Fall Calendar 2008
Monday, September 29 • 7:00 PM • 110m
Mystery Train
Jim Jarmusch, 1989 • The first of Jim Jarmusch’s omnibus films presents three stories in non-linear chronology, set around a rundown Memphis hotel where the night clerk is Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Hawkins’s music was the unseen star of Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise; here it is the spirit of Elvis Presley that permeates the film. The first segment concerns a pair of Elvis-obsessed Japanese tourists, the second an Italian widow who receives a visit from The King, and the third Joe Strummer as a would-be robber nicknamed Elvis. Watch for a cameo by singer Rufus Thomas and listen for Tom Waits’s voice as a radio DJ.
Tuesday, September 30 • 7:00 PM • 98min
Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Dario Argento, 1969 • Dario Argento’s seminal giallo wasn’t the first, but it was the film to truly popularize the craze, with subsequent films obsessively copying its suspenseful stalking scenes as well as its [animal]-[adjective]-[noun] title. Setting the bar high in terms of the genre’s baroque theatrics, Bird finds handsome young American artist Tony Musante witnessing an attempted murder while trapped between panes of glass in the entryway to an art gallery. Drawn increasingly deeper into the case, Musante comes to discover that there was more to this situation than initially met the eye. Introduced by Joe Rubin, cult film expert.
***FREE SNEAK PREVIEW***
Tuesday, September 30 • 9:00 PM
The Express
Gary Felder, 2008
Wednesday October 1 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • 96 min
The Seventh Seal
Ingmar Bergman, 1957 • One of the most iconic (and most parodied) foreign art films, The Seventh Seal is the story of a 14th century knight (Max von Sydow) who upon returning home from the Crusades plays a game of chess with Death in a battle for his life. As a result of the war and the despair of the plague-ridden land to which he has returned, the knight suffers a crisis of faith. As he buys time through the game of chess, he deliberates on the meaning of life, death and the existence of God, questions that would plague Bergman for the next two decades. In Swedish with English subtitles.
Thursday, October 2 • 7:00 PM • 85 min
Ost und West (East and West)
Sidney M. Golden & Ivan Abramson, 1923 • What happens when an American businessman brings his flapper daughter back to Poland with him? Nothing short of hilarity in this jolly romp starring delightful comedian Molly Picon. Watch as she teaches villagers to shimmy, breaks the Yom Kippur fast, and wins the heart of a Yeshiva scholar determined to return the favor. This madcap Austrian film captures the highly charged differences – and culture clashes – between Polish, American, and Austrian Jews in interwar Western Europe. Introduced by Jan Schwarz, Professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago. Restored with new English intertitles, courtesy of The National Center for Jewish Film.
Thursday, October 2 • 9:00 PM • 54min & 58min
Kiss & Couch
Andy Warhol, 1963-4 • These early films exemplify
some of Warhol’s mythic qualities – entire rolls of film simply shot and spliced together, themes of sexuality – while revealing that he channelled these attributes into the creation of deeply felt, exquisitely composed records of desire, not the vulgarity with which his films are often associated in the popular imagination. Kiss is a dozen or so three-minute takes of pairs kissing, with varying degrees of passion. Couch documents assorted Warhol associates – including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac! – behaving both mundanely and pornographically on the Factory’s couch.
Friday, October 3 • 6:30, 9:00 & 11:30 PM • Matinee, Sunday, October 5 • 3:30 PM • 126min
Iron Man
Jon Favreau, 2008 • In a market glutted by comic book franchises well into or past their prime, Fravreau’s humble rendition of “Iron Man” is an unexpected surprise. Anchored by a screenplay that prefers tongue-in-cheek humor to heavy-handed histrionics, Robert Downey Jr. hams it up as the billionaire playboy Tony Stark. If his obligatory transformation into the conscientious crime fighter is less than convincing from a dramatic perspective, Favreau has smartly downplayed moral posturing in favor of low-key pathos. Jeff Bridges plays the snarling nemesis, and Gwyneth Paltrow the pouting heroine.
Saturday, October 4 • 6:30, 9:00 & 11:30 • Matinee Sunday, October 5 • 1:00 PM • 112min
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Nicholas Stoller, 2008 • The Judd Apatow franchise (“40-Year Old Virgin”, “Knocked Up”, “Superbad”) expands with actor-writer (and Apatow regular) Jason Segel starring as a Hollywood score-writing schlep who loses his girlfriend (Krisen Bell) to a flashy, tightpantsed British rocker (Russell Brand). In a move recalling Private Lives, Segel and Bell end up at the same Hawaiian resort. There’s lots of nasty language, wonderfully dry turns from Brand, a motley crew of resort workers, and a running line about Segel’s Dracula musical. (And all the gratuitous full-frontal nudity you may have heard about.)
Sunday, October 5 • 7:00 PM • 67min
Moon Over Harlem
Edgar G. Ulmer, 1939 • This musical melodrama is set mainly in a Harlem nightclub featuring an all-black cast, a chorus, choir, and sixty-piece orchestra. Yet Ulmer claimed that shooting took four days, two for studio and two for location photography, a testament to his genius at negotiating tight budgets and poetic aspirations. An allegory of contemporary Harlem, the film is a tale of seduction and redemption, of a gangster named Dollar conning a wealthy widow, and marrying into her fortune. The widow’s daughter and her boyfriend, an idealistic community organizer, must transcend the evils Dollar has brought on their house.
Monday, October 6 • 7:00 PM • 116min
Leaves from Satan’s Book
Carl Dreyer, 1921 • The breakthrough film by one of the masters of cinema is a loose play on Intolerance, following the theme of temptation by the Devil, played by Helge Nissen, through four stories spanning nearly 2,000 years. The first story depicts Judas’s decision to betray Jesus, while Satan appears as the Grand Inquisitor in 16th century Spain in the second. The third vignette takes us to the French Revolution and the final story follows a Finnish woman in 1918 whose husband is away fighting the war. Dreyer’s incredible sense for composition and masterful use of close-ups are on display here in what was only his second feature. Silent.
Tuesday, October 7 • 7:00 PM • 97min
One on Top of the Other
Lucio Fulci, 1969 • Before he entered his gore-film phase, Lucio Fulci started by directing spaghetti westerns, sex comedies, and murder mysteries; this superior giallo was his first. Soon after his asthmatic wife’s death, suave young doctor George Dumurrier (Euro heart-throb Jean Sorel) begins seeing a mysterious nightclub girl and prostitute who shares her exact features. Could she really be the reincarnation of his dead wife, or is a far more devious explanation behind the mystery? The film’s final 30 minutes, filmed on location in San Quentin Prison, rival the finale of Robert Wise’s I Want to Live in their nail-biting suspense. Introduced by Joe Rubin, cult film expert.
Wednesday, October 8 • 7:00 & 9:15 PM • 101min
The Magician
Ingmar Bergman, 1958 • Bergman regular Max von Sydow stars as a traveling magician, widely known for a series of disturbing supernatural occurrences in his show “Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater.” The town’s leading authorities are aware of these rumors and request a preview of his act. As they meet his magic with unwavering skepticism, the film offers a profound meditation on the relationship between the rational and the supernatural. Alternatively called The Face, this film is one of Bergman’s most unjustly neglected pictures from his early period. In Swedish with English subtitles.
Thursday, October 9 • 7:30 PM • 72min
Nosn Becker Fort Aheym (The Return of Nathan Becker)
Boris Shpis & Mark Milman, 1932 • After 28 years laying bricks in the USA, Nosn escapes the Great Depression and returns home to the USSR. Unfortunately for him, he’s picked up some inefficient capitalist habits and has some learning to do before he can be a proper Soviet worker. Legendary Soviet Yiddish actor Solomon Mikhoels shines as Nosn’s father. The stinging critique of American racism adds yet another unexpected dimension to this remarkable film. Originally billed as “the first Yiddish talkie from Soviet Russia.” Restored with new English subtitles, courtesy of The National Center for Jewish Film.
Thursday, October 9 • 9:00 PM • 24min & 35min & 28min
Haircut No. 1 & Eat & Blowjob
Andy Warhol, 1963-4 • These three chronicles of the ordinary – a haircut, a meal, a blowjob – are transformed under Warhol’s lens into perception-altering documents of the intimate and unseen. Haircut No. 1 emphasizes the sensuality that underlies all human physical interaction. Eat presents the consumption of a single mushroom by a hungry man as a stringently achronological adventure, with the main course appearing to shrink or grow with each reordered reel. Blow Job gives us thirty-five minutes of fellatio – as charted on the face of the receiver in intense, studied close-up.
Friday, October 10 • 7:00, 9:00 & 11:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, October 12 • 1:00 PM • 98min
WALL•E
Andrew Stanton, 2008 • Pixar’s latest hit is a delightful fairytale of the future with references to past animated hits and sci-fi classics. The obvious highlight of the film is the Waste Allocation – Earth class Robot, or “WALL•E”, a laborer on a deserted earth with touching humanness. WALL•E labors to clean up Earth for the human race, but longs to have a robot companion. In the end, a famous Disney motif comes through to save WALL•E and his friends, including love interest EVE, and in the process revives humanity. This is a 21st century fairy tale you and your kids will remember for years to come.
Saturday, October 11 • 6:30, 9:30 & 11:30 PM • Matinee Sunday, October 12 • 3:00 PM • 120min
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Guillermo Del Toro, 2008 • When it was released in Spring 2004, Hellboy was eclipsed by Spiderman 2, but it developed a cult following for director Guillermo del Toro, who later solidified his reputation with the arty fantasy of his political allegory Pan’s Labyrinth. This time overshadowed by The Dark Knight, the Hellboy sequel has grossed less than the first, but cost more. Still, it’s a mess of fun. Del Toro invents a menagerie of weird things that “go bump in the night”, and there’s plenty of drama and poetry to go around from the noirish chemistry between the story’s unlikely lovers Hellboy and Young Liz.
Sunday, October 12 • 7:00 PM • 71min
Bluebeard
Edgar G. Ulmer, 1944 • The first of three masterpieces Ulmer would make while working at the poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, this Victorian Gothic potboiler, about a Parisian puppeteer whose search for the ideal beauty leads to the death by strangling of many a failed candidate, features John Carradine as the obsessed romantic lead, Gaston Morrel. The role was one of the esteemed character actor’s favorites, and displays him at his most commanding and sublime. The cinematography is by frequent Ulmer collaborator Eugen Schüfftan, who achieves an atmosphere of luminous decadence.
Monday, October 13 • 7:00 PM • 118m
Tales of Manhattan
Julien Duviver, 1942 • One of just a handful of American films made by Julien Duvivier (Pépé le Moko), Tales of Manhattan follows a cursed tailcoat as it circulates among various New Yorkers – the working title was, in fact, Tails of Manhattan. Some of Hollywood’s top screenwriters penned the script, including Ben Hecht and Lamar Trotti, while the all-star cast features Rita Hayworth, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, and Henry Fonda, just to name a few. Paul Robeson makes his final film appearance in the last story, though he publicly denounced the film’s portrayal of blacks upon its release.
Tuesday, October 14 • 7:00 PM • 91m
Paranoia
Umberto Lenzi, 1970• Umberto Lenzi, widely known for his infamous 1980 gut-muncher Cannibal Ferox, toiled away at more than his fair share of gialli too. One of his earliest, Paranoia features Carol Baker as a rich American widow looking for rest at an isolated Italian villa. However, the seductive but nefarious Lou Castel, who drags Baker down into a twisted spiral of drug-fueled orgies and twisted mind games, is out to prevent that. Like many early gialli, Paranoia is more about atmosphere and less about the graphic proto-slasher slayings that would later define the genre, though fans will still enjoy the occasional bloody flourish. Introduced by Joe Rubin, cult film expert.
Wednesday, October 15 • 7:00 & 9:00 PM • 89m
The Virgin Spring
Ingmar Bergman, 1960 • In his first of many collaborations with master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Bergman returns to medieval Sweden for this tale of a young peasant girl who is murdered in cold blood by two goat herders. The men seek shelter at the house of her pious father (Max von Sydow), who upon learning of their terrible deed seeks revenge at any cost. His piety and savage ruthlessness rage in conflict as he seeks to understand a God that could allow such evil to come upon his family. Curiously inspired Wes Craven᾿s 1972 horror classic The Last House on the Left. In Swedish with English subtitles.
Thursday, October 16 • 7:00 PM • 88min
Motl der Operator (Motl the Operator)
Joseph Seiden, 1939 • A tearjerking old-time melodrama reminiscent of the Second Avenue Yiddish theater scene and popular with the Jewish masses, Motl der Operator is an important historical document which illustrates the difficulties of the Jewish immigrant experience in New York City. Motl is a poor garment-worker who leads cloakmakers in a strike. When he is injured in a dispute with strikebreakers, his family is left in dire straits. Beautiful Yiddish songs heighten this bittersweet rendition of an archetypical Yiddish theater genre. Introduced by Jan Schwarz, Professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago. Restored with new English subtitles, courtesy of The National Center for Jewish Film.
Thursday, October 16 • 9:00 PM • 285min 
Sleep
Andy Warhol, 1963 • “Sleep”, Warhol’s most radical exercise in stupendous, stupid duration this side of the eight-hour Empire, observes his lover, poet John Giorno, sleeping for five hours. It proceeds in repeated four-minute segments from assorted angles that distort and amplify the intensity of the gaze. Sleep can and perhaps should be experienced transiently – leaving and returning, watching in light of the world outside. “When people go to a show today they’re never involved any more,” Warhol observed; “A movie like Sleep gets them involved again. They get involved with themselves and they create their own entertainment.”
***SPECIAL FREE EVENT***
Friday, October, 17 • 3:00 PM • 96min
Thumbsucker
Mike Mills, 2005 • Sponsored by the Creative Writing Department. Writer-Director Mills will be in attendance.
Friday, October 17 • 6:30, 8:45 & 11:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, October 19 • 1:00 PM • 108min
Mamma Mia!
Phyllida Lloyd, 2008 • Her wedding fast approaching, Sophie decides she wants her father to walk her down the aisle; problematically, he could be any one of three candidates: hunky Sam, proper Harry, or rugged Bill. Sophie deftly avoids emotional complication by inviting them all. Don’t worry if the plot sounds simple; Mamma Mia! is pure cinematic effervescence. Buttressed by delightful turns from Meryl Streep, gorgeous Greek location shooting, and a color palette bright enough to give Almodovar a run for his money, Mamma Mia! is a perfect summer throwback for a cold autumn weekend.
Saturday, October 18 • 7:00, 9:00 & 11:00 PM • Matinee Sunday, October 19 • 3:30 PM • 92min 
Kung-Fu Panda
Mark Osbourne & John Stevenson, 2008 • It’s a tale that resonates with people of every faith and nation: a clumsy, tubby panda strives to escape a life of work in his father’s noodle shop and become a world-class (but still tubby) martial artist. Armed with this premise and the voice talent of a cast including Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, and Dustin Hoffman, DreamWorks finally proves that Pixar isn’t the only worthwhile studio when it comes to CG animation. Watch for James Baxter’s absolutely gorgeous opening sequence, inspired by Chinese shadow puppetry. As the tagline says: Prepare for Awesomeness!
Sunday, October 19 • 7:00 PM • 84min
Strange Illusion
Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945 • Shortly before the release of Bluebeard, Ulmer began work on this most liberal of adaptations of Hamlet at PRC. Also photographed by Schüfftan, the film elaborates the former work’s preoccupations with the atmospherics of madness. Ulmer’s Hamlet is the son of a deceased judge named Cartwright, whose delirious nightmares reveal to him an Oedipal figuration of sinister evil, claiming to be his new father. When that figure becomes a perverse reality, a child molesting serial murderer who aggressively courts the hero’s innocent mother, Ulmer can barely hide his delight at the ensuing Freudian morality play.
Monday, October 20 • 7:00 PM • 117min
O. Henry’s Full House
Howard Hawks, Henry Koster, Henry King, Henry Hathaway & Jean Negulesco, 1952 • John Steinbeck narrates these adaptationsof five classic stories by the short story expert O. Henry, including “The Ransom of Red Chief” and “The Gift of the Magi.” Fox was inspired to make this after the success of similar British adaptations of W. Somerset Maugham stories. While the studio’s previous omnibus efforts like Tales of Manhattan and Flesh & Fantasy only featured one director, here a different filmmaker is at the helm for each story. The cast features Charles Laughton, Richard Widmark, Anne Baxter, and Marilyn Monroe.
Tuesday, October 21 • 7:00 PM • 98min
The Strange Vice of Ms. Wardh
Sergio Martino, 1971 • Bored politician’s wife Julie Wardh (the gorgeous Edwige Fenech) is menaced by a mysterious stranger who holds a few secrets that she wants kept hidden. Could the menacing figure be related to an affair from her past, or another man looking to lead her astray in the present (genre regular George Hilton)? Stylishly directed by expert helmsman Sergio Martino, Victim epitomizes the stylish, jet-set milieu amongst which so many of these films were set, and features several suspenseful stalking sequences, including a nod to Psycho that ups the ante considerably in terms of onscreen carnage. Introduced by Joe Rubin, cult film expert.