Tag Archives: Roger Ebert

MEPHISTO AT THE EGYPTIAN

Adapted from the roman à clef by Klaus Mann (son of Thomas), MEPHISTO—directed by István Szabó and based on Gustaf Gründgens, the great German actor, extreme political opportunist, and Klaus’ former brother-in-law—traces the simultaneous rise and fall of Hendrik Höfgen, a leftist thespian (played by Klaus Maria Brandauer) who becomes the toast of Nazi Berlin for his portrayal of Goethe ’s Mephistopheles.

“In the energy they bring to the film, Brandauer and Szabó have made a mighty statement, but it is as much about acting, I think, as Nazism. In Höfgen, we see an empty man, standing for nothing. This doesn’t even bother him.” — Roger Ebert

This week at the Egyptian, the American Cinematheque and Kino Lorber present a screening of the 4K restoration of MEPHISTO—winner of the Academy Award for Best-Foreign Language film—on a double bill with the 4K restoration of Szabó’s Silver Bear winner CONFIDENCE (1980).

MEPHISTO and CONFIDENCE

Friday, January 24, at 7:30 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

István Szabó, Mephisto (1981), from top: Klaus Maria Brandauer (6). Poster is from East German release. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, the photographers, and Kino Lorber.

PHILIP KAUFMAN AND JULIETTE BINOCHE IN CONVERSATION

Philip Kaufman has never done anything like this, but his experiment is a success in tone. He has made a movie in which reality is asked to coexist with a world of pure sensuality, and almost, for a moment, seems to agree. Roger Ebert, 1988

Following an American Cinematheque 35mm presentation of Kaufman’s masterwork THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING—co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière—join Juliette Binoche and the writer-director for a post-screening Q & A.

PHILIP KAUFMAN and JULIETTE BINOCHE

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Sunday, November 10, at 5 pm.

Aero Theatre

1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica.

Philip Kaufman, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), from top: Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche; Lena Olin (2), Day-Lewis and Olin. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the actors, and the Saul Zaentz Company.

RIVER’S EDGE

On a weekend of UCLA Film and Television Archive screenings curated by Sandi Tan—publisher, film critic, and director of the acclaimed doc Shirkers (2018)—a standout is Tim Hunter’s cult eighties noir RIVER’S EDGE.

Favorably compared to In Cold Blood by Roger Ebert, the film centers on the non-reaction by a group of teens to a dead body in their midst, and stars Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Crispin Glover, and Dennis Hopper. (Skye will join Tan for an onstage discussion.)

RIVER’S EDGE will be preceded by Leos Carax’s 1999 shocker POLA X.

POLA X and RIVER’S EDGE

Friday, June 21, at 7:30 pm.

Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Keanu Reeves in River’s Edge (1986); Ione Skye; Crispin Glover; River’s Edge cast; Dennis Hopper.

THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

“It’s appalling to read solemn academic studies of Hitchcock or von Sternberg by people who seem to have lost sight of the primary reason for seeing films like Notorious or Morocco—which is that they were not intended solemnly, that they were playful and inventive and faintly (often deliberately) absurd. And what’s good in them, what relates them to art, is that playfulness and absence of solemnity. There is talk about von Sternberg’s technique—his use of light and decor and detail—and he is, of course, a kitsch master in these areas… Unfortunately, some students take this technique as proof that his films are works of art, once again, I think, falsifying what they really respond to—the satisfying romantic glamour of his very pretty trash. Morocco is great trash, and movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them. The kitsch of an earlier era—even the best kitsch—does not become art…

“We are now told in respectable museum publications that in 1932 a movie like Shanghai Express ‘was completely misunderstood as a mindless adventure’ when indeed it was completely understood as a mindless adventure. And enjoyed as a mindless adventure. It’s a peculiar form of movie madness crossed with academicism, this lowbrowism masquerading as highbrowism, eating a candy bar and cleaning an ‘allegorical problem of human faith’ out of your teeth.” — Pauline Kael, “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” 1969*

“Not long before she died, Pauline remarked to a friend, ‘When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.’ That’s exactly the point. [Kael] and her foot soldiers won the battle but lost the war.” — Paul Schrader, “Fruitful Pursuits,” 2002**

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) was the film critic for The New Yorker throughout the 1970s, when American film culture—if not the magazine—was at its peak, and the country’s preeminent writer about the movies was at the height of her powers. In the obituary he wrote for his colleague, Roger Ebert said, “Kael had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades. She had no theory, no rules, no guidelines, no objective standards. You couldn’t apply her ‘approach’ to a film. With her it was all personal.”

Kael had her pet critics and filmmakers, and this coterie style of extreme subjectivity brought many detractors—most notably Renata Adler, whose 1980 takedown “The Perils of Pauline” (published in the New York Review of Books) sent shock waves through Manhattan media circles.

This week at the Newport Beach Film Fest, Rob Garver will present his documentary WHAT SHE SAID—THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL.

WHAT SHE SAID—THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

Thursday, May 2, at 7:45 pm.

Big Newport 5

300 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach.

*Pauline Kael, “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” Harper’s, February 1969, republished in American Movie Critics: An Anthology from the Silents until Now, edited by Phillip Lopate (New York: Library of America, 2006), 337–367.

**Paul Schrader, “Fruitful Pursuits” section of “Prose and Cons,” a posthumous Kael assembly, Artforum, March 2002, 129.

Also see Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me (New York: Counterpoint, 2004).

From top: Pauline Kael; Kael in Chicago with Tony Randall on the Irv Kupcinet Show, 1968; book cover image Little, Brown & Company, 1971; Kael at Cannes with Jacques Perrin in 1977; Kael.

TRINTIGNANT, FABIAN, AND ROHMER

MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD—screening at Cinefamily early Saturday evening—is the third of Rohmer’s Moral Tales, but was shot fourth, while the director waited for Jean-Louis Trintignant’s schedule to clear.

MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD is about love, being a Roman Catholic, body language and the games people play. It is just about the best movie I’ve seen on all four subjects. It is also a refreshingly intelligent movie: not that it’s ideological or academic (far from it) but that it is thoughtful, and reveals a deep knowledge of human nature.” — Roger Ebert, 1970

This presentation of Rohmer’s Moral Tales is part of Cinefamily’s La Collectionneuse series, programmed by Kalyane Lévy.

MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD, Saturday, July 15, at 5 pm.

CINEFAMILY, 611 North Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles.

At 3:30 pm, Jim Smith from The Smell is playing a DJ set at a pre-MAUD reception at CINEFAMILY. Ticket-holders can r.s.v.p. here:

docs.google.com/forms/d/1TlB9g-gsSP5mF1j9BQyd9jiVzUMBTWZiLAYsX6IWTcs/viewform?edit_requested=true

Françoise Fabian and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Ma nuit chez Maud (1969).

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