My friend Brian does the “I Only Have Two Eyes” series
annually on his blog (the title of which I’ve revised for my bespectacled self), about the best
of archival screenings in the Bay Area. And since 2016 was the first year in
ages that I actually logged every film I saw in a theater (final tally: 229 features & 256 shorts), it made compiling a
list of my own 10 indelible experiences much easier to do.
We’ll start with Dumbo (Sharpsteen, 1941) at the Paramount
in Oakland, on absolutely stunning 35mm.
Although the emcee called it original (which it couldn’t have been,
because that would have meant nitrate stock), it certainly was a crisply struck
print that had not seen much circulation.
Combine the divine “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence with the most
gorgeous Art Deco palace in the Bay Area, and it was a great way to start the
year.
Also in January were some memorable titles at Noir City at
the Castro, and for me, the highlight was a first viewing of Mickey One (Penn,
1965), a glorious jazz-tinged fever dream of a film, with an assist from legend Stan Getz. Disjointed, bizarre, singularly
unique and punctuated by a live dance routine from burlesque goddess Evie
Lovelle.
Soon after, the PFA had an excellent Maurice Pialat series,
but I suspect that the power of his Under the Sun of Satan (1987) was magnified
by it being bookended (quite by coincidence) with two other contemporary films
I saw the same week that also explore religious faith, fanaticism and hypocrisy: Pablo
Larrain’s The Club and Avishai Sivan’s Tikkun.
In Pialat’s fantasy-fueled acid bath Passion Play, he posits the possibility that
religion may be the most oppressive to the truly devout. Overall, a provocative accidental trilogy.
Some fun Gothic films ran their course at the Yerba Buena
Arts Center that summer, and the highlight was my first time seeing The
Beguiled (1971) on the big screen.
Still Don Siegel’s best, Clint Eastwood plays a Yankee fox trying to
subvert and seduce a Dixie henhouse. The
thick hothouse atmosphere and sexual tension played beautifully through Siegel's
lighting and the insidious plotting and character power plays. Still a remarkable film (soon to be remade by
Sofia Coppola).
Though a relatively recent movie, I have to include the
Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 2003) screening at the Taube Atrium in the SF Opera House
because Benoît Charest was there with a
jazz combo to perform his exquisite score live, including saws, bikes, and
trashcans as percussion instruments. A terrific
experience.
2016 was the first year the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission
was open, and the best part of their programming is the late night Mon-Wed
screenings. My first dip into that pool
was a packed show of Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971), which I’ve seen several
times in the theater, but never tire of the gearhead culture, the meditative structure
and lack of urgency (for a racing film!) and Warren Oates’s phenomenal turn as GTO. My year was relatively short on roadtrips but
this went some way to sating my wanderlust.
In my backyard at the Parkway, there was an irresistible
double bill of the cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theory documentary Room 237
(Ascher, 2012) followed by a screening of the focus of its subject, The Shining
(Kubrick, 1980) itself. Rarely does a
year go by when I don’t see some Kubrick on screen (I also revisited Paths of Glory
and Spartacus at the Smith Rafael Film Center for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday), but a bonus this year was an excellent exhibit on Kubrick at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF with some amazing artifacts from his
career, including the typewriter and hedge maze model from this film.
Also at the Smith Rafael was a Sam Fuller weekend (with his
widow and daughter in attendance), where the biggest revelation for me was his
Tokyo noir House of Bamboo (1955), a beautifully stylized genre piece whose
gangster trappings and compositions appeared to anticipate the marvelous Seijun
Suzuki, whose career was starting around the exact same time. As you’d expect, Robert Ryan is in top form
and the climax on a rooftop amusement park is a standout.
And finally, two silent films, both firsts for me. At the Silent Film Festival at the Castro,
Destiny (1921), the earliest film I’ve seen by Fritz Lang and a glorious
anthology of stories where Love must face down Death. It was wonderful seeing Lang’s visual imagination
in bloom, anticipating the superb special FX and supernatural wonders of his
next few years in Germany. Months later,
over at the Niles Essanay Film Museum, the buoyant energy of underrated actress
Bebe Daniels was on full display in the fizzy comedy Feel My Pulse (La Cava,
1928), about a hypochondriac heiress looking for rest at a health sanitarium
which is actually acting as a front for bootleggers (led by a very young
William Powell). A hilarious comedy and
secret gem.
So that’s 10 features, but since I saw over 60 archival
shorts in the theater last year, I’ll give an honorable mention to two with
Buster Keaton, still silent in the autumn of his career.
I saw The Railrodder (Potterton, 1965) at an Oddball Film Archive
screening, featuring Buster traveling across Canada on an open-air
mini-railcar, a playful reminder of his other great train film The General, but
in sumptuous color. And around the same
time, the Smith Rafael Film Center played Film (Schneider, 1965), one of Samuel
Beckett’s few forays into film and a wonderful existential metaphor with Buster
showing that age had not changed the expressiveness of his body in motion. A sublime pairing. Here’s looking forward to another year of familiar
films and new discoveries.
The Walt Disney stamp is Scott #1355 and Buster Keaton #2828.
Dumbo is #4194 and Steamboat Willie #4343. The
Ringling Brothers stamps are #4901 & 4904
while the other circus stamps are, sequentially, #1309, 2750 &
2751. The Pontiac GTO is #4744 and the Ford
pickup #5104.