Shanghai Express

This image from Shanghai Express, borrowed from Noel Vera's blog, is so iconically perfect a representation of classic Hollywood glamour in general, and the art of Josef von Sternberg in particular, that I felt compelled to just post it with no further comment.

Museum of the Moving Image

The day has finally arrived for the long-awaited opening of the newly renovated Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens with a special members' preview and screening of Robert Rossen's The Hustler this evening. Other notable film events in the opening month include the NY premieres of John Ford's rediscovered silent Upstream and Hong Sang-Soo's HaHaHa; Paul Fejos's 1928 masterpiece Lonesome; several notable avant-garde films including works by the Kuchars, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol and Gregory Markopoulos; and the current top film on my must-see list:

Manoel de Oliveira's 4 1/2-hour Doomed Love. I will have more to say about this and other films in the weeks ahead.

Best Revivals of 2010

The best revival of 2010 for my money was MoMA's presentation of the new Film Foundation restoration of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, looking better than I've ever seen it. It was a year for epic-length revivals, beginning in February with Film Comment Selects' presentation of Edward Yang's 4-hour masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day. This year also brought the New York premiere of R.W. Fassbinder's mind-bending made-for-TV sci-fi miniseries World on a Wire, Anthology Film Archives showed Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's 7-hour Hitler: A Film from Germany, Film Forum had the New York premiere of Fritz Lang's newly-restored Metropolis, and MoMA offered Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent and L'Inhumaine.

There were plenty of great revivals of normal length too. Perhaps the best was Mikio Naruse's Yearning starring the late Hideko Takamine, which I discussed in an earlier post. My favorite directorial retrospective was the Walter Reade's comprehensive Eric Rohmer salute. I had the chance to see The Sign of Leo, The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, A Tale of Springtime and A Winter's Tale (pictured above), none of which are currently available on U.S. DVD. The Walter Reade also had a screening of John Cassavetes's astonishing Love Streams, and I saw three more Visconti films there -- Conversation Piece, Sandra and Rocco and His Brothers. BAM had a great Jean Renoir retro which gave me a chance to see his neorealist classic Toni for the first time in nearly 40 years. (A DVD release of Renoir's long-unavailable La Nuit du Carrefour also helped to put his great run of 30s films in perspective.) BAM also had an Olivier Assayas series timed to the release of Carlos. IFC Center had wonderful retrospectives of Claire Denis (Beau Travail, Nenette et Boni) and Yasujiro Ozu (the underrated Record of a Tenement Gentleman and A Hen in the Wind).

Film Forum had gorgeous new prints of Jacques Tourneur's Nightfall and Antonioni's Le Amiche, among many others. BAM introduced me to Joao Cesar Monteiro (Silvestre), and screened Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together and Joao Pedro Rodrigues's very queer classic O Fantasma. I will have to consult my notes for later updates, as I'm sure I'm forgetting other highlights of 2010.

Sure to be a year-long source of amour du cinema in 2011 is the soon to be reopened Museum of the Moving Image. In the first two months alone they will be showing Paul Fejos's Lonesome, John Ford's Upstream and Manoel de Oliveira's Doomed Love, followed by a major Alain Resnais retrospective.