The Screengrab : the seventh seal

Set Your DVR!: November 10 - 17, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Mon, Nov 10:

2:45/3:45 pm: Becket on TCM. As I wrote last week, decent Oscar bait from 1964.

3/4 pm: The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years on IFC. Awwright! Hello, Cleveland.

Tues, Nov 11:

6:55/7:55 am: Solaris on IFC (repeat at 2:40/3:40 pm). As I mentioned in our utopia/dystopia list from last week, Tarkovsky's Solaris is a stunning, somber look at alienation. This is a slow one, but it pays off in spades.

11 pm/12 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC (repeat on 11/12 at 4/5 am). Also a little slow. Also pays off in spades. Terrence Malick's take on the war movie falls somewhere between nature film and meditation on the soul.

Wed, Nov 12:

8/9 pm: Wild at Heart on IFC (repeat on 11/13 at 12:30/1:30 am). My least favorite Lynch. I don't even know why I'm recommending this.

Thurs, Nov 13:

12:30/1:30 am: Blow-Up on TCM. Antonioni's meditation the lens and the horror of other people, all in Swinging London. Not my favorite of his movies, but it's essential for movie geeks.

1/2 am: Vanishing Point on FMC. Cool cars & existential crises!

2:30/3:30 am: Quartet on TCM. Four stories by W. Somerset Maugham, as introduced by the man himself.

5/6 am: Isle of the Dead on CHILLER (repeat on 11/14 at 2/3 am). I'm tired of recommending Val Lewton-produced horror flicks. But this is a good one.

8:45/9:45 am: Amarcord on IFC (repeat at 2:20/3:20 pm and on 11/14 at 4:50/5:50 am). Fellini making the most Felliniesque movie of his career.

11:45 am/12:45 pm: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM. Date movies don't get better than this. True, the execrable You've Got Mail is based on this, but Lubitsch's movie has a wildly beating heart, which neither Meg Ryan nor AOL can claim.

Fri, Nov 14:

3/4 pm: Rear Window on TCM. Everybody loves Hitchcock. I've been avoiding recommending his movies, because a) there's always a Hitchcock movie playing on TV somewhere and b) even the bad ones are good, so why bother recommending them? But Rear Window is so great that I just wanted to mention that it's going to be on.

5/6 pm: The Thomas Crown Affair on TCM. Q: Would I enjoy watching Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway doing mostly nothing for 2 hours? A: The Thomas Crown Affair.

Sat, Nov 15:

1/2 am: Suspiria on TCM. Dario Argento's greatest movie.

2:45/3:45 am: The Haunting on TCM. As always, the Robert Wise movie, not the terrible remake.

7/8 am: Three Outlaw Samurai on IFC. Pretty good samurai movie.

7/8 pm: Paths of Glory on TCM. Kubrick's classic anti-war movie, starring Kirk Douglas as a man who is OUTRAGED that the military might be run by incompetent boobs. The actors who aren't chewing scenery might just tear your heart out.

Sun, Nov 16:

7/8 am: The Seventh Seal on IFC. The source of the famous Swedish aphorism "Never play chess with Death unless you are Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA."

10:15/11:15 am: Bright Young Things on IFC (repeat at 4:15/5:15 pm and on 11/17 at 3:55/4:55 am). Stephen Fry's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies." Funny AND bitter!

Mon, Nov 17:

1/2 am: Diabolique on TCM. One of my favorite suspense movies. The dread that permeates it never lets up until the heart-stopping finale.

6/7 pm: Restoration on IFC. Honestly, I can barely remember this movie, but I seem to recall that Robert Downey, Jr. killed in it.

8:30/9:30 pm: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) on TCM. The Charles Laughton version.

10:15/11:15 pm: The New World on IFC (repeat on 11/18 at 2:45/3:45 am). Just recently wrote about this one, too. Over-wrote, you might even say. Still, this is one of the best films of the last decade.

Summerfest '08: "Smiles of a Summer Night"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Our goal here at the Screengrab for the Summerfest '08 feature is to give you a dozen or so movies, all of which have "summer" in the title, which you can watch to no great pain while you are waiting for your dog to bring back the tennis ball you threw in the ocean. Unsurprisingly, most movies with the word "summer" in the title – and, indeed, most movies that are about summer, or are set during the summer, or are released during the summer, or in any way have the lemonade-and-sunscreen scent of summer about them, are pretty light, fluffy concoctions, spilling over with good will, gentle humor, and people wearing far less clothing than they normally would. Today, though, is different. Today we'll be featuring a movie by none other than Ingmar freakin' Bergman. Bergman: the man who single-handedly inspired Woody Allen to become a huge bummer. Bergman: the man whose most famous film involves a dying knight playing a desperate game of chess with the personification of Death itself. Bergman: the man whose very name is synonymous with incredibly heavy European art cinema. Could this man possibly direct a breezy summer movie (or, in this case, a breezy sommar movie)? Could this man, whose movies are stuffed with miserable families, emotional trauma, and metaphysical turmoil, give us, of all things, a fun little comedy?

Grab a chilled bottle of Svedka, book your tickets on Scandinavian Airlines, and join us for some Smiles of a Summer Night!

THE ACTION: Meet Frederik Egerman. He's a Swedish attorney and self-involved clothes horse with a gorgeous teenage wife named Anne. There's one problem with their marriage: they haven't consummated it yet. Meet his son (from a previous marriage) Henrik, a recent graduate from divinity school, who faces a serious impediment to entering the priesthood: he's got a big hard-on for his stepmother Anne – and since she's off-limits, he's carrying on an affair with Petra, his father's maid. Meet Desirée Armfeldt, an actress that Frederik used to have a crush on and who is seriously envied by Anne. She lets it be known that she has feelings for Frederik, which pisses Anne off to no end. Desirée is currently seeing another well-off fop named Carl-Magnus Malcolm, whose wife, Charlotte, is a good friend of Anne. Are you following all this? No? Good. We weren't either, to be perfectly honest with you. Just take our word for it that wacky hijinks and hilarity are bound to ensue.

THE PLAYERS: Hard as it is to believe, Smiles of a Summer Night – which plays, alternately, like an Oscar Wilde comedy of manners and a more subdued, highbrow version of Three's Company – was written and directed by none other than Ingmar Bergman, the grand old man of highly cerebral and incredibly depressing Swedish art films. The movie that started out as Sommarnattens Leende isn't exactly the strongest film in his oeuvre, aesthetically speaking, and tonally, it's a bit jarring to think that this is what he produced just prior to making the deep, masterful The Seventh Seal. Still, despite its novelty value as a light, sunny comedy – or perhaps because of it – it's become a favorite of Bergmanophiles the world over, with Woody Allen essentially rewriting it as A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Stephen Sondheim launching his own adaptation with A Little Night Music. The 1955 production (set, uncharacteristically for Bergman at the time, in a contemporary milieu) also features an all-star cast of the director's favorite actors, including the legendary Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, and Ulla Jacobsson.

SUMMER FUN: Generally speaking, there isn't a lot of summer fun in Ingmar Bergman movies. Sure, characters sometimes go to the beach, but it's usually to have nervous breakdowns, sexually traumatic encounters, or existential crises stemming from their incestuous affairs. They don't got to drink banana daiquiris and snap each other with towels. While Smiles of a Summer Night is, indeed, based during the four days of the calendar year that pass for summer in Scandinavia, it's frightfully low on frat-boy hijinks and authority figures falling into swimming pools. There is a certain element of summer fun, but it's typical Bergmanesque stuff for the overeducated clove-smokers in the back row: going to the opera, falling into mud puddles, and having ever so delightful romantic misunderstandings.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: Despite its contemporary (well, contemporary for Sweden in the mid-1950s) setting and alleged comic tone, there is not a Hawaiian shirt anywhere to be found in Smiles of a Summer Night. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that there is not a Hawaiian shirt anywhere in any of the films of Ingmar Bergman. Given that the two main characters are unrepentant fops, it is likely that if they were to even encounter someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt, they would have him arrested and imprisoned. The closest anyone in a Bergman movie comes to wearing a Hawaiian shirt is when Max Von Sydow dresses up in a gaudy Fu-Manchu-from-Mars getup in Flash Gordon. And, just to head this question off at the pass, assume that there are no scenes where people do body shots as Boston plays over a CD jukebox.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: There's no denying that Sommarnattens Leende is stuffed with beautiful women. Although its approach to sexuality is pretty strait-laced (not surprising for the times, but it's a bit mild for Bergman), the ladies are lovely to look at, especially Ulla Jacobsson as Anne and Eva Dahlbeck as Desirée. However – and I do not wish to alarm you here, but it is my duty as a movie reviewer to tell the unvarnished truth, no matter how unpleasant – there is not a single bikini in the entire movie. This would be inexcusable enough in what is essentially a romantic summer comedy, but lest we forget, this movie was made in Sweden – the home of the world-famous Swedish Bikini Team! Despite this inexcusable lapse (what, Bergman couldn't have gotten one lousy off-season Bikini Team member to play the maid or something?), we'd still recommend this uncharacteristic but rewarding film by the master of Swedish cinema; if nothing else, it'll help you feel smarter and classier after a viewing of Summer Catch.

The Rep Report (January 11-15)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

BERKELEY: Pacific Film Archives launches a wide-ranging new retrospective, "The Medieval Remake" (January 11 - February 16), devoted to the many different flavors of medieval fantasy on film. (The series "was inspired by The Contagious Middle Ages in Post-Communist East Central Europe, an exhibition on view at the Townsend Center for the Humanities on the UC Berkeley campus through January.") We're not talking Robert Taylor and George Sanders jousting in tin costumes here; the whole program is strictly high end, with Takovsky's Andrei Rublev, Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, both Dreyer's and Bresson's takes on the story of Joan of Arc in the dock, a pair of Ingmar Bergman's flashbacks to the Dark Ages (The Seventh Seal and Virgin Spring), and Fritz Lang's two enormous, silent Nibelungen, baroque visual extravangas so large-scaled that Wagner himself might have wondered if maybe the director were laying it on a little thick. It's striking to be reminded of how many great directors of wildly varying ranges and styles have been drawn to this period and these stories, and it promises to be an amazing series. But you might want to stick Ivanhoe or Excalibur in your Netflix queue just to help you lighten up afterwards.

Hepcats, zoot suiters, and beboppers can usher in the new year at PFA with "Cool World: Jazz and the Movies" (January 12 - February 6), a series that mixes well-known films with jazzy scores and settings (such as The Man with the Golden Arm, featuring Frank Sinatra's great performance as a junkie poker dealer) and relative obscurities. Notable among the latter category are Sweet Love, Bitter, a low-budget 1967 drama that features a strong performance by the comedian-activist Dick Gregory as a character modeled on Charlie Parker, and All Night Long, a 1962, modern version of Othello set in London, that features Charles Mingus in an acting role as himself. (A clip from it appears in the documentary Mingus.)

NEW YORK: "John Ford at Fox" (January 12-February 2) spotlights the glory period that was the director's time at "the Hollywood studio closest to being Ford’s base." (It's the same body of work honored in the new DVD box set Ford at Fox.) There are films here, such as The Iron Horse, Young Mr. Lincoln, and My Darling Clementine, where the director defined the popular version of key chapters of American history; others, such as the folk comedies Steamboat 'Round the Bend and Judge Priest, which preserve the performance style of Will Rogers, now are American history. The series begins with the new documentary Becoming John Ford, featuring interviews with Ford biographer Joseph McBride and Peter Fonda.

The Rep Report (Dec 6 - 14)

Peter Smith — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual Spanish Cinema Now begins on December 7 and runs through the 27th. The schedule this year includes a special program devoted to the works of the late Pilar Miro, one of the rare women to make a filmmaking career for herself in the wake of Franco's death. Seven of her features will be shown, including her last movie, the 1996 version of Felix Lope de Vega's The Dog in the Manger.

BERKELEY: The Pacific Film Archives' Ingmar Bergman: Light and Shadow (December 6 - 20) gives admirers of the late director, whose death last summer was one of the supreme, sad film events of the year, to remember some of his proudest achievements (including Persona, The Seventh Seal, and Shame) in handsome prints on the big screen. The final selections, wisely, are The Magic Flute and Fanny and Alexander, either of which can serve as a timely rebuttal to the idea that Bergman has nothing to offer in the way of holiday festivity.

— Phil Nugent