Cinematheque

Waiting for the End of the World: Lars von Trier Retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox

by James McNally on November 9, 2011

in Cinematheque,Directors,Special Events,Theatrical Release,TIFF

Waiting for the End of the World: Lars von Trier Retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox

Years before he was per­sona non grata at the Cannes Film Festival, I dis­covered the films of Danish “bad boy” Lars von Trier at the old Cinematheque Ontario. So it’s fit­ting that the folks behind the Cinematheque are bringing a mini-retrospective of his work to their new digs at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Beginning tonight and run­ning through November 19, six of von Trier’s earlier films will be shown as a sort of appet­izer for his latest, Melancholia, which opens on Friday November 18.

Melancholia (2011)
Still from Melancholia (2011)

Though I’m dis­ap­pointed with the omis­sions, both obvious (no Antichrist?) and not-so-obvious (The Kingdom would have been per­fect run­ning over a few nights, and Epidemic seems not to be shown much), I’m most excited to revisit the (lit­er­ally) dark early films that were my intro­duc­tion to his work. The Element of Crime (1984) is a sort of police pro­ced­ural, with a prot­ag­onist who prac­tic­ally goes mad trying to track down a serial killer in a post-apocalyptic and dream­like envir­on­ment that just might be the inside of his own head. And Europa (1991), the very first of von Trier’s films I saw, which fol­lows a naive young American working as a porter on a very strange train in post-World War 2 Germany. Both films are drip­ping with style, evoc­ative images, and dark, dream­like plots.

The Element of Crime (1984)
Still from The Element of Crime (1984)

I’d also like to finally see The Idiots and Dogville, both of which seemed reli­ably pro­voc­ative when I saw clips during Adam Nayman’s excel­lent class earlier this year at the Jewish Canadian Cultural Centre.

Europa (1991)
Still from Europa (1991)

Here are the details for the schedule. Don’t forget that in addi­tion to the ret­ro­spective, you can see Melancholia begin­ning Friday November 18.

  • Breaking the Waves (1996) — Wednesday November 9, 6:30pm
  • The Element of Crime (1984) — Friday November 11, 6:30pm
  • Europa (1991) — Saturday November 12, 8:00pm and Thursday November 17, 9:15pm
  • Dogville (2003) — Wednesday November 16, 6:30pm
  • Dancer in the Dark (2000) — Friday November 18, 6:00pm
  • The Idiots (1998) — Saturday November 19, 8:00pm

As always, tickets are avail­able online.

Tagged as: denmark, larsvontrier, lightbox

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Hollywood Classics: The Cinema Is Nicholas Ray at TIFF Bell Lightbox

by James McNally on September 29, 2011 · 2 comments

in Cinematheque,Directors,Special Events,Theatrical Release,TIFF

Hollywood Classics: The Cinema <em>Is</em> Nicholas Ray at TIFF Bell Lightbox

From October 2nd through December 13th, TIFF Bell Lightbox will present a ret­ro­spective of the work of icon­o­clastic American dir­ector Nicholas Ray (1911–1979). It’s a full-scale exhib­i­tion in honour of the cen­tenary of Ray’s birth, and will con­tinue into the new year with another selec­tion of his work.

Ray was a unique char­acter, making per­sonal films about ali­en­ated youth and vul­ner­able people within the Hollywood studio system. Perhaps best known for his work with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Ray had been exploring the same themes from the very begin­ning of his career. His first fea­ture, They Live By Night (1948), fea­tured two naïve young lovers on the run from the law; it was remade by Robert Altman as Thieves Like Us (1974) and was a huge influ­ence on Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973). Other career high­lights screening during the series:

  • In A Lonely Place (1950): Humphrey Bogart gives one of his best per­form­ances as a man accused of murder who finds love but sees it des­troyed by his self-loathing rage.
  • On Dangerous Ground (1952): Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino star in this noirish tale of the trans­forming power of love.
  • Bigger Than Life (1956): a Technicolor marvel fea­turing James Mason in a ter­ri­fying turn as a bene­volent teacher trans­formed by the side effects of a drug treatment.
  • Bitter Victory (1957): an anti-heroic war film set in the North African desert during World War II, the film pits two British officers against each other in the after­math of a love triangle.

Ray’s focus on out­siders, on the lonely and mis­un­der­stood mis­fits in our midst, was ahead of its time, and has endeared him to modern dir­ectors like Jim Jarmusch (who studied under him at NYU in the 1970s), Martin Scorsese, and many of the fig­ures of the French New Wave, most not­ably Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. It was Godard who, in his review of Bitter Victory, provided the quo­ta­tion that forms the title of the series:

There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforward there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.

Tickets for all screen­ings are now avail­able to order online.

Tagged as: lightbox, nicholasray

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Masks and Faces: The Films of John Cassavetes at TIFF Bell Lightbox

by James McNally on July 6, 2011

in Cinematheque,Directors,Special Events,Theatrical Release,TIFF

John Cassavetes

From July 14–31, TIFF Bell Lightbox is presenting a ret­ro­spective of the work of pion­eering American inde­pendent film­maker John Cassavetes (1929–1989). It’s the first time in 20 years that such a major exhib­i­tion of Cassavetes’ work has taken place in Toronto.

Beginning his career as an actor with roles on stage as well as on tele­vi­sion and film (including a mem­or­able turn as Mia Farrow’s hus­band in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby), Cassavetes always chafed against the strictly eco­nomic focus of the studio system, and was one of the first film­makers to fin­ance, make and exhibit his films out­side the existing infra­struc­ture of the Hollywood movie busi­ness. Working with a small group of col­lab­or­ators and friends, including his wife Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes made a handful of films that have had an enduring influ­ence on American film­making, including the work of dir­ectors as dif­ferent as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

I am eagerly looking for­ward to cor­recting yet another blind spot in my know­ledge of American film his­tory, espe­cially since Cassavetes’ obses­sion with char­ac­ters rather than plots is right up my alley. In many of his films, his char­ac­ters are ordinary people facing dif­fi­cult situ­ations or at major turning points in their lives. He also chose to work with actors who looked and spoke like reg­ular people, using his friend­ships to chal­lenge them to dig deeper and to give some of their rawest and most direct per­form­ances. Some of his reg­ular col­lab­or­ators (Peter Falk, Seymour Cassel) are among my favourite actors, and I’m espe­cially looking for­ward to seeing the recently-departed Falk light up the screen again.

Tickets are avail­able online for the entire series, including a very spe­cial con­ver­sa­tion with Gena Rowlands on July 14th at 6:30pm. She will also intro­duce her Oscar-nominated per­form­ance in A Woman Under the Influence (1974) at 8:45pm that evening, as well as Cassavetes’ second fea­ture Faces (1968) on Friday July 15th at 6:30pm. More inform­a­tion on the series is avail­able on the TIFF Bell Lightbox site.

Tagged as: cassavetes, independent, lightbox

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C’est pas moi, je le jure! (It’s Not Me, I Swear!)

by James McNally on February 1, 2009

in Cinematheque,Film Festivals

C'est pas moi, je le jure! (It's Not Me, I Swear!)

C’est pas moi, je le jure! (It’s Not Me, I Swear!) (Director: Philippe Falardeau): Originally screened at TIFF in 2008, this bit­ter­sweet film from Québec returned as part of the Canada’s Top Ten screening series at Cinematheque Ontario this weekend, and I’m so glad I caught up with it.

Based on the mem­oirs of Bruno Hébert, C’est pas moi, je le jure! is the story of the troubled Doré family in 1968 Québec, told from the very unique per­spective of ten-year-old Léon, a liar, vandal and thief who will do just about any­thing to keep his bat­tling par­ents from split­ting up. When we first meet Léon, he’s hanging from a tree, and we’re unsure if this is the result of a mis­ad­ven­ture or a sui­cide attempt. Much of the rest of the film details the trouble he gets into, and those two pos­sib­il­ities remain in our minds. Clearly his “acting out” is a cry for atten­tion, and he admits as much when he explains that a strategically-lit fire always stops his par­ents from fighting, and even brings the family together as they struggle to put it out. Despite this example, it’s dif­fi­cult to convey just how skil­fully the film blends humour and heartache, but the mix­ture is a large part of the film’s appeal.

When he fails to stop his mother from run­ning off to Greece, Léon’s beha­viour becomes even more des­perate. He bonds with Léa, a girl from a sim­il­arly broken family, and they hatch a plan to steal money and buy plane tickets to Greece. Falardeau keeps this material from becoming too grim or too melo­dra­matic by not dwelling for too long on the characters’s feel­ings. Léon doesn’t mope, he acts, and even though the epis­odic nature of the film res­ulted in a few false end­ings, I was happy to keep fol­lowing along to see what Léon was going to do next.

He can go from smashing up a neighbour’s house while they’re on vaca­tion to sit­ting down and playing Schubert on their harp­si­chord. He behaves ter­ribly, but then feels remorse. He’s a boy trying to deal with an adult world, and without the coping mech­an­isms of his older brother Jérôme, he just lashes out without thinking. The per­form­ance of Antoine L’Écuyer is simply aston­ishing. He’s like a young Jean-Paul Belmondo, a gang­ster with a twinkle in his eye. The film itself reminded me of The 400 Blows, another chron­icle of a troubled child­hood that still sparkled with inno­cence. Supporting L’Écuyer’s incred­ible per­form­ance, Falardeau’s dir­ec­tion com­bines the nos­talgic set­ting, some swooping cine­ma­to­graphy, and the warm music of Patrick Watson to evoke a time and mood where the trans­ition between child­hood and some­thing else felt scary and exhil­ar­ating all at once.

Official web site of the film (English version)

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: adolescence, canada, childhood, coming-of-age, family, quebec

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