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FILM FORUM JR.: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

The Monster (Boris Karloff) is getting ready to meet his mate in FRANKENSTEIN sequel

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, October 27, $7, 11:00 am
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

At the start of James Whale’s Frankenstein, actor Edward Van Sloan, who plays Dr. Waldman in the film, steps out from behind a curtain and tells the audience that what they are about to see “is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation; life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now’s your chance to uh, well — we warned you!” Instead of staying away, people flocked to the theaters, making Frankenstein such a hit that Universal produced a sequel, although it took longer than expected. At the beginning of Whale’s 1935 follow-up, Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) tells Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Walton) and Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), “The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson, the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate god,” letting them know that there was more to her story, picking up where the first movie left off. The Monster (Boris Karloff again, billed only by his last name) has survived the fire, and he is on the loose. Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive, reprising his role as the godlike creator) has survived as well and is ready to finally marry his sweetheart, Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson, taking over for an ill Mae Clarke).

The Bride (Elsa Lanchester) has a few things to say about her resurrection in Whale sequel

But their plans are interrupted by the arrival of the extremely strange and menacing Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who thinks that the Monster deserves a mate. Meanwhile, the Monster is traipsing through the woods, finding a friend in a blind violin-playing hermit (O. P. Heggie) and learning how to speak as he tries to avoid capture by the determined Burgomaster (E. E. Clive). Whale, who initially did not want to direct the sequel, has a ball with the film, infusing it with religious imagery, including having the Monster lifted up on a cross in a graveyard, and campy humor, particularly when Dr. Pretorius shows off his collection of rather silly miniature creatures to Dr. Frankenstein. Karloff, who was billed above the title, takes the Monster to another level, achieving sympathy as he learns more about what he is and comes to understand such feelings as longing and loneliness. Una O’Connor is a hoot as the loudmouth Minnie, practically serving as a one-woman Greek chorus. The scene in which the Monster waits for and then meets his mate (Lanchester, who is listed in the credits only as Mary Shelley) is a genuine cinema classic, layered with depth and meaning. While the first film was, and still is, shocking and horrifying, just as Van Sloan warned, the second is actually stranger, more satisfying, and, at its heart, more human. Interestingly, Bride of Frankenstein, which experienced various types of censorship back in the mid-1930s, is screening on October 27 at 11:00 am as part of the Film Forum Jr. series for kids and families and will be preceded by Ub Iwerks’s 1937 cartoon Skeleton Frolics for Halloween week; the series continues November 3 with Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, appropriately during election week, and later will show George Seaton’s 1947 Miracle on 34th Street on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

THE SQUARE

Ahmed Hassan fights for a better future for Egypt in THE SQUARE

THE SQUARE (AL MIDAN) (Jehane Noujaim, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 25 – November 13
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.thesquarefilm.com

“During the early days, we agreed to stay united no matter what,” Ahmed Hassan tells those around him in Jehane Noujaim’s powerful and important documentary The Square. “When we were united, we brought down the dictator. How do we succeed now? We succeed by uniting once again.” But Ahmed, one of several Egyptian revolutionaries who Noujaim follows for two years in the film, finds that it is not that easy to bring everyone together, as the government leaders continue to change and factions develop that favor the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Putting her own life in danger, Noujaim (The Control Room, Startup.com) is right in the middle of it all as she shares the stories of Ahmed, a young man who is determined to see the revolution through until peace and justice prevail; Magdy Ashour, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who must choose between his own personal beliefs and that of his power-hungry organization; and Khalid Abdalla, the British-Egyptian star of The Kite Runner and United 93 who becomes an activist like his father, serving as the revolution’s main link to the international community through the media and by posting videos. In The Square, a 2013 New York Film Festival selection, Noujaim also introduces viewers to human rights lawyer Ragia Omran, protest singer Ramy Essam, and filmmaker Aida El Kashef, none of whom are willing to give in even as the violence increases.

Massive crowds of Egyptians occupy Tahrir Square to demand freedom and democracy in THE SQUARE

Documentary offers an inside look at the occupation of Tahrir Square by Egyptians demanding freedom and democracy

In the documentary, Noujaim includes footage of televised political speeches and interviews that contradict what is actually happening in Tahrir Square as elections near. Reminiscent of Stefano Savona’s Tahrir: Liberation Square, which played at the 2011 New York Film Festival, The Square makes the audience feel like it’s in Tahrir Square, rooting for the revolutionaries to gain the freedom and democracy they so covet. The film also features several stunning shots of the massive crowds, most memorably as thousands of men kneel down in unison to pray to Mecca. Among its many strengths, The Square personalizes the revolution in such a way as to reveal that a small group of people can indeed make a difference, although sometimes they just have to keep on fighting and fighting and fighting. The Square opens October 25 at Film Forum, with Noujaim, Abdalla, and producer Karim Amer participating in Q&As following the 7:50 shows on October 25 and 26 and the 3:20 show on October 27.

Academy Award Nomination: Best Documentary Feature

CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915

Juliette Binoche stars as sculptor and mental patient Camille Claudel in heartbreaking film

CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 (Bruno Dumont, 2013)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
October 16-29
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.kinolorber.com

Juliette Binoche gives a gut-wrenching performance as the traumatized title character in Bruno Dumont’s heartbreaking Camille Claudel 1915. The film takes place over the course of several days in 1915, as the sculptor and former mistress of Auguste Rodin awaits a visit from her younger brother, poet, devout Christian, and diplomat Paul Claudel. Camille has been moved to an asylum in Montdevergues, where she prepares her own meals for fear of being poisoned on orders from Rodin, who she believes is still trying to ruin her life and career twenty years after their personal and professional relationships ended. Run by nuns, the asylum is home primarily to deeply disturbed women incapable of taking care of themselves and barely able to speak coherent sentences. Claudel, a loner who was committed by her family shortly after the death of her father, desperately wants to be released and get her life back, but everything seems to be poised against her. Binoche, her pale face appearing to have been chiseled like one of Claudel’s sculptures, plays Camille with a subtle yet stern beauty, giving several long, impassioned speeches that writer-director Dumont (Twentynine Palms, L’humanité) and cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines shoot in single takes, the camera remaining still, Camille framed like a painting. Throughout the film, Camille is seen amid mostly blacks, grays, browns, and whites, a monochromatic color scheme that echoes her work. The film has a cinéma vérité feel, as much of the sparse dialogue is improvised, many of the nuns are nurses at the asylum, and several of the patients are actually committed there, lending a neo-Realist quality to the austere setting. The film, which is “freely adapted from” Paul’s writings and letters, Camille’s letters, and medical records, is not a biopic; instead, it’s a fascinating study of a talented artist and the mental anguish that ultimately overwhelmed her.

AFTER TILLER

Dr. Susan Robinson has to make difficult choices when deciding whether to perform a late abortion

AFTER TILLER (Martha Shane & Lana Wilson, 2013)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 212-875-5600
Opens Friday, September 20
www.aftertillermovie.com

In After Tiller, directors and producers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson manage to humanize one of the most contentious, controversial, and complicated issues of our age: late abortion. In May 2009, Dr. George Tiller, who specialized in third-trimester abortions, was assassinated in front of his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. That left only four doctors in the United States who performed late abortions, each of whom had either trained or worked with Dr. Tiller. “It was absolutely no question in any of our minds that we were going to keep on doing his work,” one of those four doctors, Susan Robinson, says in the film. As After Tiller begins, Dr. Robinson works with Dr. Shelley Sella at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dr. LeRoy Carhart is a former U.S. Air Force colonel who operates the Abortion & Contraception Clinic of Nebraska, and Dr. Warren Hern is director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado. Shane and Wilson follow these four dedicated doctors who continue doing their work despite the personal danger associated with their profession, including harassment, murder, assault, and bombings. “When I walk out the door, I expect to be assassinated,” Dr. Hern says. The filmmakers show the doctors in their offices, meeting with women who are requesting late abortions for various reasons; Shane and Wilson also follow the abortion providers into their homes as they go on with their daily lives, offering an intimate portrait of these men and women who are so often called monsters but are firm in their belief that what they are doing is important and absolutely necessary, performing their jobs with care and understanding. However, Dr. Hern wonders if he should stop providing late abortions and just settle down peacefully with his new wife and adopted son, while Dr. Carhart and his wife opt to move out of Nebraska after a law change and meet resistance as they try to move their clinic to Maryland or Virginia.

Dr. Warren Hern is one of only four doctors in America who provides late abortions

The film also reveals that deciding to perform a late abortion is often an extremely difficult choice for the doctors as well as the patients and not something the providers do automatically when a woman comes to them. One of the most compelling scenes occurs when Drs. Sella and Robinson have a heart-wrenching disagreement over whether to proceed with a late abortion for a young woman, evaluating whether her reason is valid enough and lamenting that the ability of the woman to tell her story could affect the final decision. It’s a pivotal moment that also brings into focus the concerns of the American people; while less than one percent of the abortions performed in the country occur in the third trimester, the procedure is often the centerpiece of the antiabortion movement, but even pro-choice supporters will find themselves questioning the efficacy of all late abortions. The women come to the doctors for many reasons, ranging from the health of the child to economic situations to admitting that they either didn’t know or refused to accept that they were pregnant until it was too late. “It’s guilt no matter which way you go,” one desperate patient, whose child would be born with severe disabilities and would likely die within a year, tells Dr. Sella. “Guilt if you go ahead and do what we’re doing, or bring him into this world and then he doesn’t have any quality of life.” Although Shane and Wilson include footage of protestors, news reports, and congressional hearings, After Tiller is a powerful, deeply emotional documentary about the doctors and patients who must make impossible choices and live with their decisions for the rest of their lives. The film, which raises fascinating, difficult questions for which there are no easy answers, opens September 20 at Film Forum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Shane (Bi the Way) and Wilson will be at Film Forum on September 20-21 at the 8:10 screenings and September 22 at 4:30 to discuss the film; they will also participate in a series of Q&As at Lincoln Center, including September 20 at 7:00 with NARAL Pro-Choice New York, September 21 at 7:00 with the New York Abortion Access Fund, September 22 at 3:00 with Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and September 26 at 7:00 with Dr. Sara Miller of the Reproductive Health Access Project, in addition to a panel discussion on September 23 at 7:00 with Kassi Underwood of Exhale.

CONTEMPT

Brigitte Bardot shows off both her acting talent and beautiful body in Jean-Luc Godard’s CONTEMPT

CONTEMPT (LE MEPRIS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 6-19
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

French auteur Jean-Luc Godard doesn’t hold back any of his contempt for Hollywood cinema in his multilayered masterpiece Contempt, which is being shown September 6-19 in a fiftieth-anniversary restoration at Film Forum. Loosely based on Alberto Moravia’s Il Disprezzo, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as Paul Javal, a French screenwriter called to Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance ) to perform rewrites on Austrian director Fritz Lang’s (played by Lang himself) adaptation of The Odyssey by ancient Greek writer Homer. Paul brings along his young wife, the beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot), whom Prokosch takes an immediate liking to. With so many languages being spoken, Prokosch’s assistant, Francesca Vanini (Giorgia Moll), serves as translator, but getting the various characters to communicate with one another and say precisely what is on their mind grows more and more difficult as the story continues and Camille and Paul’s love starts to crumble. Contempt is a spectacularly made film, bathed in deep red, white, and blue, as Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard poke fun at the American way of life. (Both Godard and Coutard appear in the film, the former as Lang’s assistant director, the latter as Lang’s cameraman — as well as the cameraman who aims the lens right at the viewer at the start of the film.)

Producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) doesn’t always have the kindest of words for director Fritz Lang in CONTEMPT

Bardot is sensational in one of her best roles, whether teasing Paul at a marvelously filmed sequence in their Rome apartment (watch for him opening and stepping through a door without any glass), lying naked on the bed, asking Paul what he thinks of various parts of her body (while Coutard changes the filter from a lurid red to a lush blue), or pouting when it appears that Paul is willing to pimp her out in order to get the writing job. Palance is a hoot as the big-time producer, regularly reading fortune-cookie-like quotes from an extremely little red book he carries around that couldn’t possibly hold so many words. And Lang, who left Germany in the mid-1930s for a career in Hollywood, has a ball playing a version of himself, an experienced veteran willing to put up with Prokosch’s crazy demands. Vastly entertaining from start to finish, Contempt is filled with a slew of inside jokes about the filmmaking industry and even Godard’s personal and professional life, along with some of the French director’s expected assortment of political statements and a string of small flourishes that are easy to miss but add to the immense fun, all set to a gorgeous romantic score by Georges Delerue.

SON OF SUMMER SCI-FI, FANTASY & HORROR: METROPOLIS

Workers change shifts in the lower depths in Fritz Lang’s futuristic masterpiece, METROPOLIS

METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, September 2, 5:40, 8:30
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Film Forum master programmer Bruce Goldstein has made quite a scheduling choice for Labor Day, screening the 153-minute definitive reconstruction of Fritz Lang’s epic silent masterpiece Metropolis as part of the “Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror” series. Set one hundred years in the future, Metropolis pits man vs. machine, the corporation against the worker, and sin vs. salvation in a futuristic society run by business mogul Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel). While Fredersen rakes in the big bucks on the surface, the workers are treated like slaves way down below, in a dark, dank hell where they perform their automaton-like jobs. When Fredersen’s son, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), starts feeling sympathy for the workers and falls for Maria (Brigitte Helm), an activist who is trying to convince the men, women, and children of the lower depths that they deserve more out of life, Fredersen has mad inventor Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) create a man-machine version of Maria to steer his employees to a revolution that will lead them to self-destruct, although things don’t quite turn out as planned. Written by Lang and his wife, Thea Von Harbou, Metropolis is a visual marvel, featuring jaw-dropping special effects by Eugen Schüfftan (who was developing his Schüfftan process of using miniatures) and a stunning man-machine designed by sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff.

Walter Schulze-Mittendorff’s man-machine stirs up plenty of trouble among the workers in 2026

The complex story incorporates biblical elements, from direct references to the Tower of Babel to other allusions, including fire and flood, while focusing on the relationship between father and prodigal son that evokes both God and Jesus and Abraham and Isaac. A parable that also relates to the battle between employers and unions, the film features a series of doppelgängers: there are two Marias, the real one, who is loving and genuine, and the cold and calculating man-machine; Freder and worker 11811, Georgy (Erwin Binswanger), who temporarily switch places; and Fredersen’s wife, Hel, who died while giving birth to Freder but has been revived into the initial man-machine by Rotwang, who was also in love with her. The massive achievement was shot by Karl Freund (Dracula, Key Largo) with Günther Rittau and Walter Ruttmann, who give it a dazzlingly dramatic look in every scene, accompanied by a soaring score by Gottfried Huppertz that incorporates snippets of Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle’s “La Marseillaise.” The film declares, “The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!” Lang explores all three in this remarkable film, which has been shown over the years in various versions and with different music, most famously Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 score, but this screening at Film Forum is the real deal, getting as close to Lang’s intended original as possible. It’s quite a way to spend part of your Labor Day weekend.

SON OF SUMMER SCI-FI, FANTASY & HORROR: DEMON SEED / ROSEMARY’S BABY

Julie Christie is trapped in a suburban nightmare in Donald Cammell’s DEMON SEED

DEMON SEED (Donald Cammell, 1977)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, August 30, 1:00, 5:20, 9:40
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Back at Film Forum for the first time in seventeen years, the “Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror” series continues on August 30 with an inspired double feature of movies dealing with alternative forms of motherhood. First up is Donald Cammell’s creepy, claustrophobic 1977 futuristic thriller Demon Seed. Based on the novel by Dean R. Koontz, the film stars a surprisingly game Julie Christie as Susan Harris, a frustrated housewife whose husband, Alex (Fritz Weaver), is the leader of a team that has built a master computer known as Proteus (voiced by Robert Vaughn). When Alex goes off for several months to further Proteus’s already impressive attributes, the supercomputer starts developing a mind of its own, locking Susan in the house and deciding she must give birth to its child. Cammell, who codirected Performance with Nicolas Roeg, fills Demon Seed with trippy, psychedelic visuals and cool technological flourishes, along with an electronic score by Ian Underwood and Lee Ritenour supplementing Jerry Fielding’s central musical themes. The film delves into suburban paranoia with Toffler-esque flare and an Orwellian fear of artificial intelligence. The film harkens back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project while also influencing such future films as John Badham’s WarGames, which also names its supercomputer “Joshua” and casts Weaver look-alike John Wood as computer creator Dr. Stephen Falken.

Mia Farrow is trapped in an urban nightmare in Roman Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY

ROSEMARY’S BABY (Roman Polanski, 1968)
Friday, August 30, 2:50, 7:10
www.filmforum.org

Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein has paired Demon Seed with another gripping tale that offers a frightening look at mothering evil. Based on the novel by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby is one of the greatest psychological horror films ever made. When Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) move into the fancy Upper West Side apartment complex the Bramford (the Dakota), ready to start a family, Rosemary slowly grows suspicious of Guy’s new friends, particularly the sweet old couple next door (Oscar winner Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). The paranoid thriller is filled with truly scary scenes, both inside the apartment and on the streets of New York City. Like Demon Seed, it also includes a crazed conception scene and similar themes leading to their inevitable conclusions. While Rosemary’s Baby is by far the better film, with well-flushed-out characters and genuine scares that are not driven by technology but instead by inner (and outer) demons, it makes for a great double feature with Cammell’s truly whack Demon Seed. “Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror” continues through September 5 with such other double features as the 1958 and 1986 versions of The Fly, Quatermass and the Pit and Village of the Damned, It Came from Beneath the Sea and 20 Million Miles to Earth, and The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds.