Boston Globe: The story of cinema in eight weeks
Bruce Calvert
The story of cinema in eight weeks
By Ty Burr, Globe Staff | June 25, 2006
School's out. Class is in session. For the sixth summer in a row, the
Harvard Film Archive is offering a staggeringly rich two-month series of
double-bill screenings. There won't be a quiz.
The archive's ``Eight Weeks of Film History" spans the movie landscape from
1895 to 2006 and from mainstream entertainment to the most rigorous
experimentalism, all arranged by day of the week. The choice is yours: You
could cough up five figures for a graduate degree in cinema studies, or you
could get the equivalent of a GED in the movies by heading to the archive's
basement screening room -- Boston's very own bunker Cinemathèque
Française -- and come out at the end of August paler and wiser. The seats
could be more comfortable, but the films are sublime.
The schedule is largely drawn from the archive's collection of over 10,000
titles, with an assist in the form of rare prints from international
collections; it's as if the curators had tipped the toy box onto the floor
and made pairings on the basis of whim and arcana. What do Michael Mann's
1986 Hannibal Lecter run-up ``Manhunter" and Takeshi Kitano's 1997 ``Hana-bi
(Fireworks)" -- both screening on July 8 and 9 -- have in common? Just
muscular visual poetry and a lot of bloodshed. What does Jacques Tati's
playful comedy ``Jour de Fete" (1949) have to do with Douglas Sirk's
masterful weepie ``Imitation of Life" (both playing July 4- 5)? Beats me,
but they're both great movies.
Mondays are reserved for films released in the period between 1895 and 1939,
from rudimentary silents to the apex of Hollywood's golden age. July 3
offers a typical example of the odd, enlightening concordances thrown up by
curator Ted Barron: a miniature double bill of the 1913 D.W. Griffith short
``The House of Darkness" and Oscar Micheaux's 1920 ``Within Our Gates" --
the latter an extremely rare screening of the pioneer black filmmaker's
response to Griffith's ``Birth of a Nation" -- followed by ``Showboat,"
James Whale's 1936 version of the Broadway musical that plays like a mirror
to pre-World War II America's conflicted attitudes toward race.
On July 10, two classic Charlie Chaplin shorts -- 1920's ``The Tramp" and
1918's ``A Dog's Life" -- are followed by ``Child of the Big City" (1914), a
proto-melodrama by the Russian filmmaker Yevgeni Bauer, which is followed by
two 1930s silents by Yasujiro Ozu. The great Japanese director's early work
almost never sees the light of day; for fans, this is an event.
Clearly, the whole ``doublebill" idea is being treated with maximum
flexibility. A more traditional twofer comes on July 17: Greta Garbo in
``Love" (1926), with both the ``happy" ending shown in US theaters and the
``tragic" finale shown abroad, and the once-infamous ``Ecstasy" (1933), a
film condemned by the pope and banned in America due to Hedy Kiesler's nude
swim. (Hollywood snapped Kiesler up nevertheless and renamed her Hedy
Lamarr.)
Playful Russian silents paired with Buster Keaton's cinematic surrealism
(July 24). Dictatorial directors (Erich von Stroheim's ``Queen Kelly" and
Josef von Sternberg's ``The Scarlet Empress") on July 31. European ``city
symphony" films of the 1930s coupled with Ralph Steiner's groundbreaking
abstractions on Aug. 14. All good stuff.
(snipped)
--
Bruce Calvert