Cinema Retro columnist David Savage brings us up to date on the movie event scene in New York City.
It's nearly Thanksgiving and as the holiday season breaks into full gallop,
the film calendar is already bursting here in New York. Is it possible not to overcommit oneself? A major
Pasolini festival gets underway November 28th at the Film Society of
Lincoln Center (see below), followed by the 16th edition of Spanish
Cinema Now, also at FSLC, beginning December 7th. Newly restored
35mm prints of Pietro Germi's classic Divorce Italian Style (1961) and
Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956) are playing at Film Forum (filmforum.org) through November
22nd, not to mention the roster of foreign and indie features
rolling out weekly for the press, and the seductive eye candy of newly
remastered and special edition DVD box sets from Warner Bros., Universal,
Criterion, etc. winking on the shelves – how is a film reporter supposed to
keep on top of this all and keep a steady job at the same time?
Thanksgiving doesn't bring to mind many great movies, but rather a few
memorable movie moments. One I’d like to offer up is the scene in Annie Hall
(1977) when Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer is invited by Annie (Diane
Keaton) to Thanksgiving dinner at her parents' house. Allen correctly
identifies Thanksgiving as the WASP-iest of all holidays, given its Pilgrim
roots, and turns it into one of the funniest Jewish-Among-WASPs moments in
movie history. In the sequence Allen recreates Norman Rockwell's famous
painting of a New England family at
Thanksgiving dinner and inserts himself into the tableau vivant. As the
struggling comic Alvy tries out joke after joke on Annie's family, presided
over by a frosty Colleen Dewhurst as Annie's mother, all of them fall with a
thud in confused silence. Eventually we see him transform into a rabbi at the
table. It's one of those scenes that showcased Allen's loose brilliance as a
director during the period, and also reminds me how few young directors today are
willing to mine the WASP/Jewish culture clash for comedy. There was the original
The Heartbreak Kid (1972) with
Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd, written by Elaine May, and Jerry Stiller
and Anne Meara have perhaps made the most of their comic culture clash of a
marriage of all entertainers. But since then? A few recent exceptions are Meet the Fockers (2004) and Meet the Parents (2000), both written by
Jim Herzfeld, and this year’s Knocked Up
(2007) from Judd Apatow. While the story doesn’t address the topic explicitly,
Apatow makes the most of the contrast between the Jewish central character, Ben
Stone and the tall blonde shiksa
Alison Scott, whom he unwittingly knocks up after a fateful meeting in a
nightclub. The screenplays that treat this subject usually come from a Jewish
writer, suggesting that the satirical perspective (following conventional
wisdom) comes from the cultural outsider, as was the norm for the last half
century. But now that WASPS are rapidly dying off as a demographic in the U.S., and more
importantly as a cultural force, it will be interesting to see if a comedy
comes along from a WASP’s perspective. It might be controversial, if said
writer is so fortunate. If I’m missing any obvious examples other than the
above-mentioned, do let me know.
Fans of the late Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) will not
want to miss the grandiose retrospective Lincoln Center’s
Film Society is dedicating to the controversial filmmaker and poet. Heretical Epiphanies: The Cinematic Pilgrimages of Pier Paolo Pasolini, runs
from November 29 – Dec. 4th at Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center (www.filmlinc.com). The Film
Society hosts the event with the Italian Cultural Institute of New York and
Fondazione Aida in the celebration, focusing on the films of the acclaimed
poet, writer and director, screening 11 of his features and shorts and two
recent documentary looks at his work in Heretical
Epiphanies: The Cinematic Pilgrimages of Pier Paolo Pasolini, at the Walter
Reade Theater, Nov. 28 – Dec. 4. Some of Pasolini’s most acclaimed film titles
will be featured, including Accattone, Mamma Roma, The Gospel
According to St. Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Teorema,
Pigpen, and the notorious Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, released two weeks after
Pasolini’s murder. Pasolini tends to have a polarizing effect on many – either
you love him or hate him. Personally I find The
Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) one of the most spiritually moving
films ever, due in no small part to the luminous cinematography of the great
Tonino Delli Colli, who also lensed most of Pasolini’s other films as well as
Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the
West (1968) and The Good, The Bad and
The Ugly (1966). His work is so accomplished that he literally paints the
film with light. But back to Pasolini. According to Richard Peña, program
director at the Film Society, “No other major filmmaker from the ‘60s continues
to seem as strikingly contemporary as Pier Paolo Pasolini. His insistence on a
‘cinema of poetry,’ his candid analysis of the politics of sex, and his search
for the spiritual in the everyday, make him not only a forerunner of
contemporary debates, but also an active participant in those debates.â€