(John Huston, US/UK 1975, 129 min.)

In one of director Huston’s best-loved movies, Sean Connery and Michael Caine are Danny Dravot and “Peachy” Carnahan, the roguish Masonic heroes of Rudyard Kipling’s story. Together they seek fortune and glory in the mystical (and fictional) nation of Kafiristan. When the duo are mistaken for something more than mortals, power and greed begin to tear Danny and Peachy apart.

(Harmony Korine, US 1997, 89 min.)

Harmony Korine’s second outing as writer and first as director is safely described as unusual. The loosely structured and often wandering narrative follows the adventures of two boys in tornado-devastated Xenia, Ohio, which include sniffing glue, killing cats, riding dirt bikes, and having sex. The cast includes Chloe Sevigny in her second voyage on a Korine vessel and Days of Heaven’s Linda Manz.

(Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden 2006, 99 min., Danish and Icelandic with subtitles

Lars von Trier took a sharp detour from Dogville and Manderlay’s symbolic austerity with this office-based black comedy in which a Danish IT company comes under mysterious new management. Fraught with hyper-modern lingo and interpersonal conflict that would make Ricky Gervais blush, the film has become semi-notorious among cinephiles for its shooting style. Von Trier employed a technology called Automavision through which a computer randomly selected camera angles, but this off-kilter visual style works in the film’s favor, uncannily echoing the nonsense and frustration of our everyday lives.

(Billy Wilder, US 1950, 110 min.)

“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” One of film history’s most unforgettable masterpieces rips the Hollywood monolith apart, exposing its corrupt and tainted nature for all to see. Gloria Swanson is eerily sinister as the delusional shriveled-up has-been actress Norma Desmond, who hires struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) to edit her new script and help jumpstart her floundering career.

BON VOYAGE (Alfred Hitchcock, UK 1944, 26 min. French with subtitles)
AVENTURE MALGACHE (Alfred Hitchcock, UK 1944, 32 min., French with subtitles)
LIFEBOAT (Alfred Hitchcock, US 1944, 97 min., 16mm)

The first part of this program devoted to Alfred Hitchcock’s contributions to the Allied war efforts consists of two rarely shown narrative propaganda shorts that the Master of Suspense made for his native England to bolster morale in neighboring occupied France. For our feature presentation, Lifeboat, Hitchcock returned to Hollywood and cast theater legend Tallulah Bankhead as one of a grab bag of shipwreck survivors set adrift in the title object. John Steinbeck was one of the contributors to the screenplay.