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see the new yorker online!
a reel-time retrospective by david denby
This program is sponsored by Bacardi, DuPont, Motorola, Panasonic and
Volkswagen.
The New Yorker Goes to the Movies is a cinematic celebration of one of
America's greatest literary institutions. The New Yorker began right at the
dawn of sound in movies, and the studios could never have made the transition
without the help of such wordsmiths as Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and
S.J. Perelman, whose brash, witty, distinctively urban voices went a long way
towards defining American movies during their golden age. The relationship
remains a fruitful one, and the proof is in the broadly eclectic range of
this series, which includes everything from musicals to melodramas, comedies
to film noir, war films to European art films. The New Yorker Goes to the
Movies is, finally, the celebration of a secret 75-year-long love affair
between words and pictures.
MONKEY BUSINESS
Norman Z. McLeod, 1931; 77m
The first Marx Brothers movie not to be based on a stage show begins with them stowed away as kippered herring on a transatlantic liner and concludes with them--what else?--looking for a needle in a haystack. In between they make merry on shipboard with the better-heeled ocean-crossers, including a mini-test-run of their once and future crowded stateroom scene with an available blonde (Thelma Todd). Harpo does not speak but he sings, with an assist from fellow Paramount star Maurice Chevalier. Written by Will B. Johnstone and S.J. Perelman.
Tues Nov 30: 2 & 6
HORSE FEATHERS
Norman Z. McLeod, 1932; 68m
For reasons that do not bear scrutiny, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) is installed as president of Huxley College and proceeds to set higher education on its ear. He couldn't have done it without the collaboration of an iceman named Barovelli (Chico) and a dogcatcher named Pinky (Harpo). He probably could have done it without the collaboration of his college-age son, who is actually his brother Zeppo, but then the Marxes could have done everything without Zeppo. Thelma Todd returns as "the campus widow," whose presence occasions Groucho's sublime performance (in a canoe) of the song of which Woody Allen made such good use--"Everyone Says I Love You." Includes the classic "swordfish" routine at the door of a speakeasy. Written by Will B. Johnstone and Bert Kalmar.
Tues Nov 30: 4
MILLION DOLLAR LEGS
Edward Cline, 1932; 64m
There's really no way to convey fully the surreal zaniness of this gem about
Migg Tweeny, a young American Fuller Brush salesman (Jack Oakie) who falls in
love with the pretty daughter of the President of Klopstokia ("A Far-Away
Country. Chief Exports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Imports: Goats and Nuts. Chief
Inhabitants: Goats and Nuts"). As President, W.C. Fields daily arm-wrestles
his Secretary of the Treasury in order to retain control of his bankrupt
domain, and generally contributes inspired insanity to every scene he steps
into. Since Klopstokians are super, if rather bizarre, athletic specimens,
Tweeny plots to enter a team in the 1932 Olympics to raise money. Enter sexy
seductress Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti: "Madame can only be resisted from 2 to
4," announces her deadpan butler) whose job is to "weaken" the athletes-her
lowdown snake-dance has got to be seen to be believed. Truly one of the most
delightful and wackiest little comedies ever made. New Yorker editor Joseph
Mankiewicz was one of the writers. (With Robert Benchly's short How to Sleep.)
Wed Dec 1: 1, 6 & 9:45
BANANAS
Woody Allen, 1971; 81m
As Fielding Mellish(!), Woody Allen (frequent New Yorker contributor) pursues
his politically passionate lady love (Louise Lasser, then Mrs. Allen) to the
banana republic of San Marcos. It's no surprise when Mellish somehow gets
embroiled in a revolution, toppling the country's dictator to become a
Castro-like president. Hilarity is guaranteed throughout, with Howard Cosell
delivering a cameo turn as the host of a show called San Marcos'
Assassination of the Week and later, as blow-by-blow commentator on the
Mellishes' long-in-coming connubial rites.
(With Robert Benchly's short The Sex Life of a Polyp.)
Wed Dec 1: 3 & 7:45
LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972; 129m
Back in the days when movies still had the power to shock, LAST TANGO was a
cause célèbre. Many denounced it as merely a dirty movie masquerading as art,
and some saw the Marlon Brando tour de force as a one-man, misogynistic show.
In the New Yorker, Pauline Kael called it "a breakthrough," and thought that
the night TANGO closed the 10th New York Film Festival "should become a
landmark in movie history comparable to...the night Le Sacré du Printemps was
first performed.... There was no riot, and no one threw anything at the
screen but TANGO has the same kind of hypnotic excitement as the Sacre, the
same primitive force, and the same thrusting, jabbing eroticism." Brando
perfectly incarnates a man in his mid-40s, his wife lately a suicide, who
seduces and is seduced by a young girl (Maria Schneider) he meets in an empty
apartment, There in an illusory Eden, the couple plays at insulated, wholly
physical and anonymous romance. Meanwhile, fiancé Jean-Pierre Léaud tries to
penetrate his girl's mysteries by starring her in a cinéma vérité movie.
TANGO's take on the dynamic of death, love and sex is alternately moving,
funny, embarrassing, perhaps even transcendent.
Thurs Dec 2: 1 & 6
L.A. STORY
Mick Jackson, 1991; 95m
Current New Yorker fave Steve Martin's whimsical love poem to the city that
Bertolucci once famously dubbed "The Big Nipple." As Martin's terminally
romantic weatherman tries to sort out his entangled lovelife, we get a
breezy, pastel tour of L.A. in all its eccentric glory. Martin very sweetly
pictures the town as a neverland where the surface remains undisturbed and
everyone just floats along through life, ignoring the roiling passions
beneath their eternally placid exteriors. With a standout performance by
Sarah Jessica Parker as Martin's airhead temporary girlfriend sAndEe--"Wow!
share how that makes you feel." The coffee-ordering sequence is a classic.
Thurs Dec 2: 3:30 & 8:30
Tues Dec 7: 8:15
TRADE WINDS
Tay Garnett, 1938; 93m
Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell co-wrote the script for this
delightful globe-trotting chase comedy (with Frank Adams), directed by the
underappreciated Tay Garnett. Joan Bennett is framed for the murder of the
man who jilted her late (by suicide: the Parker touch) sister, and she hits
the road, dyeing her hair brunette before she goes--actually, the look stuck
for the rest of Bennett's career. Fredric March is the detective who pursues
her throughout Asia, and falls in love with her, and Ralph Bellamy is his
sidekick. Ann Sothern's character was so popular that it was spun off for the
long-lasting Maisie series. Garnett was happy to be able to use a lot of the
stock footage he'd shot on a round-the-world cruise the previous year-as he
wrote in his autobiography, "How often do you get a chance to take your own
boat around the world, tax deductible?"
Fri Dec 3: 1, 6 & 10
MIDNIGHT
Mitchell Leisen, 1939; 95m
Soon after hiring on at Paramount Pictures as a screenwriter, erstwhile New
Yorker theater critic Charles Brackett found himself teamed with a newly
emigrated Polish-Austrian-German Jew named Billy Wilder. An urbane WASP of
the old school (Brackett) and an irreverent wisecracker (Wilder) who'd
learned English from jazz and pop lyrics, movies, and other unabashedly
vernacular sources, made for an unlikely--and often fractious--pairing, yet
within very few years "Brackett-Wilder" would be a trademark for smart,
sophisticated, impeccably constructed screenplays. MIDNIGHT is one of their
best, and certainly most enchanting, scripts, elegantly brought to the screen
by Paramount's glossiest director, Mitchell Leisen. Claudette Colbert is
literally radiant as an American Cinderella who, stranded penniless in Paree,
is taken up by an outrageous "fairy godmother"--a baron played by John
Barrymore--and brought to the ball as a means of winning back his errant wife,
Mary Astor. Rumanian cabdriver Don Ameche also becomes embroiled in the
masquerade, one of the crowning achievements of Thirties screen comedy and a
precursor of the classics Brackett-Wilder would soon be creating as producer
and director, respectively.
Fri Dec 3: 3 & 8
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
Vincente Minnelli, 1944; 113m
Beautiful, 22-year-old Judy Garland purely glows under the direction of
Minnelli, her future husband, in this nostalgic evocation of a way of life
from an American past that may never have existed but should have. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS takes place during 1903, the year of the World's Fair. Everything
that happens, as seasons change, to the Smiths, a closeknit family consisting
of four daughters, a son, and grandpa, falls under the shadow of Mr. Smith's
decision to take a new job in New York, necessitating his whole tribe's
moving East. Classic melodies include: "The Trolley Song," "Meet Me in St.
Louis," "The Boy Next Door," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." With
Leon Ames, Mary Astor, Margaret O'Brien (who won a special Oscar as the
year's best child actress), Marjorie Main, June Lockhart, et al. The musical
was based on American fiction by Sally Benson, author of stories printed in
The New Yorker.
Sat Dec 4: 4:30 & 8:45
MY SISTER EILEEN
Richard Quine, 1955; 108m
The stories written by Ruth McKenney (the sister-in-law of Nathanael West) about her
Greenwich Village salad days with her sister had already served as the basis
for a sweet 1942 non-musical version with Rosalind Russell, and, of course,
the Comden/Green/Bernstein Wonderful Town. Why this lovely 1955 Columbia
version (songs by Jule Styne and Leo Robin) isn't based on Wonderful Town is
a long story, but this one's good enough. Betty Garrett is Ruth and Janet
Leigh is Eileen, ably supported by a very young, fresh Jack Lemmon and an
even younger and boyishly charming Bob Fosse, who also choreographed
(beautifully). Written by Blake Edwards, MY SISTER EILEEN proves that MGM
hadn't cornered the market on musicals.
Sat Dec 4: 6:45
LEFT-HANDED WOMAN
Peter Handke, 1977; 119m
Novelist Peter Handke made his directing debut with this version of his own
novella (published in The New Yorker). Handke transposed the action from
Austria to Paris, giving the strange new world of a married woman remaking
her life an added poignance. In many ways, the movie is indebted to Ozu, but
the homage is never forced or awkward. Working with Wim Wenders' DP Robby
Müller, Handke maintains pitch-perfect emotional control over every scene,
and works in perfect harmony with the great Edith Clever in the lead. Bruno
Ganz is good as always as the husband. And look for a very brief cameo by the
ubiquitous Gérard Depardieu.
Sun Dec 5: 4:30 & 9
CRIES AND WHISPERS
Ingmar Bergman, 1972; 91m
A shattering encounter with death: three sisters have taken up residence in a
large family manor: Agnes (Harriet Andersson), dying in agony of cancer;
Karin (Ingrid Thulin), ripped apart by a vampirelike hunger for human
connection; and Maria (Liv Ullmann), trapped in her own narcissism and
sensuality. Death, to Agnes's sisters, is inconvenient, an affront to their
egotism--they are heartless souls islanded within their flesh. In contrast,
the dead Agnes, sacramentally cradled against her maid's earth-mother
breasts, finds heaven--perhaps even resurrection--in sweet memories of summer
innocence. Suffused in sanguine color, this superb film plumbs the deepest,
darkest waters of the female body and spirit to find transcendent beauty and
truth.
Sun Dec 5: 7
THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER
William Keighley, 1941; 112m
Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley), a mercurial New York radio personality
(and a very thinly disguised version of New Yorker and Algonquin regular
Alexander Woollcott), is on his way to a quaint dinner at the home of a
Midwestern family when he slips on the ice and has to be carried inside,
beginning a long, trying and hilarious convalescence. John Barrymore was
originally set to star in this version of Kaufman and Hart's smash stage hit,
but the part was too much for him at this last stage of his career and Monty
Woolley took over with flying colors. With Bette Davis as his assistant,
Jimmy Durante as a thinly disguised Harpo Marx and Reginald Gardiner as a
thinly disguised Noël Coward.
Tues Dec 7: 1 & 6
THE MALE ANIMAL
Elliott Nugent, 1942; 91m
Maybe the first--and only--romantic comedy to hinge
on the First Amendment. Henry Fonda is a Midwestern college professor who
announces that he will read a letter written by Vanzetti (of Sacco & fame) to
his students. The school objects, and eventually, so does his wife Ellen
(Olivia de Havilland). Fonda's Tommy Turner starts to come undone when
Ellen's old steady, the boorish Joe Ferguson (Jack Carson), pulls into town.
A delicate, beautifully acted film version of the play by James Thurber and
director Elliot Nugent. With the infallible Eugene
Pallette as the President of the Board of Trustees.
Tues Dec 7: 3:15 & 10:15
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
John Huston, 1951; 69m
At the turn of the 1950s John Huston was the hottest director in Hollywood
and one of the most respected. He was then affiliated with MGM--an unlikely
studio home for a political liberal with a penchant for gritty realism, an
ironical turn of mind, and a sardonic aversion to happy endings. Studio boss
Louis B. Mayer hated Huston's latest, the film noir classic-to-be The Asphalt
Jungle (L.B. called it "Pavement"), and he had his doubts about the
director's next, an adaptation of Stephen Crane's Civil War novel The Red
Badge of Courage-which Huston proposed to film at his own ranch, with WWII's
most decorated soldier Audie Murphy in the leading role. These were only
three of the fascinating cast of characters available to New Yorker writer
Lillian Ross, who chose RED BADGE as the project she would follow from
preproduction to post-release for a booklength report entitled Picture. Later
published as a book in its own right, this remains the single most evocative
and insightful account of a movie's making and unmaking; for RED BADGE went
through a heartbreaking series of sneak previews and studio-ordered recuts,
to emerge with a B-picture running time of 69 minutes. The result suggests
the remnants of a masterpiece, with a psychoanalytic intensity and a feeling
for battle inspired equally by Crane's prose, the Civil War photography of
Mathew Brady, and Huston's own experiences as a battlefield documentarian
during WWII (San Pietro). With Bill Mauldin, Royal Dano, John Dierkes;
narrated by James Whitmore.
Wed Dec 8: 1, 5:15 & 9:30
IN COLD BLOOD
Richard Brooks, 1967; 134m
Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel," an accounting of
two young thrill-killers who murdered the entire Clutter family of Kansas on
the night of November 15, 1959, caused a sensation when it was originally
serialized in The New Yorker in the mid-60s. Richard Brooks gave it a tough,
intelligent treatment on film, and lucked out with his casting. Scott Wilson
is the weak-willed Dick, and Robert Blake, formerly child star Bobby Blake,
was a revelation as the wannabe-charismatic Perry. In many ways though, the
real star of IN COLD BLOOD is cinematographer Conrad Hall, who seems to bring
every corner of the frame to life and imprints the dulled, squared-off Kansas
landscape on your brain.
Wed Dec 8: 2:30 & 6:45
SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY
John Schlesinger, 1971; 110m
New Yorker film critic Penelope Gilliat scripted this impeccably civilized
study of a romantic triangle among Londoners. Peter Finch won critics'
awards for his portrayal of a well-respected Jewish physician who happens to
be discreetly gay. Although they've never met, he has two things in common
with divorcee Glenda Jackson-a telephone answering service and a lover, a
young bisexual man played by Murray Head. Gilliat's screenplay and the
sympathetic direction of John Schlesinger explore the permutations of
disappointment, accommodation, and inveterate decency as the three make their
various ways, separately and together, through a dreary, and as it turns out
transitional, autumn. Finch, Jackson, Gilliat and Schlesinger were all
nominated for Oscars.
Thurs Dec 9: 1 & 6
CASUALTIES OF WAR
Brian de Palma, 1989; 113m
Among the many films that tried to make sense of the
Vietnam war, Brian de Palma's hair-raising tale of a group of soldiers out on
a recon mission, who take along some "portable R & R" in the form of a
Vietnamese girl (Thuy Thu Le), is one of the most pointed and direct attacks
on American arrogance. Written by David Rabe and Daniel Lange and based on
reportage by Lange that appeared in The New Yorker, CASUALTIES OF WAR is
given maximal emotional impact by its director (with the help of Ennio
Morricone), who makes every corner of the Scope frame throb with tension,
right up to the tragic climax. With Michael J. Fox as the one good soldier,
Sean Penn as the maniacal sergeant who instigates it all, and John C. Reilly
and John Leguizamo as the two privates who can't say no.
Thurs Dec 9: 3:30 & 8:30
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