Maureen Russell Only Has Two Eyes

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from Maureen Russell, San Francisco film festival volunteer and cinephile

2011 was an embarrassment of riches for me, film-wise. I finally saw several classic films I'd never seen before (that it seemed everyone else had), waiting for my big screen opportunity. Good thing I got to a lot of films last year, as the 35mm screenings will be harder to find in the future. And my favorite festivals were as strong as ever- I limited myself to one film from each of them.

1. World On A Wire
I hadn’t heard of this film for television before. I ended up seeing it twice: first at SFIFF, the digital screening at the Kabuki. There was so much to take in visually (plus subtitles) and story-wise, that I had to go again when the Roxie screened it a few months later, on 35mm. The 200 minute film sounded like a challenge to do in one screening (with intermission), but I got lost in the intrigue and loved the color, humor, drama, dashing lead, West German early 70’s fashion, sets, mind-bending story, and figuring out the characters.

2. Toby Dammit, Castro Theatre
SFIFF’s last minute acting award and screening was worth the wait. A fun onstage interview with the still charming Terence Stamp was followed by a seldom-screened masterpiece Fellini film. It was 40 minutes of bliss for me: Edgar Allen Poe, late 60’s Italy, surrealism, horror, Italian sports cars, and Terence Stamp as an alcoholic actor.

3. He Who Gets Slapped, Castro Theatre
The entire SF Silent Film Festival was top notch and it was hard to pick a favorite. While I’m usually wary of films about clowns, this one stars Lon Chaney along with John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. The Swedish Matti Bye Ensemble returned to SF to accompany this Swedish director Sjöström’s MGM film, and the music soared.

4. Angel Face, Castro Theatre
Noir City 9 was another great 10 days of noir. Hard for me to pick a favorite here too, but this one definitely delivered. Director: Otto Preminger.

5. Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, Castro Theatre
Los Angeles neo-noir double feature with two period pieces.
Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski: I’m one of the people who had never seen Chinatown before (only clips)! I was saving myself for a big screen, and it was worth the wait! Wow.
L.A Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson: Fantastic character and action driven story from James Ellroy’s novel; Great cast includes Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce. I’d seen this on TV before, but so much better on the big screen and in this double feature.

6. The Devil’s Cleavage
Good thing I chose to go a screening during the PFA's Cult of the Kuchars series. George Kuchar was there to introduce The Devil’s Cleavage, and the actor playing the plumber was in the audience. A beautiful and outrageous film. And George died just months later...

7. David Holzman's Diary, Victoria Theatre
Another film I'd never heard of before. I found out about it as a Fandor free screening with the director (Jim McBride) in person. The film was beautifully shot and so direct that it stays with you, a mockumentary as well as a personal film. And looking at my list, it ties in with #9.

8. The Hunger/Nadja, the Roxie.
I'm not one to pass up a double feature of arty vampire films before Halloween. I remember loving both of these films when they came out, but hadn't seen either in years. They were great together and I appreciated them as much as ever. I was especially pleased to see Nadja screened on 35mm: a beautiful Pixelvision 90’s flick I wish more people could see. And SFMoMA brought Ann Magnuson (who had a memorable minor role in The Hunger to the Roxie for a revealing onstage interview. I even answered one of her trivia questions and got a prize and a hug from Ms. Magnuson!

9. SFMoMA’s Exposed On Film series
The series accompanied SFMOMA’s fascinating Exposed photography exhibit.
Films I caught at the Castro Theatre included Medium Cool, Haskell Wexler, introduced by Haskell Wexler!
and Kids on the Boundaries day triple feature with the haunting Deep End, Jerzy Skomilowski, Streetwise, Martin Bell, (director's restored version) and Pretty Baby, Louis Malle.
AND my first time seeing Lost Highway, David Lynch! I was waiting for a big screen for that one. It did not disappoint.

10. In Search of Christopher Maclaine: Man, Artist, Legend:
Wilder Bentley II, actor, and Lawrence Jordan, filmmaker in person. Curated by Brecht Andersch, presented by Andersch with Brian Darr, SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Theater:
The End, The Man Who Invented Gold, Beat & Scotch Hop by Christopher Maclaine. Trumpit by Lawrence Jordan. Moods in Motion by Ettilie Wallace.
I was not familiar with Christopher Maclaine before, so this was a great introduction. Seeing these films, especially The End, was a great bit of SF History. The onstage interview with men who were there and the cool slide show presented by Brecht Andersch and Brian Darr of their quest for SF locations in The End was topped off by drinks at Vesuvio’s, one of the film’s locations.

For those who have seen Tropical Malady

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/14/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

* * * * *
Friday night's event at the Pacific Film Archive, in which Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul guided the audience through a screening of his 2004 Cannes prize-winner Tropical Malady, marked perhaps the first time I was thankful, with no reservations whatsoever, that a theatrical screening was being projected from a DVD rather than a 35mm print. Such a print had been shown the previous night for the benefit of those of us who wanted to soak up the richness of the film's images in their full glory, but this night was to be devoted less to pure aesthetic pleasure than to textual analysis. With Apichatpong (or "Joe", as he is often called) in front of a microphone with his hand on a remote control allowing him to pause, slow forward, or adjust the audio level at will, it was a unique chance for something like a live director's audio commentary only all the more illuminating for its flexibility. Not only did Joe provide his own personal reflections and interpretations on this famously enigmatic film at precisely opportune moments, but PFA curator Steve Seid also asked audience members to call out "stop" when we thought of a question to ask for ourselves. After putting forth a poorly-worded query fairly early in the process I found myself too shy to pursue more, but others had some very insightful questions triggering fascinating answers.

Joe made several disclosures that I'd never remembered reading in reviews or interviews (perhaps I've just read the wrong ones), or hearing in the audio commentary discussion with Chuck Stephens on the Strand DVD. Some are interesting little tidbits regarding production, while others feel right now something like world-shattering revelations that cast the film in an entirely new light. Maybe there's a bit of both in all of them. I'll share a few of them (in paraphrase), but I implore you not to read further unless you've seen Tropical Malady before. I get the sense that Joe would rather that these tidbits/revelations not interfere with anyone's first experience with this very personal film for him. a.k.a. SPOILER WARNING!!!

1. One reason why the film is credited to three directors of photography is that working with Jean-Louis Vialard (Investigations Into the Invisible World, Dans Paris) was frustrating and he was soon taken off the film. Apparently his aggressive style of persuasion did not mesh well with the Thai style of making a film (or Joe's style, anyway). Vialard was adamant that certain shots be captured just a certain way, which required very long periods of time to set up the lighting.

My reaction: Maybe Vialard ought to have read a book like this before taking on the job? I must say, however, that the one shot Joe singled out as taking Vialard particularly long to set up (a half day), the one just before the end of the film's first half, in which Tong sits up from his bed, his body bifurcated by light and shadow, is particularly beautiful and perhaps on some level the key shot in the film.

2. According to Joe, one idea he had when making Tropical Malady is that all of the male characters in the film would be gay. Not only did he express this through certain casting choices and direction of actors, but also in design details such as posters adorning the walls of his locations.

My reaction: It's impossible not to notice the unblinking acceptance of homosexuality by the characters in Tropical Malady, including Tong's family who seem completely at ease with his interest in the soldier Keng, the sisters who offer to smoke the two lovers out, and essentially everyone else in the film. And there is definitely a lot of other flirtatious behavior with other men in the film, in scenes like the one in the pool hall for example. The entire first half of the film, at least up to the point of the roadside beating, feels like it exists in some kind of utopia. (Some have found the first half of the film to be so conflict-free as to be completely unsatisfying.) But it seems Joe's unifying idea behind this utopian state is one that never occurred to me at all. Fascinating food for further thought.

3. Tropical Malady has been praised for its sound design, in which the ambient sounds of the jungle and other environments are turned way up in the mix to a highly visceral level in a theatre with a good sound system. But according to the director, in Thailand there were many complaints that in certain scenes the dialogue was not audible enough to understand. Joe admitted that he didn't really mind that Thais couldn't clearly hear certain dialogue, an example being the conversation in which Keng tells Tong, "When I gave you the Clash tape I forgot to give you my heart."

My reaction: Though it might be tempting to use this disclosure as evidence that he makes his films for subtitle-reading festival audiences without thinking of audiences from own country, I think there's reason to conclude the contrary. In his DVD commentary with Chuck Stephens, Joe makes it clear that he's a little uncomfortable about the corniness of some of this lovestruck dialogue; it seems to me that he'd almost rather the audience not be let into his characters' private moment. Perhaps the Thai version, in which the dialogue can't really be made out, better represents his authorial intention in certain scenes than a fully subtitled version does.

I'm also interested in the way Joe deals with the foregrounding and withholding of sounds because I feel like his ideas on this front are interacting with the relatively short history of sound cinema in Thailand; as far as I know, no other country's film industry experienced a longer silent film era. As I understand it, it wasn't until the 1970s that Thai films stopped being distributed without soundtracks, with local troupes of voice actors providing the film dialogue in each village, a practice often seen as a holdover from the benshi-style narration practiced throughout East Asia until sound cinema displaced it, country by country, starting in the 1930s. What this has to do with Joe's films and videos is fodder for an entirely other realm of inquiry that I hope to explore someday.

4. The shot in which Keng rests against a tree was based on an old photograph of a resting hunter that Joe particularly liked. He asked the actor to hold the same pose as that of the subject of the photograph.

My reaction: More ammunition for a reading of Joe's work as postmodernist. He's clearly interested in a dialogue with imagemakers of the past, and not just those in the motion picture field. It's a great composition, anyway.

5. When you hear the sound of dogs crying in the distance, they were inspired by Joe's appreciation of hearing the same in Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry.

My reaction: I think this is the first confirmation I've heard that Joe has definitely been influenced by Kiarostami, though it's a contention that many critics have put forth. Even in this interview, in which he's asked to react to comparisons between his work and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's, Tsai Ming-Liang's, and Kiarostami's, Joe cops to a personal connection to Hou and Tsai, but essentially punts on the question of Kiarostami.

6. The shot of the tiger staring intently at Keng at the end of the film could never have been achieved naturally; tigers just don't do that sort of thing for the camera. Actually, the image was achieved through digital compositing by the German visual effects house that also worked on the ghostly zebu and the luminous tree effects. In fact the tiger's movements have been randomized and looped.

My reaction: Watch carefully the next time you see the film, and you'll definitely notice the loop. It's a pretty cool effect.

This event has definitely been a major highlight of my cinematic year so far, and I'm now all the more hungry to finally see Syndromes and a Century at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts next weekend. It gets six showings (five evening, one matinee) Friday through Sunday. Hopefully I can make it to at least two of them.

Two Eyes: Michael Guillén

In the San Francisco Bay Area, moviegoing is not just for the newest releases. In 2013 there were more theatrical opportunities to see films spanning the history of cinema than any one person could take advantage of. Therefore, I've asked a sampling of local moviegoers to select a few favorites seen in cinemas last year. An index of participants is found here.  


The following list comes from Michael Guillén, who blogs at The Evening Class.

Absence makes the cinephilic heart grow fonder.  Relocating to Boise, Idaho from San Francisco has all but meant letting go of repertory programming.  Although Boise's movie "palace" The Egyptian offers some older fare, they project from DVD onto a large screen and resolution suffers accordingly.  Hardly the ideal in-cinema experience.  Thus, I rely on my sojourns back to San Francisco and film festivals here and there to satisfy my hunger for restorations and revivals.  Here's what I've enjoyed in San Francisco and the Bay Area in 2013.

Gun Crazy (Castro / Noir City / 01/25/13)—The term "value added" has come to qualify the spectatorial experience.  Although the Film Noir Foundation's annual Noir City prides itself on screening titles generally unavailable on digital formats, they know how to up the ante when a film is available on DVD, Blu-Ray or online streaming.  Case in point would be the opening night for the 11th edition of Noir City where Peggy Cummins—"the deadliest female in all of film noir"—was fêted in an onstage conversation with "Czar of Noir" Eddie Muller.

Curse of the Demon (Castro / Noir City / 01/26/13)—Featuring Peggy Cummins once again, and one of my favorite Jacque Tourneur vehicles because of its supernatural audacity, catching Curse of the Demon (1957) at an afternoon matinee screening made me feel all of 12.  Never discount how the movies can provide the sense of recapturing one's youth; surely one of the presiding aesthetics that inform repertory viewings.

Try and Get Me! (Castro / Noir City / 01/26/13)—There are absolutely no 35mm screenings in Boise, Idaho.  None.  Thus—as Paolo Cherchi Usai has recently argued—the screening of a 35mm restoration has all the earmarks of a "special event."  Attending the world premiere of a brand new 35mm restoration by the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archive is about as special as filmgoing gets.  Stir in local interest—the film's narrative borrows from events in 1934 San Jose—and it makes for a tasty Saturday night experience.

The Other Woman (Castro / Noir City / 01/31/13)—Along with the aforementioned aspect of recapturing one's youth through revival screenings, sometimes films like Hugo Hass's The Other Woman (1954) featuring the voluptuous Cleo Moore harbor fascination for not being the literal films of one's youth but more films that informed the culture one is born into, especially with regard to sexual attitudes of the time.  As a young gay boy growing up in the hinterlands of Idaho I wanted desperately to be a bad girl.  My self-image virilified over time but I've never let go of thoroughly enjoying a Bad Girls Night at the Castro Theater.  It's an indulgence I look forward to once a year.

In effect, I could easily replicate the programming of Noir City 2013 to satisfy the 10-film requirement of this year-end wrap-up; but, that wouldn't be fair to the rest of the fine programming executed in the Bay Area during the rest of the year.  Before leaving Noir City, however, I have to give honorable mentions to the world premiere of a 3-D 4K digital resoration of Man In the Dark (1953), its Technicolor counterpart Inferno (1953)—also in a brand new 4K digital restoration—a traumatized Lee Remick in Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror (1962), Edward Dmytryk's tense and engaging The Sniper (1952), Clarence Brown's 1949 adaptation of William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, the over-the-top close-ups of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) where Gloria Swanson's iconic and unhinged Norma Desmond stares out at all those faces in the dark, and the pre-Code proto-noir A House Divided (1931), notable for an early version of Walter Huston's infamous Treasure of Sierra Madre jig.

The Thief of Bagdad (Castro / Silent Winter / 02/16/13)—As I reduce the number of film festivals I'm attending, some cannot be forsaken for being so unique and stellar; namely the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's bi-annual events.  At Silent Winter 2013 I was thrilled to the marrow by Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad (1924) wherein Douglas Fairbanks embodied the role of Ahmed with athletic virtuosity to the welcome accompaniment of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.  Honorable mentions at Silent Winter 2013 would have to include J. Searle Dawley's Snow White (1916), which contextualized both Disney's animated version of the tale, as well as more contemporary efforts such as the Spanish Blancanieves and Hollywood's Snow White & The Huntsman.  Also, Buster Keaton's shorts, Sam Taylor's My Best Girl (1927) featuring sweetheart Mary Pickford, and F.W. Murnau's atmospheric adaptation of Goethe's Faust rounded out a satisfying edition.

 

Blood Money (Roxie / Pre-Code / 03/01/13)—Rowland Brown's Blood Money (1933) was one of the highlights of Elliot Lavine's "Hollywood Before the Code: Deeper, Darker, Nastier!!"  With its endearing portrayals of transvestism and sadomasochism, Blood Money titillated, entertained, and/or offended its Roxie audience as much as it did 70+ years ago.  Add Judith Anderson's film debut, Frances Dee at her kinkiest, Katherine Williams' sapphic "Nightclub Woman Wearing Monocle" and Blossom Seely's bluesy musical numbers, and it was blood money well-spent.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Castro / SF International / 05/05/13)—Philip Kaufman was the recipient of the San Francisco Film Society's 2013 Founder's Directing Award.  The catalog related a lovely anecdote of how Kaufman met Anaïs Nin at the University of Chicago in 1962.  They spent the day together, shared ideas, and she encouraged him to become a film director.  Among the remarkable roster of films to follow, his 1978 adaptation of Jack Finney's classic novel updated Finney's 1950 Cold War paranoia to post-Nixon era San Francisco.  One could extend that narrative to the present day to wonder if all these Google buses aren't actually transporting pod people?  Just as the HBO series Looking weaves its San Francisco locations into its narrative design, Invasion of the Body Snatchers likewise provides a tangible sense of '70s San Francisco, such that to this day I can't walk through Civic Center without fearing that I'll encounter something half human, half dog.

Wild Girl (PFA / Kehr / 08/01/13)—Back to the notion of a "special event", Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive brought New York Times film critic/historian Dave Kehr to the Bay Area to introduce and contextualize three Raoul Walsh westerns: Wild Girl (1932), a new print of The Lawless Breed (1953), and the "noir western" Pursued (1947).  Having the opportunity to dine with one of my favorite film writers, hearing him in conversation with local critic Michael Fox, and sharing the experience with Idaho filmmaker Zach Voss who was visiting the Bay Area made for a special event indeed.  Further, on the occasion of these screenings, Film International granted permission for me to republish my seen-by-few interview with Dave Kehr upon the publication of his book When Movies Mattered: Reviews From A Transformative Decade.

Sorcerer (PFA / 09/19/13)—With my habit for recording nearly every public film appearance in the Bay Area, it seems almost unbelievable that I didn't bother to record or have recorded my on-stage conversation with William Friedkin when the newly restored digitally remastered Sorcerer (1977) screened mid-September at the Pacific Film Archive during their Friedkin retrospective.  Memory will have to serve with this one; but, oh, what a memory!!

The Gospel According to Matthew (PFA / 09/22/13)—I gave up on Pier Paolo Pasolini after being introduced to him via Salò: 120 Days of Sodom, which I was way too young and inexperienced to absorb.  But wooed back to his oeuvre by Fandor who invited me to interview Ninetto Davoli, one of Pasolini's key actors, during a Bay Area multi-venue retrospective of Pasolini's films, I was stunned to—first of all—discover that I could now appreciate Salò on its own merits (perhaps because of years of watching torture porn in the horror genre, which makes Salò seem nearly quaint by comparison), but just how beautiful some of his earlier films were, particularly the incandescent Gospel According to Matthew, which aligned neatly with my interest in the Historical Christ and the Gnostic Gospels.  Not only did this film reawaken my interest in Pasolini, but it literally reawakened my passion for arthouse cinema.