BOOK EXCERPT: MISSING REELS by Farran Smith Nehme

Was it really so long ago that the blogosphere sought social cohesion through the early practice of padding blogrolls with favorite bloggers? High on every aspiring blogger's wish list was the "Self-Styled Siren" Farran Smith Nehme, a classic film enthusiast who launched her website, Self-Styled Siren in 2005, focusing on cinema's golden age, particularly the 1930s-1960s. Her frothy—and undeniably informed—pieces on film rapidly earned her a coterie of high-profile fans and praises from Film Comment as one of the top ten film blogs on the internet. As her blog's readership soared, Nehme began writing film reviews for The New York Post, The Baffler, The New York Times, Barron's Magazine, Cineaste Magazine, and Moving Image Source.

Now, in Missing Reels—her wholly delightful and cinematic debut novel forthcoming on November 12, 2014 from The Overlook Press—Farran Smith Nehme's extraordinary talent in film criticism, 1980's New York City and the grand Hollywood romances of yesteryear play off of one another seamlessly, creating an irresistible glimpse into two long lost worlds.

Missing Reels follows a young, starry-eyed Ceinwen Reilly as she moves from Yazoo City, Mississippi to the gritty world of New York City in the late 1980's. While her job and Avenue C walk-up apartment don't exactly exude glamour, Ceinwen will always have old movies and silent films to transport her to a world of smoldering heroes and glitzy galas. But the balance is upset when Matthew, a charming British math professor, waltzes into her life and a classic film-fueled romance is sparked.

While frequenting repertory cinemas and trying to look as much like Jean Harlow as possible, Ceinwen discovers that her elderly downstairs neighbor may have starred in a long-lost silent film. Trouble is her neighbor Miriam refuses to say a word about it. Soon enough, Ceinwen embarks on an epic search for the missing reels—with the bumbling, awkward, and impossibly dreamy Matthew by her side—hoping to leave her mark as a movie archivist ingénue. Together they uncover the mesmerizing, albeit bizarre, New York City silent-film underworld and encounter a slew of quirky characters along the way.

Photo: Gary Spector

Nehme's extensive knowledge of golden age cinema pops up throughout Missing Reels and technical lore of nitrate print storage and the unsung masters of film abounds. The novel's nimble pacing makes Nehme's debut an addictive read and lets it rest perfectly in tune with the spellbinding Hollywood romantic comedies of the past. Missing Reels is a witty battlefield of romantic misadventures and snappy dialogue all set in the perfectly captured world of 1980's New York City.

Advance praise for Nehme's debut novel has been considerable. Vanity Fair columnist and author of Critical Mass, James Wolcott writes: "Not since Woody Allen's romping comedy Manhattan Murder Mystery has a romantic ode to New York moved with this much buoyant speed, flirty banter, frizzy sophistication, and zigzagging zeal—the zeal of amateur bloodhounds on a mission. Missing Reels, the impossible-to-resist debut novel of film blogger and critic Farran Smith Nehme is infused with the love of a time and a place and impelled by the flickering spell of cinema past, the golems and ghosts of classic Hollywood."

Dan Callahan, author of Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, adds: "Missing Reels is as funny and satisfying as a classic Hollywood romantic comedy and as absorbing as the most intricately plotted detective story. It is also an intensely loving, convincingly detailed, elegantly shaped, and thoroughly knowledgeable tribute to the glory and heartache of working in the movies and being a hardcore movie fan, written by one of the best writers on the movies that we have ever had."

And from Mark Harris, author of Five Came Back: "With the same combination of passion, precision and generosity that she brings to her film criticism, Farran Smith Nehme has crafted a lovely, witty and empathetic novel that effortlessly captures New York City in the late 1980s, a moment when being obsessed with movies took—and rewarded—a bit of legwork."

The following excerpt will reveal a crisp cinephilic wit that interrupts the social discourse of a dinner party with parenthetical irony and wry irritation; a charming screwball comedy as irresistible and energetic as the grand Hollywood romances that inspired it and one which—as Kirkus Review states it—"Katherine Hepburn would admire. Simply grand; this tale begs to be filmed."

My thanks to Josie Urwin of The Overlook Press for permission to excerpt from Missing Reels. Copyright © 2014 by Farran Smith Nehme. Published in 2014 by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Support your local bookstore, or buy the book through IndieBound, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

* * *

And there he was, Professor Andrew Evans, purchaser of Harry's movies, a man so strange he stood out amongst mathematicians. He was dressed soberly in chinos and a v-neck sweater over a shirt, and he wasn't scratching or talking to himself, but this was clearly a weird dude. His hair was down to just above his shoulders, a wiry mix of brown and gray, and his hairline crawled patchily back on his skull. His ears were so big they stuck out through the frizz.

He also appeared to be slightly pop-eyed, but it was hard to tell. Because Andy was staring at her. From time to time a man his age stared at her in the store, but not quite like this. She realized he had moved to shake hands.

"Andrew Evans," he said, in a weedy little voice. She hated thin, high voices in men.

"Ceinwen Reilly," she said. His hand was cold and slightly damp. She had it. The Gold Rush.

"So, how do you know Paru?"

The Little Tramp, she recalled, was in the mountains, snowed in by a blizzard. And his starving companion kept staring and staring, until he began to hallucinate that the Tramp was a giant chicken.

"I'm a friend of Matthew Hill," she told him. Any minute now Andy was going to grab a knife and fork and lunge for her throat. He was certainly looking in that vicinity. No, lower. She pulled the shoulder of her dress back into place.

"Matthew. Yes. I know him. He hasn't been here long. How did you two meet?"

Another social occasion, another lie she hadn't thought to prepare. "I work in the neighborhood and we met . . . around," she said. "We got to talking about old movies and then he wanted me to meet Harry."

"Talking about old movies. That's something of a surprise. I thought he only cared about new releases." His speaking manner was bizarre too, fast, pause, fast, pause, like a cabbie rushing to the next stoplight, then tapping the brakes.

"Maybe he was afraid to bring it up with you. Harry says you're something of an expert on silent movies."

"Afraid. Matthew." Obviously her lying was as polished as ever. Andy repeated her words like she'd told him Matthew had been wearing a toga.

"You know how the English are," she said. "Never want to reveal any kind of ignorance."

"I can't say that's been my observation." Pause. "On the contrary, I find the English are always pretending ignorance, in hopes of gaining some sort of tactical advantage." All righty then. Not exactly president of the fan club. "But I think it's fair to say the silent cinema is something of a passion of mine. Do you know anything about silents?"

"A bit."

He wasn’t waiting for a response. ". . . Because you remind me of a silent star, a great one. Vilma Banky. Do you know her?" Becauseyouremindmeofasilentstaragreatone pause. VilmaBankydoyouknowher? pause.

"The name's familiar."

Her input was wholly unnecessary. "She was discovered by Samuel Goldwyn and made a number of high-quality productions in the 1920s. Her acting skills were not inconsiderable, but she was famed primarily as a beauty. She was promoted as the Hungarian Rhapsody."

A no-talent sex symbol. Was this a good place to say thank you? Evidently not, Andy was still going, and while she was dithering she'd missed the tour of Banky's filmography. ". . . with Valentino, and The Winning of Barbara Worth, directed by Henry King. When sound came in she had difficulties, however. The accent, and she also had a bad case of what they called mike fright. So she retired. Luckily she'd taken good care of her finances, and she was happily married to an actor named . . ."

And here was another thing about Andy. He was a major space invader. As he talked, he inched closer. "But, like a lot of silent stars, more than half her movies are lost." She took a step back. "I hope you don't think it's too forward of me to mention the resemblance."

"Not at all. I'll have to look her up when I get home. But it's probably just the dress."

"That is a very unusual dress. Quite authentic.:

"It should be, it's from the twenties." Where was Matthew?

"So you have an affinity for the silent era."

"You could say that." Another step back.

"That's wonderful, just wonderful in a person your age. Have you seen many movies from the period?:

"Sure," she began. "I saw The Crowd at Theatre 80. With Matthew. He liked it too."

"Theatre 80? Oh no, not there! You couldn't possibly have appreciated it there. Rear projection, 16-millimeter, it’s horrendous. And the projection speed of course is all wrong."

She'd hoped throwing Matthew back into the conversation might discourage Andy, but instead she had opened the taps. Projection speed, it seemed, was the key to proper enjoyment of silent movies. Andy knew all about projection speed. The silent cameras were operated with a handcrank and the speeds varied, but projection often didn't. Sometimes it was too fast, and they were screened at sound-movie speeds of 24 frames per second in clips on television, making everything look like the Keystone Kops. But at Theatre 80 the speeds were a hair too slow. If you showed a silent movie at 16 frames per second . . . Where the hell was Matthew? She couldn’t see him anywhere . . . 18 frames per second, but Theatre 80 was slower than that, and it killed the . . . something. Undercranking. Overcranking. Adjusting to the rhythm of music played on the set during filming. It was all probably very important, but that voice, and those eyes, and how could anyone who cared so much about projection speed not have any notion of the speed of his own sentences?

Suddenly Matthew was at her elbow, and Andy wasn't noticing: ". . . and I tried to talk to the Theatre 80 management, but they really don't care that much about silents, so . . ."

"Forgive me," said Matthew, "but it seems we're going in for dinner. How are you, Andy."

"I'm well. Thank you." Ceinwen imagined Andy watching The Crowd at 24 frames per second. He’d eye the screen the same way he was eyeing Matthew.

"We should go find a seat," said Matthew. "You don't mind if I just borrow her for the duration, do you? I’m sure she'll be happy to go back later to, what was it?"

"Film-projection speeds," she said.

"That's right," said Andy.

"Ah. Sorry I missed that." Matthew made a little after-you gesture and she followed, relieved that Andy was still nursing his drink.

"Where have you been?" she whispered.

"Over by the door, talking to Paru and watching Andy back you up across the room."

"My hero."

"Do you realize you started there"—he stopped to indicate a spot at one end of the bookshelf—"and wound up there?" He pointed to a spot about eight feet away, near the window.

"He kept stepping toward me. Doesn't he realize New Yorkers need their space?:

"New Yorkers need their space. You need Yankee Stadium." He pushed her dress back onto her shoulder. "Have a heart. Andy probably dreams of cozy chats with young Mary Pickford. And there you were, in that dress, with that hair. The answer to his prayers."

"Shows how much you know. He said I reminded him of Vilma Banky." They were keeping their voices low as the others filed into the dining room behind them.

"Who?" He was pulling out her chair.

"Vilma Banky. Silent movies. A sex symbol. They called her the Hungarian Rhapsody."

He let go of the chair and coughed for a second, then resumed pushing her in. "Smooth-talking devil, that Andy."

Harry blasted into the room with greetings for both of them, and he and Donna settled directly across the table. Ceinwen spotted Yoshi sitting way down at the opposite end and reminded herself Donna had said it was nothing personal. She heard Matthew say, "Looking for something?" He was addressing Andy, who was hovering nearby.

"Just trying to find a seat." Andy sounded almost plaintive.

"You're in luck," beamed Matthew. "One right here." He pointed to the empty chair next to hers. Andy quickly leaned past Harry to plunk his glass down at the spot, like he was saving a seat at the theater. Harry's eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. Donna took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

Ceinwen had come to realize that Matthew had an extremely overdeveloped sense of mischief.

Still, things seemed to go all right at first, everyone passing plates and commenting on the food and Donna exclaiming over the cleverness of Radha putting garam masala in the stuffing. They talked about Paris and what it was like in February and whether there were any good exhibits at the moment. That led to Parisian moviegoing, which led to the Cinémathèque Française, which led back to silent movies, at which point Matthew asked someone to pass the wine.

She told Harry that the bad part of his silent-movie books was reading about a movie that sounded great, only to find out it didn't exist anymore. Four Devils, for instance, or London After Midnight.

"The studios never thought they had any value," growled Harry. "That's what happens when you let raw capitalism determine which art survives."

"I don't disagree with that," said Andy. "But I do think it helps to put things in a broader perspective."

"What kind of broader perspective do you have in mind?" Harry said this way too calmly.

"Lost movies appeal to our sense of doomed artistry," said Andy. It was safer to have him sitting down, thought Ceinwen, though there was still an awful lot of leaning. "The movies in your head are always much better than the movies you sit down to see. We build up heroic concepts of certain directors. Then, when their work is lost, we imagine what we're missing as even better than the movies we have. In that sense, we need lost movies. They fortify our Romantic ideal of cinema, that's cap-R Romantic of course."

She was stymied. How did you find a polite way to say, "That’s just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard"?

"Postmodern poppycock," exploded Harry, pounding the consonants so hard a tiny bit of spit flew in the air.

"It isn't postmodernism, Harry. It's—"

"Rubbish. Nonsense. Have you been sneaking over to the humanities building?" Any minute now, Harry’s finger would be launched at Andy's chest. "I'm not F. W. Murnau, I'm not Tod Browning, I'm not interested in my own puny concept of what they'd have done. I want to see those movies. I don't want to get my kicks imagining little scenes with Janet Gaynor."

"You’re avoiding the question of—"

"And furthermore"—there went the finger, only it was pointing between Andy's eyes—"I do know what happens when some slob tries to reimagine a great movie. I know because I get to sit through the last twenty minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons and see just how Robert Wise stacks up against Orson Welles."

"Magnificent Ambersons," said Andy, who'd been trying to break in, "is a completely different instance, but now that you mention it, Harry, it actually supports my case. That's a movie where we have fragments of the director's vision. When you can see part of a movie, your imagination naturally fills the gaps. Your interpretation of what it would have been like becomes your experience of seeing it."

"Reader-response theory," said Matthew. "You have been playing with the humanities boys, haven't you."

Harry's eyebrows were about to meet his cheekbones. "You've been unfaithful to us, Andy," he intoned.

"Sneaking off at lunch," said Matthew.

"Discussing Barthes at secluded tables in dark little restaurants."

"Meeting Stanley Fish at the Washington Square Hotel."

Andy's hair was vibrating. "It isn't my fault you need a certain vocabulary when discussing the arts."

Ceinwen wasn't crazy about Andy, but she was even less fond of seeing someone ganged up on. "You have to study the arts like anything else," she heard herself say. Her reward was Andy's hand giving her bare shoulder a pat. She pulled her dress back up and caught Matthew leaning a bit closer.

"That's right," said Andy. "We aren't superior to artists—"

"That’s exactly what I'm saying."

"And if you'd let me finish, I was going to say that we also need theorists to illuminate what the artist is trying to do. And my original point about lost films isn't—"

"I don't need their stinkin' theories," boomed Harry.

"Treasure of the Sierra Madre," said Matthew, like he'd hit the buzzer on Jeopardy!. Andy looked stunned. So did everyone else. As they digested the fact that Matthew had referenced a movie made before Watergate, he spoke across Ceinwen, addressing Andy with the air of a patient tutor. "The Mexican bandits, pretending to be officers? Bogart asks to see their badges, and the leader says, 'We don't need no stinkin' badges.' "

Harry's glass went up in a silent toast.

"I know the scene," said Andy. "I didn't realize you were a John Huston fan."

"I'm not." Matthew gave Andy a big smile. "That's Ceinwen."

"I thought maybe Anna took you to see it." She winced. Good grief, who knew professors were this catty. Vintage Visions was more collegial.

"Everybody," said Matthew evenly, "needs a good movie friend."

"I agree," said Donna. "Who wants to go to the movies by yourself?"

Donna then changed the subject, with no attempt at a smooth transition, to Reagan. Politics, apparently, was a much safer subject with academics. Everyone was on the same side.

The party broke up quickly, although Harry and Donna hung back. They took the 1 train at 116th Street. It was cold on the platform, and when they sat down Ceinwen put her feet on the heater underneath the seat. The car was almost empty, just two tired men in down jackets and an old lady in a plaid coat, Bible open in her lap, eyes darting around behind thick-lensed glasses. As soon as the train pulled out she began to speak.

"And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth . . ."

"Wish she'd shut hers," muttered Ceinwen.

Matthew didn't turn. "Done to death, I agree."

". . . blessed are the meek . . ."

"Maybe she takes requests," said Ceinwen.

"Go on, ask her for Ecclesiastes."

"Ask her yourself, you're dressed for it. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

"Oh, go to hell."

"There's an idea. Revelations. And upon her forehead was a name written . . ."

"Don't you dare."

"Mystery, Vilma Banky the Great. What did you think I was going to say?"

"I'll never hear the end of Vilma. Will I."

"I'm just jealous." She caught herself before the grin spread. "It would take me days to think of a chat-up line that good. I'd have compared you with that woman in the Marx Brothers movie we saw last week."

"Thelma Todd?" She was the only blonde.

"No, the other half of the bill." She shook her head. "The one who hung around Groucho. Similar taste in dresses."

"What?!?"

"Although I can't help but point out, she had a tiara. Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more—ouch! You brat, that hurt!" She pulled her foot back. "All right, all right, not her."

"Ye are the salt of the earth . . ."  The woman was getting louder.

Matthew moved closer and pushed her hair back, sucking in one cheek as he studied her face. "Maybe Ginger."

"Rogers? I'll take that."

"Gilligan's Island, although the hair—" He put his hand on her knee before she could swing her foot again and they started kissing. After a minute she noticed the subway car had fallen silent and then she heard a shuffling.

They turned their heads to see the Bible lady open the connecting door to change cars. They grinned at each other and kept necking all the way to Christopher Street.

3RD I 2014—Frako Loden Previews the Lineup

We here in northern California hardly get a breath! We're barely recovering from the big autumn upheavals—a victorious World Series, Halloween / Day of the Dead festivities and mid-term elections—when the 3rd i South Asian Film Festival (3rd i) [Facebook] arrives to fill a long weekend in early November in San Francisco and mid-November in Palo Alto. Fill with what? With the best in narrative features, documentaries and shorts from South Asian countries (mainly India and Pakistan) and their vast diasporic tentacles into other lands. I don't mean to sound ominous with the octopus metaphor, because these animals are smart, daring, resourceful and creative—qualities that make diaspora happen and drive some of the most globally interesting films coming out today. 3rd i's programmers, led by Ivan Jaigirdar and Anuj Vaidya, can be trusted to find these films and make them available to us. There's rarely a bad film in the bunch, and it's been that way for 11 years.

Unlike other years, I could screen only some of the offerings this time. So this review reflects my preference for documentaries and melodramas. For those keeping track, I watched nearly everything on Vimeo.

I'm very sorry to be missing Mughal-e-Azam: Ruminations on a Classic Spectacle [IMDb / Wikipedia], a presentation by tabla artist / educator Robin Sukhadia on the influence of K. Asif's phantasmagoric 1960 musical tale of tragic romance between a poor dancing girl and Mughal crown prince Salim, son of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. (Nov. 9, 1:00PM, New People Cinema, San Francisco)

Stand Up Planet: The Documentary (USA: David Munro, 2014) is a fast-moving, upbeat visit to Mumbai and Johannesburg as Indian-American comedian Hasan Minhaj looks for a standup comic from each city to invite back to Los Angeles' Laugh Factory. Minhaj himself has just been added to the fake-news staff of The Daily Show and is a winning ambassador to India and South Africa, two countries that are enjoying a standup-comedy boom. Minhaj imagines all those comics "killing it in places I never imagined. Who are the Pryors and the Carlins of this new global comic spring? What truth bombs are they dropping?" See this and find out. (Nov. 9, 7:30PM, New People Cinema, SF)

One documentary took its time to win me over, but when it did I found it uncommonly moving. The title of The Auction House: A Tale of Two Brothers (UK / India: Edward Owles, 2014) alludes, of course, to A Tale of Two Cities, which it also is—only this time it's London and Calcutta. Two brothers from Calcutta, their late father the owner of the oldest auction house in India, have lived very different lives. Elder brother Anwer has lived and worked in London since 1969, while younger brother Arshad has stayed in Calcutta and taken over the family business. After 40 years Anwer returns, intending to transform the faltering, obsolescent Russell Exchange into a 21st-century concern comparable to Sotheby's and Christie's.

This setup has more than a whiff of a reality show, but the film ultimately isn't interested in simplistic personality conflicts or staged confrontations. The material objects (e.g., a very large whip) are not as fascinating as the brothers' attitudes toward their worth and saleability, and ultimately toward each other. Diaspora has shaped their experience but perhaps not their fate, and their shouting matches evolve into a slow, grudgingly respectful brother love. Nothing I've said indicates how hilarious this film is, and it doesn't need the overbearing musical choices that signal "funny" a little too often. (Nov. 15, 6:30PM, CineArts at Palo Alto Square)

Even funnier is another film about siblings, the Opening Night entry Meet the Patels (USA: Ravi & Geeta Patel, 2014). Unfortunately, tickets—even a rush line—are no longer available at the festival, but the film's ITVS / CAAM pedigree promises future Bay Area screenings. This documentary proposes that if the very Americanized Ravi, pushing 30 and panicking after a breakup with his white girlfriend Audrey, can't find a marriage prospect on his own, he should give himself up to his eager immigrant parents to find him a match. After all, his mother is a traditional matchmaker who feels humiliated that her own children remain unmarried.

So Ravi, tracked by his sardonic filmmaker sister Geeta, hands over his "biodata" to his parents for the traditional marriage resume and travels from city to city meeting up with candidates. Meanwhile we get a fascinating social studies lesson about the Patels, a working-class Gujarati clan famous for owning 7-11s and motels in the American diaspora. A glitch shut down my online screener at one hour, so I didn't get to see the full running time. But it's the mark of an excellent documentary that I couldn't predict how it would end, having set up such a complicated and nonstereotypical—and completely hilarious—situation. (Nov. 6, 7:15PM, New People Cinema, San Francisco)

And now to fiction films. The two that I saw qualify as thrillers, maintaining high levels of tension throughout their melodramatic family-themed frames. Dukhtar (aka Daughter) (Pakistan / USA / Norway: Afia Nathaniel, 2014), Pakistan's official entry for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars®, follows a mother who hits the road with her underage daughter, unwilling to let the little girl be married off to an enemy tribal chieftain to settle a vendetta between warring clans. Humiliated, the jilted fiancé orders a manhunt. There are elements that make the social-justice theme a poor fit with the thriller genre, such as improbable saviors and coincidences. But it's still an enjoyable experience with an indomitable heroine and fabulous panoramas of mountainous Pakistan. (Nov. 8, 6:00PM, Castro Theatre, San Francisco)

Titli (India: Kanu Behl, 2014) is an entirely more hard-edged melodrama, protecting its sentiment with a scarred narrative skin. Sad-eyed, scruffy Titli is the youngest of a Delhi trio of brothers who make a living at carjacking. Just as Titli is trying to break out of the crime family with a parking contract for an unfinished shopping complex, his brothers figure a new wife for Titli will kill two birds with one stone: keep him leashed to the family and bring in a new female carjacking accomplice. When Titli discovers that his desperate but strong-willed fiancée has her own plans, they strike a bizarre bargain that steers this film into noir territory. Director Behl co-wrote and assisted director Dibakar Banerjee in the latter's ground-breaking Love Sex aur Dhokha (3rd i 2010). Titli is set to be released in India at the end of this year. See it from the diaspora! (Nov. 7, 9:15PM, New People Cinema, San Francisco)

 

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959)—Review by David Robson

It rises back up, like a ghost. Appropriate that the movie is being re-released to theatres on Halloween, a perfect date for a movie as haunted as Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Alain Resnais' landmark film (from a script by novelist Marguerite Duras) was considered by some the first truly modern movie of the sound era. Originally commissioned to create a documentary on the atomic bomb, Resnais opted to instead confront the subject's weighty history through fiction. (He had earlier captured some of the anguish of the Holocaust in his poetic, terrifying short documentary Night and Fog, and some of that movie's strategies are deployed in Hiroshima).

The movie's unsettling first reel takes in sights, footage, and artifacts from a museum erected in Hiroshima to commemorate the bombing. Over this harrowing travelogue we hear a conversation between two people, whom we figure out are a French woman (Emmanuelle Riva), who is confronting the horrors of what happened at Hiroshima, and a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) who gently but implacably insists that she has seen nothing. The movie then seems to switch its focus on the affair between these two figures, a French actress in town to shoot a historical war drama and a Japanese architect who has his own memories of the war.

Both are married with children. Both are scarred by their experiences during the real war. Both are defined by that pain, and to a degree isolated by it. And so the story never really loses its initial focus on the horrors of Hiroshima; Duras and Resnais artfully speak to the unknowability of such horrors by juxtaposing it with the unknowability of a foreign lover. Duras cannily uses the enormity of the pain embedded deep within Hiroshima to outweigh the immorality of her characters' affair, allowing us perhaps to engage their affair at a remove. This remove lets us empathize more deeply with their longing for one another, joining us to them at the heart. Too many movies about similar subjects attempt to make us see them through their characters' eyes; Resnais, Duras, Riva, and Okada instead let us truly feel the pain, the weight of history.

And so this intriguing, compelling, often confounding, and ultimately timeless motion picture has been caught in another moment it couldn't have anticipated. It feels necessary to mention that this iconic film has been resurrected in a new digital print. At least one critic I know who has seen it lamented yet another classic movie released in a new, bad DCP. And yet he quickly pointed out that few seemed to understand what a bad DCP was, confessing that the distinction often eluded him as well. From my own perspective I recall seeing many worse digital prints of more recent movies. I recall that Hiroshima's still images were crisply rendered, with some of the movement within those images a bit blurred, pixilated (as is sometimes the case with new digital transfers). And yet I recall nothing about the visual presentation keeping me from being absorbed in the movie. Indeed, I noticed immediately that the movie sounds absolutely stellar, with the digital wash bringing a gorgeous clarity to the accumulated music of Duras' dialogue, Riva and Okada's voices, Giovanni Fusco's score (a piano piece in the film's aching final third struck me as one of the loveliest pieces of music I've ever heard in a movie). In a movie that puts so much weight on its music and sound design, the clarity this DCP brings to those aspects should not be overlooked in a perhaps knee-jerk movement to condemn its medium.

It is entirely possible that the new format, and the potential ubiquity it offers Hiroshima Mon Amour, will put it before the eyes of a larger, younger audience not as invested in issues surrounding the ongoing film-vs.-digital debate. I don't doubt someone will suggest that the movie's new format will add a layer of obfuscation to the issues already permeating the movie of capturing that which is unfilmable, be it the terrifying reality of nuclear war or the deep, singular pain carried by all of us. I'm hoping that the re-release will allow a new audience to discover the movie; to be carried into its mysteries, and see its own pain, longing, and identity reflecting back, as always, from this still-singular movie.

Hiroshima Mon Amour opens Friday, October 31, 2014, at the Vogue Theatre, 3290 Sacramento St., S.F. (415) 346-2288. David Robson holds a degree in theatre from the University of Virginia. He is the editorial director at Jaman, a website that offers a smarter search for new movies to watch on line. David blogs irregularly at the House of Sparrows, but is often too busy seeing movies to write about them.

THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT: FRENCH FILM NOIR, 1946-1964

Everyone knows that the French (specifically, journalist Nino Frank) coined the term film noir. But not everyone knows just how immersed the French became in the production of their own films noirs in the years following World War II.

With that in mind, and noting the rising awareness that film noir was (and is) an international phenomenon, legendary programmer Elliot Lavine has teamed up with Midcentury Productions Executive Director Don Malcolm to assemble a twelve film, four day mini-extravaganza that will take audiences at the Roxie Theatre on a twisted, feverish journey into the heart of Gallic darkness. San Francisco audiences who had their appetites whetted for foreign noir earlier in 2014 can do no better than to congregate at the Roxie from November 14-17 to discover the hidden treasures of French film noir that this landmark series will unearth for them.

The festival will feature familiar international stars—Jean Gabin, Brigitte Bardot, Simone Signoret, Lino Ventura—but will place them in the context of lurid ménages and murderous deceits that have been given a uniquely French twist. It will also probe deeply into the reservoir of actors and directors whose work in France during this time frame has been unjustly neglected for the past half-century.

"It seems that the Nouvelle Vague, which revered film noir, ironically managed to push much of the French film noir movement that preceded it into the shadows," Malcolm notes. "Only a handful of these films have resurfaced in America thus far—Rififi, The Wages of Fear, Bob Le Flambeur, Grisbi, to name a few—but that's just the tip of the iceberg."

"By the time this festival ends," Lavine promises, "those who've seen these twelve films will realize just how well the French embraced the noir style—and they won't be able to stop talking about the sexy, scheming blondes who dominate the action."

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 379. Photo Sam Lévin

It's not just Bardot, who'll be seen twice—as the leggy streetwalker opposite Jean Gabin in En Case De Malheur (aka Love Is My Profession) and as the murder-trial defendant in Henri-Georges Cluozot's social problem thriller La Verité. The bevy of blonde French bombshells bubbling under Bardot is incredible.

"Mylene Demongeot, Marina Vlady, Odile Versois, Barbara Laage, and Cecile Aubry are simply astonishing," Malcolm enthuses. "The French bring a fully adult dimension to their conception of the femme fatale, and these performances prove that in spades!" But even the non-blondes—the legendary Simone Signoret in Dédée D'Anvers, Daniele Delorme in Voici Les Temps Des Assassins (aka Deadlier Than the Male) and Catherine Rouvel in Chair de Poule (aka Highway Pickup)—will leave audiences breathless.

"We are going to have to hold a contest to see who the audience considers to be the nastiest of all the bad girls," Lavine grins. "It will be a very tough choice!"

In addition to reviving lesser-known works by master directors (Henri-Georges Clouzot, Julien Duvivier), lesser-known but equally worthy directors who excelled in French noir (Rene Clement, Claude Autant-Lara, Yves Allegret, Henri Verneuil, Robert Hossein, Eduoard Molinaro) will also be showcased. But the most incendiary double bill, concluding the festival on Monday night, November 17, showcases two of France's most legendary midcentury literary figures—two writers who could not be further apart: Jean-Paul Sartre and Boris Vian. Sartre's play La Putain Respectuese and Vian's novel I Spit On Your Graves both tackle the still-controversial subject of American racism, and the on-screen results are electrifying.

"Boris Vian is the embodiment of French film noir in all its glory and its excess," Lavine notes. "He was the first person to embrace the idea. I Spit On Your Graves, which appeared in 1946 just as the term film noir was being coined, fuses pulp fiction and social commentary in a unique way that is still controversial and disturbing today."

"And Vian literally died for that idea of noir," Malcolm adds. "He fought director Michel Gast throughout the production of the film version, and at the premiere of I Spit On Your Graves, he stood up after the first ten minutes, cursing the screen. After a moment or two of vitriol, he suddenly clutched his chest, collapsed—and died right on the spot!"

While Roxie patrons are encouraged not to follow in Vian's footsteps during the screening of "The French Had A Name For It," there's little doubt that they will be enraptured by the rediscovery of a new treasure trove of dark thrillers done only as the French could do it.

My thanks to Larsen Associates for this press release and credits to Donald Malcolm for the following program capsules.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 / TWO BY CLOUZOT

Manon (1949, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot)—In between the highly touted Quay des Orfevres (1947) and La Salaire de Peu (1952) the often-clinical Clouzot indulged his most fervid powers of lurid extrapolation with Manon, his deliriously dark reworking of the notorious Abbe Provost novel Manon Lescaut. Clouzot modernizes the tale of star-crossed Parisian lovers and transplants their escape location from eighteenth-century New Orleans to post-WWII Palestine to wondrous visual effect (courtesy of long-time Clouzot cinematographer Armand Thirard). Baby-faced Cecile Aubry sets the tone and look for a series of blond bombshells that will prove popular in French noir of the fifties. With Michel Auclair and Serge Reggiani. (100 min.)

La Verité (1960, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot)—The emergence of Brigitte Bardot signaled a sea change in how sexuality was depicted on screen, and her superstardom provoked a firestorm of controversy and backlash. La Verité traded on that notoriety and placed itself squarely in the middle of the French culture wars, with Bardot literally and figuratively "on trial" for her lack of decorum. Flashbacks ignite the sordid tale of her character's misplaced love for a narcissistic composer (Sami Frey) and become the basis of a furious courtroom battle when she is charged with his murder. With Paul Merisse and Charles Vanel as the bickering barristers. (122 min.)





SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 / SALUTE TO HENRI VIDAL (matinee)

Les Maudits (1947, dir. Rene Clement)—Henri Vidal (1919-1959) was too handsome for his own good—his early promise as a successor for Jean Gabin was sidetracked by his success in early sword-and-sandal-epics such as Fabiola (1949). Prior to that, however, he is at his best as the kidnapped doctor in Rene Clement's exceptionally tense Les Maudits, where the strangest of all possible bedfellows are trapped together in a submarine commandeered by a group of Nazis attempting to escape in the last days of WWII. Clement creates a series of interlocked, claustrophobic cat-and-mouse games that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Photographed by the great Henri Alekan (Beauty and the Beast, Such A Pretty Little Beach). With Florence Marly, Marcel Dalio, Michel Auclair, Anne Campion. (195 min.)

Une Manche Et La Belle aka A Kiss For A Killer (1957, dir. Henri Verneuil)—Director Verneuil, a Turkish expatriate best known for his helming of The Sicilian Clan (1959), is in top form here adapting a James Hadley Chase source novel (The Sucker Punch) into a well-modulated Gallic amalgam of Sunset Boulevard and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Vidal is the trophy husband of a rich dowager (Isa Miranda) who is slowly seduced into murdering her by his comely, cunning secretary (well-played by Bardot lookalike Mylene Demengeot). With crisp lenswork from esteemed French cinematographer Christian Matras (Grand Illusion, Le Ronde). (98 min.)



SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 / BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SEARCH FOR! (evening)

Toi Le Venin aka Blonde In A White Car (1958, dir. Robert Hossein)—Suavely deadpan Robert Hossein quickly became a force on both sides of the camera with his breakthrough film The Wicked Go to Hell (1955), which also introduced him to France's blondest minx, Marina Vlady (whom he would soon marry). Hossein's key collaborator in his noir phase (1955-64), however, was novelist Fredric Dard, considered by some to be France's answer to Raymond Chandler. Toi Le Venin, from Dard's novel of the same name, is a nasty little ménage a trois in which two sisters (Vlady and her real-life sister Odile Versios) lead Hossein down a primrose path littered with thorns. Featuring subtle, evocative photography from Robert Juillard (Germany Year Zero) and a cool, jazzy score from Hossein's father André. (92 min.)

Un Temoin Dans La Ville aka Witness In the City (dir. Eduard Molinaro, 1959)—France's greatest character lead in the 1960s and 70s, Lino Ventura, has his breakout role here, as a revenge murderer who finds that his "perfect crime" was witnessed by a cab driver and must try to eliminate him. As events unfold, Ventura finds that he is as much hunted as hunter. Stunning night photography from Henri Decae (Bob Le Flambeur, Elevator to the Gallows), and an evocative score featuring jazz greats Kenny Clarke and Kenny Dorham. (86 min.)







SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16 / THE HAZARDS OF STREETWALKING (matinee)

Dédée D'Anvers aka Woman of Antwerp (dir. Yves Allegret, 1948)—Bursting through the echoes of "poetic realism" contained within its narrative, Dédée D'Anvers showcases the emergence of Simone Signoret, a hooker with a hankering for a better life. The original French femme fatale, Signoret is both luminous and complex, presaging a series of follow-up performances in similarly-themed films over the next half-decade. With Bernard Blier, Marcello Pagliero, Jane Marken and Marcel Dalio. Evocatively photographed by Jean Bourgoin (Black Orpheus, Mr. Arkadin). (86 min.)

En Case De Malheur aka Love Is My Profession (dir. Claude Autant-Lara, 1958)—Gabin! Bardot! Oh-la-la (or, should we say, OMG)!! The trouble starts when Gabin, a distinguished lawyer, defends Bardot, a prostitute who has committed a robbery. He gets her off, and finds (to everyone's dismay, including his wife) that he gets off on her; she becomes his mistress. Alas, Gabin's efforts to "upscale" her are fraught with peril, for she has another lover, a handsome young student (Franco Interleghi), who slowly builds into a murderous rage. With Edwige Feuilliere. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon. (105 min.)




SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16 / SALUTE TO JULIEN DUVIVIER (evening)

Chair de Poule aka Highway Pickup (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1964)—Legendary director Duvivier (Pepe Le Moko, Le Fin du Jour, Panique) was nearing the end of his illustrious career, but he saved one of the best for last in Chair de Poule, in which the essence of noir's hard-boiled school is distilled in a taut tale of fate, lust and enveloping entrapment. Robert Hossein is at his astringent best as a thief on the lam who jumps from frying pan into the fire when he holes up at a highway truck stop where he's quickly embroiled in the grasping, malevolent schemes of a hard-bitten, voluptuous vixen (Catherine Rouvel) who will literally stop at nothing to get what she wants! With Jean Sorel, and Jacques Bertand. With photography from Leonce-Henri Burel, longtime right-hand man of Robert Bresson. (107 min).

Voici Les Temps Des Assassins aka Deadlier Than the Male (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1956)—While the other French femmes fatales are "hot," none of them approach the coiled ferocity of Daniele Delorme in Deadlier Than the Male. It's possible that no one in the history of cinema is as driven by the bitter recollection of her hardscrabble youth to a life of ruthless scheming—even Delorme herself, when interviewed, shrank from the implications within the character. American noir aficionados would do well to recall Angel Face and think of Delorme's work here as "Jean Simmons on steroids." Matching her step-for-step are Jean Gabin, the target of her desperate, malevolent scheming; Gabriele Fontan, as his cold-hearted mother; and Luciene Bogaert, as Delorme's drug-addicted mother. Featuring superb camerawork from Armand Thirard (Clouzot's right-hand man), Deadlier Than the Male is arguably the definitive French film noir. (107 min)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 / WHITES vs. BLACKS IN A BLACK-AND-WHITE WORLD

La P… Respectueuse (dir. Marcello Pagliero and Charles Brabant, 1952)—Barbara Laage was Orson Welles' first choice to play Elsa Bannister in The Lady From Shanghai. A viewing of La P… Respectueuse will show you what Welles saw in her … and then some! Her character, a down-on-her-luck singer, escapes the frying pan—New York City—only to land squarely in the fire—the racist, segregated South—where she witnesses a brutal race murder committed by a Senator's son. Only she can vouch for the black man who is being framed for the murder. Laage burns up the screen as she struggles to do the right thing against increasing odds. Co-directed by Marcello Pagliero (long-time right-hand man to neo-realist master Roberto Rossellini) from a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. (Full 92 min version.)

J'Irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes aka I Spit On Your Graves (dir. Michel Gast, 1959)—See the notorious film that literally killed the author of its source novel at its own premiere! Boris Vian's fever-dream novel of a light-skinner race-avenging psychopath had been the focus of intense controversy beginning with its publication in 1946, and the prospect of a film version brought the twelve-year contretemps squarely back into the public eye, with Vian and director Michel Gast trading barbs in the press as the movie went into production. Ten minutes into the initial screening on June 23, 1959, Vian rose from his seat, furiously denouncing the film—at which point, he clutched his chest and collapsed, suffering a fatal heart attack! He was only 39. I Spit On Your Graves features a fine jazz score composed by Alain Goraguer, which goes down smoothly amidst all the mayhem that ensues in Gast's crude but effective evocation of Vian's dark landscape. (109 min.)

#STUCK (2014)

It's easy to see why Stuart Acher's Stuck (2013) [Facebook] won the Audience Award at the 2013 edition of the Sun Valley Film Festival. And I'm delighted that it's enjoying a run at San Francisco's Roxie Theatre, with screenings continuing through October 16.  This vehicular narrative froths up its meet cute into a satisfying love story with a warm upbeat ending. It's an entertaining and honest romance from start to finish. Credit lies in the pacing, of course. Brisk tight editing with revelatory flashbacks inch us episodically forward through a drunken one-night stand and its comic aftermath. Two early morning strangers rush to escape each other and end up being stuck in traffic together long enough to let down their guard and discover each other; an exchange skillfully conveyed via charismatic turns from Acher's two lead actors: Joel David Moore (Avatar) and Madeline Zima (who doubles as Executive Producer). Zima and Moore, in fact, were recognized with a Special Jury Award for Acting at last year's Napa Valley Film Festival. Their chemistry shines with sensual dalliance and considerable wit. Moore's lanky charm sides up well to Zima's haughty beauty. Zima has described Stuck as "kind of like When Harry Met Sally, but stuck in a car and compacted, and then reversed."

Confining a narrative to the interior of a car would be hazardous with someone of less ingenuity than Acher. Not only does he break from "he said she said" witticisms with sweeping aerial shots of gridlocked traffic, but his camera every now and then casually explores various personalities in nearby cars who are similarly stuck. This wry social study recalled me to Julio Cortázar's 1966 story "The Southern Thruway", a compelling account of a traffic jam in the south of France that lasts for a couple of days (and on which Jean Luc Godard based his 1967 film Weekend). In his own deft style, Acher creates a microcosm of society by profiling a cluster of cars and their drivers stuck in L.A. freeway traffic.

Creating this microcosm proved to be a major challenge for an indie film shot in 10 days. Anticipating a "Carmageddon " when Interstate 405—the largest highway in America—was shut down for construction, Acher excitedly hired a helicopter to film footage of the gridlock only to encounter slight traffic, drivers having been sufficiently warned away by dire predictions of the worst traffic jams in L.A. history. Through CG plates and parking lot recreations, Acher was able to visualize the traffic jam he expected from the closure of 405, thereby creating the context for a young man and a young woman to put on the brakes, then start up all over again.

MVFF37 2014—David Robson: Four Preview Capsules

David Robson holds a degree in theatre from the University of Virginia. He is the editorial director at Jaman, a website that offers a smarter search for new movies to watch on line. David blogs irregularly at the House of Sparrows, but is often too busy seeing movies to write about them. The following quartet of preview capsules for the 37th edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival constitutes his debut appearance here on The Evening Class. We're delighted to have him aboard.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein (dir. Al Adamson, 1971)—Many Z-grade genre movies have achieved a certain notoriety thanks to an ironic "so bad it's good" approach taken by audiences in the last three decades. But schlock auteur Al Adamson's curious body of work provides a consistence of vision, the strident, bold ineptness of which renders it quite unlike any other. Divulging plot details on this super-low-budget horror flick would risk making it sound conventional, so why bother? Adamson's opus boasts veteran horror actors J. Carrol Naish (doing his damnedest to do right by the dialogue's stabs at philosophy) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (stuck, again, in the role of a homicidal manchild) with lesser-knowns like the beautifully-named Zandor Vorkov (a unique Dracula, from his silly 'fro to the echo effect on his voice), and everyone commits wholeheartedly. Which only makes the plot that much more bewildering. (Frequent Welles collaborator Gary Graver's cinematography makes every shot look like stock footage, which only enhances the movie's timelostness.) Even more hilarious is that this is one of MVFF's most expensive tickets, thanks, probably, to the presence of Metallica's lead guitarist (and horror devotee) Kirk Hammett, who will be on hand to introduce this screening. Though it's unclear if he selected Dracula vs. Frankenstein for inclusion in the festival, if he did, you might ask him why.

Clouds of Sils Maria (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2014)—Juliette Binoche is Maria, a famous international actress offered a role in a new production of the play that launched her career. But the offer is fraught with complications for Maria, as it would have her playing a different character opposite a young, difficult Hollywood talent (Chloë Grace Moretz) in Maria's career- and life-defining role. Maria retreats to the Swiss Alps where, accompanied by her patient assistant (Kristen Stewart, a revelation here), she contemplates the role, her difficult relationship with the writer who created it, and the very passage of time. Writer-director Olivier Assayas has made a career out of examining social shifts through the prism of the creative process; in his newest state-of-the-earth address every exchange is weighted but graceful, with half the movie spent watching Binoche and Stewart in and around the Alps, their conversation taking in life and art, high- and low-brow, age and youth, time and space. The total experience is never less than bracing, plus there's an interlude on a spaceship that might make you wish Marvel would let Assayas have a crack at one of their movies (OUR VOTE: a Dr. Strange sequel, introducing Moretz as Clea).

Two Days, One Night / Deux Jours, Une Nuit (dirs. Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, 2014)—Brittle family woman Sandra (Marion Cotillard) has just been voted off of her job at a solar factory. When her supervisor admits that the process behind the decision was stacked against her, it buys her a weekend to get her co-workers to consider changing their vote to let her stay, and in the process give up their badly-needed bonuses. The new movie from France's Dardenne Brothers balances neo-realistic, documentarian storytelling with a quest that often feels mythic. Cotillard is the first veteran actor to appear in a Dardenne movie, and she's absolutely believable every second she's on; we feel her anguish and shame in every encounter with every co-worker, urging her silently from our seats to just keep it together, even as her noticeably frayed nerves and prescription drug use threaten to shatter her for good. It's as suspenseful and tightly constructed as any thriller, and it's probably happening in your neighborhood right now. Gripping.

ALLoT (A Long List of Things) (dir. John Sanborn, 2014)—The films of New York-bred, Berkeley-based video artist John Sanborn have been a staple at MVFF, and this, his latest, is among his most personal. Sanborn's 40th high school class reunion prompted him to interview his classmates for a video memoir, and Sanborn edits their reflections into a mix of anecdote, poetic and cinematic digressions, self-interrogations (via Sanborn and surrogate selves, played by Thais Schwab and daughter Miranda Sanborn) and some straight-up confessions to create a vivid portrait of a shared past as "a place that never existed, but is remembered fondly." The results are an absorbing, even moving, mix, and even when Sanborn ditches the mosaic for a painful autobiographic reflection in the final third, one remains engaged. Central to Sanborn's memoir is the notion that we all begin in the same place, "handed the same script." Sanborn so gently mixes the personal with the universal that one inevitably sees one's own life within his screens.

MVFF37 2014—Michael Hawley Peruses the Line-Up

The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) arrives early each autumn, giving Bay Area cinephiles their first look at acclaimed new films from Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Toronto. I undoubtedly smiled when I saw that my two most anticipated movies of 2014, Xavier Dolan's Mommy and Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu, had made the cut for MVFF's 37th edition. And now thanks to a rare confluence of good movie karma—both are screening at a venue accessible by public transportation, both screen on my days off, and both had press comps available—it's for certain I'll be boarding that Golden Gate Transit bus to San Rafael once again.

Mommy and Timbuktu each competed in the main competition at Cannes this May, with the former winning the festival's Prix du Jury for Xavier Dolan, its 25-year-old, gay French-Canadian director. The judges decided he should share the prize with 83-year-old Jean-Luc Godard (for his new 3-D movie, Adieu au langage), and together they represented the youngest and oldest filmmakers in competition. Dolan, for those just tuning in, took Cannes by storm in 2009 with his debut film, I Killed My Mother, and has followed through with four more impressive features. While some consider him a fraud, Dolan's eye-catching, emotionally oversized dramas consistently hit my sweet spot. Timbuktu, the other film I'll be trekking to see, is the latest exercise in humanism from Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness, Bamako), whom many consider Africa's greatest living filmmaker. His new film is based on events that occurred in 2012, when the titular Malian city of legend was overrun by jihadists hell-bent on imposing sharia law. Timbuktu left Cannes with the festival's Ecumenical Jury Prize. Its lead actor, Ahmed Ibrahim, is expected to attend the film's MFVV screenings.

In addition to these two important works, MVFF37 has programmed five more selections from Cannes' 2014 main competition. The festival kicks off on opening night with Tommy Lee Jones' The Homesman, which screened in competition nine years after Jones' last neo-Western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, won him the festival's best actor prize. The Homesman co-stars Hilary Swank, who will participate in MVFF's opening night festivities. This year's best actor award went to the incomparable Timothy Spall, who portrays British Romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner in Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner. If you miss the film at MVFF, it'll be back in the Bay Area starting on Xmas Day. Based on true events and set in the world of Olympic wrestling, Foxcatcher is Bennett Miller's follow-up to 2011's Moneyball. The film, which stars Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo and a reportedly unrecognizable Steve Carell, garnered Bennett Cannes' 2014 best director prize. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night features Marion Cotillard as a factory worker who must convince co-workers to forego bonuses so that she might keep her job. While the film is that rare Dardenne Bros. joint to leave Cannes empty handed, Cotillard is being talked up as a serious Best Actress Oscar® contender. Rounding out MVFF37's impressive collection of Cannes competition titles is Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria, a reportedly challenging, meta-movie homage to the art of film acting, starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart.

From Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar, MVFF37 has scooped up two more prize-winners for its 2014 line-up. Sweden's satiric Force Majeure lampoons contemporary notions of masculinity and took home the sidebar's jury prize. It traces the repercussions faced by a husband and father after he initially abandons his family during a ski resort avalanche. Director Ruben Öslund's previous film was the excruciating (in a good way) bullying treatise Play, which I was lucky enough to catch at San Jose's Cinequest a few years back. The 2014 Un Certain Regard award for best actor went to Aboriginal icon David Gulpilil for his role as a man caught between two cultures in Rolf de Heer's Charlie's Country. Gulpilil is perhaps the world's most recognizable indigenous actor. Debuting at age 16 in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, he's carried on with a distinguished career in such Australian films as The Last Wave, Rabbit Proof Fence and de Heer's own The Tracker and Ten Canoes.

Cannes isn't the only festival from which MVFF has drawn prize-winners for its line-up. Haru Kuroki took home the best actress award at this year's Berlin Film Festival for her portrayal of a maid in an upper middle-class Tokyo home in Yôji Yamada's The Little House. Set in the years before and during WWII, it's Yamada's follow-up to Tokyo Family, his mostly unnecessary remake of Ozu's classic Tokyo Story, which played last year's fest. It's especially worth noting that The Little House will be the only movie at MVFF37 to be screened in 35mm. The winner of the coveted People's Choice Award at last month's Toronto Film Festival was The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as real-life WWII gay British code-breaker Alan Turing. The film is directed by Morten Tyldum, whose last effort was the memorable Norwegian genre thriller Headhunters. Also amongst the prize winners is Carlos Marques-Marcet's 10,000 Km. (aka Long Distance), a two-hander that explores the effects of technology on a long-distance relationship. 10,000 Km. won a SXSW special jury award and is one of nine features that make up ¡Viva el Cine!, a MVFF37 Focus on Spanish-language cinema.

October 1 was the official deadline for countries to submit their entries for the 87th Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Film competition. As would be expected, a number of MVFF entries are amongst the submissions. In addition to the aforementioned Mommy, Timbuktu and Two Days, One Night (representing Canada, Mauritania and Belgium respectively), five additional potential Oscar® nominees get their Bay Area premiere at MVFF37. Spain has submitted David Trueba's Living is Easy with Eyes Closed, in which a Beatles-obsessed high school teacher (Javier Cámara) strives to meet up with John Lennon during the 1966 filming of Richard Lester's How I Won the War. Trueba is the younger brother of veteran Spanish director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Calle 54). Dominik Graf's Beloved Sisters [no available link] is this year's entry from Germany, and focuses on a romantic triangle between 18th century poet Friedrich Schiller and two aristocratic sisters. Graf's last film to play the Bay Area was Beats Being Dead, the first chapter in the omnibus Dreileben trilogy. Ronit Elkabetz (Late Marriage, The Band's Visit) is my favorite Israeli actress and for the third time she stars in a film co-written and directed with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz. Gett: The Trial of Vivianne Amsalem premiered in Directors Fortnight at Cannes and details a woman's five-year ordeal trying to legally obtain a divorce in Israel. MVFF37 will also be screening the Oscar® submissions from Croatia (Cowboys) and Taiwan (Ice Poison).

MVFF is the Bay Area film festival where one is most likely to see movie stars and other notables walk the red carpet. In addition to Hilary Swank's appearance on opening night, this year's fest will play host to Laura Dern, Elle Fanning and newcomer Eddie Redmayne. Dern accompanies closing night film Wild, which co-stars Reese Witherspoon and is director Jean-Marc Vallée's follow-up to Dallas Buyers Club. Just as her sister Dakota did at last year's festival, Elle Fanning will be receiving a MVFF "Spotlight" treatment with a screening of her new film Low Down (opening in local cinemas on November 14). Also earning a MVFF37 "Spotlight" tribute is actor Eddie Redmayne, who's about to become a lot more famous with his starring role in the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire, Project Nim). Redmayne is probably best known to American audiences for the 2011 fantasy My Week with Marilyn and a little film called Les Miserables.

The musicians of rock band Metallica are this year's MVFF Artists in Residence and each band member will be on hand to personally introduce a movie they've selected. For example, guitarist Kirk Hammett has chosen Dracula vs. Frankenstein and singer James Hetfield has picked the Sergio Leone masterpiece The Good, the Bad and Ugly. Also hailing from the rock music world will be Moon Unit Zappa, who'll appear at screenings of a new documentary about her father Frank, Summer '82: When Zappa Came to Italy. Finally, Bay Area foodies won't want to miss the Special Screening of Soul of a Banquet, which will feature an on-stage conversation between director Wayne Wang, visionary Chinese chef/restaurateur Cecilia Chang (the film's subject), and local food icon Alice Waters.

While it would be impossible to touch upon the entire MVFF line-up—especially the enormous selection of worthy non-fiction films in its Valley of the Docs sidebar—here are four final entries I'm personally interested in. If you're a fan of New Zealanders Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi (Eagle vs. Shark, Boy), you probably won't want to miss their co-directed vampire spoof, What We Do in the Shadows. Scandinavian genre films seem to be all the rage these days. In Hans Petter Moland's In Order of Disappearance, a Norwegian snow plow driver (Stellan Skarsgard) seeks bloody revenge against a Serbian drug kingpin (Bruno Ganz). A new film from Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum) is always most welcome. His latest Diplomacy recounts the true story of the Swedish consul (André Dussollier) who convinced a German general (Niels Arestrup) not to destroy Paris in the closing days of WWII. The film will also open at Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinemas on October 24. Then there's Stéphane Lafleur's enigmatic-sounding, French-Canadian entry Tu dors, Nicole, which follows an aimless 22-year-old over the course of one summer. My interest is piqued based on Lafleur's Continental, a Film Without Guns, which played a San Francisco Film Society Quebec Film Week back in 2008. Lead actress Julianne Cote is expected to attend the screenings.

Cross-published at film-415.