg. The impossible-to-describe narrative jumps from genre to genre, from submarine thriller to Western adventure to murder yarn, from romantic melodrama and crime story to war movie and horror tale, complete with cannibals, vampires, poisoned leotards, “valcano” eruptions, caged lunatics, butt obsession, squid theft, explosive jelly, a fantastical mustache, and skeletal insurance defrauders. Intertitles that often fade away too soon to decipher help propel the plot, contain lines from John Ashbery and the Bible, and blast out such words as “Deliverer of Doom,” “Diablesa!” and “Trapped!” Text in intricate fonts announces each new character and actor, including Maddin regular Louis Negin as the Sacrifice Organizer, Slimane Dazi as shed-sleeper and pillow-hugger Baron Pappenheim, Lewis Furey as the Skull-Faced Man, and Roy Dupuis as a “mysterious woodsman” determined to rescue captured amnesiac Margot (Clara Furey) from the evil clutches of the Red Wolves. Also involved in the bizarre festivities are Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling, and Maria de Medeiros.

Although shot digitally, the film explores photographic emulsion and time-ravaged nitrate while treating celluloid as an art object unto itself, looking like Maddin (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, My Winnipeg) and Johnson stomped on, burned, tore up, and put back together the nonexistent physical filmstrip. Thus, major kudos are also due Maddin’s longtime editor, John Gurdebeke, and music composers Galen Johnson, Jason Staczek, and Maddin himself for keeping it all moving forward so beautifully. The film was photographed by Benjamin Kasulke and Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron in alternating scenes of black-and-white, lurid, muted color, and sepia tones that offer constant surprises. The Forbidden Room might be about the magic of the movies, but it is also about myth and ritual, dreams and fantasy as it explores storytelling as psychodrama. Oh, and it’s also about taking baths, as Marv (Negin) so eagerly explains throughout the film. But most of all, The Forbidden Room is great fun, a truly unpredictable and original work of art that is a treat for cinephiles and moviegoers everywhere. Following its recent screenings at the New York Film Festival, The Forbidden Room is opening theatrically on October 7 at Film Forum, with Maddin present on October 12 for a Q&A after the 7:00 show (moderated by Jonathan Marlow) and to introduce the 9:30 show.

VITTORIO DE SICA: MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni star as lovers in a rather tempestuous relationship in MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE

MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE (Vittorio De Sica, 1965)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, September 20, and Monday, September 21
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren have a blast playing off their reputations in Vittorio De Sica’s Oscar-nominated romantic farce, Marriage Italian Style. The colorful 1964 film is a kind of follow-up to Pietro Germi’s 1961 comedy, Divorce Italian Style, which earned Mastroianni an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. In Marriage, which is based on Eduardo De Filippo’s 1946 play, Filumena Marturano, Mastroianni stars as Domenico Soriano, a well-to-do businessman who takes an instant liking to seventeen-year-old prostitute Filumena (an Oscar-nominated Loren) in a Naples brothel during a WWII air raid. Their relationship secretly blossoms, but when Filumena grows tired of being hidden by Domenico, treated more like a maid than a lover, she decides to take matters into her own hands, with more than a few surprises. Mastroianni is exceptional as the smooth-talking, dapper, and elegant Domenico, who can’t keep away from beautiful young women, while Loren, who previously worked with De Sica in The Gold of Naples and Two Women, winning an Oscar for Best Actress in the latter, is at her fiery best as the hot-blooded hooker trying to raise her station in life. Produced by Carlo Ponti during the brief annulment period in his marriage to Loren, the film, which is told partly in flashback, also features Tecla Scarano as Domenico’s maid, Rosalia, and Aldo Puglisi as Domenico’s right-hand man, Alfredo, who takes quite a shine to Filumena. Armando Trovajoli’s lush, romantic score adds wonderful irony to the comic proceedings. And just wait till you see Loren in that mind-blowing black lingerie. Marriage Italian Style is screening September 20 & 21 as part of Film Forum’s twenty-four-day retrospective of elegant actor-director De Sica, one of the great Italian neorealists; the series continues through October 8 with such other seminal works as Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan, Umberto D., General Della Rovere, Shoeshine, Two Women, and The Earrings of Madame De . . .