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đ”ïž NOIR CITY: CHICAGO 2022
Noir City returns to the Music Box Theatre from Friday through Thursday! Screenings will be presented by Eddie Muller, founder of the Film Noir Foundation and host of TCM's Noir Alley, and FNF board member Alan K. Rode. We have reviews of select films below, though we highly encourage viewers to check out the others that were not covered as wellâthereâs just so much! Full lineup and schedule here.
Michael Mann's THIEF (US)
Friday, 7pm
Is Michael Mann the greatest working American director? Frederick Wiseman may possess a greater influence over world cinema on the whole and Clint Eastwood is more nationally valuable for his ongoing critique of the American character. Yet Mann inspires greater reverence than either of them due to the sheer beauty of his approach. An artist with an acute sense of the fleeting moment, the unnatural pace of time in contemporary life, and myriad variations of artificial light (he's likened himself to a photorealist painter), Mann is simply our greatest living image-maker. Shot primarily in Chicago, THIEF builds its atmosphere around the city's proletarian feistiness; it's certainly the native South Sider's most autobiographical work. In the first of many idiosyncratic takes on realism, Mann cast actual Chicago cops to play criminals and actual former criminals to play cops. In doing so, he made first steps toward the great theme of his work: the uncanny leveling of human behavior under modern professionalism. James Caan plays a successful lifelong thief who wants to get married and settle down. He discovers his own humanity too late (there's always One Last Score), but there are great realizations on the way to failure. Caan considered this his best performance, and he was probably right. Several of the most important scenes are two-person conversations that reach Bergmanesque levels of intimacy and recrimination. These moments of heightened self-doubt alternate with bloody gunfights and meticulously observed crimes; unlike Howard Hawks or Anthony Mannâtwo of his thematic forbearersâMann seems deeply ambivalent about the macho attitudes that tend to accompany these subjects. In lives increasingly defined by professional obligation, Mann regards the decline of traditional gender roles with serious curiosity and surprising nostalgia. (In this sense, his films have affinities with those of Tsai Ming-liang.) THIEF is the first of Mann's elegies for professional masculinity, and it's sharpened greatly by the film's harsh night photography. (1981, 122 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Steve Klovesâ FLESH AND BONE (US)
Friday, 9:45pm
The brooding west Texasâset noir FLESH AND BONE opens with a 12-minute prologue in which young Arlis Sweeney (Jerry Swindall) witnesses his swindler father Roy (James Caan) gun down a family during a botched home invasion. For writer-director Steve Kloves, this episode of slow-burn rural violence marks an extreme shift from the Seattle cocktail lounges of his better-remembered debut feature, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS (1989), which follows a pair of piano-playing brothers (Jeff and Beau Bridges) and the singer (Michelle Pfeiffer) they recruit to rescue their act from obsolescence. But despite the obvious differences, FLESH AND BONE shares many of the earlier movieâs pleasurable hallmarks: an affinity for nomadic personalities, an untidy portrait of familial discord, and an idiosyncratic interest in the minutiae of running a small business. Where BAKER BOYS goes into back rooms to watch the siblings negotiate their salaries and show dates, FLESH AND BONE includes a wealth of detail about the quirky vending machine supply business of the taciturn adult Arlis (Dennis Quaid). Arlis fields concerns from general-store operators regarding the threat of condom dispensers on the localeâs âsmall-town valuesâ; when a man from a nearby county dies and leaves behind a roster of Texaco stations and Dairy Queens in need of machines, Arlis and his partner weigh the pros and cons of expansion. But Arlisâ daily routine of coin collecting gets upended when he meets Kay Davies (Meg Ryan) and helps her recover from a hangover and flee an abusive marriage. Quaid and Ryan, married at the time, share lovely scenes of initial flirtation, delighting in their charactersâ strewn-about circumstances. In one enchanting dialogue, Kayâmid-bath, with beer in handâlaunches into a mini-dissertation on the history of awful men in her life before segueing into an analysis of the effect of Arlisâ cowboy hat on his hairline. But when Caanâs fearsome Roy resurfaces one night in the company of a brazen pickpocket (Gwyneth Paltrow), the sins of the Sweeneysâ past intrude on the coupleâs budding romance. Throughout the gradually paced action, Kloves returns to certain symbols (empty swing sets, barren motel lots) and phrases (Arlis and Kay both say the line âPractice makes perfectâ), giving the movie an eerie sense of predetermination. (1993, 126 min, 35mm) [Danny King]
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Jack Hivelyâs STREET OF CHANCE (US)
Saturday, 3:15pm
As demonstrated by STREET OF CHANCE (based on his novel The Black Curtain) and PHANTOM LADY (based on an eponymous novel by William Irish, one of his pseudonyms), Cornell Woolrich could devise a story with such little regard for plausibility that it plays like it came directly from his subconscious. STREET OF CHANCE begins when a man gets hit on the head by a falling object at a construction site; he finds heâs unable to remember anything that happened in the past year. Putting together the pieces of his life, the hero discovers that he left his wife a year ago and started living under an assumed identity⊠and his alias is now wanted for murder. Our poor amnesiac must prove his innocence before he can go back to his old life under his real name; his mission comes to involve living in a garden shed and teaching an elderly woman whoâs mute and paralyzed to communicate through blinking. Burgess Meredith stars, and he commands sympathy by trying very hard to play someone who isnât weird; the cinematography is by the wonderfully named Theodor Sparkuhl. Made in 1942, this comes rather early in the classic film noir canon, and it generally feels like a technical exercise in search of deeper meaning. At the same time, the filmâs drift in and out of logic can be most appealing. (1942, 74 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Anthony Mannâs DR. BROADWAY (US)
Saturday, 5pm
As Jeanine Basinger aptly declares in her book on the director, Anthony Mannâs first film âestablished [him] as capable of directing B-budget projectsâand making them better than they had any right to be.â Itâs hard to believe DR. BROADWAY was anyoneâs first film; itâs blithely entertaining, remarkably assured, and, despite its modest budget (and perhaps more impressively because of it), still evokes Mannâs greatest strength, his consummate mise-en-scĂšne. Case in point, a sequence at the beginning where Dr. Broadway (King of the Bs Macdonald Carey) and soon-to-be receptionist Connie (Jean Phillips) teeter along a buildingâs ledge high above the ground. The buildingâs architectural details; the composition, which frames the actors just so as they move cautiously across the space; how Times Square glitters away beneath them in certain angles; the way Connieâs skirt blows in the wind. They seem so high up and the rest of the world so far below, even though this was, of course, shot on a set and only made to look that way. The rest of the film follows suit in how every piece joins together to form a more perfect whole. After Dr. Broadway (whose real name is Dr. Kane, but whoâs called Dr. Broadway because heâs familiarized himself with the array of characters who haunt that part of the city) prevents Connie from jumping to her death, he learns that it had been only a publicity stunt but still takes a liking to her. Hiring her as his new receptionist, he then has to deal with a gangster he helped put away whoâs recently been released; as luck would have it, the gangster respects Dr. Broadway and seeks him out to ask that he deliver $100,000 to his estranged daughter when he passes away from a terminal illness. The thug's fate gets sped up when heâs mysteriously murdered, after which Dr. Broadway sets off simultaneously to accomplish the task and clear his name when the police suspect him of having done it. Directing a script by Art Arthur, Mann expertly balances the serio-comic tone, evincing that the stakes are high even as it continues to solicit laughs. And though it wasnât shot by John Alton, the look that heâd later come to perfect with Mann is at times on display, a painterly kind of chiaroscuro that elevates it above mere black and white. But I wouldnât snub my nose at the filmâs cinematographer, Theodor Sparkuhl; he shot several Ernst Lubitsch silents, Jean Renoir's LA CHIENNE, William A. Wellmanâs BEAU GESTE, and various notable 40s noirs. Heâs credited with helping to set the bar high for film noir aesthetics, owing to his experience in both German expressionism and French poetic realism. Crucial viewing for any Mann devotee, and a must-see for fans of solid, even if B-side, noirs. (1942, 68 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
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Joseph H. Lewisâ SO DARK THE NIGHT (US)
Saturday, 8:30 pm
B-movie director Joseph H. Lewisâ distinctive visual storytelling style is on full display in his French-set noir SO DARK THE NIGHT. While taking a long overdue vacation in the countryside, famous Paris detective Henri Cassin (Steven Geray) falls in love with and quickly becomes betrothed to his innkeeperâs zealous daughter, Nanette (Micheline Cheirel). Sheâs found murdered after the night of their engagement party, leading Cassin to assume the killer is her jilted former boyfriend, Leon (Paul Marion). But Leon also turns up dead, and as bodies begin to pile up, even Parisâ most renowned detective is at a loss. What follows is a psychological thriller with a wild revealâmore GASLIGHT than THE MALTESE FALCONâthat somehow feels earned by the skillful filmmaking of director Lewis. Lewis worked with many talented cinematographers throughout his career - including John Alton and Russell Harlan - lending to his reputation as a B-movie director with a recognizable auteurist style. SO DARK THE NIGHT was filmed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Burnett Guffey (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, BONNIE AND CLYDE), who was known for his work in film noirâIN A LONELY PLACE is perhaps his most famous film in the genre. His camera creeps around both Paris and the countryside as it spies on characters, with stark angles, out-of-focus haze, and eerie close-ups highlighting their inner turmoil. Itâs so dazzlingly well shot and full of striking camera tricks, that itâs a wonder SO DARK THE NIGHT isnât more widely recognized as a noir classic. (1946, 71 min, 35 mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Cy Endfieldâs THE ARGYLE SECRETS (US)
Saturday, 10:15pm
During radioâs Golden Age, radio adaptations of movies were common and rather enjoyable productions. THE ARGYLE SECRETS is a rare example of a radio play adaptation for the big screen. Cy Endfield, who wrote the original half-hour radio play for Suspense, expanded the story to fill a 64-minute feature-length filmâand that might explain why the plot is almost as convoluted as that of THE BIG SLEEP (1939). Thereâs not much new here for anyone who has seen THE MALTESE FALCON (1941). A newspaper reporter (William Gargan) searches for a MacGuffin called the Argyle album that has already caused two people to be murdered by those who want to get their hands on it. Thereâs a bit of nonsense about its ties to Nazis, though this is never explicitly stated, and a femme fatale in the Mary Astor mode using her wiles to wrest information from the reporter. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is the fact that three future TV stars appear in itâiconic TV moms Marjorie Lord and Barbara Billingsley as the femme fatale and faithful secretary, respectively, and John Banner, looking nothing like bumbling POW guard Sgt. Schultz, as the accented bad guy with secrets to bury. Jack Reitzen is amusing as a Sydney Greenstreet knock-off, as is a scene involving a boy murdering a musical scale on a violin when Gargan (a one-time Oscar nominee) climbs through his window and ends up making polite conversation with the boyâs Jewish mother. (1948, 64 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Julien Duvivierâs FLESH AND FANTASY and Reginald Le Borgâs DESTINY (US)
Sunday, 1:45pm
Film noir as we know it wouldnât exist without the influence of Julien Duvivierâs PĂPĂ LE MOKO (1937), so it seems fair to include almost anything Duvivier directed at a film noir festival. That said, FLESH AND FANTASY (1943, 94 min, 35mm) isnât really a noir at allâitâs a collection of supernatural stories executed in a playful, expressionistic style and made in a hurry to capitalize on the success of Duvivierâs omnibus film from the year before, TALES OF MANHATTAN. The film contains three stories, though it was originally designed to have four; the opening story, about a criminal on the lam who hides out on a farm, was excised after preview screenings. Always looking to make a return on their investment, Universal Pictures repurposed most of the footage from that story, shot new scenes with a resident yeoman named Reginald Le Borg (the cinematic equivalent of Hamburger Helper, apparently), and released it the next year as the short feature DESTINY (1944, 65 min, 35mm). In its present conditionâwith no supernatural elements and more crimeâDESTINY is a legitimate noir that tells a story of an ex-convictâs redemption upon meeting a kindly blind woman in a rural setting. (Did Nicholas Ray watch this before he made his noir masterpiece ON DANGEROUS GROUND [1951]?) FLESH AND FANTASY contains just one shot from this story (though the shot doesnât appear in DESTINY), that of a corpse washing up on the beach. In the context of Duvivierâs movie, it comes off as a non sequitur, since nothing in the poignant tale that follows is as dark as that image. Anticipating those unexpectedly cutesy Twilight Zone episodes, this story charts the transformation (via a magical mask) of a lonely young woman who sees herself as âugly.â Duvivier telegraphs the twist ending, but he makes up for it by eliciting sweet performances from the leads. Adapted from an Oscar Wilde story, the middle tale stars Edward G. Robinson as a successful London lawyer who goes mad after heâs told by a preternaturally accurate palm reader named Septimus Podgers (Thomas Mitchell, turning in a characterization worthy of this name) that heâs going to commit murder. Duvivier is at his most expressionistic in this tale, endowing London with a Langian sense of foreboding, though he also turns in a terrifying nightmare sequence in the third story, about a tightrope walker (played by Charles Boyer, who also produced the film with Duvivier) who becomes convinced heâs going to die while performing his act. Barbara Stanwyck plays his love interest, and when you remember she made LADY OF BURLESQUE the same year as this and DOUBLE INDEMNITY not long thereafter, you will easily forgive the tossed-off nature of her performance here. Less easy to forgive are the framing scenes set at a gentlemen's club where Robert Benchley of Algonquin Round Table fame and some other actors talk glibly about fate, dreams, and the like, then throw up their hands at the prospect of deriving meaning from the stories weâve just heard. [Ben Sachs]
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John Farrowâs NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (US)
Sunday, 5:15pm
Cornell Woolrich is a hallowed name in film noir. A prolific writer of pulp fiction, Woolrich provided the material for noir gems DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946), THE CHASE (1946), THE WINDOW (1949), REAR WINDOW (1954), and many others. NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES is based on his novel of the same name, published in 1945 under the pseudonym George Hopley. It is perhaps because he was writing under another name that Woolrich felt free to let his imagination run wild in this story of a mentalist who suddenly starts having visions of the future. John Triton (Edward G. Robinson), his fiancĂ©e Jenny (Virginia Bruce), and piano accompanist and best friend Whitney Courtland (Jerome Cowan) have a seemingly popular act, but with vaudeville in its death throes, they barely make ends meet. When Courtland jokes about betting some money on the ponies, Triton tells him the horse he picked will go down and have to be destroyed and gives him the name of another horse. The trio is surprised when the horse comes in first, and they are suddenly $200 richer. Triton gets other visions, some for good investments, but most include predictions of death that send Triton fleeing Jenny and Courtland to try to avert a vision of Jennyâs death. Twenty years later, Triton meets Jean Courtland (Gail Russell), the daughter Jenny and Courtland had together, and eventually he is suspected of plotting her murder. Is this actually an elaborate confidence game, or is Triton really prescient and capable of cheating the future to save Jean? Director John Farrow manages to keep the audience guessing with his deft direction. At the same time, Edward G. Robinson gives one of his best performances as a tortured man who largely has our sympathy even as the seeds of doubt are sown. Despite the contributions of Woolrichâs novel and ace noir cinematographer John F. Seitz, NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES really isnât film noir. But itâs a good story well told, and film fans will get a kick out of brief views of the Angels Flight funicular and the now-demolished Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles it served. (1948, 81 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Anatole Litvak's SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (US)
Sunday, 7:15pm
Based on a play Orson Welles once hailed as âthe greatest single radio script ever writtenâ and adapted for the screen by the same author, Lucille Fletcher, SORRY, WRONG NUMBER is a suspenseful tale of love, murder, and betrayal told from the perspective of a bedridden woman who finds out her husband isnât quite who she thinks he is. While Leona is confined to her bedroom throughout, she still acts as the driving force behind the plot, first accidentally answering a suspicious phone call about a womanâs murder, then making a series of further calls to unravel her husband's involvement in the crime. As Leona's calls trigger flashbacks, the audience is given pieces of the story little by little, as if they're tasked with piecing the crime together alongside her. This structure pulls the audience into the mystery and adds to the anxiety conveyed by Barbara Stanwyckâs Oscar-nominated performance as Leona. Stanwyck, a former Broadway star who became the highest-earning actress in her time, is electric in this film, running in exasperation between rooms in her characterâs home as if this small central setting were the theater itself. Her acting is the perfect vehicle for delivering this story, with a heavy dose of suspense in her shock, fear, and other uncontainable emotions. A classic in film noir, this just never stops moving, making for edge-of-your-seat experience. (1948, 89 min, 35mm) [Michael Bates]
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Edward Dmytrykâs THE SNIPER (US)
Monday, 7pm
If violent incels had a patron saint, it would be Eddie Miller. Although he is 30 years old, Eddie has been unable to get his life on track after he was mustered out of the army after World War II. He lives in a rooming house and is henpecked by his female supervisor at the dry cleaners where he works as a delivery boy. He is sweet on a lounge pianist on his route but becomes enraged when her boyfriend shows up during one of his deliveries. Unable to control his rage, he makes her pay for failing to be attracted to him. THE SNIPER is one of the earliest examples of a film focused on a woman-hating serial killer, and one of the few in which the audience is asked to sympathize with the murderer. Director Edward Dmytryk, one of the jailed Hollywood Ten who refused to testify for the House Un-American Activities Committee, withdrew his opposition to the communist witch hunt, named a few names, and was rehabilitated in Hollywood. THE SNIPER was one of the first films he made after his return to work, and it shows that he didnât lose a step during his enforced idleness. Working with cinematographer Burnett Guffey, Dmytryk combines noir visuals with a documentary-like knowledge of San Francisco (and the enormous cast to populate it), the town where the director grew up. Arthur Franz brings a vulnerability to his killer, confirming the interpretation of criminal psychologist Richard Kileyâs assessment that Eddie could have been savedâor imprisoned foreverâif his pathology had been identified earlier; a police interrogation of sex offenders reminded me, I believe intentionally, of Nelson Algrenâs indelible sketch of both societyâs dregs and guilty conscience, âThe Captain Has Bad Dreams.â The irony of fashion icon and virulent anti-communist Adolphe Menjou playing a rumpled police lieutenant under the direction of one of the Hollywood Ten proves that show business makes for strange bedfellows. Noir star Marie Windsor is compelling as Eddieâs first victim; her murder, played in front of a sign that carries her image, is a gem of perfect character acting and effective staging. Highly recommended. (1952, 88 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Robert Floreyâs THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (US)
Monday, 9:15pm
Peter Lorre stars as an innocent Hungarian immigrant who is horribly disfigured in a fire and, unable to find work, becomes the mastermind of a criminal gang. This transition occurs in fairly short order, and though Lorre smoothly negotiates the characterâs hairpin turn from sweetness to icy rage, no one could sell the conceit of this quiet, moony watch repairman suddenly commanding a crew of thugs. Director Robert Florey (MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE) showcases his bit players, positioning Lorre with his back to the camera and letting others react to his scarred visage. Lending heart to the story are George E. Stone as the protagonistâs loyal, rabbity lieutenant and Evelyn Keyes as a Chaplinesque blind woman who sees the soul behind the face (behind the mask). (1941, 68 min, 35mm) [J.R. Jones]
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Phil Karlsonâs SCANDAL SHEET (US)
Tuesday, 9:30pm
Today, the most well-known person involved with SCANDAL SHEET is probably Samuel Fuller, who wrote the novel the movie is based on, The Dark Page. He didnât work on the film (unless you count a treatment he wrote in the mid-â40s when it was going to be directed by Howard Hawks), but his characteristic cynicism still comes through. Likely inspired by Fullerâs early days as a crime reporter, the story centers on an amoral editor-in-chief who, at the start of the tale, is busy transforming a respectable New York newspaper into a tabloid. Thereâs an impressive early scene that takes place at a âLonely Hearts Danceâ the editor has staged as a publicity stunt (single folks from all over the country are invited to gather and fall in loveâthe first couple to marry wins a bed with a television set attached) that conveys the hideousness latent in mass culture through quick, choice gestures. After the dance, the editor (Broderick Crawford, looking appropriately like a sack of dung) is confronted by the wife he abandoned years earlier before he changed his name and moved to New York. Conflict ensues, and the wife dies in an accident. The editor, hoping to keep his secrets under wraps, covers up the murder, yet dramatic irony prevails twice over: first, his top crime reporter sees a big story in the âLonely Hearts Murderâ and starts investigating the crime; next, the editor finds himself unable to stop the reporter because he knows the story will indeed sell papers. As the narrative focus shifts between the editor and the reporter, SCANDAL SHEET develops conflicting forces of suspenseâyouâre torn between wanting to see the crime get solved and see the crime go away, depending whoâs onscreen. Thanks to the direction of Chicago-born Phil Karlson, the tone stays grim no matter what. (1952, 82 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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William Wylerâs DETECTIVE STORY (US)
Wednesday, 7pm
The squad room of New Yorkâs 21st police precinct is the setting for William Wylerâs masterfully realized DETECTIVE STORY. An adaptation of a hit play by one-time Group Theatre playwright Sidney Kingsley, a talent well known enough to feature on the movieâs poster, DETECTIVE STORY plumbs the fascination of its time with psychology as it details the compulsions and personality traits that make change so difficult for so many. Kirk Douglas plays Detective James McLeod, a man haunted by the memory of his criminal father and who exacts his revenge by showing no mercy for those he suspects of breaking the lawâthat heâs not above breaking the law himself with the aid of a rubber hose serves to show how his hatred has completely obliterated his sense of proportion. His wife (Eleanor Parker) loves him to distraction, but has been keeping a dark secret from him that connects her to one suspect he has been hounding for more than a year. When that secret is revealed, McLeodâs inability to bend breaks him. The large acting ensemble, some reprising their roles from Broadway, hits every beat with precision. Frank Faylen amuses as the detective who humors the crazies and fobs a caller off on another precinct when he learns which side of a street a crime has taken place. In her screen debut, Lee Grant is annoyingly cute as a naĂŻve shoplifter who kibbitzes with anyone who will listen to her and bemoans her unmarried status. William Bendix is believably sympathetic as a cop with compassion in his heart for a first offender who reminds him of the son he lost in World War II. And, if you like this sort of thing, Joseph Wiseman playing a cat burglar and Kirk Douglas compete to see who can swallow the most scenery in under two hours. Some may take umbrage with the stagebound nature of DETECTIVE STORY, but Wyler shows how to make the most of a confined space with blocking that emphasizes the entrapping nature of playing cops and robbers. Most praiseworthy are Wylerâs superb shot compositions. His characteristically expert use of deep focus, achieved by cinematographer Lee Garmes and an uncredited John F. Seitz, offers a kind of Greek chorus of background players watching McLeodâs central tragedy unfold. Many frames take on the look of a Raphael painting with their geometric symmetry and expressive group close-ups. Wyler anticipated virtual reality by filming DETECTIVE STORY as an immersive experience, one well worth checking out. (1951, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Joseph Newmanâs 711 OCEAN DRIVE (US)
Wednesday, 9:15pm
âThis picture was made under extraordinary circumstancesâvirtually with a gun at its back,â announces Edmond OâBrien in a trailer for this 1950 crime drama, and in fact producer Frank N. Seltzer testified to the U.S. Senateâs subcommittee on organized crime that his crew was menaced by gangsters on location in Nevada because the script disclosed their complicated scam of âpost-postingâ horse races. (Onscreen, this business is so bewildering you marvel that anyone might get roughed up over it.) OâBrien, in his sleek WHITE HEAT-D.O.A. prime, plays an L.A. telephone lineman whose technical prowess provides him entrĂ©e into the world of racketeering and who swiftly claws his way to the top. A techno-thriller of its day, the film can get lost in its own operational detail, but director Joseph Newman rescues it in the final reel with a spectacular chase sequence at Hoover (then Boulder) Dam. (1950, 102 min, 35mm) [J.R. Jones]
đœïž CRUCIAL VIEWING
William K. Howardâs THE TRIAL OF VIVIENNE WARE (US)
Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) â Wednesday, 7:30pm
This is that blessed thing, the perfect combination: a short movie that crams in the narrative and artistic complexity of a much longer film, losing little in the process. If anything, it uses its compact duration to its advantage, challenging viewers to keep up with all the machinations. At just under an hour, William K. Howardâs THE TRIAL OF VIVIENNE WAREâadapted from Kenneth M. Ellisâ six-part 1930 radio serial and 1931 book of the same, both of which were loosely based on the 1906 Thaw-White scandalâcovers an entire murder trial from the scene of the crime to plot twists on a dime. Beautiful socialite Vivienne Ware (Joan Bennett, here a blonde) discovers that her architect fiancĂ©, Damon Fenwick (Jameson Thomas), had been cheating on her with a showgirl from a glitzy nightclub. After heâs shot to death, Vivienne is arrested for his murder; her longtime friend, lawyer John Sutherland (Donald Cook), defends her as heâs hopelessly in love with the patrician beauty. Testimonies from various figures account for the flashbacks that punctuate the trial scenes, showing what happened on the night of the murder and what led authorities to believe Vivenne had killed the two-timing architect. (Non-chronological flashbacks werenât common in film at the time, though Howard use them again in the Preston Sturges-scripted THE POWER AND THE GLORY [1933], which Pauline Kael, in her infamous essay on CITIZEN KANE, claimed was its prototype.) A rather meta element also helps move things along, the inclusion of radio announcers who are narrating the events of the trial to their listeners. ZaSu Pitts plays one, the correspondent describing what the women are wearing to the female audience, though her doltish commentary extends past the sartorial. Intensifying the already quick pace is Howardâs use of whip-pans in lieu of standard cuts to shift focus from one thing to another. This tactic befits the drama of the trial, which gets more far-fetched as the film goes on, at one point even involving a knife being thrown at a witness on the stand. Be sure to pay attention, because with every whip-pan comes another plot point that turns your head as fast as the camera. Itâs good, rapidly paced fun, a genuinely mystifying whodunnit that confounds until the very end. Preceded by the Three Stooges in Edward Berndsâ 1945 short film MICROPHONIES (17 min, 16mm). (1932, 56 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
VÄra ChytilovĂĄ's DAISIES (Czechoslovakia)
Gene Siskel Film Center â See Venue website for showtimes
VÄra ChytilovĂĄ's films have earned her acolytes and enemies at an equal rateâparticularly DAISIES, an anarchic, poetic, visually exhilarating film lacking in any affirmation whatsoever. In more recent years, it has cemented ChytilovĂĄ's stature as an avant-garde genius, a feminist icon, and a major influence behind films such as CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING and MULHOLLAND DRIVE. In the period immediately following its release, ChytilovĂĄ was marked as both a dangerous dissident (by the Czechoslovak government, who unofficially blacklisted her) and a political traitor to the Left (by Godard, who made her the central figure of his anti-Soviet/Czechoslovak documentary PRAVDA). During one of the first screenings of her work in France, audience members walked out, complaining that "they shouldn't make that kind of film. It undermines people's faith in socialism. If that is the way it really is, then none of it is worth it at all." DAISIES leads with exactly this kind of "objectionable" nihilism, opening with the two protagonists deciding that "the world is spoiled; we'll be spoiled, too." These two teenage girls, both named Marie, spend the rest of the film on a hedonistic rampage of consumption and destruction, in no particular order, culminating in a banquet scene that merges both tendencies to an apocalyptic conclusion. Marie and Marie do everything that decent women shouldn't (cheat, steal, make messes, advertise casual sex without following through, overeat, etc)âand care about precisely nothing. They speak in nonsensical, non sequitur dialogue that seems like it could have been randomly generated ("Why say 'I love you?' Why not just 'an egg?'"), but was actually carefully curated by ChytilovĂĄ to serve as "the guardian of meaning" for her "philosophical documentary." During production, the only thing that she insisted remained untouched was the original script; everything else was up for grabs. Her production team took full advantage of this freedom in depicting the Maries' nihilistic spree, resulting in a surreal and stunning display of meaningless excess at every turn. Most notably, Jaroslav Kucera, the film's cinematographer (and ChytilovĂĄ's husband), shot the film as one of his famous "colour experiments," and Ester KrumbachovĂĄ, the film's costumer, styled the Maries in trendy mod bikinis and minidresses as often as elaborate sculptural outfits made from newspaper and loose wires. (1966, 74 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Anne Orchier]
Marlon Riggs' TONGUES UNTIED (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Wednesday, 7pm
One of the landmark works of queer film activism, Marlon Riggsâ TONGUES UNTIED is a treatise on the enforced silence of gay black men and an emphatic corrective to it. Through a sequence of poetry and monologues delivered by Riggs and fellow gay rights activists, the film centers and amplifies the subjectivities of this doubly oppressed group, giving space for their voices to not only be heard in all their multiplicity, but to directly address and challenge the dominant white, heteronormative patriarchy that deprives them of this privilege in the real world. Riggs conducts this address through an arsenal of techniques, including oral histories spoken directly to camera, musical interludes, instructional videos, and aural collage that often takes on the form of incantation. The last of these is introduced at the start of the film, as a rhythmic chant of âbrother to brotherâ builds in volume and tempo over the soundtrack, becoming mantra. Riggs proceeds to weave voices over and through his images, catalyzing discourses around racism and homophobia and invoking cathartic personal stories of shame, abuse, anger, and self-hate. The voices are not all from positive figures; demonstrating the persecution he faced while growing up in Georgia, Riggs cuts to extreme close-ups of mouths spitting epithets, making a grotesque symphony out of words he would eventually internalize. In a similar, later scene, preachers shout sweaty, fire-and-brimstone rhetoric around the placid visage of poet and activist Essex Hemphill, whose silence, he and Riggs tell us, serves as both a shield from such pernicious intolerance and a cloak that locks them into invisibility and muteness. TONGUES UNTIED searingly relays how this muteness festers into rage. âAnger unvented becomes pain unspoken becomes rage released becomes violence cha cha cha,â another chant on the soundtrack goes, turning a maxim into a song. âIt is easier to be furious than to be yearning, easier to crucify myself than you,â Hemphill admits. From these nakedly first-person accounts and their attendant, often confrontational images, Riggs makes perceptible the stifling feelings that, in a horrible irony, are instilled by the very culture that refuses their outlet. But in TONGUES UNTIED, they are spoken. Anger becomes mobilized into art and activism. The silence of the AIDS crisis is breached. In the early 90s, the impact of the film was such that the announcement of its broadcast on American public television caused an outcry, most notably from Pat Buchanan, who chastised Bushâs government for allowing such âpornographic and blasphemous artâ to receive federal funding. Of course, nothing about the film is inflammatory. Its candor, its poetry, its sensuality, and its politics only solicit our empathy and action. Riggs passed from AIDS complications in 1994, but thirty years on from the release of this seminal film, his voice has never left us. (1989, 55 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Screening with Arthur Dong's 1994 feature-length documentary COMING OUT UNDER FIRE (71 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration).
Bertrand Mandico's THE WILD BOYS (France)
Music Box Theatre â Sunday, 7pm
Like Guy Maddin or the late, great Raul Ruiz, French writer-director Bertrand Mandico makes films that seem assembled from the detritus of old narratives both cinematic and literary. Indeed, one could write about his first feature, THE WILD BOYS, entirely in terms of what it evokes: Mandico has cited the inspiration of two novels, Jules Verne's Two Years' Vacation and William S. Burroughs' The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (and there's a healthy dose of Lord of the Flies in there too); the fetishistic imagery recalls filmmakers ranging from Josef von Sternberg to Jean Cocteau to Walerian Borowczyk (the latter, not coincidentally, was the subject of Mandico's 2011 short BORO IN THE BOX); the rampant phallic symbolism echoes the films of Ken Russell and David Cronenberg's movie adaptation of Burroughs' Naked Lunch; and Mandico's employment of women actors to play the adolescent title characters suggests that the stage version of Peter Pan may have been an influence as well. The gender-bending casting is essential to what the film is up to thematically, as THE WILD BOYS is not just a hallucinatory nostalgia trip but also a very contemporary meditation on gender fluidity that anticipates Julia Ducournau's 2021 Palme d'Or winner TITANE. Mandico's film may go even further than Ducournau's in terms of rendering this theme strange and discomfortingâthroughout Mandico presents the "boys" acting out traditionally masculine forms of aggression (thus making it seem like a perverse form of theater), and the third-act twist proposes a bizarre solution to that aggression that was may have been derived from Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Set in the 1920s and shot mainly on black-and-white 16mm to invoke the films of that decade, THE WILD BOYS centers on five juvenile delinquents who get sent to a deserted island as punishment after they rape their literature teacher. Most of the first half takes place on board the ship that brings our antiheroes to the island, and the tribulations they encounter on the trip conjure up hazy memories of Joseph Conrad stories and Eugene O'Neill's sea plays. More tribulations await them on the island, some of them stemming from the natural world and others from the boys' own malign impulses. There's also a mad scientist played by Mandico regular Elina Löwensohn, sequences in feverish color that could have been designed by Kenneth Anger, and lots of gross fluids. It's hard to say whether Mandico wants to locate the perversions that lie hidden (or not-so-hidden) beneath the surfaces of classic entertainment or whether he wants to impose contemporary anxieties about sex and gender onto the past; regardless, the film has a way of getting under your skin. Preceded by Matthew Brendan Clark's 2022 short film THE WORMWOOD HEART (5 min, DCP Digital). (2017, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
đœïž ALSO RECOMMENDED
Alexander Klugeâs THE PATRIOT (DIE PATRIOTIN) (West Germany)
Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 200) â Wednesday, 6pm (Free Admission)
To borrow a phrase from British filmmaker Peter Watkins, the career of Alexander Kluge may be described as one long revolt against the Monoform. Kluge's films blend documentary, fiction, didacticism, and open-ended questions; his goal is to create interactive works that inspire debate. DIE PATRIOTIN features plenty of onscreen debate, too, namely during an extended rap session held by a group of high school teachers on the subject of historical truth. This scene serves as the film's centerpiece, as it elaborates Kluge's overarching questions of how German society should approach and teach national history. These questions are never far from the thoughts of the title character, a history teacher who loves her country but is unsure of how to represent it accurately for her students. In addition to debating her concerns with her peers, Kluge's patriot attends a real-life session of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (where she hopes to make history by influencing the drafting of a party resolution), visits an archeological dig, and spends a lot of time contemplating the country's past military campaigns. The character (and, by extension, the film) asks whether patriotism in Germany is still permissible, given that the nation is responsible for some of the worst atrocities in modern history. DIE PATRIOTIN seems to be taking shape as you watch itâwith each new scene evocative of someone trying to fit a piece into a jigsaw puzzleâand this reflects Kluge's mission for the film to be "completed" in society at large; the heroine's concerns clearly reflect what the whole of Germany was experiencing when the movie was made. (Significantly, Kluge made this shortly after he participated in the omnibus film GERMANY IN AUTUMN, a landmark response to controversies surrounding the Baader-Meinhof Gang and political violence of the 1970s.) More than 40 years after its release, the film remains an object lesson in how to engage honestly with the past in the hope of creating a better future. (1979, 118 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
Donna Deitch's DESERT HEARTS (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Tuesday, 7pm
What does it mean to say a film has heart? The phrase came to mind while I was mulling over the quiet firecracker that is Donna Deitchâs DESERT HEARTS. Referred to as a lesbian classic, the film is an adaptation of Jane Ruleâs 1964 novel Desert of the Heart, one of the first to seriously portray a romantic relationship between two women. Set in the late 1950s, it follows 35-year-old Columbia lit professor Vivian as she travels to Reno to procure a quickie divorce. There she meets Cay, ten years her junior and born of a different social sphere, though what she lacks in sophistication she makes up for in independence. Waiting for her decree, Vivian resides at a ranch owned by Cayâs would-be stepmother, Frances, who, while having a romantic streak of her own, condemns Cayâs so-called lifestyle. Despite Cayâs family (generally benign as they think their intolerance is) and Vivianâs initial reticence, romance flourishes in the heat of the desert sun. Vincent Canby is mostly correct when, in his review of the film for the New York Times, he points out that â[i]t's the sort of film in which everyone, including the English professor, talks as if she'd grown up inside âThe Life of Helen Trentââ (I listened to some of that program on YouTube, and heâs not wrong). Canny as his criticism may be, itâs that very earnestness that gives it its heart, raw feeling overshadowing its grandiloquent flaws. Superficial similarities to Todd Haynesâ CAROL, based on Patricia Highsmithâs novel The Price of Salt, are undeniableâone woman is older, the other younger; one is trĂšs sophistiquĂ©, the other an uncultivated creativeâbut DESERT HEARTS is softhearted where CAROL retains hints of Highsmithâs signature chilliness. The basal pulchritude of Robert Elswitâs cinematography, an early entry in his illustrious career, palliates the clunkiness of the script. Patricia Charbonneau and Helen Shaver deliver compelling performances as the romantic teacher and her student, respectively (though itâs the latter whoâs the professor at Columbia), and the soundtrack is charming as all get out. But itâs Deitchâs direction that elevates it above whimsicality, giving it that something, a je ne sais quoi, similarly embodied by her characters. (1986, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Michael Haneke's CACHĂ (France)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Monday, 6pm
In Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke's CACHE, an unidentified person films aspects of the daily lives of a married Parisian couple, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), without their knowledge. This person sends the videotapes to the couple, who interpret them as "a campaign of terror." Before long, the tapes lead Georges back to the massacre of two hundred Algerians in Paris in 1961 and to his short relationship with one of its indirect victims. CACHĂ centers not only on the unknown filmmaker, but also, and more importantly, on the unknown image. In addition to the series of tapes that structure the film, such images include news footage, public television programs, photographs, drawings, memories, dreams, and the film itself. In watching CACHĂ, the viewer does not always know when he sees a tape in contrast to Haneke's film. (Although, in fact, he can see both.) For instance, both the real filmmaker (Haneke) and his anonymous fictional filmmaker shoot in high-definition video. Often, a television set does not frame a tape, but Haneke's camera occasionally pulls back to reveal Georges and Anne watching it on their TV. Due to the frequent lack of framing and other devices, the viewer questions who captures what and why. With CACHĂ, Haneke constructs a film in which we distrust him, and ultimately ourselves. Does an image hide its meaning from us? For Haneke, we must find what we hide from ourselves to see the world around us. Screening as part of 50/50, the Siskelâs year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (2005, 117 min, 35mm) [Candace Wirt]
Gil Jungerâs 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (US)
Music Box Theatre â Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
The turn of the 21st century brought a plethora of Shakespeare adaptations to the big screen. Not that this was anything new â the Bard has been adapted since the beginning of cinema. But thereâs a particular zealousness with which this period produced these, from highbrow Oscar-winning films like SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998) to avant-garde visual feasts like Julie Taymorâs TITUS (1999). Transplanting The Taming of the Shrew to an upper-middle-class Seattle high school, the teen comedy 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU stands out among these as an adaptation that feels particular to its late-90s moment and still timeless. Bianca (Larissa Oleynik) is desperate to start dating; her overprotective father (Larry Miller) decides that she canâonly when her older sister does. The problem is that the intense Kat (Julia Stiles, who starred in two other Shakespeare adaptations around this timeâMichael Almereydaâs HAMLET and the dark teen drama O) is a Sylvia Plath-reading, Letters to Cleo-listening misanthrope who has no interest in dating. New student Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), himself crushing on Bianca, comes up with an elaborate plan to bribe brooding troublemaker Patrick (an impossibly charming Heath Ledger, in his introduction to American audiences) to take Kat out; of course, things donât go as planned. Subtly highlighting the tumultuous relationship of the sisters, 10 THING I HATE ABOUT YOU feels more grounded than some of the other teen comedies coming out around this timeâin this way it feels like the late-90s descendant of the Jane Austen adaptation CLUELESS (1995). But, like CLUELESS, amidst the core drama is an abundance of delightful characters, including a hilarious romance novel-writing guidance counselor played by Allison Janney and Cameronâs accommodating co-conspirator (David Krumholtz). It effortlessly balances quirky moments with sincerely emotional ones, making 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU a teen comedy touchstone. Screening as part of the Music Box Staff Picks! series. (1999, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Jeannie Livingston's PARIS IS BURNING (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Sunday, 2pm
Almost three decades have passed since the release of PARIS IS BURNING and Jennie Livingstonâs poignant documentary is still deeply relevant. Following drag queens and performers in the New York City ballroom scene, Livingston gives her subjects the space to do the bulk of the talking, walking, and posing. Itâs both intimate and unobtrusiveâmanaging to strike an exceptionally difficult balance for a debut documentary feature. PARIS IS BURNING captures the enthusiasm and character of âhouseâ balls: from the many kinds of performance competitions, to the costumes, and the energy that exudes from everyone in front of the lens. But PARIS IS BURNING does not paint an overly gaudy portrait, either. There is glitz and glamour, sure, but there is also immense painâoften from the loss of loved ones to the AIDS crisis and transphobic, homophobic violence. While PARIS IS BURNING has been critiqued over the years, it is still a fundamental text in the queer cinematic canon; both as an authentic documentation of queer life and as an introduction to vital fragments of queer history and culture that should not be forgotten. Preceded by Connie B. Demille's 1962 short ALWAYS ON SUNDAY (10 min, DCP Digital) and Michelle Parkerson's 1987 short STORMĂ: THE LADY OF THE JEWEL BOX (21 min, DCP Digital). Screening as part of the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series. (1991, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Cody Corrall]
Phil Tippett's MAD GOD (US/Animation)
Facets Cinema â Saturday and Sunday (Check Venue website for showtimes)
There are passion projects and then thereâs MAD GOD. Shot by Phil Tippett over a 33-year period, the film takes place in an enormously detailed apocalyptic dystopia that reflects his background as a special effects artist. Tippett cites Hieronymous Boschâs paintings as his major influence, and this comes through in images like a diorama of bloodied bodies seen through a building. But cinematically, his vision suggests Alexei Germanâs HARD TO BE A GOD combined with the avant-garde animation of Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. Sans dialogue, MAD GOD stays just shy of becoming a narrative film, although the closing credits introduce us to characters like âLast Human,â âThe Surgeonâ and âThe Assassin.â Itâs possible to piece together fragments of a story, as the filmâs key scene depicts a brutally bloody C-section that destroys the motherâs body and sprays the surroundings with gelatinous gore but retrieves an insectile baby. The world of MAD GOD is populated by humans alongside other creatures both real and imagined. The credits include ânewt wrangler,â while jellyfish float past poisonous chartreuse mushrooms. But MAD GOD devotes most of its energy to building a brutal, oft-ugly world one step away from utter collapse. Its cities are made of buildings that are toppling over and turning into flakes of grey dust; the powerful donât hesitate to crush humanoid figures under their wheels; and a pustule-faced creature watches film of a mushroom cloud exploding. Tippett, now 70, was the subject of a 2019 documentary and has benefited from a lengthy career specializing in stop-motion animation, working on the original STAR WARS trilogy, JURASSIC PARK and STARSHIP TROOPERS. However, MAD GOD has little to do with such mainstream films, even Verhoevenâs. It feels like a strange, impeccably crafted piece of outsider art inspired by disgust with war and environmental destruction, carrying the weight of obsession but made with enough resources to bring its homemade world to life. Even as a brief feature, itâs too grim and unpleasant to be reduced to eye candy. Its imagery transcends the literal tendency of film violence, describing a hellish devaluation of life that alludes to the Holocaust and other historical horrors without directly depicting them. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
John Patton Fordâs EMILY THE CRIMINAL (US)
AMC River East 21, The Logan Theatre, Music Box Theatre, et al. â See Venue websites for showtimes
Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a transplant to Los Angeles, an art school graduate carrying $70,000 in tuition debt, a hothead with a DUI and a criminal assault conviction on her record, and virtually no prospects for landing a decent job in her chosen field. Welcome to American capitalism in the 21st century and the devaluation of the arts, higher education, and people who work for a living. In his feature film debut as director and screenwriter, John Patton Ford has taken the contemporary social landscape in the United States and used its inequities to turn out a boots-on-the-ground crime thriller that does an admirable job of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. We understand Emilyâs righteous indignation at being sandbagged by job interviewers, her contracting employer at a food catering company who denies her the rights of a full-time employee, and a friend who has âmade itâ and dangles prospects of a job in front of her without being able to deliver. No wonder she gets involved in credit card fraudâitâs a better living than the straight world will ever offer her. Plaza is incredibly good as she climbs carefully, then recklessly down the stairs to the underworld. But then who wouldnât follow the handsome, charismatic leader of this criminal enterprise, Youcef (Theo Rossi), who praises her and mentors her for the advantages her young, pretty, white face can offer. Emily may have thought she was an artist when she started out, but thereâs no question that her real lifeâs work is as a criminal. If you start rooting for her because you can relate to her story, remember that little fact. (2022, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
đïž PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS â ALSO SCREENING
â« Chicago Park District
The Chicago Onscreen Local Film Showcase is taking place at various parks around the city. This series of events âfeatures locally-made and Chicago-focused short and feature-length films,â per the event descriptions. More info (including dates and showtimes) here.
â« Cinema/Chicago
Flynn von Kleistâs 2021 Dutch film I DONâT WANNA DANCE (101 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Free admission with online registration. More info here.
⫠Festival au Cinéma
Festival au CinĂ©ma, a new annual, micro film festival, is a three-night event at the Den Theatre taking place through Sunday. The festival is described as âââHaven Chicagoâs new platform for visionary and innovative filmmakers and media artists staking their claim in the future of digital storytelling. Whether by defying traditional conventions of genre, style or form, the annual micro film festival spotlights creative media works that intentionally embrace the unorthodox and inspire the next era of filmmaking.â See festival website for more info.
â« Gene Siskel Film CenterGeorge Millerâs 2022 film THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (108 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Barbara Hammerâs 1992 documentary NITRATE KISSES (67 min, 16mm) screens on Saturday at 2pm as part of the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series. Preceded by the following short films: Kenneth Angerâs FIREWORKS (1947, 13 min, 35mm); Mike Kucharâs SEASCAPE (1984, 10 min, Digital Projection); and Zackary Druckerâs AT LEAST YOU KNOW YOU EXIST (2011, 16 min, Digital Projection). More info on all screenings here.
â« Music Box Theatre
The Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.
Owen Klineâs 2022 film FUNNY PAGES (86 min, DCP Digital) begins and Dean Fleischer-Campâs 2022 animated feature MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (89 min, DCP Digital) continues this week. See Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings here.
đïž LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Andres Veiel's BLACK BOX BRD (Germany)
Available to stream for free through the Goethe Institut Chicago website (registration required) through Sunday
Itâs difficult to extract a clear lesson from BLACK BOX BRD, and this may explain why it feels so unsettling. In the film, Veiel alternates between biographical portraits of Wolfgang Grams (born 1953), who was a member of the far-left terrorist group the Red Army Faction, and Alfred Herrhausen (born 1930), a chairman of the Deutsche Bank who led the institution through tremendous economic growth, international political affiliations, and philanthropic efforts. Both men came to grisly ends: Herrhausen was assassinated by the RAF in 1989, and Grams died in a shootout with police in 1993. Veiel doesnât render either subject more sympathetic than the other (or more monstrous, for that matter). In cool, academic fashion, he shows that both were motivated by Germanyâs rapid redevelopment in the decades following World War II, even though they were inspired to act in opposite directions. As in THE SURVIVORS (which streamed for free last week), Veiel humanizes his subjects through thoughtful testimonies from people who knew them; though these anecdotes are frequently moving in themselves, the impact of going between the two different biographies is to feel a strange symbiosis between authority figures and anti-authoritarian figures, a theme explored in movies as varied as Rainer Werner Fassbinderâs THE THIRD GENERATION (1979) and Michael Mannâs HEAT (1995). (2001, 101 min) [Ben Sachs]
đïž LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS â
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING
â« Video Data Bank
ââMake Believe, Itâs Just like the Truth Clings to Itâ: In Conversation with the Work of Cecilia Dougherty,â curated by Amanda Mendelsohn, is available to stream for free on VDB TV. The program includes Doughertyâs THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD (1992, 6 min); MY FAILURE TO ASSIMILATE (1995, 20 min); THE DREAM AND THE WAKING (1997, 15 min); and GONE (2001, 36 min). More info here.
CINE-LIST: August 26 - September 1, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Cody Corrall, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, J.R. Jones, Danny King, Jonnathan Leithold-Patt, Anne Orchier, Candace Wirt