Tag Archives: film forum

INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION

Gian Maria Volontè stars as a man seemingly above the law in Elio Petri’s 1970 Italian absurdist farce

INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (INDAGINE SU UN CITTADINO AL DI SOPRA DI OGNI SOSPETTO) (Elio Petri, 1970)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 28 – October 4
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

As Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion begins, a man (Gian Maria Volontè) kills a woman (Florinda Bolkan) in the midst of some rather kinky sex. The man then goes out of his way to leave behind evidence tying him to the brutal crime, including making sure he is spotted as he exits the woman’s building complex. It is soon revealed that he is the former head of homicide in Rome who has just been promoted to chief of political intelligence, his victim a married lover of his who enjoyed acting out real murder cases with him. “How will you kill me this time?” she asks in a flashback, not knowing where their games will ultimately lead. For the rest of Elio Petri’s (A Quiet Place in the Country) absurdist farce, the man practically dares his colleagues to catch him as he continues to build a case against himself and rails against criminal and political terrorists and subversives in neo-fascist romps, filmed in daring close-up, that emphasize the importance of keeping the masses repressed. Shot in broad colors and featuring a playful score by Ennio Morricone, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is an enticing police procedural — in which the culprit is the man in charge of the case — as well as a satiric look at the state of Italian politics in 1970, as social unrest and sexual freedom grew throughout Europe and America. “Repressing all those evils is to cure them,” the man declares in a fiery speech to his department. Volontè (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More) clearly has a ball as a man who either wants to be caught or is out to prove that he is indeed above the law, Petri carefully keeping his motive ambiguous in this wonderful black comedy. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Grand Prize at Cannes, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion will be screening in a new DCP restoration at Film Forum September 28 through October 4, with Sony restoration expert Grover Crisp on hand to introduce the 7:30 screening on opening night.

THE FRENCH OLD WAVE: GRAND ILLUSION

Jean Renoir’s GRAND ILLUSION continues its seventy-fifth anniversary celebration as part of Film Forum’s “The French Old Wave” series

GRAND ILLUSION (Jean Renoir, 1937)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, September 10, 5:10
Series continues through September 13
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

If you’ve never seen this remarkable cinematic achievement, prepare to be overwhelmed by Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece. The first foreign film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Grand Illusion is set in a POW camp during WWI, where everyman pilot Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), by-the-book Captain de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay), lovable Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), and others are being held by the aristocratic Captain von Rauffenstein (an unforgettable Erich von Stroheim). Proclaimed “cinematic public enemy no. 1” by Joseph Goebbels, Grand Illusion takes on anti-Semitism, class structure, and religion in addition to war, a humanist film that is as relevant as ever seventy-five years after its initial release. It will be screening on September 10 at Film Forum as part of “The French Old Wave” in a new 35mm restored print (shown earlier this year at Film Forum), made in honor of the film’s seventy-fifth anniversary. The series continues through September 13 with such classics as Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and Renoir’s The Rules of the Game in addition to double features of Jean Grémillon’s Lumière d’Eté and Le Ciel Est à Vous, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s L’Assassin Habite au 21 and Quai des Orfèvres, and Grémillon’s Remorques and L’Étrange Monsieur Victor.

CITIZEN KANE VS. VERTIGO

CITIZEN KANE is back on the campaign trail, seeking victory

CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles, 1941
Film Forum
209 West Houston St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
September 5-11
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.com
www2.warnerbros.com

Citizen Kane is the best-made film we have ever had the pleasure to watch — again and again and again — and it is even more brilliant on the big screen. A young, brash, determined Orson Welles created a masterpiece unlike anything seen before or since — a beautifully woven complex narrative with a stunning visual style (compliments of director of photography Gregg Toland) and a fabulous cast of veterans from his Mercury radio days, including Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Paul Stewart, and Agnes Moorehead. Each moment in the film is unforgettable, not a word or shot out of place as Welles details the rise and fall of a self-obsessed media mogul. The film is prophetic in many ways; at one point Kane utters, “The news goes on for twenty-four hours a day,” foreseeing today’s 24/7 news overload. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen it and you know what Rosebud refers to; the film is about a whole lot more than just that minor mystery. Like every film Welles made, Citizen Kane was fraught with controversy, not the least of which was a very unhappy William Randolph Hearst seeking to destroy the negative of a film he thought ridiculed him. Kane won only one Oscar, for writing — which also resulted in controversy when Herman J. Mankiewicz claimed that he was the primary scribe, not Welles. The film lost the Oscar for Best Picture to John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, but it has topped nearly every greatest-films-of-all-time list ever since. However, after being number one on Sight & Sound’s poll that comes out every ten years (in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2002), Citizen Kane has shockingly been beaten out this year by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, which has been climbing the Sight & Sound spiral staircase from number 7 in 1982 to number 4 in 1992 and number 2 in 2002 after not having even made the top ten in 1962 and 1972. Film Forum is setting the two films against each other this month, with Citizen Kane screening September 5-11, followed by Vertigo, which isn’t even the best Hitchcock film, being shown September 12-18, giving everyone a chance to see just how wrong Sight & Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, is.

UNIVERSAL 100: THE NAKED CITY

THE NAKED CITY is part of Universal Studios centennial celebration at Film Forum

THE NAKED CITY (Jules Dassin, 1948)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, August 3, 3:30, 7:00
Series runs through August 9
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Jules Dassin’s police procedural was one of the first films shot on location in New York City, bringing to life the grit of the streets. Barry Fitzgerald stars as Lt. Muldoon, an Irish cop who knows the game, never allowing anything to get in the way of his sworn duty to uphold the law while never getting too emotionally involved. A model has turned up dead, and young detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) is heading up the investigation, which includes such suspects as swarthy Frank Niles (Howard Duff). Producer Mark Hellinger’s narration is playful and knowing, accompanying William Daniels’s great camerawork through Park Avenue and the Lower East Side, stopping at little city vignettes that have nothing to do with the story except to add to the level of reality. The thrilling conclusion takes place on the Williamsburg Bridge. The Naked City will be screening on August 3 at Film Forum in a double feature with George Sherman’s 1950 crime thriller, The Sleeping City, starring Richard Conte, as part of “Universal 100,” a celebration of the studio’s centennial, which continues with such other great twinbills as Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop and Steven Spielberg’s Duel as well as Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

UNIVERSAL 100: SCARLET STREET

Femme fatale Joan Bennett gets her claws into meek amateur painter Edward G. Robinson in Fritz Lang’s psychological film noir SCARLET STREET (courtesy Photofest)

SCARLET STREET (Fritz Lang, 1948)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, July 22, and Monday, July 23
Series continues through August 9
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s adaptation of Jean Renoir’s 1931 La Chienne, based on the novel by Georges de La Fouchardière, is a transplanted German street film moved to New York City. Edward G. Robinson stars as Christopher Cross, one of the all-time-great saps in the history of cinema. A henpecked cashier at a large clothing store where he has just been given his twenty-five-year gold watch, Cross instantly falls in love with a floozy he meets on a rainy night, Kitty March (Joan Bennett), who is soon conspiring with her sleazy boyfriend, Johnny (Dan Duryea), to bilk Cross, thinking that he is a wealthy painter whose canvases go for upwards of fifty grand apiece. Meanwhile, Cross continues to think that Kitty is a good girl who will marry him if he were free. But as Chris’s suspicions about Johnny grow, so does the tension, leading to a classic noir finale. Filmed on Hollywood sets designed to resemble Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, Scarlet Street is a dark, somber psychological thriller built around a mark and a femme fatale, reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 tale The Blue Angel, in which Emil Jannings is willing to sacrifice everything for Marlene Dietrich. Robinson, so good at playing tough gangsters, shows a surprisingly vulnerable, tender side as Cross, who refuses to see the truth staring him in the face, just as his paintings lack proper perspective. Duryea has a field day as Johnny, while Bennett is appropriately shady as the deceitful moll. Scarlet Street is screening July 22-23 with John Farrow’s 1948 thriller, The Big Clock, starring Charles Laughton and Ray Milland, as part of Film Forum’s Universal 100, a wide-ranging celebration of the studio’s centennial that continues with such other double features as Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows, James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein and Edgar G. Ullmer’s The Black Cat, and Stanley Donen’s Charade and Michael Gordon’s Pillow Talk.

UNIVERSAL 100: TOUCH OF EVIL

Orson Welles noir masterpiece TOUCH OF EVIL is part of Universal Pictures centennial celebration at Film Forum

TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1958)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Saturday, July 14, 1:30, 3:30, 7:30, 9:30
Series runs July 13 – August 9
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

They don’t come much bigger than Orson Welles in his dark potboiler Touch of Evil, as he nearly bursts through the frame as spectacularly dastardly police captain Hank Quinlan. A deliciously devious corrupt lawman, Quinlan is an enormous drunk who has no trouble breaking the rules to get his man. Charlton Heston took a lot of criticism playing Mike Vargas, a Mexican drug enforcement agent newly married to beautiful blonde Susan (Janet Leigh), who soon finds herself menaced by a dangerous gang as a weak-kneed, pre-McCloud Dennis Weaver looks the other way. The film famously opens with a remarkable crane shot that goes on for more than three minutes, setting the stage like no other establishing shot in the history of cinema. And the final scene with Marlene Dietrich as sultry hooker Tana is a lulu as well, highlighted by one of the great all-time movie lines. What goes on in between is a lurid tale of murder and revenge filled with unexpected twists and turns, featuring appearances by such Welles regulars as Joseph Cotten, Akim Tamiroff, Joseph Calleia, and Ray Collins. There was a lot of hype surrounding the film a few years ago when it was restored to match Welles’s original desires, but the final product lives up to its billing. A deeply affecting noir masterpiece, Touch of Evil is screening July 14 as part of Film Forum’s “Universal 100” festival, paying tribute to the major studio’s centennial with four weeks of double features and special presentations, opening on Friday the thirteenth with the original Frankenstein and Dracula and continuing with such other fine dual bills as Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and Saboteur, John Stahl’s Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows, and Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop and Steven Spielberg’s Duel, in addition to the July 29-30 triple shot of The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, and The Mummy.

SPAGHETTI WESTERNS: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

Charles Bronson was perhaps never more likable than in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Sergio Leone, 1968)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Wednesday, June 20, 3:05
Series runs through June 21
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

One of the grandest Westerns ever made, this Sergio Leone masterpiece features an all-star cast that includes Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Woody Strode, Keenan Wynn, Lionel Stander, and Jack Elam, all enhanced by Ennio Morricone’s epic score and Tonino delli Colli’s never-ending extreme close-ups. (The opening shot of a fly crawling over Elam’s grimy face is unforgettable.) Fonda was never more evil, and Bronson was perhaps never more likable. The film is a huge step above most of Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, partially because of the cast, but also because of the script help he got from Italian horrormeister Dario Argento and iconic filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci. Once Upon a Time in the West is screening on June 20 as part of Film Forum’s Spaghetti Westerns series, which concludes this week with such films as The Ruthless Four, Hellbenders, Death Rides a Horse, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.