Exploring film’s dark and lowdown past
THE Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, collaborated with director Tod Browning during the silent era on several uncompromising dark thrillers and horror films, including 1928’s “West of Zanzibar,” which screens tonight at the Silent Movie Theatre.
How’s this for disturbing: Based on the hit play “Kongo,” the story finds Chaney playing a English music hall magician named Phroso who is madly in love with his wife. But the feeling isn’t mutual, and she leaves him for an ivory trader named Crane (Lionel Barrymore). Crane ends up crippling Phroso when the two fight over his wife. A year later, his estranged wife and her baby daughter attempt to return to Phroso, but she dies before she reaches him. Phroso gets the baby, but assuming she’s actually Crane’s child, he takes her to live in the harsh jungles of Africa. Once the girl turns 18, he plans to force her into prostitution.
More Grindhouse
Among the highlights of the New Beverly Cinema’s Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007 is Friday and Saturday’s double bill of the 1975 action flicks “White Line Fever” and “Return to Macon County.”
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan (“The Accused”), “White Line” starred Jan-Michael Vincent as a Vietnam vet who returns home and takes over his dad’s trucking business. But it doesn’t take long for him to discover that the shippers are corrupt.
Nick Nolte earned his first film credit in “Return to Macon County,” about two country boys (Nolte and Don Johnson) who decide to drive their revved-up stock car to California to become champion racers.
Cons and connivers
The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre goes dark and moody for its eighth annual Festival of Noir, commencing next Thursday with Fred Zinnemann’s underrated 1948 thriller “Act of Violence,” starring a perfectly cast Robert Ryan as an emotionally and physically scarred World War II vet bent on revenge.
Also screening is the seminal 1948 film noir “Force of Evil,” starring a riveting John Garfield as a corrupt New York attorney working for a high-powered racketeer who attempts to reclaim his soul. Written and directed by Abraham Polonsky (who would later be blacklisted), the film also stars Thomas Gomez and Beatrice Pearson and features an operatic score by David Raksin.
Scheduled for April 13 is the taut little 1950 noir “Armored Car Robbery,” starring two-fisted tough guy Charles McGraw and directed by Richard Fleischer. Rounding out the bill is Robert Wise’s sharp 1959 robbery tale “Odds Against Tomorrow,” starring Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte, Ed Begley, Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame.
Jack Palance headlines 1955’s “The Big Knife,” screening April 14. Adapted from Clifford Odets’ play, “Knife” finds Palance as a matinee idol blackmailed by his corrupt studio boss (Rod Steiger) into signing a new contract. Robert Aldrich directed.
Corruption costars in the evening’s second feature, 1957’s sublimely cynical “Sweet Smell of Success.” Penned by Odets and Ernest Lehman and directed within an inch of its life by Alexander Mackendrick, the film stars Burt Lancaster as Walter Winchell-esque Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis as conniving ambitious press agent Sidney Falco. Elmer Bernstein supplied the pulsating jazz score.
Scheduled for April 15 is “Port of New York,” a 1949 rarity that marked Yul Brynner’s film debut as a drug racketeer. The second feature, “The Breaking Point,” is a terrific 1950 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not,” which is truer to Papa’s narrative than the better-known 1944 film version with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. John Garfield gives another exceptional performance as a struggling California skipper. Juano Hernandez, Patricia Neal and Phyllis Thaxter also star in this unjustly neglected gem directed by Michael Curtiz.
Paying homage
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s “The John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film,” next Thursday at the Linwood Dunn Theater, spotlights the career of Albert Maysles (“Salesman,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Grey Gardens”). Maysles will talk about his career and show clips from his work.
Curtis Hanson (“L.A. Confidential”) hosts UCLA Film and Television Archive’s “The Movie That Inspired Me” presentation on April 13. Hanson will talk with “Babel” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screen the Mexican filmmaker’s choice, Michael Haneke’s 2000 French drama “Code Unknown.”
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Screenings
Lon Chaney
* “West of Zanzibar”: 8 p.m. today
Where: Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.
Info: (323) 655-2520, silentmovietheatre.com
Grindhouse Festival
* “White Line Fever” and “Return to Macon County”: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 3:50 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: New Beverly Cinema 7165 Beverly Blvd., L.A.
Info: (323) 938-4038, newbevcinema.com
Festival of Noir
* “Act of Violence” and “Force of Evil”: next Thursday
* “Armored Car Robbery”: 7:30 p.m. April 13
* “The Big Knife” and “Sweet Smell of Success”: 7:30 p.m. April 14
* “Port of New York” and “The Breaking Point”: 7:30 p.m. April 15
Where: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
Info: (323) 466-3456, americancinematheque.com
Albert Maysles spotlight
When: 7:30 p.m. next Thursday
Where: Linwood Dunn Theater, 1313 N. Vine St., Hollywood
Info: (310) 247-3600, ampas.org
‘Movie That Inspired Me’
* “Code Unknown”: 7:30 p.m. April 13
Where: Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood
Info: (310) 206-8013, www.cinema.ucla.edu
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