Jonathan Marlow's 2018* Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

First-time IOHTE contributer Jonathan Marlow [PARACME  |  CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE  |  ARBELOS] didn't exactly color within the lines in compiling this list, but I'm pleased he's placing local showings into a wider context. He also includes a screening from 2017, which he hopes will reprise in 2019.

2001: A Space Odyssey screen capture from Music Box DVD of The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Rarely one to let guidelines apply, a handful of non-Bay Area-centric selections are represented below. I would be entirely remiss if I did not bend otherwise agreeable rules to include these absolute highlights, accordingly (with everything thereafter listed alphabetically).

In keeping the whole assortment to ten, I removed such mainstays as 2001 at the Castro Theatre and everything from Noir City (as I was out-of-town for the duration, unfortunately). I will briefly mention here one from December which I sadly missed, much as I adore it: Exit Smiling (at the Day of Silents).

Honourable mention: anything whatsoever screened by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. Dishonourable mention: the continued absence of Joel Shepard from YBCA. 

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I

Elégia [Elegy] (1965) dir. Zoltán Huszárik
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Oberhausen, Germany 
digital restoration

** Oberhausen has an extensive archive of its past award-winners and last year they opted to screen recent restorations. I knew little about the film (nor its filmmaker) in advance but I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Absolutely stunning in every way!

Uprising in Jazak screen capture from excerpt at zilnikzelimir.net

II

Ustanak u Jasku [aka Uprising in Jazak] (1973) dir. Želimir Žilnik
Flaherty Film Seminar, Hamilton, New York
16mm

** Although Žilnik's work is relatively well-known in some circles, this shorter film is not. It truly should be seen by everyone--and fortunately can be found online as well albeit in somewhat inferior quality--as a masterpiece of resistance and human ingenuity.
 

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III
 

The Parallax View (1974) dir. Alan Pakula

Local Sightings [NWFF], Seattle, WA

Paramount digital preservation copy

** Nothing spectacular in the particular visual presentation (except that a digital master needed to be created at my own expense). The draw was the musical pre-show (and thereafter) with Amanda Salazar, John Massoni, Dale Lloyd and myself, a "super group" of players from different cities playing together for the first (and perhaps last) time ever.

The Infernal Cauldron screen capture from Flicker Alley DVD Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)

IV
 

Le chaudron infernal [aka The Infernal Caldron and the Phantasmal Vapors] (1903) dir. Georges Méliès

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

35mm duo-print projected as DCP

** What happens when you take two negatives shot by two cameras side-by-side (for sensible purposes difficult to explain with any brevity) and print them together?  Unintentional 3D (with master showperson Serge Bromberg)!

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V
 

The Last Movie (1971) dir. Dennis Hopper

Smith Rafael

Arbelos 4K digital restoration

** Hopper's unfairly maligned and too-little-seen follow-up to Easy Rider, lovingly restored by Craig Rogers at Arbelos! A great year for restorations, admittedly, with Barbara Loden's extraordinary Wanda returning to screens last year as well.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

VI
 

Sen noci svatojánské [aka A Midsummer Night’s Dream] (1959) dir. Jiří Trnka

Pacific Film Archive

35mm

** Irena Kovarova curated this exhaustive touring Trnka program and the PFA brought a fair portion of the series to our neighbourhood. [My only disappointment was that no other institution stepped-in to present the handful of films missing from the complete set (despite our repeated encouragements to participate).]

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VII
 

Sphinx on the Seine (2009) dir. Paul Clipson

Camera Obscura | Fourth Annual Report

16mm wild-sync

** Undoubtedly an emotional peak of the recent Camera Obscura arrived early with a screening of Paul Clipson's Sphinx... with Seth Mitter projecting and I wild-syncing Jefre Cantu Ledesma's score. Between this and a brief tribute to Robert Todd (with Lori Felker) the following day, it was a woeful weekend of quiet reminiscence and reflection.

That Woman image from Canyon Cinema website

VIII
 

That Woman (2018) dir. Sandra Davis

Canyon Cinema Salon

[digital]

** Although Sandra Davis only recently completed this hybrid non-fiction/dramatic re-enactment (and, therein, not a revival whatsoever), That Woman presents an ideal opportunity (among its other ample merits) to see the painfully missed George Kuchar (as Barbara Walters, no less)!

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IX
 

36.15 code Père Noël  [aka Game Over] (1989) dir. René Manzor

Alamo Drafthouse [“Terror Tuesday”]

c0-hosted by Kier-La Janisse

AGFA 2K digital restoration

** A proto-Home Alone in French? Indeed! Whatever you might imagine this to be, it is everything you'd suspect and ever-so-much more.

Invention for Destruction scree capture from digital restoration trailer

X
 

Vynález zkázy [aka Invention for Destruction] (1958)

Rafael Film Club

Muzeum Karla Zemana 4K digital restoration
 

** I travelled to Prague to fetch the DCP of this (and another) outstanding Zeman film for a pair of screenings at the Smith Rafael Film Center. Well worth the expedition to see the audience reactions to his outstanding work!
 

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foreshadow ahead: 2019

Filibus (1915) dir. Mario Roncoroni

** I first had the opportunity to see this extraordinary film at the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The wonderful folks at Milestone Films have been working on a restoration which (ideally) should screen locally in the months ahead.

Monica Nolan's 2018 Eyes

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2018. An index of participants can be found here. 

Four-time IOHTE contributor Monica Nolan is an author and editor who regularly writes for the Film Noir Foundation and the SF Silent Film Festival.

Quiet Please, Murder

Quiet Please, Murder (John Francis Larkin, 1942, at Noir City): George Sanders tortures library denizens with a harp string while future producer of Perry Mason Gail Patrick looks on!

Destiny (Julien Duvivier and Reginald Le Borg, 1944, at Noir City): a mannered, mangled masterpiece.

Jealousy (Gustav Machaty, 1945, at Noir City): Karen Morley’s super-charged performance as the mild-mannered murderess brought a round of applause from the audience.

Rosita (Ernst Lubitsch, 1923, at SF Silent): Gorgeously restored and long underrated Lubitsch gem.

Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness (Piel Jutzi, 1929, at SF Silent): Slum living ends in infanticide/suicide. Now that’s realism.

The Wind Will Carry Us screen capture from Cohen Media DVD

The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999, at SFMoMA): a mysteriously sublime rightness in every cut and camera angle.

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932, CFI San Rafael): More Lubitsch perfection.

Les Rendezvous d’Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978, at the Roxie) Still wondering why no one (I mean you, PFA programmers) has done a massive retrospective of Chantal Akerman’s work.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, 1938, at the Castro) a reminder of the sheer delight of big screen technicolor.

Honorable mention for rarity and glimpse of San Francisco of yore: Whatever Happened to Susan Jane? (Marc Huestis, 1982, at SFPL)

10HTE: Lucy Laird

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Three-time IOHTE contributor Lucy Laird is the operations director for the SF Silent Film Festival, co-boss at Nerd Nite San Francisco, and writer of the occasional program note for local festivals.

In chronological order:

Image from Film Grimoire; chose it because WE HAD BEEN WAITING so long for the PFA to re-open!

2/3/2016 The Seventh Seal (1957) at the still-off-gassing-paint-and-carpet-glue-new Barbro Osher Theater at BAMPFA

There was no way I could miss the first “regular” public screening at the PFA. Having heard tales of the before-my-time, not-built-for-cinema Gund Theater’s glory days and having worked in and fallen in love (nothing like a pre-code series to fan the flames) at the “temporary” field-house structure on Bancroft Avenue, I knew this latest iteration had a lot to live up to. Yes, this Bergman was a bit somber for a celebration, but Barbro Osher charmed the audience with her introductory remarks, setting the scene for this: the screen makes generous use of its space (suddenly taking up much more of the wall’s square footage, hurrah!), the audience gasps (or was that just me?) as the masking makes way, the Swedish master takes over, and I see this film for the first time for my third time and the PFA’s fifth time on its third screen!

Screen capture from youtube.

2/6/2016 Douglas Sirk’s The Tarnished Angels (1957) at the PFA’s Cinema, Mon Amour series

Cinemascope, black-and-white perfection. I remember renting it on VHS from Santa Monica’s great (and thankfully not quite late) video store, Vidiots, back in the early aughts, and cursing my stupidity at not waiting until it came to a theater near me in 35 to see it for the first time. But I’d just read Sirk on Sirk, so perhaps you can understand. It’s a film about loneliness and love and stunt flying, the compulsive circling of Robert Stack’s character around the pylons a bit like us cinemaniacs, circling back around to our favorite theaters, convinced the next screening—or the next—will be our most thrilling.

3/4/2016 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) at the New Mission

Technically a revival screening, no matter that it was only a few months out of the theater before it circled back again. This was my first time at an Alamo Drafthouse, but I quickly became a convert to the slightly-too-slick anti-device and -talking pre-show admonitions. Thankfully, George Miller’s dystopian crank-fest was loud enough to dampen any of my newbie annoyance at the (excellent, though pricey!) service of food and drink. Let the record show that earplugs were inserted about 10 minutes into this particular film and I then ate it up, along with a milkshake. Delicious and lived up to the hype—both the movie and the theater!

Image from MoMA

5/14/2016 Twilight (no, not THAT one) aka Crepúsculo (1945), part of the PFA’s Mexican Film Noir series

Gorgeous, overwrought, a denouement on a bridge that knocked the wind outta me, and a darn fine soft-titling job from a brave soul in the booth. Wish I’d gone to more of these Mexican noirs…

5/22/2016 The Red Balloon (1956) as part of BAMPFA’s free Family Day

I’d been reading my 4-year-old daughter the children’s book version (made up of stills from the film), but it had been years since I’d seen this, so we went with some friends. Still potent, still moving, still or moving, but there’s nothing like experiencing Ménilmontant avec Pascal, on the run through the petite alleyways, only wide enough for a boy and his balloon, watching with kids not yet old enough for subtitles.

Image from cageyfilms blog

And then I came back later on 5/22 for Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well (1965), one of the PFA’s (ir)regular 4K digital restoration screenings

I couldn’t help thinking I’d’a watched the heck out of this whilst in my obsessed-with-Jean-Seberg phase 20 years ago, because Stefania Sandrelli is just as compelling and has better hair—and her character works as a fabulously dressed cinema usher! What sad fun she and this film are.

6/3/2016 Behind the Door (1919) at the Castro Theatre, part of the 21st SF Silent Film Festival

I don’t have time to preview all the films we show at the Silent Film Festival, and I’m sure glad I didn’t spoil Behind the Door by distractedly watching a digital copy of it ahead of time. Perverse, beautiful, uncanny, and made all the more so with Stephen Horne live, at a late-night screening of a brand-new, tinted 35mm print, this was the rare SFSFF film I made time to watch all the way through DURING the festival, to-do lists be darned! And now here’s my unabashed plug: watch the trailer, then pre-order the DVD/Blu-ray from Flicker Alley

Image from Theater of Guts blog

9/24/2016 White Dog (1982), part of the series Samuel Fuller: A Fuller Life at the Smith Rafael Film Center

Another of those “How can I have not seen this yet?!” films, White Dog, with its complicated history and cult following, is a movie that I’d wanted to view for the first time on the big screen. But it was oh-so-worth the wait. Such a weird and sinister atmosphere, combining some really shoddy lighting set-ups and acting (I’m looking at you, Kristy), but somehow all the better for those faults. And on Art House Theater Day, and with Fuller’s wife and daughter on hand for a post-screening Q&A, and—I later found out—in a 35mm director’s cut snagged in a twist of fate by a private collector friend. How lucky we are to live here and have access to these experiences! So why was the theater so empty? Your only excuse would be that you decided to see it at the Roxie instead.

10/23/2016 Annie (1982) singalong at the Castro Theatre

Why didn’t anyone tell me that there are GIGANTIC areas of screen covered up by the singalong lyrics? Yes, this was my first singalong experience, so maybe that’s old news. And the bags of stuff everyone gets? The bang-snaps and the glow sticks and the candy and the bubbles? Well, I was a sucker for it all, especially that goodie bag, which kept my kid happy during the (many) charmingly boring parts of this John Huston film that I remember LOVING as a kid. I think I still love it and happily belted out the stupid tunes. This is my kind of expanded cinema.

Image courtesy contributor

11/2/2016 Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ)’s talk at Nerd Nite @ the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater, part of the Bay Area Science Festival

This is a bit of a cheat because a) this isn’t strictly a movie, and b) I was involved in programming this show that combined a little bit of science, a little bit of cinema, cocktail robots, and a celebration of the New Mission Theater’s 100th anniversary—but I did not book Mr. Grannell, whose bawdy, and brilliant slideshow/lecture on the history of the Bay Area’s cult film scene really livened up the proceedings. Thank Christ for Peaches!

10HTE: Sterling Hedgpeth

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

First-time IOHTE contributor Sterling Hedgpeth runs a stamps & cinema blog called The Filmatelist, from which he's allowed me to re-post (with different images) from this entry.

Dumbo screen capture from Disney DVD

We’ll start with Dumbo (Sharpsteen, 1941) at the Paramount in Oakland, on absolutely stunning 35mm. Although the emcee called it original (which it couldn’t have been, because that would have meant nitrate stock), it certainly was a crisply struck print that had not seen much circulation. Combine the divine “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence with the most gorgeous Art Deco palace in the Bay Area, and it was a great way to start the year.

Also in January were some memorable titles at Noir City at the Castro, and for me, the highlight was a first viewing of Mickey One (Penn, 1965), a glorious jazz-tinged fever dream of a film, with an assist from legend Stan Getz. Disjointed, bizarre, singularly unique and punctuated by a live dance routine from burlesque goddess Evie Lovelle.

Soon after, the PFA had an excellent Maurice Pialat series, but I suspect that the power of his Under the Sun of Satan (1987) was magnified by it being bookended (quite by coincidence) with two other contemporary films I saw the same week that also explore religious faith, fanaticism and hypocrisy: Pablo Larrain’s The Club and Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun. In Pialat’s fantasy-fueled acid bath Passion Play, he posits the possibility that religion may be the most oppressive to the truly devout. Overall, a provocative accidental trilogy.

The Beguiled screen shot from Universal DVD

Some fun Gothic films ran their course at the Yerba Buena Arts Center that summer, and the highlight was my first time seeing The Beguiled (1971) on the big screen. Still Don Siegel’s best, Clint Eastwood plays a Yankee fox trying to subvert and seduce a Dixie henhouse. The thick hothouse atmosphere and sexual tension played beautifully through Siegel's lighting and the insidious plotting and character power plays. Still a remarkable film (soon to be remade by Sofia Coppola).

Though a relatively recent movie, I have to include the Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003) screening at the Taube Atrium in the SF Opera House because Benoît Charest was there with a jazz combo to perform his exquisite score live, including saws, bikes, and trashcans as percussion instruments. A terrific experience.

2016 was the first year the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission was open, and the best part of their programming is the late night Mon-Wed screenings. My first dip into that pool was a packed show of Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971), which I’ve seen several times in the theater, but never tire of the gearhead culture, the meditative structure and lack of urgency (for a racing film!) and Warren Oates’s phenomenal turn as GTO. My year was relatively short on roadtrips but this went some way to sating my wanderlust.

The Shining screen capture from Warner DVD

In my backyard at the Parkway, there was an irresistible double bill of the cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theory documentary Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) followed by a screening of the focus of its subject, The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) itself. Rarely does a year go by when I don’t see some Kubrick on screen (I also revisited Paths of Glory and Spartacus at the Smith Rafael Film Center for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday), but a bonus this year was an excellent exhibit on Kubrick at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF with some amazing artifacts from his career, including the typewriter and hedge maze model from this film.

Also at the Smith Rafael was a Sam Fuller weekend (with his widow and daughter in attendance), where the biggest revelation for me was his Tokyo noir House of Bamboo (1955), a beautifully stylized genre piece whose gangster trappings and compositions appeared to anticipate the marvelous Seijun Suzuki, whose career was starting around the exact same time. As you’d expect, Robert Ryan is in top form and the climax on a rooftop amusement park is a standout.

Destiny screen capture from Kino DVD

And finally, two silent films, both firsts for me. At the Silent Film Festival at the Castro, Destiny (1921), the earliest film I’ve seen by Fritz Lang and a glorious anthology of stories where Love must face down Death. It was wonderful seeing Lang’s visual imagination in bloom, anticipating the superb special FX and supernatural wonders of his next few years in Germany. Months later, over at the Niles Essanay Film Museum, the buoyant energy of underrated actress Bebe Daniels was on full display in the fizzy comedy Feel My Pulse (La Cava, 1928), about a hypochondriac heiress looking for rest at a health sanitarium which is actually acting as a front for bootleggers (led by a very young William Powell). A hilarious comedy and secret gem.

So that’s 10 features, but since I saw over 60 archival shorts in the theater last year, I’ll give an honorable mention to two with Buster Keaton, still silent in the autumn of his career. I saw The Railrodder (Potterton, 1965) at an Oddball Film Archive screening, featuring Buster traveling across Canada on an open-air mini-railcar, a playful reminder of his other great train film The General, but in sumptuous color. And around the same time, the Smith Rafael Film Center played Film (Schneider, 1965), one of Samuel Beckett’s few forays into film and a wonderful existential metaphor with Buster showing that age had not changed the expressiveness of his body in motion. A sublime pairing. Here’s looking forward to another year of familiar films and new discoveries.

10HTE: Lincoln Spector

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2016. An index of participants can be found here.

Nine-time IOHTE contributor Lincoln Spector operates the Bayflicks website. This list is edited from this post on that site.

Chimes at Midnight screen capture from Criterion DVD

8: Great Shakespeare adaptations digitally restored
Pacific Film Archive
4K DCPs

On one glorious day, the PFA screened two unusual Shakespeare adaptations, both of which are great films in their own right. Orson Welles boiled Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, with a smattering of dialog from Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Winsor, to make the brilliant Chimes at Midnight. Akira Kurosawa rethought King Lear into his last masterpiece, a Japanese fable called Ran. The digital restorations bring both of these films to life – especially Chimes, which until now had never been screened as Welles intended.

7: The Long Voyage Home
Pacific Film Archive
New 35mm preservation print

John Ford, at the peak of his powers, turned four plays by Eugene O’Neill into one coherent story about merchant marines (screenwriter Dudley Nichols and cinematographer Gregg Toland helped a lot, of course). The sailors talk about giving up the sea, but they never do. UCLA recently created a new preservation negative; the print I saw – struck from that negative – was a thing of beauty.

Runaway Train screen shot from Warner DVD of Electric Boogaloo: the Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

6: Trains on Film
Rafael
35mm & DCP

Film historian David Thomson and poet/novelist Michael Ondaatje took over the Rafael’s main theater for a three-day festival about the mixture of cinema and locomotives. I attended Saturday, and caught a gorgeous print of Shanghai Express, a beautiful, digital presentation of The Lady Vanishes, and a stunning, mouth-watering studio print of Runaway Train. Each movie was preceded by clips from other films, and followed by a discussion with Thomson and Ondaatje.

5: Blood Simple & Criterion
Castro
San Francisco International Film Festival
DCP

The SFIFF celebrated Janus Films and the Criterion Collection with two panel discussions and a screening of the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple. The event started with film critic Scott Foundas interviewing Criterion’s Jonathan Turell and and Janus’ Peter Becker. Then they screened Blood Simple, newly restored by the two often-collaborating companies. Then the Coen Brothers and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld (now a director) came on stage for another panel discussion. Great movie, and great talk, as well.

4: Singin’ in the Rain 
Pacific Film Archive
DCP
My favorite musical contains several of the best dance routines in film history. And when no one is singing or dancing, it’s one of the funniest comedies of the 1950s. I doubt there’s a better piece of pure entertainment. The DCP’s image quality was decent, but I’ve seen better; and the audio was a relatively new 5.1 mix rather than the original mono. But the audience response, with laughter and applause (and one little kid’s “Yeww!” at a kiss), reminded me just how wonderful Singin’ works theatrically.

3: Diary of a Lost Girl
New Mission
Blu-ray

G.W. Pabst made Diary of a Lost Girl in 1929, but its story of sexual hypocrisy seems very appropriate today. Men use attractive women, worship them, then toss them to the curb. And only the women are punished for what the men do to them. Louise Brooks, always brilliant and beautiful, plays a rape victim thrown out by her family and forced to make her own way. The New Mission’s beautiful Theater 1 provided a great venue, and The Musical Art Quintet combined classical music and jazz to carry the emotions and enhance the occasional humor. A presentation from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Image provided by contributor

2: Do the Right Thing
Pacific Film Archive
35mm

For a 27-year-old film, Do the Right Thing feels very much like the here and now. By focusing on a few blocks of Brooklyn over the course of one very hot day, Lee dramatizes and analyzes everything wrong (and a few things right) about race relationships in America. And yet the movie is touching, funny, warm-hearted, and humane. It’s beautifully written, acted, photographed, paced, and edited. The blazingly glorious 35mm print was a revelation, and the PFA’s Meyer sound system found new strength in the original Dolby Stereo Spectral Recording soundtrack.

1: The Italian Straw Hat
Castro
San Francisco Silent Film Festival
35mm

I’ve known about this French silent comedy for years, and when I finally got to see it, I wasn’t disappointed. A man on his way to be married runs into trouble when his horse eats a woman’s hat. If she comes home without her hat, her husband will figure out that she has a lover. And that lover is a short-tempered army officer who insists that our hero find an identical hat immediately. The story is ridiculous, but who cares when the movie is this funny. The laughing audience and the live accompaniment by the Guenter Buchwald Ensemble kept the energy flowing.

Shanghai Express (1932)

Screen capture from TCM/Universal DVD

WHO: Josef Von Sternberg directed this, the chronological center and arguably the best of the seven masterful films he made starring the incomparable Marlene Dietrich.

WHAT: Here's what Elliot Lavine said when I asked him why he picked Shanghai Express from among all the great Von Sternberg films to play in his current I Wake Up Dreaming tribute to pre-code Hollywood:

Elliot Lavine: It's a tough call. I'd have been happy putting any of them in. I have a personal fondness for this film. Beyond that, everybody loves the train in the early '30s. The sexual tension is totally honest. You can totally believe everything that they're telling you about this relationship between her and Clive Brook, and I think people respond to it that way. You know, there's a handful of pre-codes that show out of that context and still get a great, enthusiastic crowd. 

Hell On Frisco Bay: Plus, Anna May Wong?

EL: Especially Anna May Wong. Any opportunity to get her in. And she's used to beautifully in the film. Yeah, there's a whole lot going for that film. The last time I showed it was at the Roxie a couple years ago and it was packed. Beforehand I thought "this will probably be the one that doesn't draw quite as well." 

HoFB: Because people have seen it. 

EL: Yeah, but boy they all came out. 

HoFB: Because they want to see it again! 

EL: And that is a great, great quality. People gleefully seeing a movie multiple times. It still happens.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 7:45 tonight at the Castro Theatre and 2PM Sunday March 12 at the Rafael Film Center.

WHY: I think it's pure coincidence that both the Rafael and the Castro are showing this great film this week, but it's a terrific opportunity to see it on big screens, if you have yet to do that. More than once if you're game for that. The Rafael has booked it as part of a train film series that also includes 35mm prints of John Frankenheimer's The Train and Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train, as well as DCPs of David Lean's Brief Encounter, Tony Scott's Unstoppable and, of course The Lady Vanishes (which also shows up in 35mm in Palo Alto next month as part of the Stanford's just-begun Hitchcock series). 

But I first saw it and instantly fell in love with it as part of a Castro Theatre pre-code series nearly fifteen years ago, and would definitely select tonight's option of seeing it in a similar context, if I could only attend one showing. There's something so special about seeing an early-1930s film in a single-screen theatre still essentially the same as it was in that era, as I did two weeks ago when I saw the tremendous Two Seconds when it opened Elliot Lavine's current weekly pre-code series. If you haven't already, please do read part one of my interview with Lavine. Here's more of part two:

HoFB: The Castro hasn't done a proper pre-code series in years- although Eddie Muller has tried a pre-code night at Noir City a couple times, it's even been a few years since the last one of those.

EL: I don't understand why those guys don't go deeper and I'm glad they don't, because I like having this territory to myself. For now, until somebody gets hip to it. But the Castro jumped very enthusiastically, when I proposed it to them, so I'm very grateful to those guys for seeing the value in it.

HoFB: Obviously it means that everyone felt that your August 2015 noir set was a success. 

EL: Oh yeah. We'll be back in August with another noir show. I really love the vertical programming concept. To be honest with you I was getting burned out on the whole notion of doing eight to twelve days in a row. I think it's putting a lot onto the audience. A lot of them do it. They come night after night after night. But if you took them aside secretly and said 'would you prefer doing it once a week' they would say 'yeah. We would.' I had so many people last August at the Castro.

HoFB: Will it also be Thursdays, like last year was? Or Wednesdays like these pre-codes?

EL: It'll be either Wednesday or Thursday.

HoFB: I'm rooting for Thursday. I'll be missing the first feature for this series almost every week because of my work schedule. If I race over from work I can see all the last features, though, except for The Cheat. 

EL: These really play well at 9:30.

HoFB: But it's also why I didn't go to your California Theatre shows last Fall. Can't get over to Berkeley on a Wednesday.

EL: I'll be doing another film noir show there in April. It has to be all digital. They don't run 35 there anymore.

HoFB: I know they brought a 35mm projector back in to screen Interstellar. Did they take it out right away afterward?

EL: It's not being used. Initially when I talked with Jed about doing a show there, I said, are you really sure you want to do it in digital? Because these aren't DCPs. These are DVDs. Blu-Rays. Are they gonna look great? And he said, 'don't take my word for it. Bring a stack of them down one afternoon and we'll sit and watch and you be the judge.' I was flabbergasted. I felt confident to do it. I can speak for this show in a great way. And we had a good crowd. Nobody complained about anything. They were just thrilled to have repertory in the East Bay.  

HoFB: There's one DVD presentation expected at this Castro pre-code series. William Wellman's Safe in Hell. I'm guessing it's too obscure a title to be given the DCP treatment yet, but there's also probably no circulating 35mm print. 

EL: Well, there was. I ran a 35 of this way back in the '90s. That's long enough ago that, yeah, a print can get completely disintegrated, and this is not the kind of film that would wind up high on the priority list, especially in the '90s. But now there's a growing awareness of the film.

HoFB: One of my favorite Wellmans.

EL: Me too. It's in my top five, and that says a lot. He made a lot of great films. This one is especially stunning. When people come to it for the very first time, especially if they've been hyped by their friends or by me, that this is gonna be a serious, major experience, they come out and say, "yes you were right. I can't believe it. Oh my God." But it is spectacular for a variety of reasons. I think one of the great reasons is the performance of that actress Dorothy MacKaill.

HoFB: Yeah. I looked at another of her films on DVD a couple days ago because I hadn't seen any of her others- The Office Wife. It's okay, but it's nothing like this.

EL: She didn't have a big body of work. Any actress in the world, if this was in their resume it'd be their calling card, but if you don't have a whole lot to back it up, you're not going to be well-remembered, necessarily. And even though Wellman is a top director, a high-echelon director, you can't expect people to be savvy to every fucking film he ever made. So this one was sacrificed.

HoFB: Do you think it's forgotten partially because of the sordidness of it?

EL: Indirectly, I think so, because, with a handful of exceptions, the majority of the pre-code films from that period, '31 through '33, when studios sold off their packages to TV stations, they excluded those. They were, more often than not, left out of the package. So, Warners might sell a hundred of their titles to ABC affiliates or whatever for Afternoon Movie, Late Show, that kind of shit. But it was a very select group. Things that showed off the studio in a way that would be family-friendly on television. So Safe In Hell didn't have a prayer.

HoFB: They might show a cut version of The Public Enemy, or maybe Night Nurse.

EL: Exactly. A film like Public Enemy was on all the time. So was [I Am A Fugitive From a] Chain Gang. You couldn't go six months without stumbling across it. And that's great, but what about Two Seconds? What about Safe In Hell? What about a thousand other films that were kind of put into the vault?

HOW: Shanghai Express screens as a 35mm print on a double-bill with Safe in Hell (which screens from a DVD) at the Castro, and as a DCP at the Rafael.

The Assassin (2015)

Screen capture from trailer.

WHO: The legendary Hou Hsiao-Hsien directed and co-produced this film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Xie Hai Meng, Zhong Acheng and his longtime collaborator Chu Tien-Wen.

WHAT: Although I was able to view Hou's first feature since 2007's Flight of the Red Balloon at a Mill Valley Film Festival-sponsored press screening, I'm not supposed to provide more than a brief "capsule" review until its commercial run a week and a half from now. Just as well, as I'd need at least one more viewing to feel comfortable talking about it in any depth. For now I'll just call it a visually sumptuous, anti-kung fu film that verges closer to "avant-garde" than anything else Hou has done. Ninety-nine percent of the film is presented in a square-ish Academy aspect ratio, which along with its black-and-white opening makes The Assassin seem more like a 1950s Akira Kurosawa film than like the wuxia pian made by King Hu and others (always in widescreen) in the 1960s and beyond. Though honestly Mizoguchi, especially a late color film like Princess Yang Kwei Fei, feels like a more relevant referent (and one I'm not surprised to see Danny Kasman had perceived long before I did). Hou has worked with square ratios before, but (I'm pretty certain) only in his framings-within-framings in widescreen films like City of Sadness and Good Men, Good Women. It's as if he's reclaiming 4:3 Academy as a more truly "cinematic" shape in this era of wide televisions and phones.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight at the Embarcadero Cinema at 6:30 and 9:15, and 8:30 on October 17th at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. All these showings are "at RUSH", meaning advance tickets are sold out and would-be buyers must form a line in hopes of obtaining seats as they're made available. The Assassin opens a regular theatrical run at the Metreon, the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley, and Camera 3 in San Jose starting October 23rd.

WHY: Although tonight's screenings will take some persistence to get into for those who haven't already secured tickets, it's fair to say they'll be worth it, as Hou Hsiao-Hsien himself is expected to attend at least the first one, a rare occurrence here in San Francisco indeed. An auteur of his stature visiting this city is cause for real celebration, and the SF Film Society has complied by making Hou a main focus of its entire Taiwan Film Days mini-festival tonight and tomorrow. In addition to the two showings of The Assassin there's a revival showing of what many consider Hou's first great film, The Boys From Fengkuei, and although Hou is not (as far as I understand) expected to attend this showing, he does make a cameo appearance in a very early-eighties perm. There are still advance tickets available for this screening as well as for the Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema, a recent documentary about the 1980s and 1990s heyday of Taiwan's cinematic production history, focusing attention on famous names like Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-Liang and Hou (whose Flowers of Shanghai obviously inspired the doc's title) but also on lesser-knowns like Wang Tung, who employed a pre-Rebels of the Neon God Tsai as a screenwriter on multiple films. Director Chinlin Hsieh will be on hand for tomorrow night's showing.

Although the Mill Valley Film Festival The Assassin screening on the 17th is also at "Rush" (as was its Frisco Bay public premiere via the festival this past Thursday), there is still a lot of this festival to go that has plenty of tickets available. There are still seats for tonight's second screening of the Hungarian prize-winner Son of Saul, for instance. I'll be attending this as consolation for missing Hou in person, thankful that the film's distributor insisted it be screened in 35mm. It's the only new film in the festival (and so far, to my knowledge, any 2015 Frisco Bay feature-oriented film festival) to screen in this format, but MVFF has also booked a couple of retrospective titles showing on actual film reels: The Sorrow and the Pity October 16th with director Marcel Ophuls on hand, and on October 18th Autumn Sonata, Inmgar Bergman's final made-for-the-cinema film and his only collaboration with Ingrid Bergman. A documentary about her, Ingrid Bergman - In Her Own Words also screens at the Rafael Film Center tonight, launching an eight-title series celebrating her centennial. I'm told than the program page for this series contains a typo and that the documentary will not screen in 35mm but that Autumn Sonata and Notorious definitely will (the latter is also newly booked to play the Paramount in Oakland in that format) . As will Confidential Report and F For Fake in the Rafael's upcoming Orson Welles centennial conclusion, and Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home on December 3rd. In fact, between the Mill Valley Film Festival (which is far more thoroughly explored at The Evening Class by Michael Hawley and by Michael Guillén) and the upcoming Rafael winter calendar, I feel safe to say the California Film Institute holds a commanding lead among local cinephile institutions stepping up their game in the absence of the Pacific Film Archive this Fall, at least from my perspective. No, the Stanford's current Rogers & Hammerstein festival is not going to cut it for me, and though the Castro and Roxie both have some interesting programs on their slates (I'm most excited by Ken Russell's The Devils October 20th, the Brothers Quay shorts in December and Audition Halloween week), neither venue is doing quite enough to prevent me from wishing it were as easy to get to San Rafael in public transportation as it was to get to Berkeley.

HOW: The Assassin screens as a Digital Cinema Package (DCP).

Iris (2014)

A scene from Albert Maysles' IRIS, playing at the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 23 - May 7 2015. Courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

WHO: The late Albert Maysles directed this.

WHAT: I'm allowed to write no more than a seventy-five word review of this film during the festival; because of its "Hold Review" status I'm supposed to wait until its upcoming commercial release to say more. So here goes:

Manhattan's fearlessly original, supremely quoteable, style maven-about-town Iris Apfel and centenarian husband Carl prove ideal subjects for Maysles' perhaps most poptacular documentary, the last released before his March passing. I doubt it's merely the theme of exuberance in the face of mortality that makes it seem like he's filming a mirror; the fly even comes off the wall for a few warmly unguarded moments. Wear your craziest outfit to this one.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 1PM today only in House 1 of the Kabuki, presented by the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). It also opens commercially on May 8th for a (minimum) week-long engagement at the Opera Plaza, the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley, and the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

WHY: With this going into general release so soon, you may be tempted to schedule another screening in its timeslot and see it in a couple weeks. The main reason why this is not a perfectly good idea is that the day Iris is released commercially, the day after SFIFF ends, is the first day of a seven-day festival of Maysles documentaries at the Vogue Theatre, coinciding precisely with the seven days it's booked at the above venues. I mentioned this Maysles series in a post last month, but now the entire schedule of sixteen features and shorts has been posted online and tickets are already on sale. Although the series is all-digital, it includes many guest appearances by Maysles associates. I don't think any true admirer of Maysles life and work will want to go into this week-long event without having seen Iris first.

HOW: Digital presentations at each venue.

OTHER SFIFF OPTIONS: Today is the only festival screening of Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent, with director and star Gaspard Uillel both expected to attend the Castro showing. It's also the final showing of Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence, at the Pacific Film Archive, and the first showing of Tsui Hark's The Taking of Tiger Mountain at the Kabuki.

NON-SFIFF OPTION: The last double-bill in Yerba Buena Center For the Arts' Noir Westerns series may or not be noir, but it's a powerhouse: John Ford's masterful (yet somehow today undervalued) The Searchers and the first of Anthony Mann's cycle of gritty treatises on American civilization starring Jimmy Stewart, Winchester '73, both in 35mm prints.

IOHTE: Adrianne Finelli

"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found here.

Contributor Adrianne Finelli is an artist, curator, educator & film lover. She co-curates the GAZE film series at Artist Television Access; its next screening is February 13.

After a couple years of extended visits to the Bay Area, this past June I relocated here for love. Fortunately for me, my love of film is flourishing here as well. In the summer sun, my partner and I drove 2600 miles across the country straight to the Pacific Film Archive. Having only been here for six months of this year, I feel like I’ve missed a lot of treasures, but I’m grateful that I was able to see what I did. I’m looking forward to seeing much more in 2015. As requested by Brian Darr, whose film blog has become one of my bookmarks, here’s my list of my 10 favorite repertory film screenings of last year. Thanks to Brian and Hell on Frisco Bay for the invitation.

Favorites are fun, but they’re always so hard to whittle down:

Screen capture from Eclipse DVD

1) Sisters of Gion 

Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1936) 

Pacific Film Archive  

This was my first opportunity to see a Mizoguchi film on the big screen; this screening also marked my first week in the area as an official resident. Apart from that, the film, Sisters of Gion, may be my favorite of his works and is a quintessential feminist film. Rebellious and decades ahead of its time, a critique of traditions and the clash of eras—the film looks deep into the lives and issues that the women of the Geisha tradition faced. Mizoguchi’s empathy is with the lives sold and not the salesman that are buying. Oh, that ending.  

2) A Woman of Rumor 

Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1954) 

Pacific Film Archive  

Another poignant Mizoguchi feature about the personal lives of sex workers in Tokyo, that pays special attention to issues of what it means for these businesswomen to age. A fascinating portrait of two generations of women, somewhat Mildred Pierce, tragic drama of a mother and daughter in love with the same man. However, Mizoguchi does not let the man get off so easy, as the daughter’s love and empathy for her mother as a fellow woman grows and strengthens their bond. Such a beautiful film on so many levels, stunning and more mature camera, art direction and editing.

Screen capture from Ruscico DVD

3) Magdana’s Donkey 

Tengiz Abuladze, Rezo Chkeidze (USSR, 1955) 

Pacific Film Archive  

Simple and beautiful—a story about a working class widow and her day to day struggles to provide for her children. The family’s luck changes when they nurse an abandoned and abused donkey back to health, allowing Magdana to transport and sell more yogurt, but then she is brought to trial for stealing the donkey. There is definite documentary influence in this neorealistic drama, yet the rich black & white cinematography has its own style. I would love to see this film screened along side Bresson’s 1966 Au hazard Balthazar—donkeys might be the most honest animals in cinema.  

4) Sikkim 

Satyajit Ray (India, 1971) 

Pacific Film Archive  

I am so glad that I caught this, I had no idea how much I would learn and love about this film. A documentary about the sovereignty of Sikkim, a kingdom in the Himalayas situated between China and Indian, commissioned by the King of Sikkim and later banned until 2010. All copies were thought to be destroyed until one was uncovered at the British Film Institute. Very lyrical camera and sound—it’s more like a personal essay than a typical anthropological documentary of a foreign culture. Satyajit Ray’s refreshing and candid portrait has real heart and respect for the people and their traditions.

Screen capture from Columbia DVD

5) Lost Horizon  

Frank Capra (USA, 1937) 

Smith Rafael Film Center  

One of the few Capra films I had never seen, and maybe the strangest. Lost Horizon is a utopian film about an archetypal crew of five western passengers whose flight is hijacked and crashes somewhere in the Himalayan Mountains. The group is then escorted through the terrifying yet beautiful terrain to a magical palace—a warm and plentiful oasis from the harshness of the surroundings—known as Shangri-La. A dreamlike paradise where time is for passions and beauty, and no one ages. The story is bizarre and has a lot of political and social commentary embedded in it, and the set design and photography are worthy of seeing for their own merits.

6) A Night at the Cinema in 1914 

SF Silent Film Festival, Silent Autumn 2014 

Castro Theater  

A delightful collection of eclectic silent short films that were all produced in 1914 with live musical accompaniment by the brilliant Donald Sosin. A few of my favorite shorts to make note of are: Palace Pandemonium, a newsreel of Emmeline Pankhurst and 50 other suffragettes being arrested at Buckingham Palace; Lieutenant Pimple and the Stolen Submarine, endearing cardboard sets and lots of quirkiness; and The Perils of Pauline directed by Louis J. Gasnier and starring the adventurous Pearl White as a woman who wants to explore life before she gets married.  

However, the short that really stood out, Daisy Doodad’s Dial directed by Florence Turner, who also starred in the film as the main protagonist. A super silly, sassy and creative little tale about a couple that enters a face-pulling contest. The story employs a great use of the close-up and superimposition. The score that Donald Sosin composed for this film was half the joy of watching it, I wouldn’t want to see it any other way. One of my favorite things I’ve seen all year, and it was made in 1914!

7) Molba 

Tengiz Abuladze (USSR, 1967) 

Pacific Film Archive  

Like a poem in black & white, a visual metaphor with absolutely stunning cinematography and editing. Definitely one of the most unique films I have seen this year, and a film that most be seen in a dark theater, on a big screen, and on 35mm.

Screen capture from Indiepix DVD of It Came From Kuchar

8) A Criminal Account of Pleasure: The George Kuchar Reader with Andrew Lampert  

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 

Presented by SF Cinematheque 

Corruption of the Damned (USA, 1965) 

The Exiled Files of Eddie Gray (USA, 1997)  

What can I say? If you are not a Kuchar fan, then this isn’t for you. If you are, you should definitely pickup a copy of the The George Kuchar Reader edited by Andrew Lampert before it’s out of print. It’s an amazingly rich collection of journal entries, drawings, scripts, photos and other findings compiled into an impressive 336-page volume. I was so glad that I made it out to the event; Steve Polta of SF Cinematheque gave a moving account of George and introduced Andrew Lampert to read a few excerpts before the screening. Corruption of the Damned was screened on a 16mm print from Anthology Film Archives. It features a very baby-faced George in all his campy glory, and was a much more scripted and serious production than most of his later works. The pairing of this early film with The Exiled Files of Eddie Gray, a even more campy revisit or remake of sorts with some the original cast from the 1965 film, made the night for me. Shedding light, or rather pouring it, onto issues of aging and sexuality, through crude reenactments of love scenes from 32 years ago. There are no words to describe the fabulous Floraine Connors, I laughed so hard I cried.  

9) Flight of the Sparrows 

Teimur Babluani (USSR, 1980) 

Pacific Film Archive  

The first several minutes I was sure I disliked this film; it felt like a not-so-great student film—clunky, bad acting, horrible lighting. After letting my expectations drop, I was taken by surprise at what turned into a really dynamic camera matched by a fresh, beat driven pace. The story is really simple, but weird and oddly poetic and bittersweet. There are two men traveling on a crowded third-class passenger train among a large cast of characters whose diverse profiles become fixtures in the background of the confined camera. The two men are opposites, one a rough-looking rebel of few words whose only friend is the tiny sparrow he carries next to his heart, and the other a pretentious, bragging traveling salesman that leads people to believe he is a world renown opera singer. The final scene shifts to a barren landscape and a surprising battle ensues.      

Screen capture from vimeo trailer for Desire Pie

10) Radical Sex Educational Films from San Francisco’s Multi-Media Resource Center 

Curated by Herb Shellenberger 

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts  

A curious and alluring collection of extraordinarily artistic and avant-garde Sex Ed films, like a time capsule into a different, more radical era. I imagine we would all be better, more inventive lovers if we had the occasion to see these films in our health classes. Although every film different and compelling in its own right, three films really resonated and charmed me. The program opened with Jerry Abrams’ Eyetoon (1968) very easily the most experimental sex education film I’ve ever seen, a collage that combines a variety of techniques with a mesmerizing score. This film takes intimacy into another dimension. Constance Beeson’s hypnotic and lyrical Unfolding (1969) was a visual verse about the emotional side of lovemaking, a song for the two souls becoming one. Unfolding is a more sensitive portrait from a woman’s perspective, about the closeness of sex. Desire Pie (1976) by Lisa Crafts was a fun, tripped-out cartoon of the wacky and weird journey of sexual desires.  

It was also notable to see Alice Ann Parker’s Near the Big Chakra (1972) for the second time, having been lucky enough to meet her during her retrospective program at the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival. It is such a radical educational film through pure observation.    

A special shout-out to the many generous venues and to the people behind the projectors and programming that make this city and the surrounding area an amazing place for those of us that love cinema. Thank you to those that tirelessly search through the archives, those that make new work from old, those that share and connect the community.  

Craig Baldwin & Other Cinema 

Pacific Film Archive 

Artists’ Television Access 

SF Cinematheque 

The Exploratorium 

Shapeshifters Cinema 

Black Hole Cinematheque 

Oddball Cinema 

Canyon Cinema 

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 

SF Silent Film Festival 

Internet Archive 

Rick & Megan Prelinger 

California Film Institute 

Castro Theater 

Roxie Theater 

Kala Art Institute 

& the many others that made my first six months here unrepeatable.