Popeye (1980)

Screen shot from Paramount DVD.

WHO: Robert Altman directed Robin Williams in his first major motion picture role.

WHAT: Robert Altman directed thirty-six feature films and dozens upon dozens of plays and television episodes, but only one of these was an adaptation of a beloved comic strip character (who had been translated to screen by the Fleischer Brothers as animation nearly fifty years prior). It followed a post-Nashville hitless streak that included some of his strangest (and, some of them, among his best) movies, most notably the so-called "Fox Five": the Bergman-esque Three Women, the caustic comedy A Wedding, the enigmatic Quintet (which could be a good double-bill-mate with Bong Joon-ho's current Snowpiercer), the rock-and-roll romance A Perfect Couple, and the proto-Pret-A-Porter of the naturopathy movement HealtH. Longtime Altman collaborator David Levy is quoted in Mitchell Zuckoff's indispensable book Robert Altman: The Oral Biography: "if the five-picture Fox deal left his career in a place where it was on the precipice, this project would be the one that would either put him back on top or he'd be falling over into the abyss."

As it turned out, it became the latter, as Altman spent the following decade-plus persona non grata at Hollywood studios, forced to shut down his own company Lion's Gate (not to be confused with the current outfit), and scrape together television and below-the-radar independent projects (some of them excellent in their own right) until re-emerging with The Player in 1992. This was because of the critical and commercial failure of Popeye upon its opening. However, in a situation that seems impossible to replicate today, Popeye ultimately caught on with audiences starved for big-screen family entertainment, especially at weekend matinees across the country, and ended up, according to screenwriter Jules Feiffer, one of the top ten moneymakers of the year. Today its reputation is in ascendency among Altman fans, although the director always defended it, as at his last San Francisco public appearance at the Castro Theatre in 2003, when he called it his favorite of all his films in response to an audience question that denigrated it. It may be that, as a recent Dissolve article says, producer Robert Evans "bitterly regretted" the film, but in Zuckoff's book he calls it "a work of genius" and "Bob's best work", suggesting that it should be rereleased today.

As for Robin Williams, the star whose suicide this month would sadly be the most likely reason for such a rerelease, here are some of his comments in Robert Altman: the Oral Biography: 

It's a beautiful film, man. It's done with the same love he made every other film with. He told me later on, "Don't always go with a critical response. Go with, 'What did you do there?'" Yeah, we did do some really great stuff. I think it was just because it was my first movie, it was like the illusion--"I want the studio to make money." [. . .] I think for the first one of of the gate, that's a pretty amazing experience. It's kind of like Apocalypse Now without the death. . . . For your first movie to get the shit kicked out of it, it toughened me up. It's kind of, in a weird way, a gift. It was like, "Hey, now you go off and you work. You're no longer a virgin. You've been in your first battle. it wasn't a total victory but we didn't get slaughtered. So keep going."

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 7:20 tonight at the Castro Theatre, and 4:00 today and 3:00 Monday at the New Parkway in Oakland.

WHY: Popeye is a perfect MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS selection, as it snugly fits head MANiAC Jesse Hawthorne Ficks's neo-sincere philosophy of appreciation of "misunderstood and maligned" movies. Though tonight's Castro screening is surely going to be affected by the spike of interest in Williams following his suicide, it was actually planned (unlike the New Parkway shows) before the star made that tragic decision. So although it's not one of the first Williams tribute screenings here in San Francisco, it will end up being the first at the Castro Theatre, to be followed by eight shows on that venue's newly-announced September calendar. If you click that link you can also see the first programs for October at the Castro, beginning with an October 1st tribute to the late Lauren Bacall, who was tributed beautifully by in this week's issue of Eat Drink Films by Eddie Muller, by way of the vivid description of the circumstances of his 2007 interview with the Hollywood icon (who incidentally starred in Altman's HealtH along with the recently-deceased James Garner; it's been a bad summer for stars of 1980 Altman films.) The back page of the September Castro calendar gives us a bit more information than what's available on-line. More Bacall tribute screenings there will include Key Largo and Harper on October 12th and How to Marry a Millionaire and Written on the Wind on October 19th. Although the Castro now has a new 4K projector for its digital screenings, which will be used to show this weekend's booking of Lawrence of Arabia (I hope this doesn't spell the end of 70mm screenings at one of the few local venues which can theoretically hold them, although I fear it might), I hope that, like most of the Robin Williams tribute showings (all but Popeye and The Fisher King), most of the Bacall screenings will be able to be shown in 35mm prints. No word on that yet, though. UPDATE: Shortly after publication I learned that all the Bacall films will be shown in their native 35mm, other than How to Marry a Millionaire.

As Cheryl Eddy notes in her excellent SF Bay Guardian Fall preview of Frisco Bay cinema options (from which I have finally updated my sidebar of upcoming film festivals, if you scroll up and to the right), the next MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS screening is (a week before previously announced) a September 19th showing of Inside Llewyn Davis (shot on film but sadly unavailable to screen that way, it seems) and a 35mm print of Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter. What she doesn't mention (presumably because it was unavailable at press time) are some of the other terrific Castro September options, such as the rarely seen Bob Fosse film Sweet Charity screening in 35mm with the new DCP of All That Jazz September 6th, or a 35mm double-bill of Red Desert and Mickey One Sept. 24, or two prints of Sam Fuller films Park Row and Pickup on South Street, playing with a new documentary by his daughter Samantha called A Fuller Life, on Sept. 28. 

HOW: Tonight's screening is a double-feature with a 35mm print of Sidney Lumet's The Wiz, but Popeye itself will be screened as DCP. The New Parkway's showing will also be digital, as always at that venue.

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

WHO: Robert Dudley has a very memorable supporting role in this.

WHAT: John Pym writes quite a bit about Dudley's character The Wienie King, a processed-meat tycoon who encounters a low-on-cash Gerry (played by Claudette Colbert) early in the film. A sample:

Why does the Wienie King give Gerry the rent money? Partly to best his wife, to be sure, but partly because he simply has a mind to. He likes the look of Gerry in her pink wrap. He likes birds, and there just happens to be a bird embroidered on the wrap. He knows what it is like to be poor. He just does it. It's in his nature.

WHERE/WHEN: 4:10 and 7:30 today at the Stanford Theatre, and 7:00 on January 29, 2014 at the Pacific Film Archive.

WHY: I knew I had to post about Robert Dudley this weekend after seeing him for a split second on the Castro Theatre screen last Wednesday during the 4th annual Noir City Xmas screening that has become the traditional way to announce the next ten-day Noir City festival in January (2014's is taking a bold new approach, making it my most-anticipated program yet! But more on that in a future post.) He plays a small role in the 1947 film Christmas Eve a.k.a. Sinner's Holiday which gave a belly-of-Hollywood finish to a double-bill that began with the bleak, New York underground cinema standout Blast of Silence, which somehow feels like the midway point between an Anthony Mann and a John Cassavetes movie.

Christmas Eve, a story of an eccentric spinster trying to reunite with her long-lost wards (George Brent, George Raft and Randolph Scott) is one of those Hollywood oddities that doesn't quite conform to any genre conventions, but rather combines and stirs together elements from several seemingly disparate genres: screball comedy, political thriller, Western. I can't help but think that Robert Altman's involvement, very early in his film career, is in part responsible for this stew. It's an unexpectedly effective mix, especially as the middle segment of the film involving Raft and a Nazi-in-hiding unfolds coldly and powerfully. This is perhaps the only truly noir-ish element of Christmas Eve, and justification enough for it to be programmed at Noir City Xmas, especially one that announces a Noir City line-up that will be kicked off January 25th with a double-bill of Journey Into Fear and the Third Man. 

 The Stanford shows The Palm Beach Story as the penultimate of its selection of Preston Sturges-directed films to wind down its 2013 programming. Already the venue has begun announcing its 2014 line-up, starting with a quickly-organized four-film tribute to Joan Fontaine, the 96-year-old star who died a week ago. All three of Fontaine's Oscar-nominated performances will be highlighted: Rebecca and Suspicion (for which she won) on a Hitchcock/Fontaine double-bill January 2-5, and The Constant Nymph, paired with her turn for the great Max Ophüls Letter From An Unknown Woman January 9-12.

Then, the PFA will show The Palm Beach Story as part of a series called Funny Ha-Ha: American Comedy, 1930–1959 that kicks off with My Man Godfrey the night that venue reopens after the Winter break, January 16th, and speeds through some of the humorous highlights of Hollywood from Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Frank Tashlin, and more. It's called "part one of a three-part series" in the now-online program but it's a little unclear what parts two and three will be: more comedies from the same period? (Either more American ones, or else focuses on other countries' comedies?) More comedies from later periods? Perhaps a set apiece devoted to American Drama and American Romance? Or American Tragedy and American Histories? Stay tuned.

Whatever this large-scale series precisely is, it's not alone. 2014 will evidently see at least two other retrospectives that last more than just a couple of months at the PFA. A Satyajit Ray series begins with the Bengali master's first film Pather Panchali January 17, and will continue through August, expecting to include nearly all of his films. From what we've seen of the PFA's schedule for its year-long Jean-Luc Godard retrospective, it appears that it may be even more complete. Every feature film the master made up through 1967's Weekend will screen in chronological order this Spring, starting with 35mm prints of Breathless and Le Petit Soldat January 31st (unfortunately in the midst of Noir City). Programs of early short films and anthology contributions threaten to make this a complete accounting of Godard's pre-1968 work. A Fall series is promised to cover his post-1968 career.

These three big PFA presentations will still be accompanied by smaller series in 2014; the January-February calendar brings us Anthony Mann crime films, the annual African Film Festival, an in-person appearance by Pennsylvania documentarian Tony Buba, and more.

HOW: The Palm Beach Story screens via a 35mm print at both venues; on a double-bill with A Night At the Opera only at the Stanford.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

WHO: Robert Altman directed this.

WHAT: Smack dab in the middle of Altman's unbeatable string of truly great films that ran from Brewster McCloud in 1970 to Nashville in 1975 (and that perhaps extended even longer on both ends for people who like MASH and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson a bit more than I do) is his version of Raymond Chandler, the missing link between (for instance) Murder, My Sweet and The Big Lebowski. It's been far too long since I've last seen it, though I've read a lot of writing about it in the meantime, including a great take by James Naremore, from whom I shall now quote:

The underlying concept is intriguing: Elliot Gould is intentionally miscast as Philip Marlowe, and the setting is updated to contemporary, dope-crazed Los Angeles, where the private eye becomes a ridiculous anachronism.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the Phyllis Wattis Theatre at the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, at 7:00.

WHY: With SFMOMA shutting its revolving doors for an extensive remodeling project in a week and a half, the Wattis, one of the key venues for film projection in San Francisco, will be out of commission for more than two years. It's hard to think of a more aptly-titled film to mark tonight's final 35mm projection at the museum before the projectors are to be removed.

The good news is that tonight's "long goodbye" is really a "see you later," because the projectors are just going into storage for the extensive construction period, and are expected to be re-installed in time for the museum's reopening in early 2016. And when they are, they may get used more frequently than ever, as part of the museum makeover is the addition of a separate entrance to the theatre from the outside, so that screenings will be able to happen at times when the museum galleries are closed. Which means the Wattis, previously been limited to Thursday evening and daytime screenings, will have the flexibility to hold evening programs more than once a week upon reopening. So while a piece of the Frisco Bay specialty film-screening puzzle will be missed for a while, it has the potential to come back with more passion and power than ever before.

If you've been immersed in the Roxie's classic noir series (which ends tonight with a double-bill of Criss Cross and The Crooked Way) over the past two weeks, The Long Goodbye may be a good way to ease back into the modern world with a merely forty-year-old detective film rather than the sixty- or eighty-year-old films that made up the bulk of that series.

And if you want to see another Altman film on the big screen soon, try the Balboa Theatre, which will screen Popeye on June 8th as part of a weekly Saturday matinee series of kid-friendly films, that started last week.

HOW: 35mm print

Nashville (1975)

WHO: Robert Altman's signature piece as a director.

WHAT: What is Nashville? Perhaps better to ask, what isn't Nashville? Majestic and subversive, angry and gentle, musical and talky and extraordinarily cinematic, this is a film that seems to have everything you might want from a movie, except for maybe F-14 dogfights (and it's been a few years since I've last seen it, so maybe I'm forgetting a scene when I say that.)

WHERE/WHEN: 1:00 PM and 7:30 PM today only at the Castro Theatre.

WHY: Nashville plays on a double-bill with Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, reminding us of a time when Hollywood made movies that were long for good reasons. These films depend on duration: every can of film is well worth its shipping cost. I'm not so sure some of today's long movies have goods reasons for their length; more like excuses enabled by the DCP delivery system. Anyway, I'm all for a double-bill like this, and hope it's enough of a success to inspire a sequel; I think Cimino's Heaven's Gate and Altman's A Wedding (for instance) would combine for a similar running time.

HOW: The Castro calendar includes this fearsome note on Nashville: "This may be your last chance to see this classic in 35mm at the Castro!"