.One-Night Stands

Repertory film listings for November 27-December 3, 2008.

Fri., November 28

Autumn Leaves Joan Crawford, getting on in years, weds a
younger guy — then learns he’s already married and has a few
loose screws. Well, you can’t have everything. Robert Aldrich directs.
With Lorna Greene, Vera Miles, and Cliff Robertson as the husband (108
min., 1956). (PFA, 6:30)

Her Brother A cruel woman (Kinuyo Tanaka) forces her
stepdaughter to care for the woman’s spoiled brother in this soap opera
by director Kon Ichikawa. It costars Keiko Kishi and Hiroshi Kawaguchi.
Screenplay by Yoko Mizuki (98 min., 1960). (PFA, 8:40)

Sat., November 29

Our Hospitality Buster Keaton unwittingly stumbles into an
Appalachian feud when he courts a girl from the “other” family. “Our
hospitality” means her brothers won’t kill him as long as he’s their
guest, so he can’t leave, of course. A wonderful old train, a
spectacular rescue at a waterfall, and poor marvelous Buster, always
the bemused outsider learning to survive the local conditions like the
model of all-American resourcefulness he was (70 min., 1921). Preceded
by Buster Keaton’s The Haunted House (20 min., 1921). —
N.W. (PFA, 3:00)

Zigeunerweisen In the Japan of the 1920s, a professor is
drawn into a sexual pentangle full of Surrealist elements at a seaside
resort, courtesy director Seijun Suzuki. Yoshio Harada and Naoko Otani
star (145 min., 1980). (PFA, 5:00)

Open City If all the priests in the Bronx parish where I grew
up had been like Don Pietro (modeled on Father Don Morosini, executed
by the Nazis in 1944), I might still be attending church on Sundays.
The script was conceived by Roberto Rossellini in the last days of the
Nazi occupation of Rome, and shot two months after Liberation Day on
odds and ends of film stock. This homage to the martyrs of the Italian
resistance movement is electric in its immediacy, and its release
heralded the neorealist cinema of postwar Italy. Directed by
Rossellini, adapted by Rossellini, Sergio Amidei, and Federico Fellini
from a story by Amidei and Alberto Consiglio. With Anna Magnani (105
min., 1945). — M.C. (PFA, 8:00)

Sun., November 30

Tora-san’s Sunrise and Sunset Episode seventeen in Japanese
filmmaker Yoji Yamada’s 48-film Tora-san story, Sunrise and
Sunset
finds our warm-hearted yet bumbling hero heading to his aunt
and uncle’s house in the Tokyo suburbs, leaving a trail of havoc in his
wake (109 min., 1976). (PFA, 3:00)

Umberto D. Director Vittorio De Sica and writer Cesare
Zavattini collaborated five times, and along with the classic
Bicycle Thieves, this is their most satisfying and moving
effort. A touching story of an aging ex-civil servant (Carlo Battisti)
feeling the pinch of postwar economic distress more than most, whose
his only friend is his little dog (for whom he sacrifices a portion of
his meager pension), the film is at once a tragedy of a generation cut
off from the world it made and a study of a man too proud to relinquish
his tenuous grip on life. A fine example of the power of neorealism.
Recommended (89 min., 1952). — D.D. (PFA, 5:15)

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory In one of his sharpest
performances, Gene Wilder casts a melancholy, slightly sinister spell
over Roald Dahl’s satiric children’s story about a poor boy who meets
an eccentric candy manufacturer. Highlights include the “Oompa-Loompa”
song by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse and naughty kids being
dispatched by drowning in chocolate. Won’t rot the teeth of adults,
either. Directed by Mel Stuart from Dahl’s screenplay. With Jack
Albertson and Peter Ostrum (98 min., 1971). — K.V. (EC, 2:00)

Tue., December 2

Martha Colburn’s Collage Animations A collection of ten short
films by collage filmmaker Martha Colburn dating from 1995 to 2008
(total running time 55 min.). Colburn in person. (PFA, 7:30)

Wed., December 3

The Ceremony If you were understandably bored by In the
Realm of the Senses
, this 1971 film by Nagisa Oshima offers much
more convincing proof of his talent. A deadly parody of one of Japan’s
most beloved genres, the family saga, The Ceremony uses the
story of the Sakurada clan as a mirror for the cultural decay of Japan
in the wake of World War II. Influenced by Godard, Oshima employs a
collapsing montage technique that transforms melodramatic cliché
into metaphysical horror (123 min.). — D.K. (PFA, 7:00)

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