Made the year after Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution (1965), Basilio Martin Patino’s touching first feature, set mainly in the university town of Salamanca, Spain, echoes and parallels that film in many respects, although here the loss of religious faith plays the role of a betrayed Marxism. Cast in the form of nine letters written to a young woman met by the hero (Emilio Gutierrez Caba) during his only trip abroad, the film has a loose, episodic structure built around various chapter headings (“The Family Rosary,” “One Sunday Afternoon,” “A World of Happiness,” etc), and like many of the other youthful and sensitive European movies of this period, the impact of the French New Wave is salutary in the fresh use of film language: fast editing, slurred motion, and a freezing and unfreezing of certain images that makes them reverberate like pictures pasted into a scrapbook. Delicately acted and directed with a keen affection for the characters, this is surely one of the best Spanish films of the Franco period. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Thursday, April 28, 8:00, 443-3737) Read more
Ray Bradbury appears to be the presiding influence over this nostalgic fantasy-thriller about childhood and ghosts, written, directed, produced, and scored by Frank LaLoggia (Fear No Evil). Set in a small town in the early 60s, the plot centers on an apparition of a little girl seen by the ten-year-old hero (Lukas Haas) while locked in his school’s cloakroom during Halloween. Although the results are a bit overextended, the film is still something of a rarity nowadays: an evocative, poetic horror film without a trace of gore (and in this respect, closer to a Val Lewton film of the 40s like The Curse of the Cat People than any contemporary models). The Italian-American family detail is nicely handled, and much of Russell Carpenter’s photography is exquisite. With Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, and Katherine Helmond. (Chestnut Station, Golf Mill, Woodfield, River Oaks, Orland Square, Lincoln Village, Ford City, Deerbrook, Yorktown, Chicago Ridge, Evanston, Hillside Mall, Norridge) Read more
Fans of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1985) will undoubtedly recall the character Charleen Swansea, the filmmaker’s friend and former teacher, and will be pleased to discover that McElwee devoted an entire feature to this memorable woman back in 1977. An unorthodox fifth-grade teacher, small publisher, and poet who at one point was a protege of Ezra Pound, Charleen is an exuberant and outspoken southern eccentric, and McElwee’s affectionate portrait (which, unlike Sherman’s March, doesn’t do double duty as a portrait of the filmmaker) gives her plenty of opportunities to show her special qualities–which she takes full advantage of. Much of the film focuses on her inspired methods of teaching poetry and the difficulties of her relationship with a man who’s much younger than her. Larger than life and bursting with energy and intelligence, Charleen makes a fascinating film subject and indirectly gives us a glimpse of certain southern virtues that most accounts of the south gloss over. McElwee will be present at the screening. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, April 23, 6:00, 443-3737) Read more
This varied collection of shorts represents a certain improvement over the International Tournee of Animation in terms of overall quality. An organization based in La Jolla called Mellow Madness has put it together, and after many successful years on the west coast is taking the show on the road, in competition with the International Tournee. A greater interest in the hallucinatory describes part of the different emphasis, although the selection is no less international: films from Hungary, Canada, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, the USSR, and the U.S. are included, and the styles vary from the near-abstract (Sara Penny’s lovely Furies, about two undulating cats) to the political and notational (Jonathan Amitay’s Oh, Dad) to School of Chuck Jones minimalism (Andrew Stanton’s Somewhere in the Arctic) to jeering punk (Christopher Simon’s Hello Dad, I’m in Jail) to top-heavy narrative (Eunice McCauley’s Special Delivery and Andrew Stanton’s A Story, the latter a nightmarish version of TV kiddie-show muck). Some of the cartoons here suffer only because they’ve already had so much exposure. (Seriously, fellas, isn’t it about time to give Bambi Meets Godzilla an extended rest?) Otherwise, the overall level of quality is unusually high, and for sheer, unadulterated weirdness, Sing Beast Sing–by the auteur of Bambi Meets Godzilla, Marv Newland–is a standout. Read more
An interesting early example of reflexive, film-drenched cinema, this 1948 Spanish feature by Lorenzo Llobet Garcia, the only one ever made by its director, shows the life of a man dominated by film — beginning with his parents at a carnival exposition of Lumiere films, continuing through his activities as a film buff, critic, and newsreel cameraman, and concluding as he embarks on his own autobiographical first feature. Along the way, we are treated to chunks of Spanish history as well as personal film history: the hero falls in love with his future wife at a screening of Romeo and Juliet and years later, after her death, experiences a trauma at a screening of Rebecca. The only limitation of this single-minded chronicle is that it lacks both the obsessiveness of its subject and the ironic distance that might make it more meaningful. But as an outline of a sensibility that would come into its own with the French New Wave a decade later, Vida en sombras remains an intriguing and isolated document. Spanish film critic Roman Gubern will appear after the screening. (Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Sunday, April 10, 4:00, 443-3737) Read more
Victor Erice’s second feature (1983), based on a story by Adelaida Garcia Morales, seems to bring back some of the haunting obsessions of his first, the wonderful The Spirit of the Beehive (1973): the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, the magical spell movies exert over childhood, and a little girl’s preoccupation with her father and the past. This subtle spellbinder ends somewhat abruptly, reportedly because the film’s budget ran out, but it seems to form a nearly perfect whole as it is: a brooding tale with the poetic ambience of a Faulkner story about an intense father-daughter relationship and a mysterious and resonant past. English critic Tim Pulleine has observed that a reference to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt points to an elaborate system of duplication underlying the film’s structure, seen in shots and sequences as well as themes (north and south, father and daughter, real and imaginary). Omero Antonutti (Padre padrone) plays the father, Sonsoles Aranguren the daughter. (JR) Read more
Anna Maria Alberghetti plays a Polish refugee who illegally enters the U.S. and becomes an operatic recording star in this 1952 musical, which also features Rosemary Clooney singing her hit Come on-a My House and the ever-reliable Fred Clark. Reportedly the first film ever released in VistaVision; directed by Norman Taurog. Read more
An unexpected triumph. Writer-director Ramon Menendez’s 1988 account (based on a true story) of how a math teacher at the mainly Hispanic Garfield High School in East LA (Edward James Olmos) turns a group of students into whizzes at calculus makes for a lively and rousing show. Working with a talented cast (including Lou Diamond Phillips, Rosana DeSoto, and Andy Garcia) and cowriter Tom Musca, Menendez reworks the theme of Blackboard Jungle without the sensationalism or the sexism, and proves that they aren’t needed to give his material a jolt. It’s virtually impossible to dramatize the actual teaching of mathRichard Brooks had even less success in showing the work of an English teacher in Blackboard Junglebut Menendez tells the rest of the story with verve and apparent authenticity, and Olmos is especially effective in focusing the story with a minimum of liberal homilies and a great deal of unglamorous charisma. 105 min. (JR) Read more
Made the year after Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution (1965), Basilio Martin Patino’s touching first feature, set mainly in the university town of Salamanca, Spain, echoes and parallels that film in many respects, although here the loss of religious faith plays the role of a betrayed Marxism. Cast in the form of nine letters written to a young woman met by the hero (Emilio Gutierrez Caba) during his only trip abroad, the film has a loose, episodic structure built around various chapter headings (The Family Rosary, One Sunday Afternoon, A World of Happiness, etc.), and like many of the other youthful and sensitive European movies of this period, the impact of the French New Wave is salutary in the fresh use of film language: fast editing, slurred motion, and a freezing and unfreezing of certain images that makes them reverberate like pictures pasted into a scrapbook. Delicately acted and directed with a keen affection for the characters, this is surely one of the best Spanish films of the Franco period. (JR) Read more
Filmmak-er Michael Maziere of the London Filmmakers Co-op will introduce his own selection of recent British experimental work. The concerns of these filmsby John Smith, Pier Wilkie, Sandra Lahire, Anna Thew, Jean Mathee, Moira Sweeney, Nik Gordon-Smith, and Maziere himselfrange from sexuality, cultural identity, history and subjectivity to more psychological concerns about humor, madness and death. It’s not often that work of this kind crosses the Atlantic; if earlier programs from the co-op that I’ve seen are anything to go by, these filmmakers are involved more rigorously and consciously in film materiality and ideology than most of their American counterparts. Read more
Allan Francovich’s new documentary feature about the history of U.S. involvement in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, recently served as an important reference point in the U.S. congressional hearings on contra aid. Running about three hours, the film contains interviews with people of every political persuasion about Central America, and, according to Francovich, tells the story behind what Oliver North was really up to. Read more
Carlos Saura’s first feature, Los golfos (1959), follows a teenage gang that plans to burglarize a large factory in order to finance a friend’s bullfighting career. A key early work in the new Spanish cinema whose impact was partially blunted by the government censors, who eliminated about ten minutes; with Manuel Zarzo and Luis Marin. Read more
An Australian soap opera reuniting the director (Gillian Armstrong) and lead actress (Judy Davis) of My Brilliant Career eight years later. This time they’re teamed in a somewhat protracted tale of a backup singer (Davis), temporarily stranded in a trailer park in a coastal fishing town, who accidentally encounters the daughter she abandoned many years ago (Claudia Karvan), now living with her grandmother (Jan Adele). While the acting is uniformly competent and Davis is especially good, Laura Jones’s screenplay never gets beyond the obvious and familiar. (Davis’s part was originally written for a man, and while Davis makes the character suggestively travel scarred, she can’t really transcend a part that seems somewhat hackneyed for either sex.) The results are watchable enough, though not nearly as good as Housekeeping (1988). (JR) Read more
The Beatles’ second feature with director Richard Lester gallivants all over the place, with a plethora of inventive sight gags and songs. The plot resembles a 60s anticipation of the Indiana Jones epics, with a religious sect attempting to recover a sacred ring from Ringo. Most critics called this a comedown from A Hard Day’s Night when it first came out (1965), but in some ways it’s even more exhilarating. (JR) Read more
American hippies (including Danny Stone) on the isle of Ibiza learn about LSD from George Montgomery, leading to a crime spree that ends in murder. The main gimmick of this 1966 exploitation item written and directed by one Edward Mann (actually Santos Alcocer) is that the main action is in black and white, the trip sequences in color. A presentation of the Psychotronic Film Society. Read more
