Band of Outsiders (Fri., 8 p.m., $5, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., www.ihousephilly.org/ARTS/film.html) Kept off American screens and video for years due to tangled rights issues, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 film is, among moviegoers below a certain age, probably best known for lending its title to Quentin Tarantino’s production company: A Band Apart, drawn from the film’s French title, Bande à Part. It’s not hard to draw a line straight from the aimless banter of Godard’s half-assed gangsters to the “Royale with Cheese” dialogue, or from the scene where the two men step onto the dance floor with the girl they both love to the Jackrabbit Slim’s twist-a-thon. (It should be noted for posterity’s sake that Bande’s Anna Karina didn’t adopt the bob Tarantino nabbed for Uma Thurman until several films later.) The film’s use of omniscient, self-conscious and occasionally distracted narration (read by the director) is also an admitted precursor to Y Tu Mamá También.

But Bande is hardly a footnote, or merely a forerunner. Filmed before Godard capitulated to an almost Calvinist suspicion of narrative pleasure, the film advances and complicates the critique Godard first mounted with Ë Bout de Souffle. His characters here -- Claude Brasseur’s romantic but abusive Arthur, Sami Frey’s self-realized Frantz, Karina’s iconic Odile -- are similarly in love with their own fictional self-images, but less successful at realizing them -- you can see the pins holding up their suits. The three, actors and characters alike, are positively giddy on their own youthful energy; they careen across the frame as if they’ve just been slipped the most wonderful of drugs. But the film also captures the moment when contempt, the worm that would eventually sour Godard’s entire apple, started to creep into the picture. Where Ë Bout de Souffle carried an apparently straight-faced dedication to the B movies of Mongram Pictures, the bits of Bande à Part’s narration seem intended to do nothing so much as make Dolores Hitchens’ source novel (Fool’s Gold) seem as shallow and insignificant as possible. (At one point, the narrator informs us, Karina’s character’s “dark curls blew in the wind,” while the camera shows us Karina, with her brown, straight and utterly unruffled hair.) To an extent, the film’s irrepressible energy comes precisely from Godard’s assumption that all of art, pop and otherwise, is his to play with. (Rather than direction, he’s credited with “cinéma.”) But it also points the way to the day when he’d take his ball and go home.

Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (Fri., June 7, 8 p.m., Turner Classic Movies) “These days, it seems like American cinema is all there is.” So laments Martin Scorsese in Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy), his four-hour-plus testimony to the power of Italian filmmaking. Scorsese, who narrates in a lively and unstudied tone, recalls getting his first glimpse of Sicily from Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan, excerpted here at length and in a beautifully restored version. Moving through Italian cinema’s history as through Scorsese’s own, Il Mio Viaggio is a passionate recollection. Not surprisingly, given Scorsese’s dedicated involvement with film preservation, it’s also explicitly designed to stump for the power of the big screen. Though Scorsese admits that the power of the movies he cites shone through bad prints, inept dubbing and commercial interruptions, there is, he leaves no doubt, no substitute for the real thing. (It’s a shame Miramax, which purchased the theatrical rights to the film and then essentially declined to distribute it, doesn’t feel the same way.) A letter accompanying the review tape expresses Scorsese’s wish that viewers “will be inspired to seek out these powerful films on the big screen.” That goes double for TCM’s monthlong spotlight on Italian film, which features nigh on 48 hours’ worth of classic films spread out over four extended Friday nights. Following Il Mio Viaggio’s premiere is a trio of Vittorio De Sica films -- The Bicycle Thief (12:15 a.m.), Umberto D. (2 a.m.) and The Children Are Watching Us (3:45 a.m.) -- then Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Wide Blue Road (5:30 a.m.). Future Fridays include blocks of Rossellini (June 14), Luchino Visconti (June 21) and Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni (June 28), as well as a pair of silent epics: Mario Caserini’s The Last Days of Pompeii (June 15, 3:30 a.m.) and Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (June 15, 5 a.m.).

Showbiz is My Life (Fri., June 7, 6 p.m.; Sat., June 8, 6 p.m., Sun., June 9, noon, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) Cabaret has always been served best with a side of rue, and the three divas on display in Hillary Harris and Ayr Robinson’s film have plenty to get salty about. From 77-year-old “living legend” Julie Wilson, who now plays to audiences a tiny fraction of those she once entertained, to Natalie Gamsu, who emigrated from her native South Africa to pursue a career in Manhattan, only to find that even a multi-week engagement could still leave her in the red, they’re keepers of an art form that’s already made most of the journey from mass entertainment to cherished arcana. The filmmakers skimp a bit on the form’s inception, though Wilson’s recollections provide their share of pithy context. “I realized audiences didn’t want the nice girl from Omaha,” she recalls. “They wanted a bitch.” Showbiz is a bit ragged in structure, veering from a trifold portrait to historical overview and back again, but the talent and pathos of its subjects cuts through all the same. Sample the film and then some with the Prince’s “Brunch & Ballads” on Sunday; $30 gets you food, the movie, and performances by the dulcet Gamsu and the over-the-top Baby Jane Dexter, also featured in the film.

Features at the Five: Crap (Mon., June 10, 7 p.m., $5, the Five Spot, 5 S. Bank St., 215-901-3771, www.armcinema25.com/featuresatthefive.html) It’s hard to think of a criticism that hasn’t been preemptively defanged by the title of Crap, but here goes. Eighty minutes of kakapeepee humor from Broomall’s Len Cella -- the auteur behind Moron Movies and More Moron Movies -- Crap is made up of a seemingly endless series of brief visual gags like “Centerfold in Hell” and “The Prick 911 Operator.” It’s kind of interesting to watch Cella run himself ragged playing every role, even in scenes with more than one character -- not to mention those where he’s playing dogs. That’s good for about 10 minutes, but then you’ve still got a way to go. The screening is followed by an opening-night party.

Browse The
June 6, 2002
Issue

Join the
City Paper
Mailing List