Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

Written by Fellini (Sun., April 3, 7 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Drawn from 1948, two years before Federico Fellini made his directorial debut with Variety Lights, the pair of features in this Sunday program provide valuable insight into the prehistory of a filmmaking legend. Half of Roberto Rossellini's omnibus feature L'Amore, the Fellini-scripted The Miracle clearly foreshadows what was to come. Anna Magnani, to whose "art" the film is dedicated, plays a stout peasant woman whose vision of St. Joseph (beatifically played by Federico himself) is scorned by her putatively religious neighbors, especially once her divine revelation begins to manifest itself as an ostensibly immaculate conception. Re-enacting Christ's walk to Golgotha with a washbasin for a crown, Magnani wrings every sacrosanct drop from the role, although she doesn't quite match the hairpin-turn theatrics of L'Amore's Cocteau-scripted first half (not part of the program). Although the story's erotic Catholic mysticism is textbook Fellini, Rossellini's style predominates, producing a fascinating, if not wholly successful, frisson.

Fellini is harder to find in Without Pity, despite the fact that director Alberto Lattuada shared billing with Fellini on Variety Lights, which also reprises much of the earlier movie's cast. Carla Del Poggio, Lattuada's wife and Variety Lights' Lily, plays Angela, a comely blonde who saves the life of a black American G.I. (John Kitzmiller) en route to her hometown of Livorno (mysteriously rendered by the subtitles as "Leghorn"). Amid Livorno's rubble, Angela searches for her long-lost brother but quickly winds up as a prostitute in the service of the razor-faced Pierre Luigi (played by the novelist Pierre Claudé). Without pity, perhaps, but not without pathos: The doomed not-quite romance between kind-hearted American and enduring Italian goes from worse to worst with scarcely an uptick, enlivened only by Giulietta Masina's invaluable turn as Angela's world-wise confidante. Noteworthy mainly as a reminder of the neorealist roots Fellini would soon leave behind, Without Pity does offer one incontrovertible enticement: Nino Rota's credit for "elaboration on Negro spirituals." Until you've heard Rota's take on "Old Man River," well, you just haven't lived.

The Man with the Screaming Brain (Sun., April 3, midnight, $12, International House) Bruce Campbell, the jut-jawed star of Bubba Ho-Tep and the Evil Deads, stops by with his directorial debut (not counting a pair of documentaries, one on Evil Dead fans, the other on land-use issues). Campbell plays a murdered industrialist who is revived to find he shares headspace with a Latino street hustler named Paco — silly, sure, but then this is the man who played a geriatric Elvis fighting ancient evil in a nursing home. Campbell, whose willingness to beat himself up for a joke is key to his self-deprecating appeal, has managed to make himself a B-movie star in a era when the threadbare charm of low-budget genre movies has largely been forsaken for indie calling cards and straight-to-video schlock. Regardless of the quality of Campbell's directorial bow (not available for preview), Sunday's screening should be a love-fest; Campbell is unfailingly generous to his fans, and they return the favor by buying every Evil Dead DVD. The Campbell-insatiable can double their pleasure with his talk at Rutgers-Camden's Campus Center scheduled for 8 p.m.

April Fool's on Turner Classic Movies Comedy fans should stock up on tapes, clear their TiVos, or simply prepare to stay home: TCM kicks off a month of classic comedies with an 18 1/2-hour Laurel and Hardy marathon on April 1, following up on April 4 with a triple bill of Charley Chase, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Harold Lloyd, underrated silent comedians who continue to be underrepresented on DVD (though plans are afoot for a Lloyd revival). Aficionados of Buster Keaton will want to check out both TCM's April 11 marathon and this Friday's World Café Live bill, where Cambridge cabaret combo Boister will perform their original score to Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. (projected video, natch).

Misc. Picks No sooner does Screenpicks carp about the Philadelphia Museum of Art showing Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge D'or on video than I-House announces a screening of both, the latter in a 35 mm restoration. As Jack Palance used to say, "Coincidence … or something more?" (Thu., 7 p.m.) Phoenixville's Colonial kicks off three Sunday screenings of Sergio Leone classics with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sun., 2 p.m.). A Fistful of Dollars follows on the 17th, and Once Upon a Time in the West on the 24th. Either a camp classic (according to most) or a slandered masterpiece (according to Guy Maddin), Victor Sjöström's The Wind has Lillian Gish fighting the elements one gust at a time (Sun., midnight, TCM).