The Woman in the Window

Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson in Woman in the Window (RKO Radio Picures)

While I'll never complain about an opportunity to see The Big Lebowski or Pulp Fiction, I have to admit that those popular titles have become the reliable mainstay of midnight movies and local film series. Don't get me wrong, it's great they get play on the big screen but I sometimes wish for a little more innovation and creativity in film programming so that a more diverse selection of films is made available. So that's where Ralph DeLaurio, programmer for Tops Presents Cinema Under the Stars, comes in. While the outdoor summer venue has its share of popular titles (Some Like It Hot, and yes The Big Lebowski), DeLaurio also takes great care to highlight some less popular but equally impressive works. On Thursday and Friday (May 29 and 30), you can find the rare dark gem The Woman in the Window. This 1944 film noir classic by Fritz Lang serves up Edward G. Robinson as a professor who begins a downward spiral when he spies a portrait of a beautiful young woman. Robinson's married professor is then lured into the apartment of a sexy model played by Joan Bennett. Murder and deception quickly follow. The film boasts a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson. But it's Lang's moody direction that plays up the inevitable noir themes of guilt, paranoia, betrayal, arrogance and violence. This film doesn't screen very often so make every effort to seek it out. Oh... and did I mention, it's in glorious, seductive black and white.

Midnight Movie: A Clockwork Orange

Malcolm McDowell looking for a bit of the ultra violence in A Clockwork Orange (Warner Bros.)

A friend of mine was saying that if he had to choose one decade for the movies he simply couldn't live without, that decade would be the 70s. I wasn't so sure (I don't think I could live with the Marx Brothers from the 30s or film noir from the 40s). But one film from the 70s that ranks as one of the most audacious is Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. This Friday and Saturday (May 2 and 3) at midnight, Kubrick's brilliant adaptation of Anthony Burgess' chilling futuristic novel will screen at Landmark's La Jolla Village Theaters. It's hard to imagine a film like this being made today by a major, mainstream Hollywood studio, but in the 70s it was a possibility. One thing I remember about the film was that it was rated X on its initial release but the rating was reduced to an R after about 60 seconds were removed. The irony for me was that with all the violence, sex, a brutal rape and murder, the scene that was removed in order to get the MPAA to alter the rating was the sped up, energetically funny orgy scene edited to the William Tell Overture. Apparently enjoying sex is more offensive than beating up old men or raping women. Hmmm? Makes you think about those MPAA standards. Anyway, A Clockwork Orange is not only memorable for Kubrick's meticulous attention to every detail of his bizarre futuristic Britain but also for Malcolm McDowell's nasty and unnerving portrait of the sociopathic youth Alex. Just that photo above with him looking you right in the eye is unsettling. This film represents the way filmmakers were regularly pushing the envelope and raising social issues in the 70s. This one's a classic. If you've never seen it, don't miss it on the big screen.

Library Screenings

To Kill a Mockingbird screens free at the Encinitas Library on March 22. (Universal)

All five of the films competing for Best Adapted Screenplay at last month's Oscars were based on books, including There Will Be Blood, which used Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! as source material. Three of the top ten grossing films from last year were also based on novels: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I am Legend. So it pays to read a good book in Hollywood. But films can also provide good companion pieces to literature, that's why two local libraries have designed reading programs with a film component.

The Encinitas Library, which just reopened last month after being closed for four years, will screen To Kill a Mockingbird on March 22 in conjunction with its month-long National Endowment for the Arts Sponsored Big Read of Harper Lee's award-winning novel. Then on March 30, the San Diego Central Library (SDCL) will hold the first of three film events set up in conjunction with the year-long One Book One San Diego project. Their book is Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. SDCL's first companion film is Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven.

Touch of Evil

Orson Welles in Touch of Evil screening at MCASD La Jolla (Universal)

I was watching the new film In Bruges when I noticed that the movie being viewed by an Irish hitman stuck in Belguim was none other that Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. The scene playing was the famous extended, single take, opening tracking shot that plays out to Henry Mancini's music. The reason I mention this is that you have the rare opportunity to see the entire Touch of Evil on the big screen Thursday January 31 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's La Jolla location. But the version MCASD is showing will not have Mancini's music in the opening credits. That version of the film was the one Welles did not approve of. After he was removed from the production during the editing, the film no longer adhered to his vision. He ended up writing a 58 page memo outlining all the things that did not meet with his approval. That memo provided the basis for the re-issue of the film decades later. In his version, there's no music over that opening sequence. Instead, you hear the ambient sounds of the places you pass by as the camera moves from one side of teh border to the other.

Orson Welles' 1958 film noir classic festering with police corruption, and jolted by violent outbursts. Welles was initially hired just to play seedy detective Hank Quinlan. But because of a misunderstanding, star Charleton Heston had thought that Welles would be directing the film as well. To appease its star, the studio brought Welles on as director (but would end up removing him from the film in post-production). The resulting film serves up a mouth-watering feast of cameoes, noir elements and visual bravado. Among the memorable cameos are Meecedes McCambridge in a black leather jacket and ominously demanding "I wanna watch" when Janet Leigh is being terrroized; Joseph Cotton as a detective who utters the blunt appraisal "Now you can strain him through a sieve;" and of course the great Marlene Dietrich who gets to sum up Welles' Quinlan at the end of teh films with "He was some kind of man." Touch of Evil is some kind of film. I wish I had more time to do this film justice here but I at least wanted to make sure to highlight this screening. See Touch of Evil on the big screen and revel in Welles' genius. Plus, how often do you have the opportunity to see Charleton Heston play a Mexican! 

Companion viewing: Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Lady From Shanghai 

A Hard Day’s Night

The Fab Four in Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night screening February 2 at midnight (UA)

Back in 1963, many people thought the Beatles were just a passing fad. When United Artists suggested that a low budget comedy be made with the Fab Four, they were thinking of just two things: one, United Artists Records would get to release the soundtrack and two, cash in on the Beatles popularity before it faded. What they never considered was that Richard Lester's A Hard Day’s Night, a film shot in seven weeks for less than a half million dollars, would become a genuine classic and would define a hip new style of filmmaking. At the time of its release, critic Andrew Sarris proclaimed it as "the Citizen Kane of juke box musicals." A Hard Day's Night screens Saturday February 2 at midnight at Landmark Theatres' Ken Cinema.

Call it a “mockumentary” or a “rockumentary,” A Hard Day’s Night is really the first and one of the very best fake documentraies. This Is Spinal Tap owes an obvious debt of gratitude to the film. The idea for the film came about when Alun Owen, a Welsh writer the Beatles had suggested because he had grown up like they had in Liverpool, was asked to make a script based on an exaggerated day in the life of the Beatles. Since Owen had no idea what that was like, he was sent to spend a weekend with the lads. When he came back, he had the idea that “they were prisoners of their success. They go from the airport to the hotel to the theater or stadium or concert hall back to the hotel back to the airport. In any city it’s always the same.” Now the film needed a title. John Lennon mentioned that Ringo misused the English language and called an all night recording session “a hard day’s night.” That was all producer Walter Shenson had to hear and that’s how The Beatles' A Hard Day’s Night came to be.

Killer of Sheep

Killer of Sheep (Milestone)

The most stunning and artistically exciting American film youll find this summerand probably all yearis one that was made thirty years ago. Thats a sad comment on the current state of U.S. filmmaking but audiences are truly blessed to have the opportunity to finally see Charles Burnetts Killer of Sheep (opening June 29 at Landmarks Ken Cinema).

Some film-goers may have seen Killer of Sheep back in the seventies when a tattered 16mm print of the film made the college and festival circuit. Yet even without theatrical distribution, Killer of Sheep received the honor of being placed in the prestigious National Film Registry in 1990 by the Library of Congress. The film was denied wide release because filmmaker Charles Burnett was unable to get the necessary clearances for the numerous songs used in the film. Burnett had made the film as his thesis project while he was a grad student at UCLAs film school. He shot the film on weekends during the course of a year, and he used mostly non-professionals as actors. He brought the project in for less than $10,000. At that price you can understand why he couldnt afford to pay for music from the likes of Etta James, Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington, and Earth, Wind & Fire.