Tag Archives: film forum

ARMY OF SHADOWS

Lino Ventura is leading a seemingly impossible mission in ARMY OF SHADOWS

L’ARMÉE DES OMBRES (ARMY OF SHADOWS) (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
August 26 – September 1
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Based on the novel by Joseph Kessel (Belle de Jour), Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 WWII drama Army of Shadows got its first theatrical release in America in 2006, in a restored 35mm print supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Pierre Lhomme, who shot it in a beautiful blue-gray palette. The film centers on a small group of French resistance fighters, including shadowy leader Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), the smart and determined Mathilde (Simone Signoret), the nervous Jean-François (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the steady and dependable Felix (Paul Crauchet), the stocky Le Bison (Christian Barbier), the well-named Le Masque (Claude Mann), and the unflappable and practical Gerbier (Lino Ventura). Although Melville, who was a resistance fighter as well, wants the film to be his personal masterpiece, he is too close to the material, leaving large gaps in the narrative and giving too much time to scenes that don’t deserve them. He took offense at the idea that he portrayed the group of fighters as gangsters, yet what shows up on the screen is often more film noir than war movie. However, there are some glorious sections of Army of Shadows, including Gerbier’s escape from a Vichy camp, the execution of a traitor to the cause, and a tense Mission: Impossible–like (the TV series, not the Tom Cruise vehicles) attempt to free the imprisoned Felix. But most of all there is Ventura, who gives an amazingly subtle performance that makes the overly long film (nearly two and a half hours) worth seeing all by itself. Army of Shadows is once again back at Film Forum for a special one-week return engagement August 26 – September 1.

THE QUAY BROTHERS — ON 35MM

Christopher Nolan and the Quay Brothers will join forces at Film Forum for a special week-long presentation (Quay Brothers photo © Robin Holland)

Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
August 19-25
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

In such films as Memento, Inception, and Interstellar, British-American writer-director Christopher Nolan has shown a flair for unusual storytelling devices and complex narratives. “I decided to structure my story in such a way as to emphasize the audience’s incomplete understanding of each new scene as it is first presented,” he said about his debut feature, 1998’s Following, and a similar aesthetic can be applied to the works of the Quay Brothers. Pennsylvania-born, England-based twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have been making complex narratives for three dozen years, short films and feature-length tales that push the boundaries of storytelling conventions. In hypnotic films such as In Absentia, The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep), and their universally acclaimed masterpiece, Street of Crocodiles, they use fragile dolls and puppets, psychologically tantalizing Expressionistic imagery, and experimental music to draw viewers into their Gothic, industrial, dreamlike fantasy world. In fall 2009, their mind-blowing sets were on display in the exhibit “Dormitorium: Film Décors by the Quay Brothers” at Parsons the New School for Design, and the brothers were justly celebrated in the wide-ranging 2012-13 MoMA retrospective “Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets.” Now they have joined forces with Nolan for a special traveling program that debuts August 19-25 at Film Forum, consisting of the abovementioned three shorts, all restored in 35MM, and the world premiere of Nolan’s documentary about the brothers, simply titled Quay.

The meditative, mesmerizing In Absentia, dedicated to a woman “who lived and wrote to her husband from an asylum,” boasts a gorgeous minimalist score by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) is a fabulously layered film that switches back and forth between color and black and white, live action and stop-motion animation, as a woman has a remarkable dream. And Street of Crocodiles is an award-winning adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s story told the Quay way, with eerie dolls and puppets, ominous screws, and various machine parts come to life. In the three works, light, shadow, and repetitive movement create a dark but compelling mood while providing no easy answers for what is actually occurring onscreen. “That’s the question nobody’s ever asked us: ‘What are you doing?!’ or ‘What are you doing to us?’” Stephen and Timothy told Senses of Cinema in a 2001 interview. Thus, it is no surprise that some of the their major influences are Franz Kafka, Jan Švankmajer, and Leoš Janáček. Nolan and the brothers, who look rather amazing at the age of sixty-eight, will be at Film Forum on August 19 for Q&As after the 7:00 & 9:30 screenings, and the Quays will be back August 20-22 to talk about their work at the 7:00 show each night. In addition to making astonishing, hallucinatory films, they are fun to listen to, so don’t miss this opportunity that we cannot recommend highly enough.

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR: 70th ANNIVERSARY OF BOMBING

A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) examine their Hiroshima affair in Alain Resnais classic

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (Alain Resnais, 1959)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Thursday, August 6, 12:40, 3:00, 5:10, 7:10, 9:10
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

In July 1959, Cahiers du cinéma published a roundtable discussion with Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and others about Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, in which Rohmer said, “Hiroshima is a film about which you can say everything. . . . Perhaps Hiroshima really is a totally new film. . . . I think that, in a few years, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, we shall know whether Hiroshima was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema. . . . In any case it is an extremely important film, but it could be that it will even gain stature with years.” Some four and a half decades later, Rohmer’s prediction has come true, as a stunning new 4K digital restoration reveals Hiroshima Mon Amour to indeed be one of the most important films in the history of cinema, redefining just what the medium is capable of, as fresh and innovative today as it was to Rohmer, Godard, Rivette, et al. upon its initial release. As the black-and-white film opens, two naked, twisted bodies merge together in bed, first covered in glittering ashes, then a kind of acid rain. The woman (Emmanuelle Riva) is a French actress who is in Hiroshima to make a movie about peace. He (Eiji Okada) is a Japanese architect, a builder working in a city that has been laid to waste. Both married with children, they engage in a brief but torrid affair; as her film prepares to wrap, she gets ready to leave, but he begs her to stay. Theirs is a romance that could happen only in Hiroshima.

Director Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, Same Old Song), who passed away on March 1 at the age of ninety-one, was meticulous with every detail of the film, from the casting to Marguerite Duras’s stirringly poetic, Oscar-nominated script and dialogue, from Georges Delerue’s and Giovanni Fusco’s powerful, wide-ranging score to crafting each shot as a work of art in itself, using two cinematographers, Michio Takahashi in Japan and Sacha Vierny in France, to emphasize a critical visual difference between the contemporary scenes in Hiroshima and the woman’s past with a German soldier (Bernard Fresson) in Nevers. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a haunting experience, examining love and loss among the ruins of war as two people, at least temporarily, try to create something new. Riva (Three Colors: Blue, Thomas the Impostor) is mesmerizing as the confused, unpredictable woman, her eyes so often turned away from the man, unwilling to face the future, while Okada (Woman in the Dunes, The Yakuza) can’t keep his eyes off her, desperate for their romance to continue. Riva bookended her long career by starring in two of the most unusual yet beautiful love stories ever made, as more than fifty years after Hiroshima she would be nominated for an Oscar for her hypnotizing performance as an elderly woman debilitated by a stroke in Michael Haneke’s Amour. The glorious 4K restoration of Hiroshima Mon Amour,, supervised by Renato Berta, who was Resnais’s chief cameraman on four projects, makes it, to use the words of Eric Rohmer, feel like a totally new film, like we’re experiencing it for the very first time all over again. Hiroshima Mon Amour is having five special screenings on August 6 in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the actual bombing that led to the end of WWII.

TRUE CRIME — HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER

MIchael Rooker stars as a troubled murderer in HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER

HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (John McNaughton, 1986)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Thursday, July 30, 10:15
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

More than twenty-five years ago, when director John McNaughton (Mad Dog and Glory, Wild Things) was asked by executive producers Malik B. and Waleed B. Ali to make a low-budget horror film, he and cowriter Richard Fire decided to base their tale on the exploits of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, whose story McNaughton had just seen on 20/20. The result was this creepy, dark, well-paced effort starring Michael Rooker as Henry, a brooding, casual serial killer who can’t quite remember how he murdered his mother. Henry lives in suburban Chicago with ex-con Otis (Tom Towles), whose sexy young sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), comes to stay with them to get away from her abusive husband. As the relationship among the three of them grows more and more complicated, Henry continues to kill people — and get away with it. The opening tableau of some of Henry’s murder victims — the actual killings aren’t shown in the beginning — is beautifully done, although it also fetishizes violence against women, which is extremely disturbing. (Several of the victims are played by the same woman, Mary Demas, in different wigs.) Henry, which was not released until 1989 because of its graphic content, was nominated for six Independent Spirit Awards in 1990, and Rooker was named Best Actor at the Seattle International Film Festival. The film is screening July 30 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines tales as Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdou, Alain Resnais’s Stavisky, Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers, and a double features of Barbet Schroeder’s Reversal of Fortune and Peter Medak’s The Krays.

TRUE CRIME: M

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) takes a good look at himself in Fritz Lang classic

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, July 22, 10:00
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Fritz Lang’s first sound film, following such classic silent works as Metropolis and Die Nibelungen, is a masterpiece of precision, a crime thriller nonpareil in its examination of a serial killer, mob justice, and the psychological nature of good and evil. In M — Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, Peter Lorre stars as Hans Beckert, a creepy young man who befriends children before abducting and murdering them. Even with a reward out for his capture, he can’t stop himself from taking yet more little girls, in broad daylight, and writing letters to the police and a local newspaper, practically daring them to catch him. As his spree continues, the local community grows more and more frightened and suspicious, and men and women start looking suspiciously at anyone who even so much as nods to a child on the streets, mass hysteria beckoning. As the police try to figure out a plan of action, the criminals band together and hire beggars to try to track down Beckert, since the larger police presence is negatively impacting their business. Eventually, Beckert, who has a fondness for whistling Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” is spotted with a child, leading to a series of scenes that are simply spectacular in the flow of their movement as the riveting denouement approaches.

In making M, Lang was inspired by real events involving multiple serial killers. Although the film in no way preaches, Lang, who cowrote the script with his then-wife, Thea von Harbou, considered M very much a message picture. On May 20, 1931, he wrote in the German newspaper Die Filmwoche, “If this film based on factual reports helps to point an admonishing and warning finger at the unknown, lurking threat, the chronic danger emanating from the constant presence among us of compulsively and criminally inclined individuals, forming, so to speak, a latent potential that may devour our lives in flames—and especially the lives of the most helpless among us—and if the film also helps, perhaps, even to avert this danger, then it will have served its highest purpose and drawn the logical conclusion from the quintessential facts assembled in it.” M feels eerily prescient and especially relevant today, when parents’ fear for the safety of their children has perhaps never been greater. Seeing adults waiting outside schools, praying for their kids to be out of harm’s way, is something that can now be witnessed across America day after day.

Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) doesn’t like what he sees in M

Lorre (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Maltese Falcon) is exceptional as Beckert, a baby-faced man who might not be quite as evil as everyone imagines. Lang and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner (Nosferatu, Diary of a Lost Girl) regularly show Beckert in shadow and in mirrors, as if there are two sides to this child killer. Lang uses no musical score, instead allowing natural sound, and very often pure silence, as Lang (Fury, Ministry of Fear) recognizes that he doesn’t need to overplay his hand. As depicted in the film, if there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, from cops and criminals to blind balloon sellers and mothers and fathers, it’s that there is nothing worse than a man who murders children. Yet Lang ultimately is able to extract some sympathy for Beckert, who makes a powerful plea near the end of the film. Watching M is a gripping, unforgettable experience, despite its terrifying subject matter.

M is screening July 22 at 10:00 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines favorites as Sidney Lumet’s Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, Tadashi Imai’s Darkness at Noon, John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and double features of Richard Fleischer’s The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing and Compulsion and William Friedkin’s The French Connection and The Brink’s Job.

TRUE CRIME: MEMORIES OF MURDER

Detectives Park (Song Kang-ho) and Cho (Kim Roe-ha) are on the case in MEMORIES OF MURDER

MEMORIES OF MURDER (SALINUI CHUEOK) (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Saturday, July 18, 4:30, and Saturday, July 25, 4:40
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Inspired by actual events, Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder is a psychological thriller set in a rural South Korean town. With a serial killer on the loose, Seoul sends experienced inspector Suh (Kim Sang-kyung) to help with the case, which is being bungled by local detectives Park (Song Kang-ho) and Cho (Kim Roe-ha), who consistently tamper with evidence, bring in the wrong suspects, and torture them in both brutal and ridiculously funny ways. But as the frustration level builds and more victims are found, even Suh starts considering throwing away the book and doing whatever is necessary to catch the killer. Bong’s first major success, earning multiple awards at film festivals around the world, Memories of Murder is a well-paced police procedural that contains just enough surprises to overcome a few too many genre clichés. The film is beautifully shot by Kim Hyung-gu, from wide-open landscapes to a busy, crowded factory. But the film is dominated by Song’s (The Host, Snowpiercer) big, round face, a physical and emotional wonder whether he’s goofing around with a prisoner or dead-set on catching a criminal. Winner of numerous international film festival awards, Memories of Murder is screening July 18 & 25 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines favorites as Sidney Lumet’s Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, Franceso Rosi’s The Mattei Affair, Fritz Lang’s M, and double features of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Tom Kalin’s Swoon and Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher and I Want to Live!

TRUE CRIME: BONNIE AND CLYDE

Faye Dunaway and Clyde Barrow glamorize bank robbery in Arthur Penn classic

BONNIE AND CLYDE (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, July 17, and Saturday, July 18
Series continues through August 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Arthur Penn changed the course of Hollywood — and world cinema — in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde, a film previously offered to such Nouvelle Vague luminaries as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Cowritten by David Newman (Superman I-III) and Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer), the film mythologizes the true story of depression-era bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, played magnificently by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. At its heart, Bonnie and Clyde is a passionate yet unusual love story, filled with close-ups of the gorgeous Dunaway, who is first seen naked, running to her bedroom window confident and carefree, more a modern 1960s woman than a poor 1930s small-town waitress. Meanwhile, Barrow might know how to shoot a gun, but he’s a dud in bed; “I ain’t much of a lover boy,” he tells Bonnie early on, so their passion plays out in fast-moving car chases and shootouts rather than under the covers (while also playing off of Beatty’s already well-deserved reputation as a ladies’ man). They pick up an accomplice in gas-station attendant C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) and are soon joined by Clyde’s brother, Buck (Gene Hackman), and his wife, Blanche (Oscar winner Estelle Parsons), and continue their rampage as heroic, happy-go-lucky hold-up artists, leading up to one of the most influential and controversial endings ever put on celluloid, an unforgettable finale of violent and poetic beauty. Penn (Little Big Man, Target), editor Dede Allen (The Hustler, Serpico), and Oscar-winning cinematographer Burnett Guffey (All the King’s Men, Birdman of Alcatraz) redefined the gangster picture with their creative use of slow motion, long takes, and crowded shots, defying Hollywood conventions in favor of unique and innovative storytelling devices, allowing the film to work on multiple levels. Nominated for ten Academy Awards, Bonnie and Clyde is screening July 17 & 18 as part of Film Forum’s “True Crime” series, which continues through August 5 with such other ripped-from-the-headlines favorites as Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers, and double features of John Milius’s Dillinger and Don Siegel’s Escape from Alcatraz and Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place and The Boston Strangler.