***MONDAY, AUGUST 11***
DOG DAY AFTERNOON, Sidney Lumet
IFC Center
“One of Sidney Lumet’s best jobs of directing and one of Al Pacino’s best performances (as a bisexual bank robber) come together in a populist thriller with lots of New York juice… it’s an astonishing fusion of suspense and character, powered by superior ensemble acting. With John Cazale, Charles Durning, Sully Boyar, James Broderick, Chris Sarandon, and Carol Kane.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum
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FEVER RISES IN EL PAO, Luis Buñuel
BAM
The regime of a corrupt dictator of a remote Caribbean island struggles to hold onto power as the country teeters on the brink of revolution in Buñuel’s most explosively political work. This fascinating (and unjustly neglected) Mexican-French production is a steamy hothouse blend of sadomasochistic sex (courtesy of Mexican bombshell María Félix), melodrama, and pro-anarchist politics.
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THE CAT AND THE CANARY, Radley Metzger
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Changing gears, Metzger tackles a British-shot period remake of the 1939 horror classic. It’s 1934 and the avaricious relatives of a deceased eccentric millionaire convene at his mansion 20 years after his death for the reading of the will—which comes in the form of a film in which the millionaire reveals his testament. The sole heir to the fortune proves to be innocent, young Annabelle (Carol Lynley)—but should she die or prove of unsound mind, a second film has been shot naming the beneficiary next in line. Let the intrigue begin! A dark and stormy night, a hideously disfigured madman escaped from a nearby asylum, a secret torture chamber—all the classic ingredients are in place. Assembling a powerhouse cast including Honor Blackman, Michael Callan, Edward Fox, Wendy Hiller, Olivia Hussey, and Daniel Massey, Metzger attacks this material with gusto, and a true knack for classic old dark house suspense.
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THERSE AND ISABELLE, Radley Metzger
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Writer Violette Leduc’s censored autobiographical 1955 novel of sexual awakening and lesbian passion brought Metzger to Paris to tell the story of sensitive, forlorn Therese (Essy Persson), who is abandoned by her newly married mother and businessman stepfather at a high-class boarding school. She’s immediately befriended by class minx Isabelle (Anna Gael) and develops a crush on the more worldly girl. When an encounter with suave Pierre (Rémy Longa) at a nearby bar leads to a traumatic first sexual experience, Therese turns to Isabelle, acting on the erotic attraction between them in a succession of increasingly explicit Sapphic trysts. Delicately building a charged eroticism, Metzger’s direction fuses the classicism of his elegant black-and-white camerawork and George Auric’s sweeping score with the modernism of the film’s time-shifting narrative—and while they may be just a shade too old to pass for adolescent schoolgirls, Persson and Gael share a potent chemistry and sensuousness that makes the film genuinely intense.
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THE CANNIBALS, Manoel de Oliveira
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
A sui generis marriage of opera and cannibalism, this film (on which Pinto worked in the sound department) sets out to turn opera on its head, just as Oliveira had done with theater in earlier films like 1986’s My Case (which Pinto also did the sound for). When high-society Marguerite marries an aristocratic viscount despite the protestations of her plot-hatching ex-lover, Don Juan, mounting tensions boil over in truly bizarre fashion as Marguerite’s new husband reveals an unbelievable secret. A work that initially presents a veneer of stately respectability before racing off in strange and hilarious directions, The Cannibals is among Oliveira’s most underrated and entertaining films.
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THE QUEEN, Frank Simon
IFC Center
Before there was Drag Race, there was THE QUEEN. This seminal documentary about a 1967 NYC drag contest goes behind the scenes, recording the rehearsals, the conversations, and the jealousies that emerge in the lead up to the big competition. For drag king Murray Hill — “the hardest working middle-aged man in show business” — it was also “the first glimpse of gay/drag life that I’d ever seen.” Starring the legendary Flawless Sabrina, and including cameos by Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and Mario Montez, we can’t think of a better way to end our Summer of Drag than with this perfectly preserved time capsule of the pre-Stonewall New York drag scene.
BOY MEETS GIRL, Leos Carax
Film Forum
The bank of the Seine, ablaze with lights, is observed from a floating boat; a woman stormily breaks up with her boyfriend via car phone, then stalks along the bank to demand the time from a bystander; spurned lover Denis Lavant walks along the bank to strangle the bystander; then records “first murder attempt” (with date) on his map-of-Paris wall diary. Sad-eyed Mireille Perrier practices tap dancing in an apartment with a full-wall picture window fronting the apartment just across the street, then gets dumped by her boyfriend by apartment house intercom while Lavant happens by. Obviously the two melancholy waifs must meet, at a party hosted by American Carroll Brooks, whose sole damaged teacup reminds her of her brother; where a deaf-mute reminisces about the days of silent movies; and an astronaut gazes at the moon and at a former Miss Universe contestant. Nouvelle Vague… Deux, with touches of vintage Truffaut and Godard, and yet, seen now, characteristic Carax, with the ravishingly romantic, rich and creamy photography of Jean-Yves Escoffier, here in lustrous b&w, and the debut of Carax’s alter ego, the inevitable, chameleon-like Lavant.
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FRIENDLY ENEMIES, Allan Dwan
MoMA
More spies in America. German immigrants must decide where their loyalty lies.
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***TUESDAY, AUGUST 12***
CITY OF PIRATES, Raul Ruiz
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Propelled by a ferocious creative energy and blending folk legends, surrealist poetry, children’s adventure stories, and Hollywood horror movies, this vintage film by the late Raúl Ruiz follows a decidedly nonlinear narrative about a sleep-walking virgin (Anne Alvaro), a 10-year-old boy (Melvil Poupaud) who claims to have raped and murdered his entire family, and the lone inhabitant of an island castle (Hughes Quester) who shares his body with an imaginary sister. Funny, frightening, and enigmatic, City of Pirates is like a cross between Peter Pan and Friday the 13th told with a wildly baroque visual style that suggests both Georges Méliès and Sergio Leone. Pinto served as a member of the production’s sound department, one of his several, formative collaborations with Ruiz.
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DAUGHTER OF DECIET, Luis Buñuel
BAM
One of Buñuel’s rarest films is this gleamingly mounted, delightfully offbeat Mexican production that zips nimbly between melodrama and screwball farce. Enraged upon discovering his wife’s infidelity, a man (Soler) abandons his family and becomes the embittered owner of a Hades-themed nightclub. Fast forward 20 years (via a dazzling Buñuelian transition), as he seeks to reconnect with the daughter he left behind.
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THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, Rex Ingram
MoMA
In this epic story an Argentine family of divided German/French loyalties migrate to Europe just before the war and are swept up in its bloody consequences. The film helped make Valentino one of the biggest stars in Hollywood before his untimely death. Silent, with musical accompaniment.
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WHAT NOW? REMIND ME, Joaquim Pinto
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
First-person filmmaking at its most intimate and expansive, Joaquim Pinto’s What Now? Remind Me emerged from a year in which the director—documentarian, producer, sound designer, and Lisbon film scene stalwart—endured an experimental clinical trial for HIV patients. Although the film doesn’t flinch at describing the pain and despair of chronic illness, it remains above all a testament to the joys of a fully lived life, and to the inseparability of art and life. Darting between vivid scenes of the present and bittersweet recollections of the past, What Now? reveals Pinto’s day-to-day existence with his beloved husband, Nuno, and reaches back to his artistic coming of age, capturing a love of cinema that led to a wide network of friendships and collaborations. Confessional but never solipsistic, looking beyond individual experience toward history and the world, this moving film becomes an all-encompassing meditation on what it means to be alive. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2013 Locarno Film Festival and a selection at the 51st New York Film Festival. A Cinema Guild release.
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THE STEEL HELMET, Samuel Fuller
MoMA
Fuller poured his experience as an infantryman during World War II into the first of his films to deal with the madness of combat and the politics of race. In Korea, a company of stragglers, survivors, and misfits attempts to establish an observation post in a Buddhist temple. Tensions within the mixed group come to pose as much of a threat as the mostly unseen enemy.
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THE IMAGE, Radley Metzger
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Adapted from the 1956 novel by Catherine Robbe-Grillet (writing under the nom de plume Jean de Berg) and also known as The Punishment of Anne, this uncompromising and groundbreaking depiction of sadomasochism is perhaps Metzger’s darkest film. Jean (Carl Parker) encounters the mysterious Anne (Rebecca Brooke as Mary Mendum) at a Paris literary party only to discover that she’s the sex slave of middle-aged dominatrix Claire (Marilyn Roberts). Fascinated, he is drawn into their high-class world of dominance and submission, first as observer and then participant in the women’s erotic games, which take a turn when Claire hands Anne over to Jean for his own personal use. While Metzger never loses sight of the humanity of his characters, be warned—in its harrowing and relentless penultimate chapter in Claire’s “gothic dungeon,” The Image takes you to the dark side—its scenes of torture and flagellation are emphatically not for the faint of heart. The Image also marks the point at which Metzger makes the transition from softcore to hardcore, begun with the tentative first steps in Score, while nevertheless maintaining his customary high style and visual invention. With its fearless depiction of the objectification of Anne in a succession of no-holds-barred sexual scenarios, The Image ranks alongside Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse as one of cinema’s best depictions of S&M.
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CAMILLE 2000, Radley Metzger
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
The decadent high society of late-1960s Rome gets the royal treatment in one of the best and most visually inventive films from Metzger’s European phase. Set in a world of jaded and over-sexed beautiful people dressed in increasingly outrageous costumes, and interspersed with a succession of ever more debauched parties, this faithful adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Lady of the Camelliastells the tragic story of doomed love between eligible bachelor Armand (Nino Castelnuovo) and beautiful but remote Marguerite (Danièle Gaubert), a kept woman. But in this collision of Old Europe grandeur and ’60s mod stylings, heroin is the new tuberculosis…
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***WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13***
THE LICKERISH QUARTET, Radley Metzger
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Metzger considers this enigmatic tale of a decadent family’s seduction his “most personal and most free” film. Based on an original story idea by Metzger and Michael DeForrest, The Lickerish Quartet opens with a quote by Pirandello (“All this present reality of yours is fated to seem a mere illusion tomorrow”). An aristocratic married couple and their son attend a carnival after watching a crude black-and-white skinflick and recognize a female motorcycle stunt rider in a form-fitting white leather outfit as one of the women in the film. The girl accepts an invitation to their grand Italian castle, but when they show her the film, there is no longer any resemblance between the blonde on-screen and their gorgeous brunette guest—but the next morning she has become a blonde. As the girl seduces each family member in turn, liberating them from their repressed states, illusion merges with reality. Metzger’s most distinctive and most beguilingly unconventional film, regarded by many as his magnum opus, and declared “an outrageously kinky masterpiece” by Andy Warhol.
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DEATH IN THE GARDEN, Luis Buñuel
BAM
A genteel dinner party descends into depravity when the guests become convinced that they’re unable to leave, in Buñuel’s sublimely sadistic cartoon satire of bourgeois pretensions. As all semblance of social order breaks down, the director unleashes a torrent of uncanny dream imagery—from a live bear to a creepy, crawling severed hand—superbly shot by the great Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.
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SEVENTH HEAVEN, Frank Borzage
MoMA
This tragic romance, set in Paris as the war breaks out, won the first Best Director Oscar for Borzage and helped Gaynor win hers for Best Actress. Silent, with musical track.
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APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX, Francis Ford Coppola
MoMA
Coppola’s epic vision of Vietnam is shown here in the “director’s cut,” issued in 2001 and featuring footage cut from the original release version. After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Coppola’s film is a stunning and prescient critique of a country gone astray from “the better angels of our nature.”
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LITTLE MOTHER, Radley Metzger
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
In a major departure, Metzger fictionalizes the real-life saga of Evita Perón, seven years ahead of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical. In this sexy tale of intrigue and ruthless ambition, a series of flashbacks detail the rise to power of third-rate actress Marina (Christiane Krüger), who marries South American dictator Colonel Pinares (Siegfried Rauch) and successfully cultivates a mass cult of personality around her persona as the nation’s “Little Mother”—but her Machiavellian schemes don’t end there…
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THIS IS THE DAWN, Luis Buñuel
BAM
In a small Mediterranean factory town, a compassionate doctor (Marchal) gradually sheds the vestiges of his bourgeois life—including his spoiled wife—and takes up the cause of workers’ rights. This morally complex tale of a man’s political awakening includes one particularly delectable Buñuelian touch: a copy of Dali’s Crucifixion that adorns the police captain’s office.
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***THURSDAY, AUGUST 14***
THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, Luis Buñuel
BAM
A genteel dinner party descends into depravity when the guests become convinced that they’re unable to leave, in Buñuel’s sublimely sadistic cartoon satire of bourgeois pretensions. As all semblance of social order breaks down, the director unleashes a torrent of uncanny dream imagery—from a live bear to a creepy, crawling severed hand—superbly shot by the great Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.
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EC: ZORNS LEMMA & (nostalgia), Hollis Frampton
Anthology Film Archives
ZORNS LEMMA
1970, 60 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
“A major poetic work. Created and put together by a very clear eye-head, this original and complex abstract work moves beyond the letters of the alphabet, beyond words and beyond Freud. If you don’t understand it the first time you see it, don’t despair, see it again! When you finally ‘get it,’ a small light, possibly a candle, will light itself inside your forehead.” –Ernie Gehr
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HAPAX LEGOMENA I: (nostalgia)
1971, 36 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
“In (nostalgia) the time it takes for a photograph to burn (and thus confirm its two-dimensionality) becomes the clock within the film, while Frampton plays the critic, asynchronously glossing, explicating, narrating, mythologizing his earlier art, and his earlier life, as he commits them both to the fire of a labyrinthine structure; for Borges too was one of his earlier masters, and he grins behind the facades of logic, mathematics, and physical demonstrations which are the formal metaphors for most of Frampton’s films.” –P. Adams Sitney
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HOUSE OF BAMBOO, Samuel Fuller
MoMA
The arrival of color and CinemaScope added two new weapons to Fuller’s expressive arsenal, which he here trains on another vivid fable of race, identity, and violence, shot on location in Tokyo. Robert Ryan is the tightly wound criminal mastermind; Robert Stack is the outsider who infiltrates his military-style operation.
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SIMON OF THE DESERT, Luis Buñuel
BAM
Buñuel offers up his brilliantly satirical, outré take on the story of a saint who spent decades atop a pillar, whilst trying to resist the temptations of the Devil (played by Mexican superstar Silvia Pinal). Dave Kehr called it: “forty-three minutes of perfect filmmaking.”
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HATS OFF, Samuel Fuller
MoMA
Fuller received his first film credit, for story and screenplay, on this rarely seen comedy, an exceptionally ambitious effort from the Poverty Row studio Grand National. Clarke (then on her way down as a star) and Payne (then on his way up) are press agents who will stop at nothing to promote their respective clients: expositions staged by rival “twin cities” in Texas.
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