Screen Picks



Point Blank

by Sam Adams

Neo-Noir Nights

(Starts Aug. 5, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St. 215-569-9700) The great thing about neo-noir is that anything from The Conversation to Blade Runner fits the mold, and the wider you cast your net, the more interesting gems you’ll pull in. Unfortunately, the Prince’s series isn’t nearly as far-ranging as the Film Forum (NY) series by which it was inspired, which means the selections tend towards the obvious: touchstones of the genre like Chinatown and Point Blank, as well as celebrated reinterpretations like Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects and Body Heat. Ask people to vote for their favorites (as the Prince did in May) and you end up with conventional wisdom, which is safe but unexciting. For my money, these neo-noir faves are among the most overrated movies of all time: Pulp Fiction is a vastly enjoyable pop treat whose tricky structure gives the illusion of substance; The Usual Suspects is a clever script done in by its own self-seriousness; and Chinatown may be Robert Towne’s best piece of hackwork, but it’s still hackwork.

On the other hand, Point Blank (Aug. 5, 7:30 p.m.; Aug. 10, 9:30 p.m.; Aug. 12, 9:45 p.m.) is an excellent choice for an opening film, a brutal thriller that’s as much Peckinpah as Howard Hawks, featuring a not-at-all tongue-in-cheek performance from Lee Marvin. (Foster Hirsch, author of Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir will introduce the series on Aug. 5.) And movies like Le Samourai (Aug. 11-13) and Blue Velvet (Aug. 17, 19, 20, 24) twist the genre into shapes you’d never expect. (The series also includes two local premieres: the British Following and the animated compendium Cartoon Noir.) It’s all too easy to reproduce noir — as did the also preposterously overrated L.A. Confidential — but turning a well-worn style into something new only gets harder as the years go on.

My Best Fiend

(premieres Aug. 4, 8 p.m. on Independent Film Channel) As actor-director pairings go, Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog aren’t exactly Scorsese and DeNiro. In My Best Fiend, his documentary on their tempestuous relationship, Herzog corrects the legend that he pointed a gun at Kinski when he threatened to quit during filming of Aguirre: The Wrath of God. According to Herzog, he only threatened to go get his rifle. Shot partly in the jungle locations where Herzog filmed his most celebrated works, Fiend can hardly be taken as the final word: Not only is it directed by one of its main subjects, but Herzog recounts in the film how he and Kinski (supposedly) fabricated stories of their disputes for Kinski’s autobiography in order to increase sales. The real prize is the archival footage and sound recordings of Kinski’s psychotic rages, not to mention the even-more-horrifying footage, also included in Les Blank’s Aguirre making-of film Burden of Dreams, of the abandoned version of Aguirre starring Jason Robards and Mick Jagger. One caveat: In a misguided attempt to appeal to a broader audience, the film’s German-language soundtrack is often overdubbed in English, which ruins some of the intimacy; even if Herzog does his own voice, it’s hardly the same to speak spontaneously on the slopes of Machú Picchú as it is to recreate the dialogue months later in the studio. (DVD owners may want to until the 15th, when a version including the original soundtrack is released.)

Cleo from 5 to 7 / Vagabond

($29.99 each, DVD) No bells and whistles, but these Agnès Varda reissues (provided by the Criterion Collection) are still a gift from above, a great way to draw deserved attention to her not-particularly-well-known oeuvre. Released in 1961 and 1986 respectively, the two films reveal Varda as the director who may have capitalized best on the promise of the French New Wave. Cleo is pure nouvelle vague, bursting with energy and formal experimentation, but Varda’s photojournalistic background results in an unusual fusion of narrative and documentary, and an unhurried narrative style. But where Cleo recounts a vain chanteuse’s late turn toward self-reflection as she waits for the results of a fateful medical test, Vagabond turns the process around, examining the reflections we form of other people. Beginning with the discovery of a vagrant’s body in a ditch, Varda backslides and examines what led to her fate. Straightfoward storytelling is interspersed with documentary-style interviews with those who "knew" her, but sometimes Varda merely seems to be eavesdropping on a conversation already in progress, and sometimes the characters stop and address the camera mid-scene. Featuring a superb, unsentimental performance by Sandrine Bonnaire, Vagabond not only deconstructs the storytelling process, but ties that intellectual exercise to the more concrete problem of homelessness: It’s a lesson in perspective, and how the fleeting glimpses we catch become fictions that dwarf their own subjects.