Spring Preview - SFIAAFF, TIFF, Joseph Losey, Lalo Schifrin, Stanley Kubrick, Red Vic Porn, Roxie Noir, Fight Films and more

As spring approaches, I am looking forward to several events. It is shaping up to be a busy spring.

Foremost is the 2010 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. I've purchased several tickets to the PFA screenings. The festival runs from March 11 to 21. The main venues are the Kabuki, Camera Cinemas in San Jose and PFA. The festival cut back to only one day at the Castro. In years past, they had programs on Saturday and Sunday but this year only Sunday (notwithstanding the opening night film).

I've also been perusing the festival line-up for the Tiburon International Film Festival. I haven't decided on that festival. It runs from March 18 to 26. It's a bit of hassle to get over there. I'll probably catch a few films.

Finally, the San Francisco International Film Festival has announced they will screen 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) on May 4.

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PFA kicks off a Joseph Losey retrospective on March 5. Several of the films interest me.

At the top of the list is M (1951).

Smothered with suspicion, a shadowy Los Angeles becomes the id-like setting for Losey’s remake of Fritz Lang’s Weimar classic. Here stalks the monstrous M (David Wayne), whose warped logic has him murdering children to save them from an evil society. When the intense police pursuit, led by Inspector Carney (Howard da Silva), disrupts the criminal underworld, the local crime syndicate joins the hunt. Finally captured, M is taken to a subterranean garage and thrown before a kangaroo court where a soused ex-lawyer (Luther Adler) pleads his case. In this harrowing scenario, Losey presciently parallels what would soon be his own plight facing the scrutiny of HUAC. More poignant, though, is the way in which M uses the “baby killer” as a medium to unleash the pathology of the mob. The crescendos of vigilantism join all members of society, high and low, into one vengeful mass.

Other films that I hope to watch include:

The Big Night (1951) - In one of cinema’s more startling first acts, seventeen-year-old George La Main (John Barrymore, Jr.) barely blows out the candles on his birthday cake before seeing his passive father (Preston Foster) savagely humiliated, leading George into an after-dark adult netherworld for the sweet icing of revenge. But the hit-man guise suits him no better than Dad’s ill-fitting clothes, and the journey quickly evolves into a complex coming-of-age melodrama with trenchant commentary on love, shame, race relations, and fatherhood. Banged out on a shoestring budget as Losey prepared to go into European exile, it features some of the most evocative performances to be found in his films, with Dorothy Comingore, Joan Lorring, and Howard St. John as ships passing in the big night, each offering a lesson or revelation. There were real-life revelations to come: Losey would learn that the young Barrymore had been an FBI informant, reporting on his activities in England. Look fast for a cameo by director (and former Losey assistant) Robert Aldrich.

Eve (1962) - Tyvian Jones (Stanley Baker) lives the life of a smug novelist, garnering the benefits of his success in a Venice of lush parties and canal-side villas. He’s got kudos for his new film, a fiancée in the form of Virna Lisi, and a well-lubricated sports car, but Tyvian’s a soulless imposter. Then one night iconically alluring Eve (Jeanne Moreau) breaks into his house. Eve is zero-degree woman, bearer of knowledge, and a pricey prostitute who is anything but garden variety. Perhaps Losey’s most baroque film, Eve projects Tyvian’s fixation with his unhinged love object upon an ornate setting of fetid canals and Roman alleyways, using Antonioni’s cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo to render the choking complexities of antique space. Tyvian and Eve taunt and tantalize each other in a free-spirited narrative that finds its passion in the agonized tableaux. For years this restive romance was known only through a highly truncated version disowned by Losey. What will screen tonight is an approximation of his original intent, discovered in Scandinavia.

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The Castro Theater present another in its Legendary Composer Series. From April 2 to 8, they are presenting 12 films by Lalo Schifrin. I am particularly anxious to see THX 1138 (1971) - George Lucas' first feature length film. Other films in the series that interest me are Hell in the Pacific (1968) starring Lee Marvin and Toshirō Mifune which I've never seen on the big screen and The President's Analyst (1967) with James Coburn.

The Schifrin line-up is solid throughout and includes such classics as The Cincinnati Kid (1965) with Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson, Bullitt (1968) with Steve McQueen, Cool Hand Luke (1967) with Paul Newman and Dirty Harry (1971) with Clint Eastwood.

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On April 11, the Castro screens F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927) which I missed at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Winter Event a couple years ago.

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From April 23 to 29, the Castro presents 12 Stanley Kubrick films which is most of his filmography.

The films are The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Spartacus, Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, The Killing, Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A.I.

I've seen most of the films (in a theater too) with the exception of Barry Lyndon (1975) with Ryan O'Neal, The Killing (1956) with Sterling Hayden, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and A.I. (2001) with Haley Joel Osment.

I had lunch with a friend during the Noir City festival this year. She was not attending the festival but looked a souvenir festival guide. She mentioned she had seen a noir on television recently that she enjoyed but could place the title or the stars. All she could remember was that there is a scene at the end where the money blows away at an airport. That didn't ring a bell with me.

At the festival, they kept showing Serena Bramble's short film, The Endless Night. Her film consisted of clips from classic noirs with a very effective soundtrack. I could identify many of the stars and films in the loop. I noticed that there is a clip of money blowing off a luggage hauler on the tarmac. Thinking this was the film my friend referenced, I asked Eddie Muller what film that was. He answered it was The Killing.

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On March 17 and 18, the Red Vic screens Night of Lust (1963). The synopsis for this gem reads The pinnacle of pornographic artistry was arguably achieved with the release of this smut noir. Though it has been banned in half the world, we have a 35mm print of the rare film to share. As the plot goes, two rival gang leaders clash over control of the Parisian drug trade leading to criminal mayhem and the excuse to showcase tits and ass. Lots of it. After the controversy following its initial release, the film was later re-cut and re-dubbed for American audiences. However, you will likely be too distracted by the stunning black and white photography and original Chet Baker’s free-jazz score to notice the plot holes and off-time lip movements. Preceded by a lusty trailer show designed to arouse the senses!

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The Roxie, returns to noir in May with a two week program titled I Still Wake Up Dreaming: Noir is Dead! / Long Live Noir!

It’s Springtime at the Roxie - where 28 half-forgotten film noir classics and curios will bloom boldly before your disbelieving eyes at San Francisco’s first and foremost House of Noir—The Roxie Theater! This Spring’s amazing cavalcade features six titles from Columbia’s legendary and darkly sinister 1940s Whistler mystery series starring Richard Dix: Mark of the Whistler (from a story by Cornell Woolrich!), Mysterious Intruder (a major noir rediscovery from director William Castle!!), Power of the Whistler (with the incredible Janis Carter!!!) as well as Voice of the Whistler, The Thirteenth Hour and Secret of the Whistler. All six Whistler films presented in BRAND NEW RESTORED 35mm STUDIO PRINTS!

Marvel too at six RARE United Artists noir gems from the 1950s: Jacques Tourneur’s cold-war thriller The Fearmakers starring Dana Andrews; Phil Karlson’s gritty gem 99 River Street with John Payne and Evelyn Keyes; the freakishly strange Nightmare with Kevin McCarthy and Edward G. Robinson (from a story by Woolrich); Ed McBain’s low-down, rough and sleazy Cop Hater with Robert Loggia; Shield For Murder directed by and starring noir icon Edmond O’Brien; and Henry Silva in the ultra-violent late-model ‘63 Rat Pack noir Johnny Cool. ALL PRESENTED IN 35mm STUDIO ARCHIVE PRINTS!

Peppered liberally with ultra-rare 16mm B noirs from the hidden vaults and libraries of private collectors!! NONE CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON DVD!!

Programmed exclusively for The Roxie Theater by Professor Elliot Lavine.

The program runs from May 14 to May 27.

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The Red Riding Trilogy is currently screening at the Landmark Lumiere.

Several films are opening at the Landmark Theaters in April and May that caught my attention.

The Warlords (2007) opens on April 9. The film stars Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Set in the midst of war and political upheaval during the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860s, Warlords stars Jet Li as General Pang, who barely survives a brutal massacre of his fellow soldiers by playing dead, and joins a band of bandits led by Er Hu (Andy Lau) and Wu Yang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). After fighting back attackers from an helpless village, the three men take an oath to become “blood brothers,” pledging loyalty to one another until death, but things quickly turn sour and the three men become embroiled in a web of political deceit, and a love triangle between Pang, Er Hu and a beautiful courtesan (Wu Jing-Lei).

The Square (2009) which played at the Mostly British Film Festival and Cinequest opens April 16. A stylish, twist-filled neo-noir worthy of the Coen Brothers, The Square centers on an adulterous couple whose scheming leads to arson, blackmail and murder. Escaping the monotony of a loveless marriage, construction supervisor Ray (David Roberts) becomes entangled in an affair with the lovely but troubled Carla (Claire van der Boom). She presents him with a large chunk of money stolen by her husband, suggesting that they keep it for themselves. Ray agrees, and they hire a professional arsonist (Joel Edgerton), which turns out to be the first of a series of deadly errors. At first all seems to go well, but soon the bodies start to pile up, and then the first blackmail note arrives from a mystery author. Written by his brother Joel, this tense thriller is directed by former stuntman Nash Edgerton, who succeeds in building ferocious tension.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008) opens May 7. This deliriously over-the-top “Oriental Western” is a loving, virtually non-stop action tribute to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the 1930s Manchurian desert, where lawlessness rules and ethnic groups clash, three Korean men fatefully meet each other on a train. The Good (Jung Woo-sung) is a bounty hunter who tracks down criminals with rewards on their heads. The Bad (Lee Byung-hun) is the leader of a group of bandits and can’t stand to be second best. The Weird (Song Kang-ho, The Host) is a train robber with nine lives. The three strangers engage in a chase across Manchuria to take possession of a map The Weird discovers while robbing the train. Also on the hunt for the mysterious map are the Japanese army and Asian bandits. In an unpredictable, escalating battle for the map, who will stand in the end as the winner? Never be sure who’s good, bad or weird! Directed and co-written by Kim Jee-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters).

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On April 18, Dennis Nyback returns to the YBCA with So, You Wanna Fight!. Film archivist and raconteur Dennis Nyback returns to YBCA for his annual screening of weird and wonderful delights from the past. Tonight he'll present boxing films from the teens to the fifties. Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Max Baer, "Jersey" Joe Walcott, Tex Avery, many others, plus the ferocious fightin' eight-year-old girl, Pam Sproul. Don't get too close to the screen or you might splattered with blood.

I saw an entertaining Nyback program a few years ago at the Hole in the Head called Bad Bugs Bunny.

Film on Film and YBCA Events in May & June

I see that the Film on Film Foundation is holding an event at the Roxie on May 10. It's titled First Stabs: Formative Works by Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman.

Stanley Kubrick was born to make films. As a youth, he was a rapacious movie-goer, turning his critical eye to the myriad cinematic offerings of his native New York City. A talented shutterbug, he parlayed this hobby into a job as staff photographer at Look magazine while still in his teens. Kubrick's yearning to extend his photographic work into the domain of cinema led to his first short film, Day of the Fight, a portrait of boxer Walter Cartier, whom he previously profiled in the pages of Look.

From the start of his career, Kubrick had high-art aspirations, and these are evident even in his first feature-length work. Fear and Desire, perhaps the first independently-made American art film, is an allegorical war picture that explicitly locates its conflict, and its primal motivators, in the province of the mind. Kubrick acted as producer, director, and editor, and though his mise-en-scène was limited by available locations and props and a mostly static camera, he nonetheless evinced a flair for evoking moods with eye-catching compositions and subtle nuances of light, and an analytical, poetic approach to montage.

Ultimately, the film's miniscule budget was insufficient to fully realize its maker's intent, particularly when it came to performances, including that of a young and spastic Paul Mazursky. Kubrick, who would become notorious for requiring multitudinous takes in pursuit of his ineffable vision, was unable to indulge this maniacal perfectionism in Fear and Desire, and would suppress the film as his career advanced. But close examination reveals the seeds of themes that pervade his later work: the imperviousness to reason of man's subconscious, often destructive impulses; his isolation (Kubrick eschews "normal" displays of emotion, and he frequently refuses to provide us a charismatic protagonist to identify with); and a fascination with the grotesque.

Robert Altman is best remembered for his masterpieces of the 1970's (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, etc.), less so for his 1950's efforts, separated from his mature work by a long journeyman period in TV. His early industrial/educational shorts (eg. How to Run a Filling Station, Better Football), made for-hire in early '50's Kansas City, show a quaint but timely concern for keeping the nation's youth off the streets and out of trouble.

Juvenile delinquency, by various names a long-time staple of exploitation films, became the subject of Altman's first feature, 1957's The Delinquents. Tom Laughlin (to become famous for his Billy Jack movies) channels the late James Dean (much admired by Altman) in his first starring role as a teen driven from the arms of his girl and into the clutches of a vicious gang which includes Richard Bakalyan in his debut.

Altman has always used certain conventions of what we now call vérité style, applying his own poetics to the multifarious scrappiness of real life. If the party scene in The Delinquents seems to have the dynamics of an actual party, it's because it is one. Though Kubrickian perfectionism was never one of Altman's hallmarks, he nevertheless came later to dismiss this early work as "meaningless". But he could never deny that it's fabulously entertaining.

The schedule is

7 PM
Day of the Fight; directed by Kubrick; B+W 16mm 16 minutes; (1951)
Flying Padre; directed by Kubrick; B+W 16mm 9 minutes; (1951)
Fear and Desire; directed by Kubrick; B+W 35mm 61 minutes; (1953)

8:45 PM
The Delinquents; directed by Altman; B+W 35mm 72 minutes; (1957)

Admission is $7.

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I perused the film schedule on the Yerba Buena Center for the Art website.

On May 7, they are screening the first half of Coming Apart: Two Views of 1972 - 1972 was one of the most tumultuous years in American history—and one of the richest in cinema history. Watergate, The Godfather, the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, Pink Flamingos, Apollo 17 lands on the moon, Deep Throat, Nixon defeats McGovern with the lowest voter turnout since 1948, Deliverance, the Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes during the Summer Olympics, Harold and Maude… This two-program series revisits two films of 1972—through completely different lenses. One a free and loose document of a rollicking anti-war road show, the other a brutal mirror held up to the relentless violence of the era.

The May 7 show is FTA which stands for Free the Army or Fuck the Army. Available for the first time since it mysteriously disappeared in 1972 after only one week in theaters, this raucous time capsule is a riveting slice of the Vietnam anti-war movement. Reviving the biting theater of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland's F.T.A. Tour, it captures the entertaining magic and mayhem of the anti-war and pro-labor show as it rallies and rouses dissident GIs stationed along the Pacific Rim.

The second part of the series screens on May 9 with the original Last House on the Left directed by Wes Craven. The pointless recent remake of this film only served to reinforce the original’s terrifying occult-like power, which played in theaters and drive-ins for over a decade. Loosely inspired by Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, LHOTL is a harrowing journey into the heart of darkness, telling the story of a family’s revenge on a gang of nihilistic thugs. Just keep repeating, it’s only a movie...it’s only a movie...it’s only a movie...

On May 28, YBCA presents Classic Laurel and Hardy Shorts.

For some reason no one ever shows Laurel and Hardy films anymore, and so we’re presenting this selection of shorts. “All the world knows Laurel and Hardy. All the world empathizes with them and their common humanity. For those who don't know them, this is the chance to see them at their very best.” – Dennis Nyback

Nyback programmed Bad Bugs Bunny at the 2007 Hole in the Head festival.

On May 29 and 31, YBCA screens Inglorious Bastards (1978).

Inglorious Bastards is more than just the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's new movie (starring Brad Pitt); it remains perhaps the biggest and toughest war movie in European cult film history! Action legends Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson and Bo Svenson star as the leaders of a gang of condemned criminals who escape from an Allied prison camp, only to find themselves 'volunteering' for a suicide mission deep inside Nazi occupied France.

From June 11 to 20, YBCA kicks off Food, Sex and Liberation (Go POP)

In this series, a comparison between Jeanne Dielman and Dillinger Is Dead seems inevitable. Though one film is French and the other Italian, both films are innovative stylistic experiments communicating their stories almost entirely through the intimate gestures of cooking, the home and the body. The documentary We Want Roses Too—made also in the language of the personal and the private experience—about the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies is screened in between to help contextualize the private politics and ambiguous feminism of these formalistic masterpieces. Series guest curated and notes by Miriam Bale.

Dillinger Is Dead (1969) screens once daily from June 11 to 14. In this should–be cult classic in a new 35mm print, Michel Piccoli has got a bad case of sixties ennui. One night, a lukewarm meal left by his pill–popping wife (Anita Pallenberg) is the last straw, setting off an exquisite train of triggers that leads to his liberation by the morning. Carefully shot to look very loose, this single night is shown only through the details of his nocturnal domestic rituals—cooking, painting, walking in and out of images from TV and home movies, listening to records, and dripping honey on the maid.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) plays on June 20 & 21.

Jeanne Dielman is an uptight housewife who makes dish washing, veal breading, bathtub scrubbing and coffee making into an art. She keeps to a rigorous schedule, including regular afternoon prostituting to help fund this art, her domestic sanctuary for herself and her teenage son. When an orgasm interrupts her perfect order, she comes unraveled. This year marks the first time that the film has been screened in the U.S. in the 35mm print in which it was intended to be seen, revealing a breathtaking muted pastel palette designed with total precision.

Sandwiched between those two films is 2007's We Want Roses Too on June 18. This documentary that tells the history of feminism in Italy in the 60's and 70's through diaries, illustrated romance novels, pop songs, home movies and other found footage. The style is the content; the filmmaker's rejection of objectivity and insistence on shaping history through a private and emotional point–of–view was in part what differentiated Italian feminism from the women's movement in Britain and America. For Italian feminists, communication had to take new feminine forms and the political was highly personal.