Screen Picks

Farewell, Uncle Tom (Fri., July 11, 9 p.m., $8, Broadway Theatre, 43 S. Broadway, Pittman, N.J, 856-589-7519, www.exhumedfilms.com) Either one of the most racist films ever made or a potent condemnation of racism, this 1971 feature from the directors of Mondo Cane is nothing if not brutal, taking a You Are There approach to the history of American slavery, with gruesome pseudo-documentary footage of slaves being beaten, raped, force-fed with metal funnels and about every other horror you could imagine (and some you hopefully can't). Reading the IMDb comments, viewers seem split between Amistad-bashers who laud the film's boldness and those who see it as grotesque exploitation. (It might depend on if you think the gas chamber scene in Schindler's List is a cop-out or a brilliant piece of audience manipulation.) By the movie's surreal get-Whitey climax, which renders a modern black man as a caricature of African savagery, any notion of good intentions is gone.

Pépé le Moko (Mon., July 14, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Whistle "La Marseillaise" as you walk in the door and join I-House and the White Dog Café's Bastille Day celebration. Julien Duvivier's 1937 drama stars Jean Gabin as Pépé, the dashing thief whose renown is equal only to the police's desire to track him down. Within the Algerian Casbah, introduced in a memorable montage, Pépé is king, but he can't leave without being caught. That's fine by Pépé until he falls for Gaby (Mireille Balin), a champagne magnate's kept woman who can't figure out if Pépé wants her or her diamond bracelets. Gabin's iconic performance is rock-hard, characteristically French but inspired by American actors like James Cagney (just as Henri la Barthe's source novel was inspired by Scarface). When they dance, Gaby starts laughing and won't tell Pépé why; he responds, "I wish I knew you better so I could slap you." (Good thing there isn't a grapefruit handy.) Pépé has its moments of corn, not least in Pépé's climactic walk through the Casbah, which Duvivier shoots with a series of rear projections that make it seem like Gabin's about to burst into song. But its influence is indisputable, perhaps most notably on Casablanca, which lifted its setting, several of its relationships (including that between Pépé and the fez-topped policier who's assigned to catch him) and one of its actors: Marcel Dalio, who played Casablanca's croupier. For an even more startling "influence," check out the 1938 Hollywood remake Algiers, or the side-by-side comparison on Criterion's Pépé disc, to see how entire sequences were virtually photocopied, right down to the physical types of the actors.

Philadelphia Stories (Tue., July 15, 9 p.m., WYBE-TV) Week two features Barbeque with Bobby Seale, directed by Sonic Liberation Front's Kevin Diehl, which finds the ex-Black Panther dishing out tips on the proper use of liquid smoke while reminding us that "even revolutionaries have to eat." Also on tap: Rocco Iacovone's 10 Minutes, a cleverly edited women-in-prison piece whose ending doesn't pay off quite the way it should, and Sloan Seale's Recovery Portrait, a sequel of sorts to her own Recovery Mural.

The Firemen’s Ball (Wed., July 16, 8 p.m., $6, International House) I-House's Abnormalization: Scenes from the Czech New Wave truly swings into action next week, but don't miss the first film in the series, Milos Forman's delightful 1967 satire. Following up his internationally successful Loves of a Blonde, Forman made this wicked little trifle, whose 73 minutes breeze by in a giddy haze. It's so swift, in fact, that you may not realize how deep it's cut. Set at a catastrophic fundraiser run by a provincial firemen's squad, the movie not only slices and dices the idealized communist working man, unflinchingly depicting the greed and corruption that flourished in communist Czechoslovakia, but mercilessly parodies the firemen, the local representatives of law and order whose uniforms look suspiciously like military garb. (By the time the movie was released, Soviet tanks had already rolled through Prague.) In the movie's single most cutting exchange, the firemen quarrel over who's stolen the goods they meant to raffle off at the end of an evening, and one publicly returns an item his wife has stolen. One of his comrades explodes in fury, yelling, "The good name of the fire brigade means more to me than any honesty!" Substitute "the Party" for "the fire brigade," and you can hear how, as Forman reports in an interview on Criterion's DVD, it was that line that set a government official to "climbing the walls," leading to its suppression in Czechoslovakia and Forman's immigration to America, where none of his movies have come close to equaling the manic energy of The Firemen's Ball.

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December 2, 2004
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