Sundays may be a “wan, stuff shadow of a robust Saturday” or a day of “forced leisure for folks who have no aptitude for leisure,” according to Tom Robbins, but a weekend is still a weekend. The pleasure of a Friday night, the knowing the burdens of work week have a brief respite carry themselves into the following two days of leisure, and what better way to indulge in that leisure than heading to the cinema.
And this weekend, there are more than enough wonderful films showing around New York for you to disappear into. Whether it’s your favorite Polanski, the essential Ashby, or a noir crime classic, there is surely something to satisfy every cinematic appetite. I’ve rounded up the best of what’s playing around the city, so peruse our list, and enjoy.
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***FRIDAY, AUGUST 1***
GILDA, Charles Vidor
MoMA
“Audiences continue to swoon over Hayworth’s performance as the erotic, unattainable Gilda, trapped in a hateful ménage a trois with brooding sadist Glenn Ford and chilly German casino owner George Macready in Buenos Aires. Costume designer Jean Louis is said to have used John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madame X as the inspiration for the black gown in which Hayworth famously performs her sly striptease, ‘Put the Blame on Mame’.”
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MAN IN THE DARK, Lew Landers
MoMA
“The prolific and occasionally personal B filmmaker Lew Landers shot this “three-dimensional chiller” in a breakneck 11 days, enabling Columbia Pictures to rush the film into theatrical release a mere 48 hours before Warner Bros.’ House of Wax and launch a brief 3-D arms race among the Hollywood studios. An experimental brain surgery designed to cure O’Brien of his criminal impulses instead gives him an unfortunate case of amnesia, as his former gangster colleagues kidnap and beat him senseless to discover where he’s stashed the payroll loot. Only the comforts of Audrey Totter, a golden-hearted, golden-haired fatale, can soothe his weary soul. A contemporary Variety review pointed out that “Miss Totter’s figure is a definite 3-D asset,” while Elliott Stein, in a more recent Village Voice review, noted, “This seems to be the 3-D flick that most exploits the short-lived medium. An endless array of stuff comes whiffling at your face—a lit cigar, a repulsive spider, scissors, forceps, fists, falling bodies, and a roller coaster. The prolific Landers may not have been a great director, but he was a pretty good pitcher.”
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IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH, Gianfranco Parolini
Anthology Film Archives
“This enormously successful spaghetti western launched a series of official and unofficial sequels (of a quantity surpassed only by the “Django” films) and helped nudge the genre in the direction of comic parody. Deliriously convoluted, it concerns a strongbox of gold that inspires a vortex of scheming and double-crossing among a motley crew of outlaws, bandits, and town officials, with Gianni Garko’s angel of death, Sartana, materializing to dole out bloody vigilante justice. In typically puzzling spaghetti-western-style, Kinski, who appears here as gangleader Morgan, would return in the next installment (I AM SARTANA YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH) but in an entirely different role.”
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WHAT ABOUT ME, Rachel Amodeo
Anthology Film Archives
“A significant and all-too-rarely-seen work of the NYC underground, WHAT ABOUT ME tells the story of a young woman, Lisa Napolitano (played by filmmaker Rachel Amodeo), who finds herself homeless in the city. The film portrays her gradual deterioration as she intermingles with various outcasts of society. Along the way she encounters a shell-shocked Vietnam veteran, Nick (Richard Edson); a nihilistic east-villager, Tom (Nick Zedd); and a sympathetic good samaritan, Paul (Richard Hell). A peerlessly entertaining film that has with time become a precious document of an increasingly vanished neighborhood, WHAT ABOUT ME was shot on location in the Lower East Side and Tompkins Square Park (with footage of the park’s homeless shanty-town). Best of all, it features music by the legendary Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls.”
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CRAWLSPACE, David Schmoeller
Anthology Film Archives
“In one of his final films, Kinski once again steps out of the supporting-role-shadows to take the lead, and delivers one of his batshit craziest, creepiest performances as apartment building landlord, Karl Gunther. A seemingly kindly figure, Karl turns out (surprise, surprise) to be the son of a Nazi doctor, who spies on his (all-female) tenants via an intricate system of hidden tunnels while continuing his father’s twisted, sadistic experiments in the building’s attic.”
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DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Billy Wilder
Film Forum
“‘Office Memorandum: I killed Dietrichson,’” dictates Fred MacMurray’s bleeding insurance man Walter Neff, and then the flashbacks begin: prospective client Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson, greeting him clad only in bath towel and monogrammed ankle bracelet, exchanges double entendres (“There’s a speed limit in this state”), then swiftly turns the discussion from auto to accident insurance; but then, after Stanwyck’s husband’s “accident,” MacMurray’s boss, cigar-chomping Edward G. Robinson, and the “little man in his stomach,” just won’t let it rest. Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted James M. Cain’s then-notorious novel.”
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BELLE DE JOUR, Luis Buñuel
BAM
“While her husband’s at work, new bride Séverine (Deneuve) lives out her erotic fantasies as a high-class prostitute with a taste for S&M. This kinky-cool mix of sex and the surreal is one of Buñuel’s most highly regarded films, anchored by a provocatively poker-faced performance by Catherine Deneuve. With her alabaster beauty and mask-like countenance, Deneuve’s Séverine is a tantalizingly obscure object of desire.”
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JACKIE BROWN, Quentin Tarantino
Museum of the Moving Image
“Tarantino followed his blockbuster hit Pulp Fiction with this labyrinthine multi-character cops-and-robbers film derived from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch (1992). Despite the convoluted plot, the point of the movie is spending time with the characters. “It’s my Rio Bravo—my hangout movie,” said Tarantino. The great ensemble cast is led by former “Blaxploitation” star Pam Grier”
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MEMORIES WITHIN MISS AGGIE, Gerard Damiano
Nitehawk Cinema
“Director Gerard Damiano’s tribute to Ingmar Bergman’s surreal psychological thrillers of the 1960s, Memories Within Miss Aggie follows the fantasies and daydreams of a lonely middle aged woman who endlessly attempts to remember how she first met her wheelchair bound companion named Richard. With each passing ‘memory,’ a darker and more sinister side of Aggie’s personality is revealed until the film builds to its shocking and brutal final twist.”
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EL TOPO, Alejandro Jodorowsky
IFC Center
“Jodorowsky’s legendary, notorious cult hit essentially created the genre of the midnight movie — a spectacle so stunning and bizarre that normal hours couldn’t contain it. Incorporating influences from tarot to the Bible to surrealism into a mind-blowing western, Jodorowsky cast himself as the leather-clad gunman, El Topo (‘the mole’), who wanders through a desert strewn with mystical symbols on an unnamed quest, leaving blood and carnage in his wake. Declared a masterpiece by no less than John Lennon himself, EL TOPO tops even the most outrageous aesthetic experiments of its radical era and remains unmatched in its provocations and strange beauty. Long unavailable, EL TOPO is presented in a gorgeous new restoration personally overseen by Jodorowsky.”
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THE STRANGE LITTLE CAT, Ramon Zurcher
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“In the hands of masters like Jacques Tati, Lucrecia Martel, and Chantal Akerman, cinema that at first appears to merely observe and record is in fact masking intricately constructed commentaries, built from seemingly mundane experiences. In the case of The Strange Little Cat, an extended family-dinner gathering becomes an exquisitely layered confection ready for writer-director Ramon Zürcher’s razor-sharp slicing. A mother desperately trying not to implode and her youngest daughter who explodes constantly form poles between which sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, cats and cousins weave in and around each other in the tight domestic space of a middle-class Berlin flat. Fans of Béla Tarr and Franz Kafka will find much to love, as will devotees of The Berlin School, of which this film represents a third-generation evolution. A comedic examination of the everyday that has been captivating audiences since its premiere at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival.”
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STOP MAKING SENSE, Jonathan Demme
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“It’s been 30 years since the initial release of Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking Talking Heads concert film, in which a black stage, basic white lighting, and long takes allowed viewers to engage with the band without distraction, giving a generous sense of being at the performance itself. Considered by many to be one of the greatest rock movies ever made, it’s both visually (who can forget David Byrne’s big suit?) and aurally stunning. Featuring “Psycho Killer,” “Burning Down the Hose,” “Slippery People,” “Take Me to the River,” and much more.”
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CARNIVAL OF SOULS, Herk Harvey
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“In this haunting, dreamlike cult indie rediscovered in 1989, the sole survivor of a car accident is haunted by a ghoulish apparition and finds herself caught up in a series of terrifying uncanny events. What does it all mean?”
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***SATURDAY, AUGUST 2***
SALT IN THE WOUND, Tonino Ricci
Anthology Film Archives
“This ‘macaroni combat’ war film is a little-seen gem that deserves to be far better known. Kinski, in one of his rare starring roles, is a WWII American soldier condemned to death for the murder of a civilian. Escaping execution thanks to a German ambush, he and another condemned soldier end up behind enemy lines alongside the officer who was responsible for carrying out their execution. But when they stumble upon an Italian village that welcomes them as liberators, they find themselves defending it against a Nazi attack, providing a chance at redemption. Though it combines elements and themes from THE DIRTY DOZEN and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, SALT IN THE WOUND stands very much on its own, with terrific performances, exciting action sequences, and a surprisingly powerful trajectory.”
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MY BEST FIEND, Werner Herzog
Anthology Film Archives
“Opening with footage of Kinski during the ‘Jesus Christus Erlöser’ tour (documented in full in JESUS CHRIST SAVIOUR), Herzog’s posthumous tribute to his frequent collaborator and ghoulish alter ego is a fascinating portrait of Kinski and a necessarily one-sided chronicle of their profoundly tumultuous artistic and personal relationship. Herzog confronts the host of infamous stories, rumors, and attacks that their collaboration engendered (such as the alleged incident in which Herzog reportedly threatened to shoot Kinski if he tried walking off the set of AGUIRRE, or Kinski’s description in his autobiography of Herzog as a “nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep”). If the film shows evidence of self-serving revisionist history, it’s no less entertaining as a result.”
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DAY OF WRATH, Carl Theodor Dreyer
Anthology Film Archives
“Carl Dreyer’s art begins to unfold at the point where most other directors give up. Witchcraft and martyrdom are his themes – but his witches don’t ride broomsticks, they ride the erotic fears of their persecutors. It is a world that suggests a dreadful fusion of Hawthorne and Kafka.” –Pauline Kael
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A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL, Damiano Damiani
Anthology Film Archives
“A spaghetti western classic, one of the many Mexico-set Zapata westerns produced during that genre’s heyday, A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL weaves a tangled tale of proletarian rebellion, greed, and hidden motives. Like so many of the best spaghetti westerns, it’s at once exhilaratingly entertaining, blackly comic, visually stunning, and politically sophisticated. Starring the great Gian Maria Volonté as wild-eyed Mexican bandit ‘El Chuncho’ and Italian and French New Wave luminary Lou Castel as mysterious gringo Bill Tate, it also features a typically scene-stealing Kinski, who, in his most memorable moment, stands atop a fortress in full monk garb, lobbing grenades at the enemy as he recites the Lord’s Prayer.”
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THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, Carl Theodor Dreyer
Anthology Film Archives
“A work that exemplifies Dreyer’s philosophy: simplicity is the most complex idea of all. Although renowned for its spare acts, lack of embellishment, and use of simple shots, Dreyer’s masterpiece reveals the natural complexity of an un-retouched face (often existing alone, filling up the frame) and a landscape of history as individual as the lines on that face. Made in 1927-28, it continues to haunt the cinema, looking more and more avant-garde as the years go by.”
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ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, Douglas Sirk
Museum of the Moving Image
“German-born Douglas Sirk is revered as American cinema’s most expressive director of melodrama, and this is perhaps his greatest overall achievement, a tale about a good-hearted, upper-middle-class widow (Wyman) who must deal with the dissaproval of her neighbors and family when she falls for her handsome—and much younger—gardener (Hudson). Wielding a gorgeous Technicolor palette, Sirk emotionally lays bare the small-mindedness lurking behind the veneer of suburban America.”
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BATON BUNNY AND OTHER CARTOONS, Chuck Jones
Museum of the Moving Image
“To accompany the new exhibition What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones, the Museum will present matinees of cartoons directed by Jones, many presented in archival 35mm prints from The Academy Film Archive and the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity.”
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HAROLD AND MAUDE, Hal Ashby
Nitehawk Cinema
“Harold is a wealthy young man of twenty who, suicidal and obsessed with death, meets the kooky eighty year old Maude (played by the eternally stunning Ruth Gordon) at a funeral. Although in opposite phases of life, Harold’s is beginning while Maude’s is ending, they find genuine love and affection for each other. Shifting from black comedy to anti-establishment, Ashby’s Harold and Maude wasn’t exactly an box office but its tone of acceptance and untraditional love has managed to live long after its release.”
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WHITE HEAT, Raoul Walsh
IFC Center
“Raoul Walsh’s heroes had a knack for going too far, but none went further than James Cagney in this roaring 1949 gangster piece. Cagney is a psychotic punk who sleeps in his mother’s lap between jobs; otherwise, he’s continually in motion, blasting away at cops and bystanders. Pure id, he could be the most unbalanced hero in film noir, yet Walsh’s swift, pounding direction keeps you cheering for him up to the famous ending, which finds Cagney shouting “Top of the world, ma!” as the world he ignited goes up in flames. His own energy does him in: he can’t contain it, and he finally explodes—the film leaves you drained and weirdly exhilarated. With Edmond O’Brien, Margaret Wycherly, and Virginia Mayo.” – Dave Kehr
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BAROQUE DUET, Susan Froemke, Peter Gelb, Pat Jaffe, Albert Maysles
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Opera star Kathleen Battle and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis unite to
go baroque. Rehearsals and recording sessions bring them together to explore the 17th-century music of Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach. Marsalis worries throughout about his intonation while Battle is endlessly amused and supportive. The film widens its focus by following the two to their hometowns—Battle makes a special appearance with her old church choir in Ohio, and Marsalis travels to New Orleans to coach young jazz musicians and play with his renowned father and brothers. The film’s final performance with Battle, Marsalis, John Nelson, and the accompanying St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra is both quietly lyrical and joyfully triumphant.”
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MY WAY, Dominique Mollee, Vinny Sisson
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Small-town girl goes bad! Rebekah Starr has an all-girl band and wants to make a music video. She has a friend who has a friend in L.A. willing to shoot it, so… road trip! With Annika, her Estonian bandmate, she leaves her small Pennsylvania town to drive cross-country, picking up gigs and hawking CDs to pay bills. Along the way they make friends, some famous, like Steven Adler (Guns N’ Roses) and Rikki Rockett (Poison), who help out when they make it to Hollywood. Rebekah shows her tough, determined side, ready to leave it all behind for a shot at rock-’n’-roll fame.”
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***SUNDAY, AUGUST 3***
PAGANINI, Klaus Kinski
Anthology Film Archives
“Having written the screenplay for this biopic of the virtuoso 19th century violinist, Niccolo Paganini, a figure with whom Kinski strongly identified, he attempted to enlist Werner Herzog to direct. When Herzog declined (deeming the script an “unfilmable mess”), Kinski took the reins himself, resulting in his only directorial credit. As much self-portrait as biopic, PAGANINI is as unhinged, self-indulgent, and gloriously singular as you’d expect from a Kinski labor-of-love, a largely non-narrative, nearly dialogue-free tribute both to Paganini’s artistic genius and sexual voracity. These rare screenings are not to be missed!”
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CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND, Alfred Vohrer
Anthology Film Archives
“Kinski’s early career coincided with the advent of the Krimi genre, a series of atmospheric, convoluted mysteries, initially based on the works of early-20th-century English crime novelist (and co-creator of KING KONG), Edgar Wallace, that saturated German cinemas throughout the 1960s. Invariably set in foggy London (with foggy Hamburg serving as stand-in), they almost as invariably featured appearances by Kinski, usually in supporting roles as shady, menacing characters. CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND, however, elevates Kinski not only to a starring role but a dual one, as both accused murderer Dave Emerson and his twin brother Richard, who Dave believes is the actual culprit. CREATURE is a superior krimi, with a double-dose of Kinski.”
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SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Museum of the Moving Image
“Melodramas do not get more intense than Joseph Mankiewicz’s Gore Vidal–scripted adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s shocker about a domineering widow, Violet (Hepburn), who wishes to lobotomize her niece, Catherine (Taylor), who has cracked up after bearing witness to something very terrible involving the death of Violet’s son. Clift is the psychiatrist who has come to investigate the bizarre case. It’s bold and brave throughout, and Taylor’s performance ascends to a fever pitch that’s justly famous.”
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CHINATOWN, Roman Polanski
Museum of the Moving Image
“Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film (2014, Public Affairs) is the new book by Kenneth Turan, renowned film critic for The Los Angeles Times and NPR. Blending cultural criticism, historical anecdote, and inside-Hollywood controversy, the book spans a century of great movies. For this special event, Turan will present Chinatown (dir. Roman Polanski, 1974, 130 mins. With Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston), of which he writes, “It was the fusion of the memories and sensibilities of Roman Polanski and Robert Towne, sometimes divergent, sometimes in sync, that made Chinatown and its depiction of mendacity, amorality, and despair in 1930s Los Angeles so compelling.” The screening will be followed by a conversation with Turan and a book signing in the Moving Image Store.”
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EUROPE IN 8 BITS, Javier Polo
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Europe in 8 Bits explores the world of chipmusic, a trend that is growing exponentially throughout Europe. The stars of this new music movement reveal how to reuse old video-game hardware from the likes Nintendo and Atari by turning them into tools capable of creating original sounds, modern tempos, and innovative musical styles. It’s an all-new way of interpreting music performed by artists who show their skill in turning these “limited” machines designed for leisure in the 1980s into surprising musical instruments. Information and resources are shared online, while performances take place anywhere from basements to nightclubs in this latest techno-revolution.”
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TOSCA’S KISS, Daniel Schmid
Film Society of Lincoln Center
“Meet the inhabitants of the “Casa di Riposa” in Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. In his documentary Tosca’s Kiss, which has gained a cult following over the years and is a favorite among opera and music lovers worldwide, director Daniel Schmid has captured a world in which these wonderful singers (many of whom had significant careers on the opera stage) relive and reenact their triumphant roles of the glorious past. Tosca’s Kiss is a touching and often hilarious film on the subject of aging and the power and timeless capacity of music to inspire. With Sara Scuderi, Giovanni Puligheddu, Leonida Bellon, Salvatore Locapo, and Giuseppe Manacchini. Restored by Cinémathèque Suisse on the occasion of the film’s 30th anniversary.”
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THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, Orson Welles
MoMA
“Like so many Orson Welles films, The Lady from Shanghai is a shadow of its former self, as Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn trimmed Welles’s 155-minute cut by nearly an hour and refused to follow his scoring notes. Nonetheless, this is noir at its best, with Rita Hayworth as the seductive Scheherazade who entangles naïve Irish sailor Welles in romantic intrigue, an insurance scam, and murder. Baroque set pieces on a yacht (on loan from Errol Flynn for the production), a Chinese opera theater, and, most famously, a funhouse hall of mirrors, give Welles free rein with deep-focus, chiaroscuro photography, optical distortions and trickery, and shock editing.”
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DEAD RECKONING, Joseph Cromwell
MoMA
“A returning war hero (Bogart) investigates the sudden disappearance of a paratrooper buddy who’s been accused in a crime of passion, only to get drawn into a Florida Gulf love triangle involving Coral Chandler (Scott), a husky-voiced cabaret singer who harbors deadly secrets, and a smarmy casino owner named Martinelli (Carnovsky). Lizabeth Scott may have been no Lauren Bacall—or, for that matter, Rita Hayworth, who was unable to star in Dead Reckoning because she was committed to her estranged husband’s The Lady from Shanghai—but John Cromwell and Humphrey Bogart seem to be having fun quoting earlier noirs like The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon.”
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