November 6-12, 2003

screen picks

by Sam Adams

The Devil, Probably (Fri., Nov. 7, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Though most are available on video, there's hardly been a rush to release Robert Bresson's films on DVD; only the distinctly un-Bressonian Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne has made it to disc. There's something appropriate about the way Bresson's oeuvre has calmly resisted the rush to digitalization. For one, any kind of hurry is antithetical to Bresson, and for another, like any films that demand rapt attention and resist easy consumption, they're particularly unsatisfying on video.

"Everybody said, 'Don't rent tapes. Wait until it plays [theatrically], no matter how long it takes,'" recalls Richard Hell, who will introduce this one-time screening of Bresson's The Devil, Probably (1977). Hell calls it "the most punk film ever made," and he should know, since his Blank Generation album, released the same year as Devil, is a key document of the New York scene. (Not that Hell's always happy about the association; even over the phone, you can hear the quotes around the word "punk.")

The link between punk (or "punk") and Bresson, who was in his 70s when he made Devil, might occur to no one but Hell; Devil's actors (or "models," as Bresson preferred to call them) look more like the student revolutionaries of '68 than the slashed-T-shirt crowd. But they're surely members of Hell's blank generation, stunned into inaction by the world's corruption. Says long-haired, androgynously sexy Charles (Antoine Monnier): "If I did anything, then I'd be useful in a world I despise."

Though it's unlikely Bresson was explicitly commenting on punk, Hell was stunned at the movie's resonance. Hell had always found Bresson's movies timeless, even perplexingly so, but when he saw Devil, it took him right back to the time of its creation. "I had a very personal reaction, which really surprised me. Instance after instance of the way he looks at things reflects, with the utmost fidelity, the same sorts of things that I was feeling and thinking, the same things I was trying to express at the time." Though Bresson's ultra-reserved style might seem the polar opposite of the hard, fast assault typically associated with punk, Hell sees a clear similarity between Bresson's methods and his own. "It's very much a do-it-yourself thing, using the simplest of means. It's like the way we were making music; there were no frills, it's extremely honest. In a way, that's its highest value."

Though Hell didn't become a devout Bresson convert until the Museum of Modern Art's Bresson retrospective in 1999, he's become not only an admirer, but something of a champion; this will be Hell's third public introduction of The Devil, Probably in the last year. If a full-on Bresson revival is unlikely, there are signs of hope, notably the decades-delayed American release of Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), often called Bresson's masterpiece. (Cross your fingers, Philadelphia.) Hell hopes to "prepare" Bresson neophytes for the film, which he admits can be hard, if worthwhile, going. "It's very deliberate," he says. "It's not bim-bam-boom, bang-flash-pop. You have to release yourself into its zone to really appreciate it."

Cinemania (Thu.-Fri., Nov. 6-7, 7:30 p.m., $8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700) You know them, though probably not their names. Every time you go to a screening at the Prince or International House, when you skip work to take in an afternoon revival, they're in the audience, always watching. Call them cinephiles, or film buffs, or just people with time on their hands, but if you recognize their faces, you might be one of them.

Fortunately, at least for them, Philadelphia's film opportunities limit their ability to indulge. No such luck for the New York-based film obsessives of Cinemania. Jack freely admits he'll skip a family member's funeral to attend a screening. Bill, a 38-year-old who hasn't had sex in years, calls film "a substitute for life." Elderly, stooped Roberta was banned from the Museum of Modern Art after she assaulted a ticket taker who defiled one of her precious stubs. These are not, to put it bluntly, your average movie nuts.

And there lies Cinemania's rub. The further Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak take us into their cinemaniacs' lives, the more it seems their obsessions are as much a product of mental illness as a love of film. Roberta stockpiles not only movie programs, but Metrocards; Jack alludes to being a diagnosed schizophrenic, while shy Bill pops anti-anxiety pills. The list of movies Jack's seen might prompt you to guiltily update your Netflix queue, but it's hard to envy the cluttered apartment and the towering stack of papers from which it's produced. Much as it stimulates your need to watch (and hey, I saw three other movies the day I watched Cinemania), the film makes you feel a lot better about all the movies you haven't seen. That relief is by design: Like Capturing the Friedmans, Cinemania subtly dehumanizes its characters under the guise of understanding them.

The brief run at the Prince is followed by showings at the County and Ambler theaters, and since it's easy to become as obsessed with these characters as they are with movies, it's worth seeking out Wellspring's DVD, which adds 45 minutes of deleted scenes to the movie's terse 80 minutes.

The Son (Wed., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., $6, International House) Olivier Gourmet took Best Actor honors at Cannes for his imposing performance as a man bent double by grief over the death of his son. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (La Promesse, Rosetta) specialize in inarticulate, often working-class characters, and use a rough-hewn cinematic vocabulary to tell their stories: handheld camera, minimal exposition, scenes that unfold in real time. That vocabulary proves perfectly suited to Gourmet's character, whose near-total retreat from the social world results in some pretty odd behavior -- not least his taking-on of a carpentry student, a young boy with an intimate connection to his son's death. While Mystic River ultimately condemns revenge, it still, as Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed out, treats it as "an honorable adult emotion." The Son inspires dread every time the camera focuses on Gourmet's near-frozen face, realizing you have no idea how he might lash out.

Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Wed., Nov. 12, 7:30 p.m., free, Prince Music Theater) Part of the promotion for Warner Bros.' two-DVD Lon Chaney collection -- which also includes the superlatively bizarre The Unknown (with Alloy Orchestra score), The Ace of Hearts, a photo-reconstruction of the lost London After Midnight and the exemplary A Thousand Faces doc -- this free screening includes an appearance by composer H. Scott Salinas, who was 26 when he won Turner Classic Movies' Young Composers Competition. Salinas ably draws out the whipsawing passions of this take on the Pagliacci tale, with Chaney as a clown who must suppress his love for his adopted daughter. Though Chaney is well-remembered for his grotesques, the 1928 Laugh shows the heart beneath the hunchback.

Misc. Picks The Bryn Mawr Theater hits its second week of midnight screenings with the Pang brothers' incoherently creepy The Eye. Sundance Channel offers "A Night at the Races," a compendium of political docs from Manhattan to Iran, Nov. 8, 16 and 21.

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