We like old, classic movies too, and in many cases more so than the regular old bullshit.
– We were just talking about Francis Ford Coppola’s little-seen, 1969 feature, “The Rain People” (starring Shirley Knight, James Caan and Robert Duvall) a few short weeks ago. Now it’s screening during the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival as part of the already announced, “An Evening with Francis Ford Coppola & Friends” taking place May 1 at the Castro Theatre, in honor of Coppola’s career. The film and its vague French New Wave-y tendencies, isn’t fantastic, but it is an interesting archival curio, and it does tie closely to Coppola’s career as it’s the more intimate drama he meant to pursue until he got sidetracked with “The Godfather” (that was released afterwards), and is now finally returning to (see “Youth Without Youth,” “Tetro”). The great film editor/sound designer Walter Murch will be on-hand for a conversation and some guy named George Lucas will be there too.
– At Walter Reade’s Lincoln Center in New York, they’re in their final week of their excellent Satyajit Ray retrospective (the Indian neo-realist-like maestro behind the exalted humanist dramas, the “Apu” and “Calcutta” trilogies to name a few) which features “The Big City,” “The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha,” “Days and Nights in the Forest.” We talked to one of the UCSC curators that was onhand after a screening of “Teen Kanya” and he was telling us the criminal tragedy of Ray’s greatest work not being readily available on DVD (though some of it is). If sir ever writes us back, maybe we’ll have a larger story there one day.
– At MOMA, also in New York, they’re in their final week of a Mike Nichols retrospective (“The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf”), which reminds us we just missed our last chance to see his little-seen comedy not available on DVD, “Fortune,” from 1968, which stars Stockard Channing, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty (we’re out of town this weeked, but you still have one more shot on Sunday).
– As part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAMcinemaFEST (June 17–July 2), repertory classics that will be screening include Jim Jarmusch’s atmospheric Western-noir, “Dead Man” (fans of that one will love “The Limits Of Control”), Spike Lee’s sticky-hot look at racism during one sweltering summer in Brooklyn, “Do The Right Thing,” Luchino Visconti’s 1963 magnum opus “The Leopard” (part of a tribute to critic Pauline Kael), Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and more.
– Another great series at BAM, that begins April 30 and continues through much of May, is “The Late Film,” which features late-period films from classic auteurs like, Yasujiro Ozu, Billy Wilder (“The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes“) Jean-Luc Godard (“King Lear”), Ernst Lubitsch (“Cluny Brown”), Robert Altman, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Ousmane Sembene and more. The New York Times has an affectionately-penned story about it.
– New York’s Film Forum has a trifecta of good-taste cinema hitting in May, June and July. May 11-June 8 bring us a retrospective of Tod Browning’s work, the director best known for his 1932 circus oddities film, “Freaks,” and/or 1931’s “Dracula” starring Bela Legosi and called “One of the most intriguing directorial enigmas of the 20s and 30s,” by the New York Times David Kehr.
– May 8 – Thursday, May 21 gives us The Con Film Festival, which gives an assorted look at various criminals in films from Howard Hawks’ “The Criminal Code,” and classic James Cagney-lead film noirs like “White Heat” and “Angels With Dirty Faces,” to Women-In-Prison films (a whole beloved genre unto itself) and more farcical fare like the Coen Bros’ “O’ Brother, Where Are Thou?” and Preston Sturges’ “Sullivan’s Travels.”
Got a cool film retrospective in your town? (We don’t want to just cover New York stuff) Let us know. Want more? We suggest you read Beaks’ very cool piece on the April releases from Warner Bros. archive over at AICN. A ton of great films coming our way that haven’t been available since forever or at least that obsolete thing called the VHS.
