French director Maurice Tourneur, father of cult director Jacques, was a commanding figure during the silent era and a very talented visual stylist in his own right, known for his taste and subtlety. This was especially evident during the teens and early 20s, when he was working in the U.S. on many prestigious projects, including this lovely 1920 adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel about the French-Indian War. After Tourneur was incapacitated by an accident, Clarence Brown took over the direction, setting the stage for his own distinguished career. 73 min. (JR) Read more
English postnoir specialist Mike Hodges follows up his successful Croupier with this moody, stylistically assured 2003 feature, written by Trevor Preston. Superficially it’s a standard-issue revenge story set among gangsters (rather like Hodges’s first film, the 1971 version of Get Carter), but upon closer inspection its story and characters grow more mysterious, ultimately bordering on the unfathomable. After being raped by a respectable businessman (Malcolm McDowell), a small-time London drug dealer (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) kills himself, and his older brother (Clive Owen), a dour and solitary ex-gangster enduring some inexplicable depressive penance, returns to the city to get even. Charlotte Rampling seems to know more about what’s going on than anyone else, but she doesn’t say much. R, 102 min. (JR) Read more
Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Horse Thief), one of China’s greatest living filmmakers, has had a difficult career because of his political outspokenness, and this 2002 feature was his first since The Blue Kite in 1993. It’s a remake of the 1948 masterpiece Spring in a Small City by Fei Mu, widely considered the nation’s greatest film by Mandarin speakers but tragically neglected by almost everyone else. A young doctor visits an ailing aristocrat, who’s an old friend, and the man’s alienated wife, who was the doctor’s first sweetheart years earlier. The only other characters are the aristocrat’s sister and aging male servant, and the concentration gives Tian’s magisterial mise en scene enormous potency. This erotically charged drama may not be quite as great as the original, but it’s an amazing and beautiful work just the same. In Mandarin with subtitles. 116 min. A 35-millimeter print will be shown. Reviewed this week in Section One. Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more
