A very intriguing double-bill. Locket was the first John Brahm film I ever saw, and served as a delirious entryway into the vortex of this highly delirious director's oneiric world. Inside flashback within flashback within flashback lies the core of this work, a center which cannot hold, and within that -- The Locket. This is amongst the most gynocentric of noirs, and as such, features an extremely young, doom-laden Robert Mitchum in a key supporting role as one romantic piece of thick-cut beef jerky. Don't remember much about my single viewing of Letter (via TDM) other than when it was over, I thought "someday I shall have to reevaluate this". Not sure if this'll be the time, but this duo of male-directed films originating from Petticoat Junction Heights exerts its siren call. I always was a sucker for a good line of feminine patter.
Stanford: Double Indemnity & The Lady Eve
Speaking of which, this noir/comedy of re-marriage gâteau gives us the two faces of Eve in her Ultimate Hollywood Incarnation, the indomitable, luscious Barbara Stanwyck. There was never one finer and more natural (and I'm sure there never will be) at getting the male Sucker-fish to fall hook, line, and sinker, and for a chance to dive deep within those perturbed, glistening eyes, who wouldn't want to take the plunge? As a child, if you'd told me the forbidding iron-grey Big Valley matriarch would someday be one of my feminine ideals, I'd have thought you daft. But many mysterious trails lie within the Big Valley, and I was pleased as an adolescent to discover this Goddess in films of the 30's, from when she was in her twenties. Never has beauty, strength, passion, deft-wittedness, a quick and sharp tongue, and ultimate feminine frailty been united on two feet to such tremendous effect. My most cherished version of Barbara is probably found in Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire, but I wouldn't argue with Double Lady being her finest two roles/films. Given the various slanders against her, Eve has always seemed a ripe candidate for Indemnity, but the audience of this pair will be the true beneficiaries of this Goddess in all her ripeness.
Plays thru Mon.
California (San Jose): Playtime in 70mm
Jacques Tati's gargantuan, overwhelming paean to the democratic possibilities of the 7th art strikes me as being a tad more approachable in 35, but as I've only seen it in 70 once, and from a balcony seat at that, I'm likely jumpin' the gun in a mad rush to Conclusionsville. I doubt I know the way to San Jose enough to find me in a California theatre seat for one of these screenings, but having seen a picture of the David Packard-restored (art-nouveau-ish?) California, this run is exerting a lure... Playtime is a glorious uniting of opposites: massive and intimate; closely observed and multiplane; sweet n' tender and chillingly satirical; a view of the modern simultaneously representing both perspectives of Robert Mitchum's Night of the Hunter LOVE/HATE-bestrewn fists. Tati's film is a cosmic vision with Paris at the center of a swirling spiral galaxy. Its portrait of the late 60's traffic in that city bears some resemblance of what's to be found in contemporary San Jose, and the joining of the latter with art-nouveau stylistics seems a similar uniting of opposites. Could this be the perfect place to view this film? Unfortunately, Recs may never know...
Plays thru Sat.
PFA: Double Suicide: Japanese Summer & Gohatto
Is it Double Suicide's status as the last tremendously anticipated, never-yet-seen-by-me work on the current PFA calendar, or perhaps the overwhelming climatic rush of our coming to the end of this madcap Oshima season which causes the Jason Sanders notes on this film to strike me as seemingly incomprehensible? Or maybe it's just the effect, like many another Oshima, on the nervous system of the sensitive cinephile attuned to the Japanese auteur's Beethoven-like audacity? He sets us all-aflutter, it's true. Don't know, but one thing I do is I'll be in my ususal seat, my bulbous eyes straining their sockets as the lights go down... Gohatto I saw during its initial run, and although I remember this work, possibly inspired by Pasolini's Teorema in its tale of a young samurai who sets the hearts of all who encounter him athumpin', as quite good, unless Japanese Summer proves a dud, I think I'll probably prefer to bask in the glow of the as-yet-unseen, and leave off re-viewing Gohatto for another, less pressurized occasion...
PFA: All About Eve & Léon Morin, prêtre
Yet another addition to the Eve canon (of which, I must admit my favorite by far is Losey's) Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About has long struck me as a major piece of White Elephantery, long on personalities, witty characterizations and one-liners, short on the greater part of the necessary areas in which cinematic brio must be summoned forth to fortify a work for the long haul. However, as a straight man, I admit a certain pleasure in the knowledge that Mankiewicz's script and direction provided a work beloved of women and gay men everywhere. I don't know whether to feel more pride at a win for "our" team, or a successful legacy of communality achieved. (Just in passing, I'd be remiss not to remind Recs fans that Mankiewicz won Oscars for writing and directing both Letter to Three Wives and Eve on back-to-back years -- the only filmmaker to perform this feat, if I'm not mistaken.) Léon Morin isn't exactly a co-feature to Eve, and watching these together might prove a disconcerting experience. While the Mankiewicz is all high-octane verbal thrust-and-parry, Léon, by the very great Jean-Pierre Melville, is an entirely subtler kettle of fish. It's been some years since I first and last saw it (in 16mm), but I remember something along the lines of Bells of Saint Mary's as directed by Bresson. "I'm sorry, but it's Bresson who has always been Melvillian", corrected the master when someone once had the temerity to make such a comparison. And I hope to confirm this shortly, even though Bresson himself will not be represented. With luck, the pleasure to be experienced at healthy dollups of Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Paul Belmondo will force all such logic contortions from my mind, and cause me to experience this work in all the bracing glory I expect from it...
Castro: The Miracle Worker @12noon
My first encounter with this film was pure, albeit via TDM. Arthur Penn was (and to this day is) a great hero of mine. Here we had a great agonistic tale of knowledge vs. ignorance, pained experience vs. innocence, love vs. complacency, age vs. youth, employer vs. employed, etc. Anne Bancroft was harsh and heroinic in her role as Helen Keller's instuctress. Patty Duke, as the world's most famous blind, deaf, and dumb girl, was all soft, spoiled indolence. Eventually, as every schoolchild should know (hope I'm not about to dish out spoilers here) contact is made, and a new kingdom of possibilities emerges from the shadows in one (to be very important) little girl's life. I sometimes think of all this in my on-going saga of Mite-raising... But after this first viewing, I had another encounter, one which put the first in a whole new light, leading me down a path of depraved temptation in which all my fantasies could be fulfilled, in which I'd never have to make choices, or suffer limitations... Yes, I saw, then swallowed whole over a matter of months, the astonishing vision which is The Patty Duke Show. Duke played twin roles in her showcase -- "identical cousins", who meet in adolescence for the first time and are flabbergasted to find their shells are exactly the same, while their innards couldn't be more antipode. While the sophisticated "Cathy" "adores a minuet, the Ballet Russes, and crêpes Suzette; our Patty loves to Rock 'n' Roll, a hot dog makes her lose control - what a wild duet!" Indeed. This hall of mirrors of my anima's many faces for some time took me to a place entranced and ecstatic, my reveries and romance brought to life. I made a point to see The Miracle Worker again, however, and was cut to the quick. Suddenly, my appreciation for the combat between a middle-aged woman walloping a food-bestrewn little girl seemed deranged, perverse... I've never been able to see it since without being overcome with shock waves of disturbance. Still, I haven't yet seen it in 35, and maybe seeing it as it should be will jar me back to proper perspective. Here's hoping...
Castro: Captain Blood & The Adventures of Robin Hood
These two marvelous Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland pictures make me think not only of Fassbinder (because of his love for Curtiz), but of the two Georges I've been pleased to call friends. The first, my long departed mentor George Morris, wrote the book on Flynn -- no kidding, it's the Errol entry in the famed Pyramid series on movie stars published in the 70's. Excellent book (as are George's volumes in the same series on Doris Day and John Garfield). You might be able to snatch up a copy on Amazon, or some such -- I urge you to, posthaste. The other George was a fellow projectionist, who upon growing similar facial hair, bore an astonishing resemblance to the great Swashbuckling Sex God, a fact confirmed when an attractive co-worker told me "George is sex". Needless to say, I've never forgiven him for this comment, despite his lack of direct guilt. (Hey -- I'm just getting over a practical joke he played on me I discovered two years after the fact!! -- so I consider my issues excusable.) Whenever the Flynn thing was mentioned, George would just giggle and grin broadly, (unconsiously) much in the manner of Flynn himself. It was infuriating. Loved the guy, tho. Happy sails, whichever of the seven seas you currently tread, George... Damn, I haven't even talked about de Havilland, and how scrumptious I find her (especially in Walsh's Strawberry Blonde, but that's another story). It'll have to wait...
Stanford: I Walked with a Zombie
For those who'd complain there was nary a discussion of the actual above Curtiz films to hand, I say "HUSH!!! Have you no fear of voodoo? If youdo, be aware I have connections in this area... For example, one of my favorite Jacques Tourneur films is this Zombie, with which I have Walked many times. Jane Eyre transposed to the Caribbean, this work is an astonishingly sensitive and unsettling evocation of a realm one wouldn't usually imagine finding sympathetic terrain on a Hollywood soundstage. But -- and this is what distinguishes all of Tourneurs efforts from the other, less inspired Val Lewton productions -- Jacques Tourneur really believed in the spirit world and had experiences of it. Tho probably based in less direct immersion than the efforts of Maya Deren, Tourneur's film is profoundly sincere and genuinely eerie...
Plays thru Thurs.
PFA: Léon Morin, prêtre & Night Tide