January 30, 2009

Cinema file: '70s NY returns on screen in 'Needle Park'

NewYorkology film columnist Tim McGonagle was orphaned in a revival theater in Boston, Mass. in the mid-1970s. While other kids were outside playing tag, he was busy absorbing the films of Buster Keaton, Akira Kurosawa and the inappropriate-for-his-then-age, John Cassavettes. Currently he contributes to the “Noir of the Week” film website and maintains a blog of his own. Here are his picks of upcoming cinema offerings in New York City.

“The Panic in Needle Park” (1971)
In many ways New York City of the early 1970s was a dysfunctional town.

Crime, economic recession and social turbulence contributed to the overall metropolitan malaise of the period. Additionally the widespread abuse of hard drugs was a powerful agent in Manhattan’s nadir during this time. Heroin abuse was especially rampant and crushed the lives of many people unable to sustain its financial, social and physical burden. A gritty and intimate portrait on two such people in the throes of their enslavement to heroin is director Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park playing at the Film Forum from today through February 5.

The film’s title comes from a notorious junkie hangout on Broadway and 72nd Street (Sherman Square) known as “Needle Park” back in the ’70s. Al Pacino plays Bobby, a petty thief who’s a fixture in the park and surrounding area. Bobby meets the reserved Helen (Kitty Winn) and entices her with his fast talk, street wisdom and affable personality. Bobby however is a junkie and soon Helen follows him down the path of addiction.

Needle Park is surprisingly touching in telling the story of these two people who have a genuine affection for one another, but it’s harshly tempered with the gritty, callous aspects of hustling for smack and the inevitable dehumanization of that perpetual pursuit. The film is effectively shot with harrowing intimacy and realism on the streets of New York in 1970. Kitty Winn is heartbreaking as Helen (for which she won the Cannes Film Festival best actress award) and Pacino cinched his role as Michael Corleone in “The Godfather” when Francis Ford Coppola showed the studio executives at Paramount his dazzling performance in “Needle Park.”

Be forewarned there is some graphic drug use in the film. If you’re they type who nearly faints when the doctor draws blood from your arm, this is not the movie for you and it’s definitely not an appropriate first date movie (unless the date is going poorly and sabotage seems necessary.)

Double Your Melodrama Pleasure
Anthology Film Archives is offering a unique double bill pairing by showing each version of “Imitation of Life” today through and Sunday. The pair of films, based on Fannie Hurst’s popular novel, tells the story of a widowed single mother’s meteoric rise to success with the indispensable help of a female African-American servant. Both women have daughters who grow up together and attempt to “pass” in their own ways: the servant’s daughter as white due to her light skin and the successful woman’s daughter as a viable woman for the mother’s love interest.

Director John M. Stahl’s 1934 version starring Claudette Colbert is an amazing piece of depression era cinema that explores issues such as class and race in a surprisingly frank manner for it’s time. Undeniable is the fact that the 1934 version is filled with some uncomfortable racial portrayals that will make your head spin in this day and age. Otherwise the film has moments that ring authentic and despite the surface stereotyping, the film broached several aspects and nuances of race in America far ahead it’s time to be considered fashionable, or more so, safe.

If Stahl’s version is the unrefined prototype, melodrama auteur extraordinaire Douglas Sirk’s 1959 rendition is the veteran field-tested deluxe model. Starring Lana Turner and the incredible Juanita Moore, Sirk’s Imitation of Life is layered with complexity and epic in its overall cinematic breadth. Riveting to the end, Douglas Sirk is subversive in his drawing attention from the Lana Turner character’s rise to fame, to the pathos filled relationship between Juanita Moore and her estranged “passing” daughter who rejects her.

Arguably Sirk’s best film, Imitation of Life (1959) is an undeniable classic in cinema’s elite cannon. (Note: In keeping with the theme, on Saturday January 30 Anthology Film Archive is also showing versions 1935 and 1954 of Magnificent Obsession. Each interpretation is directed by … you guessed it, John Stahl and Douglas Sirk.

Also of note …
If documentaries are your cup of tea the MoMA’s second annual Doc Month starts in February and looks to have a great lineup with a month long smorgasbord of them. An interesting and relevant (as the Academy Awards are just around the corner) week of the event is “Oscar’s Docs, 1946–56: Optimism and Adventure!” from February 2 through the 9.

The Class (2008) by fantastic French director Laurent Cantet (Time Out, Human Resources) opens at the Angelika Friday January 30th. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is up for the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year. Judging from that type of critical praise, if you’ve never seen one of Cantet’s films, this one may be a fine choice for your first.

Earlier: Cinema file: Godard’s Made in U.S.A., Eraserhead

January 30, 2009 9:34 AM in Sightsology

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