In his second feature, Pee-wee Herman runs a farm (or, rather, owns a farm that apparently runs itself), shares his bed with a talking pig named Vance, and courts a local schoolteacher (Penelope Ann Miller). When a traveling circus run by Kris Kristofferson turns up on his property, the hostile locals decide that they don’t want a show, but the circus goes on with it anywayand once Pee-wee serves everyone cocktail wieners grown on his hot dog tree, the townsfolk turn into kids who want to attend. Meanwhile, Pee-wee has jilted his fiancee for a sexy Italian circus performer (Valeria Golino). While the peculiar synthetic fantasies of Paul Reubens had a certain nightmarish logic on his TV kiddie show Pee-wee’s Playhouse, at least as a reflection of TV itself as a synthetic medium, the social reality behind this feature is so tenuous that the giggly humor is never allowed to build. With real-life farmers in a state of crisis, it obviously requires a special imperviousness to concoct a barnyard comedy set in no particular time where money and work scarcely exist even as minor issues. Most of the circus freaksincluding the miniature Midge (Susan Tyrrell), a hermaphrodite, a dog-faced boy, and a mermaidare as synthetic as Pee-wee himself, and while the level of imagination here is scaled to the bite-size dimensions of TV, the sense of an alternate universe felt in Herman’s TV show is woefully lacking. Read more
While it isn’t nearly as inventive as the Disney features that preceded and followed it (Dumbo and Saludos Amigos respectively), this animated feature based on Felix Salten’s book about the coming of age of a fawn and his various forest friends (including the beloved Thumper) does convey some of the primal emotional power of Disney’s features during this period. The handling of patriarchal authority here has some queasy echoes of Leni Riefenstahl’s treatment of Nazi officials in Triumph of the Will, reminding one that Disney was the only Hollywood figure to befriend Riefenstahl when she visited in the 30s; but the adroit mixture of pantheism and sentimentality continues to be sufficiently timeless to allow Disney’s heirs to recycle this picture endlessly (1942). (JR) Read more
Basil Dearden’s neglected 1961 British film tells the story of Othello in jazz terms. Richard Attenborough plays a wealthy jazz buff who throws an all-night party at a warehouse in London’s East End to celebrate the wedding anniversary of jazz player Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) and his wife, a white singer. Among the musical highlights is a rare duet by Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck; among the other musicians are John Dankworth and Tubby Hayes. A rare treat for jazz buffs. 95 min. (JR) Read more
Hugh Leonard’s adaptation of his autobiographical play of the same title, partially based in turn on his book Home Before Night, offers a charming mix of childhood memoir and speculative wish fulfillment. An Irish playwright living in New York (Martin Sheen) returns to Ireland to attend the funeral of his father (Barnard Hughes), and then proceeds to have lengthy conversations with the old codger, with his younger self (Karl Hayden), his mother (Doreen Hepburn), and a former employer (William Hickey) all becoming a part of the discussion. As touching as most of this is, one’s tolerance for good-natured, sentimental blarney is occasionally stretched–as in some of John Ford’s depictions of Irish life, such as The Quiet Man–but the actors and director Matt Clark manage to keep most of it fluid and likable. (Fine Arts) Read more
The idea must have seemed like a natural to producer Don Boyd: invite ten filmmakers to select an operatic aria and make a short film interpreting the music independent of the opera’s original story line. The results are decidedly mixed, but the best segments are worth waiting for. To take them in ascending order of preference: Bill Bryden provides an uninteresting “wraparound” using Leoncavallo that links the various segments; Nicolas Roeg’s use of Verdi in depicting a plot to assassinate King Zog of Albania in Vienna in 1931 (with Theresa Russell as Zog) is disappointingly pointless, and Bruce Beresford’s matching of a “love duet” and Korngold seems equally thin. Robert Altman’s view of the audience at the opening night of Paris’s Ranelagh Theater in 1734 (where a Rameau opera was premiering) is ambitious but sluggish, and Franc Roddam’s version of a young couple’s suicide pact in Las Vegas to the strains of Wagner is thoughtful but corny. More experimental sections by Charles Sturridge (lyrical black-and-white shots of children playing hooky, used with Verdi) and Derek Jarman (an elderly opera singer on stage in 35-millimeter recalls her romantic childhood in Super-8, all to a Charpentier aria) are arresting but rather unsatisfying. Ken Russell’s surreal depiction of a car-crash victim’s fantasies of her wounds becoming jewels in a lush ritual done to Puccini, seems to benefit from Russell’s previous experience in matching music to action. Read more
The mukhtar (chief) of an occupied Arab Palestinian village (Ali Mohammed Akili) wants to hold a traditional full-scale wedding for his son (Nazih Akly), but the Israeli military governor will allow it only if he and his officers are the guests of honor. As the ceremonies and festivities gradually unfold over a tense day and night, writer-director Michel Kleifi, who grew up in Nazareth and is now based in Belgium, paints an intimate and multilayered view of the village and its various factions, including the three generations of the mukhtar’s family. Beautifully filmed and edited, and effectively acted by nonprofessionals, the story moves between an alienated grandfather, a group of flirtatious teenage girls, an angry group of young male terrorists, an impotent groom and a resourceful and beautiful bride (Anna Achdian) who are expected to offer proof of their marriage’s consummation in the form of a bloody sheet, a horse that has strayed into a mine field, an Israeli woman soldier who changes into Arab clothes, and other diverse centers of interest, with the mukhtar in most cases providing both the narrative linkage and our sense of how the village is run from within. Eschewing propaganda for an in-depth portrait, this is a fluid and lovely film that speaks volumes about a subject–Palestinian life–that most of us know next to nothing about. Read more
Clare Peploe’s accomplished and intelligent first feature is a sunny tale of expatriates set on the Greek island of Rhodes, with a cast of characters and a set of crisscrossing destinies that occasionally suggest Graham Greene in one of his happier moods. The people include a talented professional photographer (Jacqueline Bisset) faced with the possibility of having to sell her house, her teenage daughter (Ruby Baker) and ex-husband (James Fox), an art historian who is her oldest friend (Sebastian Shaw), a tradition-minded Greek peasant (Irene Pappas) and her rebellious son (Paris Tselios), and an English couple on holiday (Kenneth Branagh and Lesley Manville). Many of these characters are not who they initially seem to be, and there are various forms of comedy in how they relate (or fail to relate) to one another. For spectators who recall Mazursky’s Tempest of a few years back, this is a much better and smarter handling of many of the same elements, but done this time for grown-ups–pleasurable and diverting throughout. (Chestnut Station, Oakbrook) Read more
For once, a Hollywood entertainment that lives up to all of its advance hype. Set in Tinseltown in 1947, this zany detective story follows the efforts of gumshoe Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to clear the name of cartoon character Roger Rabbit when the latter becomes the main suspect in a murder case. The movie, which combines live-action and animation with breathtaking wizardry, was coproduced by the studios of Disney and Spielberg, and although Robert Zemeckis is the director, and the script is by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman (based on a novel by Gary K. Wolf), another way of interpreting the title is to read it in cartoon terms as an inquiry into how one makes an old-style studio blockbuster without an auteur. In this respect, the “framer” of Roger Rabbit is a platoon of committed and talented individuals united by their love for both film noir and the Hollywood cartoon. As a tribute to the lost splendors (and characters) of both forms, this labor of love is deeply moving: in the world of the film, cartoon characters are treated like a repressed minority threatened by genocide, and gumshoes out of Raymond Chandler (or even Robert Towne) are almost equally archaic. Read more
My favorite Czech film, and surely one of the most exhilarating stylistic and psychedelic explosions of the 60s, Vera Chytilova’s madcap and aggressive feminist farce explodes in any number of directions. Featuring two uninhibited young women who are both named Marie–whose various escapades, which add up less to a plot than to a string of outrageous set pieces, include several antiphallic gags, and a free-for-all with fancy food rivaling Laurel and Hardy that got Chytilova in lots of trouble with the authorities–this is a disturbing yet liberating tour de force from a talented director showing what she can do with freedom. A major influence on Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, this is chock-full of female giggling, which might be interpreted in this context as the laughter of Medusa: subversive, bracing, energizing, and rather off-putting (if challenging) to most male spectators (1966). (Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Monday through Thursday, June 20 through 23, 7:00, 281-4114) Read more
One of the more delightful things about this sharp baseball comedy is that you don’t have to be a sports fan to have lots of fun with it. Written and directed by rookie Ron Shelton, the movie evokes Howard Hawks (in spirit if not in letter) in its tight focusing on a snug, obsessive world of insiders and camp followers where the exchanges between buddies and sexes both have a euphoric stylishness and a giddy sense of ritual. Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon make an appealing triangle: an overlooked, smarter, and older catcher (Costner) is hired by the Durham Bulls mainly to coach a more successful, dumber, and younger pitcher (Robbins); Sarandon is a groupie who believes in “the church of baseball” and is drawn to both of them. On the level of plot, this movie somehow loses itself before the final inning, but there’s loads of laughter and enjoyment on the way to the lockers. (Starts Wednesday, Golf Glen, Biograph, Water Tower, Ford City East, Deerbrook, Yorktown) Read more
This is an intriguing mix of materials drawn from Video Data Bank’s What Does She Want series, which centers on art by women. Julie Dash’s Illusions, the only full-size film (as opposed to video) in the bunch, is an effective narrative about racism in 1942 Hollywood. The videos include Cecilia Condit’s nightmarish fairy tale fantasy Possibly in Michigan, Max Almy’s SF fever dream with fancy graphics Leaving the 20th Century, and Martha Rosler’s rather humorless Semiotics of the Kitchen. Rounding out the program are a TV ad for Kleenex and a promotional short for General Motors, both from the 1950s, and Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen’s deadpan parody John Torreano: Art World Wizard, which incorporates some jazzy special effects. This is a mixed bag, like many such collections, but one that jingles. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Wednesday, June 8, 6:00, 443-3793) Read more
The conceit of Ken Russell’s version of Oscar Wilde’s Salome is that Wilde’s favorite London brothel is staging a version just for him (Nickolas Grace) in 1892, with his male lover Bosie (Douglas Hodge) playing John the Baptist and the brothel keeper (Stratford Johns) Herod. (Glenda Jackson plays Herodias, Imogen Millais-Scott is the rather unexciting Salome, and Russell himself turns up in an uncredited cameo as a photographer who helps with the sound effects.) Perhaps the biggest problem with this rather static (if mainlyand, for Russell, uncharacteristicallystraightforward) version of the play is that it tries too visibly to be outre, what with Jewish midgets cavorting, one character belching or farting whenever the action flags, and everyone else straining hard to be lewd and decadent. (In that department, as well as lushness, the unfortunately unexported Day-Glo version of the play by Italian avant-garde director Carmelo Bene in the 70s makes Russell’s efforts look even more feeble.) The tacky score, which runs the gamut from Schubert to Satie to Hollywood schmaltz, seems emblematic of the overall uncertainty. (JR) Read more
The mukhtar (chief) of an occupied Arab Palestinian village (Ali Mohammed Akili) wants to hold a traditional, full-scale wedding for his son (Nazih Akly), but the Israeli military governor will allow it only if he and his officers are the guests of honor. As the ceremonies and festivities gradually unfold over a tense day and night, Belgian-based writer-director Michel Khleifi, who grew up in Nazareth, paints an intimate and multilayered view of the village and its various factions, including the three generations of the mukhtar’s family. Beautifully filmed and edited, and effectively acted by nonprofessionals, this 1987 feature moves between an alienated grandfather, a group of flirtatious teenage girls, an angry group of young male terrorists, an impotent groom and resourceful and beautiful bride (Anna Achdian) who are expected to offer proof of their marriage’s consummation in the form of a bloody sheet, a horse that has strayed into a minefield, an Israeli woman soldier who changes into Arab clothes, and other diverse elements, with the mukhtar in most cases providing both the narrative linkage and a sense of how the village is run from within. Eschewing propaganda for an in-depth portrait, this is a fluid and lovely film that speaks volumes about Palestinian life. Read more
Kenji Mizoguchi’s first postwar film (1946), made under the censorship pressure of the American occupation, might be interpreted as a story about the director’s own artistic confinement as well as that of the great 18th-century wood-block printmaker Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806). (A less offensive and more accurate translation of the title would be Five Women Around Utamaro, which is what the film is called in England.) The film isn’t without its difficulties — a plot with no easy identifications due to a virtual absence of close-ups, a large cast of characters, and a periodic displacement of narrative centers — but these are all intimately related to the its uncommon achievements. Significantly, Utamaro’s artistry only becomes visible at any length in the film’s final shot, and many of the moments of greatest beauty and power take place in the margins of the story proper. A neglected and important film by one of the supreme masters. With Minosuke Bando and Kinuyo Tanaka. In Japanese with subtitles. 94 min. (JR)
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This awkward title is attached to a new Japanese feature by a 26-year-old director, Kaizo Hayashi, that sounds quite fascinating. An intricate detective story involving a mysterious couple’s kidnapped daughter leads the two heroes toward and apparently into a silent sword fight scene that was shot in 1915 but that can only be completed with their involvement. Hayashi created the silent footage himself. The film also features one of the few surviving benshisthe live, offscreen commentators of silent films in Japan who were often more popular than the films they accompanied, and whose influence delayed the coming of sound in Japanese cinema (1986). (JR) Read more
