Lincoln Spector'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. 

Ten-time IOHTE contributor Lincoln Spector writes under Bayflicks, where a more extensive version of this list was originally published here.

Watermelon Man screen capture from How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (& Enjoy It) streaming on Kanopy

Watermelon Man, Modern Cinema/Black Powers: Reframing Hollywood, SFMOMA, archival 35mm print
My stepfather worked on Melvin Van Peebles’ only studio movie, so the experience of seeing it again was especially entertaining. Watermelon Man is a very funny movie, and a very pointed one. A white, a middle-aged, middle-class bigot (Godfrey Cambridge in whiteface) wakes up to discover that he’s suddenly turned black. The print looked glorious.

Serge Bromberg Presents…, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro, DCP
Serge Bromberg is not only an important film preservationist; he’s also a great showman – even in English, which is not his native language. This very fun program consisted almost entirely of early 3D films, with a focus on George Méliès’s accidentally stereoscopic movies. Just delightful. And, of course, Bromberg set a piece of nitrate film on fire.

The Big Heat screen capture from Columbia DVD

The Big Heat, Noir City, Castro, DCP
A cop commits suicide, and the first person the new widow calls is a mob boss. The mob runs the unnamed city and the police do what they’re told – except for the one honest detective assigned to the case (Glenn Ford). I waited years to see Fritz Lang’s morally ambivalent noir. The digital restoration looked damn near perfect.

A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) & The Red Shoes, Castro, DCP & 35mm
A Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger double bill. In Matter of Life and Death, a British bomber pilot (David Niven) who should have died survives, creating a serious problem for heaven’s bureaucrats. But the pilot is newly in love and refuses to enter the afterlife. The great cinematographer Jack Cardiff mixed color and black and white in ways that seem impossible with 1940s technologies. I’ve seen the other film, The Red Shoes, many times, and it just keeps getting better. Although both films were digitally restored, only Matter was on DCP; Shoes was in 35mm. Some four months later, I saw an original, Technicolor nitrate print of The Red Shoes at the Nitrate Picture Show.

All That Heaven Allows screen capture from Cohen Media DVD of What Is Cinema?

All That Heaven Allows, BAMPFA, vintage Technicolor IB print
I’m not one of those cinephiles who gets excited at every screening of a 35mm print. But when it’s a vintage Technicolor IB print…well, that’s exciting. And it was the print, more than the movie, that drew me to see this 1955 romantic drama starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. The movie was pretty good too, and historically fascinating with its story of people trying to break out of ’50s conformity. You can read my full article on the film and Technicolor’s technology.

Battling Butler, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro, DCP
Buster Keaton gives one of his most complex and subtle acting performances, while still being extremely funny. He plays a spoiled rich kid who pretends to be a professional boxer to impress his girl, and matures in the process. The spectacular stunts we expect from Keaton are smaller and more intimate here, but they’re still impressive and very funny. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra provided a wonderful musical accompaniment.

Exit Smiling, San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Day of Silents, Castro, 35mm 
print
The screamingly funny, beautiful, and all-around loveable Beatrice Lillie should have become a major film star; the camera just loves her. Thanks to her abilities, this backstage comedy makes you laugh from beginning to end. With Franklin Panghorn at his gayest. Wayne Barker did a wonderful job on piano; he even kept us entertained when the screen went blank and the projectionist had to fix something.

To Be Or Not To Be screen capture from Warner DVD

Mel Novikoff Award: Annette Insdorf & To Be or Not To Be, SFFILM, SFMOMA, 35mm print
Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf discussed cinema, her life, and her expertise on Holocaust films, answering questions from Anita Monga and then the audience. Then they screened an unfortunately poor 35mm print of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942, dark, brilliant, anti-Nazi comedy, To Be or Not to Be (you can read my Blu-ray review). Nevertheless, the audience enjoyed it immensely.

2001: A Space Odyssey, Castro, 70mm; Metreon IMAX Theatre, 70mm; Castro, 4K DCP
Yes, three separate screenings of the same film, months apart, tie for my my best moviegoing experience of 2018.
Castro, 70mm: In May, I saw Christopher Nolan’s “unrestored” version projected on the very large (but not huge) screen at the Castro. I had lost my love of this film over the decades, but with this presentation, I fell in love with it all over again.
Metreon IMAX Theatre, 70mm:
2001 was designed to be shown on a giant, curved screen – something the Castro cannot provide. The huge, slightly-curved screen of the Metreon’s IMAX theater provided something closer to the original experience. Again, it was Nolan’s version, this time on an even bigger 70mm IMAX frame.
Castro, 4K DCP: This time, the Castro screened Leon Vitali’s new digital restoration. The colors were better, and there were no scratches or vibrations.

SFFILM 61: Day 8: I Was Born, But...

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival began last week and runs through April 17th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

Image from I Was Born, But... supplied by SFFILM

I Was Born, But... (JAPAN: Yasujiro Ozu, 1932)
playing: 8:00 tonight at the Castro Theatre

What to say about I Was Born, But...? It's one of my very favorite Ozu films, one of my favorite silent films, heck, one of my favorite films of all time. As I wrote in my essay for the 2011 San Francisco Silent Film Festival screening:

Usually described as a comedy, I Was Born, But… has been compared to Hal Roach’s Our Gang series. Yet it is much more, reflecting a tumultuous 1930s Japan being shorn of its traditions. The film focuses on the family of a typical white-collar worker (“salaryman”), his stay-at-home wife, and two school-age sons, who have just moved from Tokyo’s crowded center to an unfinished suburban development. As the boys struggle to find a place in the pecking order among neighborhood kids, they outwit the dandified young Taro and his bullying protector with their wily antics, only to be humiliated when their father plays jester to his boss, who happens to be Taro’s father. Ozu uses schoolboy politics to mock the hypocrisies of adult hierarchies. 

I haven't watched I Was Born, But... since that SFSFF showing, so I'm excited to finally revisit it tonight in 35mm. The musical accompaniment at the Castro is Blonde Redhead, a band I don't think I ever listened to in their 1990s heyday, but whose somewhat Sonic Youth-esque album Fake Can Be Just as Good I've been listening to a bit over the past year or so. I'm not sure how the pairing of a New York band with roots in noise punk, and a boisterous but thoughtful silent comedy are going to gel, but I'm almost always up for giving the San Francisco International Film Festival's annual silent film/indie rocker mash-ups a try in the hopes of another sublime night like Dengue Fever & the Lost World.

Since 2011, I've been pleased to have near-annual chances to see Ozu's silent films at the Castro Theatre, thanks to the SF Silent Film Festival. They showed Tokyo Chorus in 2013, Dragnet Girl in 2014, That Night's Wife in 2016, and it was just the other week announced they'll be showing another one, his final silent An Inn in Tokyo, on the second day of its now-expanded-to-five-day 2018 festival. As an Ozu completist I love having opportunities to see on such a large screen these also-excellent films, but I have to admit the loyalty to two Japanese directors (the other being Teinosuke Kinugasa, who has seen two films show over the years), as much as I like them, gives me second thoughts when I reflect that the festival hasn't shown any films by the likes of Mikio Naruse, Kenji Mizoguchi, etc. So I was thrilled to see that for the first time SFSFF will show two films from Japan in 2018: An Inn in Tokyo and Policeman, which for more than ten years I've regretted missing at the PFA's Tomu Uchida retrospective. This means there will be an unprecedented three films from Asia in this year's SFSFF, the third being A Throw of Dice from India. It looks like a truly wonderful festival for a silent film lover like myself, with only two features selected (opening night film The Man Who Laughs and An Inn in Tokyo) that I've seen before, and the latter only on a French-intertitled VHS tape from Le Video. According to the Film on Film Foundation calendar, ten of the festival's twenty feature-length selections, as well as one full shorts program, will screen in 35mm prints; these include the Ozu & Uchida films as well as some of my most-eagerly anticipated selections like Jean Grémillon's The Lighthouse Keepers, Rex Ingram's Mare Nostrum introduced by Kevin Brownlow, the Tom Mix Western No Man's Gold, and an Italian film called Trappola which will be screening with footage of Market Street footage after the 1906 earthquake, filmed by the same brothers who filmed the famous A Trip Down Market Street just a few days before; this newly-uncovered footage will re-premiere digitally at a long-sold-out Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum screening this coming Saturday.

SFFILM61 Day 8
Other festival options: Tonight's your last chance to see The Shape of a Surface: Experimental Shorts program of 16mm works by some of the great modern practicioners of hand-made, medium-specific analog moving images. I already mentioned how the pair of the late Paul Clipson's films in the program are substitutes for two films that couldn't be finished onto 16mm prints in time for the festival, after his shocking February death. Since then I learned that another two films in the program, Pablo Mazzolo's NN and Jennifer Saparzadeh's Nu Dem, were originally intended to screen in 16mm (like the other seven films showing tonight will be) but that the sole available release prints were damaged in one case and destroyed in transit in another, thus necessitating digital presentation at the Roxie tonight. The same venue hosts the final SFFILM screening of No Date, No Signature, which I profiled yesterday, tonight as well, while BAMPFA hosts the second of three SFFILM screenings of Mila Turajlić's The Other Side of Everything, which she is expected to attend along with her filmmaking subject: her activist mother Srbijanka Turajlić.

Non-SFFILM option: In addition to being an SFFILM venue tonight, BAMPFA is hosting another installment of its Wednesday afternoon lecture and screening series led by UC Berkeley professor Anne Nesbit. The theme of the series this semester has been "Eisenstein and His Contemporaries", complementing the evening/weekend Sergei Eisenstein retrospective at the venue that will wrap up April 21st with a double-shot of Ivan the Terrible Part I & II (with a few minutes of surviving test footage from the never-made Part III). I've been able to catch a few of the screenings and lectures, and got a lot out of both viewing and lectures for Pudovkin's The Battle of St. Petersburg and Eisenstein's The General Line, as well as the lecture-less showing of the Swiss-made rarity Misery and Fortune of Women (shown half digitally, half in 35mm). But nothing compared to finally fillng one of my greatest cinematic gaps Alexander Nevsky in a great 35mm print. This is the film & print that will be discussed and be screened at BAMPFA today at 3:10. If you're free at that time you should definitely go. It's been called a masterpiece enough times to be a cliché by now, but it's true.

SFFILM 61 Day 4: Smoke

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival began Wednesday and runs through April 17th. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

Image from Smoke provided by SFFILM

Smoke (USA: Wayne Wang, 1995)
playing: 7:30 tonight at Dolby Cinema as part of the festival's Tribute to Wayne Wang

I believe I saw Smoke years ago, perhaps shortly after it was released onto videocassette (I seem to associate it with those Blockbuster plastic cases) but I barely remember it at all. I definitely recommend listening to its director talk about how he protected this Miramax release from the meddling of Harvey Weinstein in his recent KQED interview.

I'm interested in this screening for two main reasons beyond refreshing my memory of what at the time was apparently a forgettable movie for me (albeit one that I've heard others talk of more positively in the meantime). One is that I'm interested in hearing the director of great San Francisco (and not just Chinatown) films like Chan is Missing and Dim Sum: a Little Bit of Heart speak about his work in person; he'll be interviewed by the auteur of Colma: the Musical and Fruit Fly, H.P. Mendoza.

The other reason is my curiosity about the Dolby Cinema, which as far as I know has only opened to the general public for ticketed screenings twice: during the first weekend of the San Francisco International Film Festival last year, and during the first weekend of the festival this year. In 2017 I took advantage of the occasion only for one film, Score: A Film Music Documentary, which certainly showed off the sound capabilities of the space well by way of Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Hans Zimmer etc (it was heavy on big-budgeted Hollywood symphonic music and barely addressed anything foreign or indie for better and worse). This year I want to see how it stacks up when showing work shot by a great cinematographer, and I think Adam Holender, who shot Midnight Cowboy and Puzzle of a Downfall Child a quarter century before spending time as something of a Miramax house DP, lensing Boaz Yakin's Fresh a year before Smoke and M. Night Shyamalan's studio debut Wide Awake a few years after, qualifies. Normally I'd want to see a movie made during the 35mm era (even if at the tail end, by many though not all accounts) on 35mm but I've heard miraculous things about the Dolby's deep blacks and I want to see them tested out on a new remastered digital "print" so I can know precisely what photochemical restorations are up against these days.

Unfortunately at this writing all advance tickets to Smoke are unavailable, but you can check the SFFILM website again at the daily "noon release" of tickets to some (not all) SFFILM shows, or wait in the RUSH line to see if you can be seated at the time of the screening. Just remember to eat dinner beforehand; no food or drink of any kind is allowed inside the Dolby, and they check you bags to make sure you won't be a scofflaw.

SFFILM61 Day 4
Other festival options: The first screenings of Golden Gate Award nominated shorts are today, all at the Roxie: narratives & documentaries in one program, animation in another, and experimental works in a third. It's also the second of three SFFILM screenings of Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof's A Man of Integrity, 9:30 tonight at SFMOMA.

Non-SFFILM option: I can't limit myself to just one: if I weren't going to SFFILM I'd be sorely tempted by tonight's female-focused Other Cinema line-up or the 100-year old Mary Pickford film Stella Maris, with a screenplay by San Francisco's own Frances Marion, screening in 16mm at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont.

The Station Agent (2003)

A scene from Tom McCarthy's THE STATION AGENT, playing at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 21 - May 5, 2016. Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

WHO: Tom McCarthy wrote and directed this film, his first feature before going on to make The Visitor and the most recent Oscar Best Picture, Spotlight. Although my own favorite film on which he's credited as one of the writers is the Pixar hit Up.

WHAT: The Station Agent is such an archetypal Sundance Film Festival success: a low-key dramedy featuring quirky, socially marginal characters interacting awkwardly in an off-the-beaten-track environment captured beautifully, if rather straightforwardly, in a long-shot-heavy camera style. Given all that, and the fact that the film doesn't try very hard to avoid or subvert cliches, it's a far better film than it has any right to be. I think this is thanks to the performances, especially those of the three lead actors. There's Peter Dinklage (not a star yet as this was pre-Game of Thrones and even pre-Elf), who plays the titular character, a railroad buff who moves to a forgotten corner of New Jersey but has no burning desire to make friends with people in a community he feels certain is laughing at him behind has back- or worse. There's Patricia Clarkson, who plays a painter who has trouble focusing in the wake of a family tragedy. And finally Bobby Cannavale, who played the Jersey-est San Francisco mechanic ever in Blue Jasmine, but seems right at home here as a Cuban-American hot dog vendor eager to make friends with the other two. It's appropriate that the finickiest film awards body I know of, the Skandies, picked all three actors among its top 20 performances of 2003 (in their respective categories) even when they left the film off lists for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay.

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive at 7PM following an on-stage conversation with McCarthy, presented by the San Francisco International Film Festival.

WHY: If you're a big fan of The Station Agent then seeing it with a BAMPFA audience in 35mm with the director present is probably a dream come true. If you're a skeptic, or have never seen it before at all, it might be just the thing to win you over. Watching it on DVD on one's own may be the sort of solitary experience that mirrors the tone of the film, but gathering with an audience to view it on a big screen is certain to bring out some of the comedy that may be too understated for full impact in a home-viewing scenario.

BAMPFA, with its respectful, knowledgeable audiences and its almost-always flawless projection, has built a reputation as the best possible place to see a film, and it's no wonder that so many filmmakers, scholars and other luminaries are eager to present films there (the venue's SFIFF guest list is online here). I understand that it was chosen as venue for tonight's screening because McCarthy wanted to screen a 35mm print, and that it was seen as the best SFIFF venue to project one. Indeed, when I went to my first SFIFF screening at the new space, the Experimental Shorts program on Sunday, all the formats shown- 35mm, 16mm and various digital forms, looked stunning.

While there I picked up a copy of the May-June BAMPFA schedule, which is also available as an online pdf, and began making post-SFIFF plans for future visitations. A myriad of special guests will appear at various screenings there over the next few months. Now-retired BAMPFA curator Steve Seid will provide opening remarks to a Roberto Gavaldón film Night Falls May 28th, as part of a 8-title Mexican Film Noir series in which I've seen only one from the program, Gavaldón's positively psychotronic In the Palm of Your Hand. Julio Bracho's Twilight and Tito Davison's May God Forgive Me will screen from 35mm prints with electronic subtitles; the rest will be shown via new DCPs. Japanese cinema scholar will be there to discuss three features by living legend of the yakuza film Seijun Suzuki; two (Kanto Wanderer in 35mm and Tokyo Drifter as DCP) are part of the dozen entries in the largest Frisco Bay Suzuki retrospective since the 1990s, while the third (Branded To Kill) screens as the close of the current Wednesday afternoon In Focus: Japanese Film Classics lecture/screening series, although it appears again in the retro (as the only non-35mm title other than Tokyo Drifter- don't be fooled by the words "imported print" on the website) sans Vick, May 27th.

Walter Murch, Jonathan Lethem, Carroll Ballard, David Peoples, Barry Gifford, Philip Kaufman, and Dana Spiotta are just a few of the notables appearing at the June 1-5 Auteur, Author Film & Literature series held at BAMPFA in collaboration with the Bay Area Book Festival. Two more festivals (albeit not nearly so chronologically concentrated ones) include the long-awaited return of the touring UCLA Festival of Preservation, featuring new 35mm prints of under-screened American classics from the 1910s to the 1960s (as well as a new DCP of a 1909 Mary Pickford vehicle, accompanied by Judith Rosenberg on piano as part of an all-Pickford program), and the new Early Music Film Festival, in which 35mm prints of films by Gérard Corbiau, Alain Corneau, and Straub/Huillet brush up against other "baroque and before"-themed music-pictures such as Agnes Méth's documentation of Dorris Dörrie's staging of Handel's Admeto, which will be introduced by conductor Nicholas McGegin.

I think that's all the guests expected at BAMPFA in the coming months, excepting the as-yet unspecified student filmmakers who'll be on hand for the annual Film and Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Prize Competition screening the day after SFIFF ends. (Having heard Summer Mason speak about an earlier work and experiences at Cal at a New Parkway screening last month, I'm rooting for her to be on hand with her new work.) The venue's able curatorial staff will be on their own to introduce other screenings on the upcoming calendar including the 35mm screening of To Kill a Mockingbird (commemorating Harper Lee's recent passing, or Gregory Peck's centennial earlier this month, or both?), the selections in the (all-digital) Wim Wenders retrospective, and the 2 showings of a new 35mm print of the Nicholas Ray film I'm most embarrassed not to have seen by this point in my cinephilia, The Lusty Men.

HOW: 35mm print, as noted above.

OTHER SFIFF SCREENINGS: Today is the final festival screening of Michel Gondry's Microbe and Gasoline, and the second screening of The Apostate.

NON-SFIFF SCREENING: Since I'm on the topic of film-on-film showings, I'll highlight the Tech Museum of San Jose, the last remaining Frisco Bay IMAX screen that still uses 15-perf 70mm film reels. Today (and for the rest of the week, at least) the venue screens Batman Vs. Superman, which I can't recommend (because I haven't seen it). But I can recommend the Hackworth Dome screen as the most immersive I've experienced.

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.

Scarlet Street (1945)

WHO: Fritz Lang directed this, and Edward G. Robinson starred in it.

WHAT: A remake of Jean Renoir's 1931 masterpiece La Chienne, about an amateur artist who finds himself taken advantage of by a conspiracy of small-time criminals, Scarlet Street has a darker ending than Renoir's original, and is frequently cited as an important piece of the mid-1940s film noir cycle.  As "Czar of Noir" Eddie Muller wrote in the conclusion of his two-part Keyframe article on the film, it marked a key moment in Lang's career. Quoting from Muller's article:

Starting with Scarlet Street, Lang claimed that all his films “wanted to show that the average citizen is not very much better than a criminal.” We must always be on guard from ourselves, and our deepest desires. Lang’s early films displayed a dark fascination with the vagaries of fate. After Scarlet Street that changed.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens at the Castro Theatre today only at 4:15 PM.

WHY: I didn't have time to ask Muller about Scarlet Street when I interviewed him recently, so I won't be publishing more outtakes from our conversation here, but I did want to highlight this film as a true film noir masterpiece that completely fits this year's Noir City "Art of Darkness" theme. In fact when I first heard the theme announced this was the first film that came to mind as an obvious program choice (even though it has screened at a prior Noir City festival, back in 2007). Since I've not seen Specter of the Rose yet, I can also say that it may be your last chance to see a true film noir masterpiece at this year's festival, as while tonight's other presentation, The Red Shoes is an incredible, very dark film, and a perfect fit in this year's artist-centric program, it's still a far cry from film noir. Meanwhile tomorrow's Peeping Tom/Blow Up pairing, while also arguable masterpieces, treads into the territory of the noir-influenced sixties art film, out of film noir itself. That's okay. They're a great way to close the program by shepherding the audience out of the chiaroscuro world we've inhabited for the past week or so.

Last year's Noir City wrapped up with a sixties double-bill as well, a The Honeymoon Killers and Seconds pairing that seemed to blow every mind in the theatre. Seconds makes its way back to Frisco a year later as the closer for the Roxie's February 5-7 "Mad Men Weekend" featuring film and television critic Matt Zoller Seitz introducing four excellent movies that influenced that recent TV hit's aesthetic. The program includes another previous Noir City closing film, The Sweet Smell of Success, as well as Billy Wilder's The partment and Frank Perry's bizarre, amazing The Swimmer. Though the Roxie indicates these all as digital presentations, the Film On Film Foundation seems to have other information about Seconds being shown on 35mm, though as I recall that site originally listed its Noir City screening last year as being in that format, which was not borne out at the actual showing. Other upcoming 35mm Roxie showings include two pre-Valentine's showings of John Waters's Polyester (in Odorama!), and, on February 25, Too Late, the experimental 2015 neo-noir closing Indiefest this year.

Meanwhile, I picked up a paper copy of the new Castro schedule and was able to see the back page, which lists the formats of each film screening (along with succinct and usually-enticing program descriptions) before the information appears on the theatre's website. My previous posting that rounded-up the upcoming programs there would have been more effusive had I seen it in time. lmost everything I'd hoped to be screened on 35mm will be, including every single one of the films shot by departed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Obviously I will be skipping the live Oscar broadcast in order to watch a 35mm print of Heaven's Gate February 28- I've been waiting many years for such a screening (I've never seen this film before at all). Might as well make it a marathon that day, too, with its double-bill-mate America America being shown on 35mm as well. (I feel a bit stupid for not having immediately recognized that the Zsigmond films all partner with a film shot by another recently-deceased master DP,  Haskell Wexler- all his films show on 35mm as well. Maybe because I've seen fewer of them; Bound For Glory will also be a first for me). I also got word on the pre-code Wednesday formats: all the screenings will be 35mm except for Safe in Hell and The Bitter Tea of General Yen, which makes me very excited indeed. Especially for the back half of the opening program: Two Seconds, starring Scarlet Street protagonist Edward G. Robinson.

HOW: Scarlet Street screens today as part of an all-35mm triple-bill also including John Brahm's excellent Hitchcock remake The Lodger and Edgar G. Ulmer's Bluebeard. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Screen capture from Warner DVD

WHO: Oscar Wilde, the "Irish dramatist, poet, novelist and essayist known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, glittering conversation and enduring artistic achievements" wrote the novel on which this film is based. The quote comes from Wilde's plaque on the Rainbow Honor Walk on the sidewalk just a few dozen feet down the hill from the Castro Theatre. Thankfully the original plaque, with its embarrassing typo ("bitting wit") has been rectified.

WHAT: I read Wilde's novel years ago and loved it, but have yet to see this adaptation. Dave Kehr calls is "a good movie" and it takes a pretty stratospheric place on Jaime Christley's 1945 top ten list. On the other hand Fernando Croce calls it "an instance in which an outright debacle would have made a much more interesting film," taking director Albert Lewin to task while praising its performers Hurd Hatfield, Angela Lansbury and George Sanders, if not quite their performances. This is still probably the most well-known version of the novel, despite a 2009 British production that has some fans.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 7:15 tonight only at the Castro Theatre as part of Noir City

WHY: What better place to see an Oscar Wilde movie than at the Castro Theatre? A 1400-seat Timothy Pfleuger gem built in an era much closer to Wilde's than our own, but in a neighborhood that still feels like it owes a debt to prominent pioneers like him. The Castro has been San Francisco's home to Noir City for twelve of its fourteen years and is an example of an event and a venue being a perfect match for each other. Castro regulars know that for ten days they'll have to plan their bathroom visits carefully in order to avoid long lines, and in exchange they're allowed to sit in the usually-closed-off balcony, where the most comfortable seats in the house are located.

The Castro just announced its February calendar on its website and it's pretty outstanding (it has to be, I suppose, to stay relevant now that the new Alamo Drafthouse is deep in its "signature" programming, and the Pacific Film Archive is set to grab a lot of attention as it re-opens in a new location close to the Berkeley BART station next week). Some potential highlights include: underrated neo-noir Copland screening Wednesday February 3rd in a Stallone double-bill with Creed; a February 13 pairing of Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans with Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon; a Valentine's Day marathon of Casablanca with Notorious (also screening together at the Stanford this coming weekend) as well as the new documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut (a love story of a more cinephilic sort); Truffaut's Jules & Jim on February 18 (a day after his counterpart Jean-Luc Godard's rarely-shown Sympathy For the Devil); A February 15 pairing of George Lucas's American Graffiti (his best film, IMHO) with Steven Spielberg's (and perhaps more importantly the late great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's) Close Encounters of the Third Kind; more great Zsigmond showings including McCabe & Mrs. Miller February 21, Deliverance February 23, and Heaven's Gate February 28 (a very good Oscar night alternative). There's also a hint of March offerings including a Jean Cocteau double-bill on the 3rd and a David Bowie tribute screening of The Man Who Fell To Earth with co-star Candy Clark in person, on March 12th.

A February 24th showing of Howard Hawks's Scarface marks the beginning of a six-Wednesday stand of 1931-1933 "pre-code" gems programmed by Elliot Lavine. I've seen eleven of these fourteen sex- and crime-oriented entertainments, and there's not a one I wouldn't recommend to someone who hasn't seen it before. The ones I'm eager to see for myself for the first time are Two Seconds (also on the 24th), Torch Singer on March 2nd, and (not listed on the Castro site) Downstairs on March 23rd (paired with The Bitter Tea of General Yen). I'm also always up for a big-screen rewatch of films like Shanghai Express and Safe in Hell (March 9th), I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang and Wild Boys of the Road (March 16th) and Island of the Lost Souls, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and Freaks (March 30th). Every one of these films should appeal strongly to almost any Noir City regular; this period of the early 1930s and the mid 1940s have some interesting affinities in Hollywood.

HOW: The Picture of Dorian Gray screens on a double-bill with the UK rarity Corridor of Mirrors. The latter will be screened as a DCP, while the Picture of Dorian Gray will screen as a..., well, I'd rather let Eddie Muller break it to you. This is what he said when I interviewed him for Keyframe Daily recently:

I had my heart set on finding an original print of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Have you ever seen that? It has Technicolor inserts in the film. I was always like, "why hasn't there been a restoration of this?" Harvard Film archive has a 35mm print. But they admitted, under slight pressure, that the color sections had faded. Warner brothers, which owns the rights to the film, restored it digitally to put it out as a Blu-Ray. But there's no film. So I said, "you know what, I'm just gonna show the Blu-Ray". Because I felt like I wanted the experience for the audience to be as close to what it was like when that film came out as possible, and that meant that those color sections had to be shocking. Like, "oh wow, this gorgeous black and white is now vivid Technicolor". And that's not gonna happen with a faded print. You're left trying to imagine what they intended. I'd rather show you, as close as possible, what they intended.

Humoresque (1946)

Screen capture from Warner DVD.

WHO: Joan Crawford and John Garfield star in this.

WHAT: Another film I've yet to see and am excited to. Here's what Noir City festival honcho Eddie Muller had to say about this film when I interviewed him last week (but couldn't fit into my Keyframe article):

I could argue that Humoresque is Joan Crawford's best performance. What interests me about it is it's not Joan being Joan. She plays a very different character, very vulnerable, and trying to be a big woman and kind of failing and breaking down. It's really dramatic. She's just great in it and I think I said in my notes something along the lines of that it's one of those Hollywood movies where you can see every calculated thing in it, just how archly melodramatic the whole thing is, and it doesn't matter. It's almost like its incredible theatricality is what makes it so emotionally affecting. It really is a powerful film. And to see Hollywood go all out in a film about classical music in both of those movies, it's like Hollywood treating classical music like there's no higher art form in the world. And to see the special effects, and how they make John Garfield a musician with very complicated effects that aren't in the camera. These are physical effects that are just extraordinary. Garfield is a multi-armed character when he's playing, you know: one arm belongs to somebody and another arm belongs to somebody else. Unbelievable. You honestly can't tell.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Castro Theatre, with showtimes scheduled at 3:50 and 8:45.

WHY: There's a tendency, when viewing films in pairs, as the hardcore denizens of Noir City do this week thanks to its double-feature format, to compare one film against the other as if they're in competition. I do the same thing myself sometimes, as when I say things like "Rear Window is a better movie than The Public Eye, but I preferred seeing the latter Friday night because its 35mm print looked a lot better than the Rear Window DCP did." It's more fruitful to consider the ways a pair of films can build upon each other, deepening both viewing experiences, as the colliding of two films about ethically questionable Manhattan photographers did for the opening of the Noir City festival.

Last night's pairing of pitch-black noirs from Argentina and Sweden, Fernando Ayala's The Bitter Stems and Hasse Ekman's Girl With Hyacinths, is another example. These films were clearly not just chosen to be together because they're both extremely pessimistic, because they both tangentially fit into this year's "Art of Darkness" Noir City theme, or because they're both featured in recent or upcoming (New York City) MoMA retrospectives. All of the above is true, but is overshadowed by the films' fundamental connection despite being made six years and over eight thousand miles apart from each other: both films are obsessed with their nation's neutrality during World War II. This is something I'd enjoy writing about in much greater depth (after a second viewing of each film, too, ideally). But for now I'm just going to avoid talking about which of the two films is "better" than the other, as I overheard many do as I left the Castro last night, and focus on the ways each film strengthens the other in my memory as I think about them a day later.

On the heels of that, it seems funny to comment on today's double-bill of musician-themed melodramas featured on the cover of the gorgeous program book available only to Castro attendees this week (and a reason alone for noir-loving shut-ins to buy at least one ticket to the festival). I believe it's the first time Noir City has paired a Joan Crawford film (Humoresque) with a Bette Davis one (Deception) on the same double-bill. Going way back to the second Noir City festival in 2004, there were three "Crawford vs. Stanwyck" double-bills that year (this year Barbara Stanwyck appears separately, in tomorrow night's The Two Mrs. Carrolls), but the famous history of the Davis/Crawford rivalry really invites the audience to make today's pairing into a competition (perhaps especially so on a day when spandex-clad gladiators compete for a trip to Frisco Bay next week). Just a reminder that this might not always such a productive way to view movies, as one can be appreciated without having to be "better" than the other one...

HOW: Today's films are both screening in 35mm; according to the aforementioned program book, all upcoming Noir City screenings are expected to employ 35mm prints except for The Picture of Dorian Gray, which screens from a Blu-Ray, and Corridor of Mirrors, The Red Shoes, and Blow Up, which screen from DCP.