Tag Archives: film forum

BREATHLESS

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg star in Jean-Luc Godard’s anarchic, iconic BREATHLESS (courtesy Rialto Pictures/StudioCanal)

BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE SOUFFLE) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
May 28 – June 10
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

The fiftieth-anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic, BREATHLESS, will leave audiences, well, breathless. Godard’s first feature-length film, buoyed by an original treatment by François Truffaut and with Claude Chabrol serving as technical adviser, is as much about the cinema itself as it is about would-be small-time gangster Michel Poiccard (an iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ultra-cool dude wandering from girl to girl in Paris, looking for extra helpings of sex and money and having trouble getting either. Along the way he steals a car and shoots a cop as if shooing away a fly before teaming up with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and heading out on the run. Godard references William Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and Sam Fuller as Michel and Patricia make faces at each other, discuss death, and are chased by the police. Anarchy prevails, both in Belmondo’s character and the film as a whole, which can go off in any direction at any time. Godard himself shows up as the man who identifies Michel, and there are also cameos by New Wave directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Rivette. The beautiful restoration, supervised by the film’s director of photography, Raoul Coutard, also includes a brand-new translation and subtitles that breathe new life into one of cinema’s greatest treasures. Although many of the restored movies that play at Film Forum do so immediately prior to DVD release, no DVD is currently planned for this version of BREATHLESS, so you’ll have to catch it on West Houston St. during its limited two-week run.

BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO

Jessica Oreck reveals Tokyo’s love of bugs in unusual documentary

BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO (Jessica Oreck, 2009)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
May 12-18
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.com
www.beetlequeen.com

Collecting insects as pets is a way of life in Japan, and first-time director Jessica Oreck captures this obsession with bugs in the surprisingly effective and highly unusual documentary BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO, playing at Film Forum May 12-18. Oreck, a docent and animal keeper at the American Museum of Natural History, traces the history of the relationship between Japan and bugs in a nonlinear narrative that often plays like a fiction film, especially when showing a young boy shopping for a particular insect – his favorite costs fifty-seven dollars – much the way children in the West look for dogs or cats, or following an insect hunter as he searches the forest for specimens to sell. Oreck cuts between dazzling, colorful shots of fast-paced, modern-day Tokyo backed by a thumping, bass-heavy soundtrack and calmer, more subtle scenes of nature as people discuss their love of beetles, crickets, and other creepy crawlers. But Oreck doesn’t present the Japanese treatment of insects as a strange fad or craze, instead seeing it as yet another relationship with nature and beauty that Westerners are unable to understand. Oreck will be at Film Forum for the 6:30 and 8:20 screenings on May 12 and 14, bringing with her some live exotic insects, and will also be at the 4:40 show on May 16 with INSECTOPEDIA author Hugh Raffles.

THE NEWSPAPER PICTURE: ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN

Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) bring down a presidency in classic newspaper picture

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Thursday, May 6, 1:30, 4:10, 6:50, 9:30
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Film Forum concludes its four-week series “The Newspaper Picture” with one of the grandest of them all, Alan J. Pakula’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. Even though the audience knows the outcome, following two young reporters, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), as they try to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal is an absolute joy, an edge-of-your-seat thriller written by master scribe William Goldman. Pakula goes inside the machinations of the Nixon administration and the Washington Post, setting up an epic battle with an all-star cast that also includes Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, Ned Beatty, and Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat. Nominated for eight Oscars and winner of two (for sound and art direction), ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN is not just one of the great newspaper pictures of all time but one of the best films of an outstanding decade for movies.

THE NEWSPAPER PICTURE: WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS

Dana Andrews stars as a cynical reporter in Fritz Lang’s WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (courtesy Photofest)

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (Fritz Lang, 1956)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, April 23
The Newspaper Picture series continues through May 6
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

When media magnate Amos Kynes (Robert Warwick) dies, his son Walter (Vincent Price) takes over despite Amos’s greatest fears. Walter decides that whoever gets a scoop on the Lipstick Killer will become his number two man, so the backstabbing race is on among sleazy wire service chief Mark Loving (George Sanders); managing editor Jon Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), who’ll do just about anything for a story; and Harry Kritzer (James Craig), who thinks the best way to get the job is from the bed of Walter’s wife (Rhonda Fleming). Throw in cynical television journalist Ed Mobley (Dana Andrews) and hot-to-trot columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino) and you have another one of Hollywood’s terrific newspaper pics. Director Fritz Lang pulls no punches; the film is filled with plenty of sexual undertones (and overtones), and Kynes himself is a take-off of Charles Foster Kane, the glistening K atop his New York City skyscraper reminiscent of the K atop Xanadu’s front gate.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS is screening on April 23 in a double feature with Boris Ingster’s 1940 film noir STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR, starring Elisha Cook Jr. and Peter Lorre, as part of Film Forum’s “The Newspaper Picture,” which continues through May 6 with such films as HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks, 1940) on April 24, MEET JOHN DOE (Frank Capra, 1941) on April 26, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) on April 29, and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) on May 6.

TWO BY KUROSAWA: DERSU UZALA

Maxim Munzuk stars as the remarkable title character in Kurosawa classic (courtesy Kino International)

DERSU UZALA (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
April 14-22
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

In this stunning film, director-cowriter Akira Kurosawa has fashioned one of cinema’s greatest characters, a worldly wise, deceptively simple charming man who understands life, nature, responsibility, and helping others. Maksim Munzuk gives a marvelously understated performance as the title character, who is suddenly taken out of his quiet life of solitude when a Russian army troop comes to Siberia. Film Forum is screening the film as part of its continuing celebration of the centennial of Kurosawa’s birth; it will be followed April 23-29 by his 1970 epic DODES’KA-DEN, in a new 35mm print.

THE NEWSPAPER PICTURE: ACE IN THE HOLE

: Kirk Douglas is looking for a way out in Billy Wilder masterpiece ACE IN THE HOLE

ACE IN THE HOLE (Billy Wilder, 1951)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Friday, April 9, and Saturday, April 10
“The Newspaper Picture” series runs through May 6
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org/films/newspaper.html

Sandwiched between such hits as THE LOST WEEKEND, SUNSET BLVD., STALAG 17, and SABRINA, Billy Wilder’s ACE IN THE HOLE might just be his lost masterpiece. A major flop upon its release in 1951, ACE IN THE HOLE is a cynical look at Americans and their values. Chuck Tatum (a classic Kirk Douglas) is a ruthless reporter who has been fired in every major city in the nation because of his love of the bottle, his success with the ladies, and his penchant for playing hard and loose with the facts. He demands a job at a small-town paper in Albuquerque, hoping to land a story that will restore his luster and put him back in the big time. He finds his patsy in the person of Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), a low-rent Indian artifacts hunter who gets trapped in a cave-in at the base of the Mountain of the Seven Vultures. Sharpening his fangs, Tatum makes a deal with the sheriff (Ray Teal), choosing to take the long way to rescue Minosa in order to keep the sheriff’s name in the news and the reporter’s name on the front page for a longer amount of time. Meanwhile, Minosa’s wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling, with fabulously uneven eyebrows), who was ready to leave her husband, sees a way for her to cash in as well. The whole thing turns into a huge media circus; in fact, the studio changed the name of the film to THE BIG CARNIVAL upon its release, trying for a more upbeat title. ACE IN THE HOLE opens Film Forum’s series “The Newspaper Picture,” which includes some of the best (HIS GIRL FRIDAY, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, CITIZEN KANE, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT), most overrated (THE PHILADELPHIA STORY), and worst (PARK ROW) movies set in the world of the fourth estate, all being shown in 35mm prints.

THE SUN BEHIND THE CLOUDS

Exiled Tibetans seeking independence from China go on long march to their homeland (photo courtesy of White Crane Films)

THE SUN BEHIND THE CLOUDS: TIBET’S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM (Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam, 2010)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
March 31 – April 13
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

At the Palm Springs International Film Festival earlier this year, China withdrew Lu Chuan’s CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH and Ye Kai’s QUICK, QUICK, SLOW in protest of the festival’s inclusion of the pro-Tibet documentary THE SUN BEHIND THE CLOUDS. CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH, which examines the 1937 Rape of Nanking, was scheduled to open at Film Forum on March 31, but the distributor could not guarantee that China would allow it to be shown, so Film Forum filled the open slot with THE SUN BEHIND THE CLOUDS. Subtitled TIBET’S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM, the seventy-nine-minute film, made by husband-and-wife team Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, delves into the battle between those Tibetans who follow the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way Approach, in which Tibet would seek autonomy from China but not full independence, and those that want their country back completely. Sarin and Sonam, who have been documenting the situation in Tibet for nearly twenty years in such films as THE TRIALS OF TELO RINPOCHE (1994), THE SHADOW CIRCUS: THE CIA IN TIBET (1998), the narrative feature DREAMING LHASA (2005), and THE THREAD OF KARMA (2007), focus on the March 2008 uprising, the biggest since the Chinese invasion of 1959.

The Dalai Lama is facing growing opposition to his Middle Way Approach (photo by Jaimie Gramston / White Crane Films)

Tibetans were protesting Chinese rule and hoped to grab public attention as the Beijing Olympics approached, particularly one group that began a long march from their exiled home in India back to Tibet. The filmmakers gained intimate access to the Dalai Lama, who explains his position of peace, while also interviewing such controversial figures as poet Tenzin Tsundue, historian Tsering Shakya, former political prisoner Rigzin Choekyi, activist Lhadon Tethong, writer Lhasang Tsering, poet Woeser and her husband, political commentator Wang Lixiong, and others. They also speak with filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen, who was later sentenced to six years in prison; the International Campaign for Tibet has recently claimed that he “suffers from a medical condition and is being denied adequate treatment. His whereabouts in detention are currently unknown.” Watching THE SUN BEHIND THE CLOUDS, it is easy to see why the Chinese government is so afraid of it, as the film depicts a growing movement of Tibetans in India, the diaspora, and Tibet itself who are questioning the nonviolent ways of the Dalai Lama and are ready to fight for the restoration of their homeland, and their continuing plight is gaining support from people around the world. The filmmakers will be present for screenings on March 31 at 8:00, April 1 at 8:00, April 3 at 4:20, and April 4 at 2:40; Lhadon Tethong of Students for a Free Tibet will be at the April 2, 8:00 screening; and Tibet House cofounder and president Robert A. F. Thurman will participate in the April 6, 8:00 showing.