ArtsEmerson Film Program May 4 to 26
Gotta Dance: The American Movie Musical 1929-1953
By: ArtsEmerson - Apr 02, 2012
ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage closes its second season of adventurous, independent and repertory films with the final entry in Gotta Dance, an ambitious five-month survey of the American film musical; late-period Renoir and the second annual Festival Focus showcase. Films are screened at Emerson College’s Paramount Center (559 Washington St., Boston), in the Bright Family Screening Room.
Tickets are $10, or $7.50 for members, and are available in advance at www.ArtsEmerson.org or by calling 617-824-8400. Discounted tickets for seniors are $7.50, and $5 for all students with valid ID and children under 18. Discounted tickets are available in person at the Box Office only. For more information visit www.ArtsEmerson.org
.Gotta Dance: The American Movie Musical 1929-1953
Friday, May 4, 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 5, 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 6, 2 p.m.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—Restoration Print from the original three-strip Technicolor negative!
Directed by Howard Hawks
With Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn
U.S. 1953, 35mm, color, 91 minutes
Hailed by no less than R.W. Fassbinder and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum as one of the top ten films ever made, Hawks’ classic musical comedy offers bombshells in the shape of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell dressed as sequined Amazons. Blinding with brash Technicolor reds and lurid purples—and glittering with diamonds—Gentlemen is “a landmark encounter in the battle of the sexes [in which] Hawks keeps topping perversity with perversity” (Dave Kehr). Monroe and Russell are the gold diggers from Anita Loos’ bestselling 1925 novel, two man-hungry showgirls from Little Rock en route to Paris on a luxury ocean liner.
Renoir in Technicolor
All films directed by Jean Renoir and in French with English subtitles.
Friday, May 4, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 5, 2 p.m.
Saturday, May 5, 6:30 p.m.
The River – Restoration Print!
With Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields
U.S./India 1951, 35mm, color, 99 minutes
The greatest of Renoir’s late-period films and arguably one of the greatest color films ever made, The River takes its story from Rumer Godden’s book about children growing up in India in the waning years of British colonialism. Into this framework Renoir finds the perfect expression for his lyrical humanism among an expat community and three young women stirred by the arrival of a wounded American war veteran. For his first foray into color Renoir left Hollywood, and found in India “a certain understanding of life. . . . India may have taught me that everyone has his reasons."
Friday, May 11, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 12, 2 p.m.
Saturday, May 12, 6:30 p.m.
The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d'or)
With Anna Magnani, Odoardo Spadaro, Nada Fiorelli
1952, 35mm, color 103 minutes
Anna Magnani ("the miraculous choice that gives this film its gusto and its piercing beauty," wrote Pauline Kael) stars as the bewitching head of a commedia dell'arte troupe who casts her spell over three men while travelling in 18th century Peru. Another dazzling Technicolor masterpiece, described by Jonathan Rosenbaum as "essential viewing... a celebration of theatricality and a meditation on the beauties and mysteries of acting—it's both a key text and pleasurable filmmaking at its near best.
Saturday, May 19, 2 p.m.
Sunday, May 20, 2 p.m.
French Cancan
With Jean Gabin, Françoise Arnoul, María Félix
1954, 35mm, color, 102 minutes
This Technicolor period spectacle may be "the happiest and most exuberant ripple in Renoir’s career as a river of personal expression" (Andrew Sarris). The director conjures up the lavish Belle époque to tell the founding of the notorious Moulin Rouge and the Cancan craze it begot, with Jean Gabin as the impresario who turns a simple laundress into the toast of Paris. Critic Andrew Sarris wrote that of all Renoir’s films, this “is the one that bursts out again and again with lyrical explosions of color, vitality, and sensuality…. [it is] an artist's tribute to art.”-
Friday, May 25, 8:15 p.m.
Saturday, May 26, 2 p.m.
Saturday, May 26, 6 p.m.
Elena and Her Men (Elena et les hommes)
With Ingrid Bergman, Jean Marais, Mel Ferrer
1956, 35mm, color, 98 minutes
Ten years after Ingrid Bergman asked Renoir to make a film for her came this "fantasie musicale" about the power of love and the folly of patriotism. Set in the heyday of Auguste Renoir, it tells of a Polish countess caught between her passion for two different men. Elena was fervently championed by Cahiers du cinéma critics, including Godard, who said, “There has never been a freer film than Elena… To the question, What is cinema? Elena replies: More than cinema."
Special thanks to Anne Miller and Eric Jausseran of the Consulate of France, Boston and Brian Belovarac of Janus Films.
Festival Focus 2012
Friday, May 11, 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 12, 8:30 p.m.
Policeman (Hashoter)
Directed by Nadav Lapid
With Yiftach Klein, Yaara Pelzig, Michael Mushonov
Israel 2011, 35mm, color, 100 minutes, Hebrew with English subtitles
J. Hoberman of the Village Voice named Policeman one of five must-see films at the New York Film Festival, and later singled it out as the best unreleased film of 2011. Nadiv Lapid’s explicitly political, formally adventurous and confidently directed debut remains without U.S. distribution, yet it won the Special Jury Prize in Locarno, and was a multiple winner at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Propelled inexorably forward by an atmosphere of simmering violence, the film plots the confrontation between Yaron, an ultra-macho member of an elite anti-terrorist squad and Shira, the poet-revolutionary leader of a group of bourgeois youths decrying Israeli socio-economic disparities. Co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel to New England.
Friday, May 18, 6:15 p.m.
Saturday, May 18, 8:30 p.m.
Oslo, August 31st—Boston Premiere
Directed by Joachim Trier
With Anders Danielsen Lie, Malin Crépin, Aksel M. Thanke
Norway 2011, 35mm, color 96 minutes, Norwegian with English subtitles
Oslo, August 31st, the second feature from Norwegian director Joachim Trier (one of Variety's 10 Directors to watch in Sundance, 2007), premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and was selected for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art’s 2012 New Directors/New Films festival. Loosely based on Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's 1931 novel (adapted by Louis Malle in 1963), Oslo is a compelling study of existential crisis that charts a critical day in the life of Anders, a 30-something heroin addict nearing the end of drug rehabilitation and searching for answers.
Friday, May 18, 8:15 p.m.
Saturday, May 18, 6 p.m.
Neighboring Sounds (O som ao redor) —Boston Premiere
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho
With Irandhir Santos, Gustavo Jahn, Maeve Jinkings
Brazil 2012, 35mm, color, 124 minutes, Portuguese with English subtitles
From its sophisticated opening sequence, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s gripping debut is assured and audacious—unmistakably a breakout film. A private security firm is hired to police the streets of a middle-class neighborhood in present-day Brazil, their presence the catalyst for the film’s exploration of “the palpable unease of a society that remains unreconciled to its troubled past and present inequities” (FSLC). Around a mother of two trying to silence the neighbor’s barking dog, Mendonça Filho weaves a meticulously constructed web of modern life whose stunning finish brings home the danger of violence left unaccounted for. Winner of the FIPRESCI Award at the 2012 Rotterdam Film Festival. Friday night's screening is free and presented by the Consulate-General of Brazil in Boston.
Friday, May 25, 6:45 p.m.
Saturday, May 26, 8 p.m.
Nana—Boston Premiere
Directed by Valérie Massadian
With Kelyna Lecomte, Alain Sabras, Marie Delmas
France 2011, 35mm, color, 68 minutes, French with English subtitles
Grand Prize winner at Istanbul’s Independent Film Festival, Nana is “as disturbing as it is poetic, a quicksilver piece of pure cinema… [as] adventurous as any” at Locarno (MUBI), where it was awarded Best First Feature. The film is an intimate fable whose center is four-year-old Nana, a child left to fend for herself in a country farmhouse, her imagination and innocent fortitude as unsentimentally depicted as the forces of nature and death which surround her. “One of the great debuts of the past year, a quiet, minimalist exploration of childhood in all its elusiveness” (Interview Magazine), Nana was included in the Museum of the Moving Image’s highly selective inaugural First Look festival. Festival Focus concludes the ArtsEmerson 2011-2012 film season. Programming will resume in September.
About ArtsEmerson
ArtsEmerson is the organization established by Emerson College to program the beautifully restored 590-seat Paramount Mainstage; the versatile, intimate Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre (“The Jackie”), which can seat up to 150 people; the state-of-the-art 170-seat Bright Family Screening Room (all located within the new Paramount Center, a cornerstone in the revitalization of downtown Boston); and the beloved, historic 1,186-seat Cutler Majestic Theatre in the heart of the Theatre District, fully restored by Emerson in 2003. Under the artistic leadership of Rob Orchard, ArtsEmerson gives Boston audiences a new level of cultural choice, bringing professional American and international work to its four distinct venues. In addition to its acclaimed theatre works, ArtsEmerson presents adventurous, independent and repertory films on weekends, and offers a diverse music program including cutting edge indie rock and world music. For more information, visit artsemerson.org