A few days ago, we posted the trailer for the BAMcinématek series The Vertigo Effect and linked to C. Mason Wells‘s terrific introduction to the series running through April 30. At Hammer to Nail, Evan Louison notes that “the films included in the series run the gamut of bewildering dreams, questionable memories, false identity, secret plots, and murder. From the schlock (Basic Instinct, Mulholland Drive) to the interstitial (Sans Soleil), it’s easy to see how this one replaced Citizen Kane at the top of the heap a few years back.”
Melissa Anderson for Artforum: “It’s surely no coincidence that Madeleine, the woman with whom Scottie is so deliriously besotted in Vertigo, shares a name with the pastry that serves as the aide-mémoire for the narrator in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; in La Captive (2000), her sublime adaptation of the fifth volume of Proust’s magnum opus, Chantal Akerman makes the connection between that sprawling novel and Hitchcock’s movie even more explicit.”
To celebrate the series, Verso’s posted an essay from Jacques Rancière‘s The Intervals of Cinema, “Cinematic Vertigo: Hitchcock to Vertov and Back.”
Also in New York, Eric Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs are screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center through April 30. Jordan Cronk in the L on Full Moon in Paris (1984): “Shot in Rohmer’s typically unadorned style, with an emphasis on dialogue and situational irony rather than decorous mise-en-scène, the film arrives very subtly at a climax all the more devastating for its inevitability.”
“Imperious, perverse, remote and radiant, Catherine Deneuve is a monument to French poise and pulchritude,” writes Andy Webster in the New York Times. “François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel and Roman Polanski are among the Continental auteurs who have been captivated by her. Now, the IFC Center honors her with Deneuve x 8, a program of her best-known films, playing through June 7 as part of its Weekend Classics series.”
Film Forum’s Strictly Sturges is on through Thursday. At the L, Scout Tafoya notes that Preston Sturges “was in the middle of one of the hottest winning streaks of any director in Hollywood history when he put it all on red with” his “deliciously unpatriotic tale,” The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944).
On Tuesday at Light Industry, Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold present Stan Brakhage‘s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971) and Thierry Zéno’s Des morts (1979). At the L, Eli Goldfarb calls Brakhage’s “silent, impressionistic document of several autopsies conducted at the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office… as indelibly affecting, and as difficult to watch, as any other half-hour in the history of cinema.”
Chicago. On this final day of the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival, Ray Pride, who’s interviewed CIMMFest executive director Dave Moore for Newcity Film, will be moderating a panel this afternoon: “The Greatest Rock Movie of All Time.”
Meantime, Six Films by Hou Hsiao-hsien are screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center through May 13 and Ray Pride recommends “the still-modern fragrance of Millennium Mambo (2001) and the sorrowful play of history, memory and performance in Good Men, Good Women (1995).”
At the Dissolve, Kate Erbland‘s got the full lineup for the Chicago Critics Film Festival running from May 1 to May 7 at the Music Box Theatre.
The Reader‘s J.R. Jones rounds up more local festivals and events.
Los Angeles. The Filmforum presents Thom Andersen‘s The Thoughts That Once We Had this evening.
Kidlat Tahimik’s Perfumed Nightmare (1977) screens tomorrow at REDCAT.
Theresa Russell will be at Cinefamily a week from today, April 26.
Minneapolis. In conjunction with the International Pop exhibition, the Walker Art Center‘s screening a selection of films curated by Light Industry’s Ed Halter through August 29.
The Nashville Film Festival‘s on through Saturday and the Scene‘s got you covered: “We’ve got FAQs on everything from ticket info to repeat screenings. We’ve got a spotlight on Tennessee-related films. We’ve even made you a handy list that will help if you can only pick five movies out of the roughly 280 showing this year. Most of all, we’ve pre-screened more than three dozen festival features and passed along our opinions on what to see (or skip).”
London. The Robert Siodmak season rolls on at BFI Southbank through May and programmer Geoff Andrew recalls the time he was “knocked for six” by Phantom Lady (1944): “I first saw the film in the late 1970s, when I was beginning to dive deep into jazz; I was immediately struck by its authentic atmosphere, its brazen conflation of near-ecstatic musical and sexual excitement, its perfectly paced editing and its sharp, shadowy, angled visuals. And I was also struck by the way form expertly complemented content.”
Another current highlight of the series is Cry of the City (1948), currently traveling the Isles through mid-June. For David Jenkins at Little White Lies, “the beauty of Siodmak’s film is how it objectively observes how a man acts with the spectre of death on his shoulder.” More from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian, 4/5).
Paris. “In the new, rather curiously titled Cinematheque Francaise exhibition Antonioni: The Origins of Pop, the director’s work is given a thorough examination through clips, annotated screenplays, archive materials, set photographs and original paintings made during the latter half of his career.” A report from Jordan Mintzer in the Hollywood Reporter. The retrospective screens through May 31 while the exhibition’s on view through July 19.
Vienna. Wednesday: “Michael Glawogger, writer and filmmaker, died on April 22, 2014, in Liberia. One year later, the Austrian Film Museum stages an evening in Michael’s memory, celebrating the enormous vitality of his work with the Vienna premiere of his final completed film, Die Frau mit einem Schuh, and the launch of his posthumously published novel, 69 Hotelzimmer.”
Munich. “What can art gain from cinema? And how can cinema contribute to art?” Kino der Kunst runs from Wednesday through Sunday.
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