(Todd Rohal, US 2006, 96 min., 35mm)

Overbrimming with comic and visual invention in almost every sequence, writer-director Todd Rohal’s feature debut is an endearing portrait of a most peculiar mountain town. The slim narrative revolves around a mysterious power failure that coincides with the disappearance of Donald Turnupseed and how it affects (or doesn’t affect) the lives of the town’s other memorably eccentric characters, including: Ethel Firecracker, a lonely senior citizen looking for her lost dog; Sadie, a demolition derby superstar wannabe; Stool, an anxious roller rink referee with hygiene problems; and a little girl named Turkeylegs. Beautifully shot on widescreen 35mm film in Southeastern Pennsylvania, The Guatemalan Handshake is something truly special to behold. Rohal, who won the Best Director prize at last year’s Torino Film Festival, will introduce his gem and answer questions after the screening.

(Luis Buñuel, Spain 1961, 90 min., Spanish with subtitles, 35mm)

An innocent and philanthropic novice nun (Silvia Pinal) goes to visit her uncle (Fernando Rey) on his farm before taking her final vows. But the uncle’s obsession with his beautiful niece precipitates a bizarre series of events that culminate in a free-for-all beggars banquet. After accepting Franco’s invitation to return to Spain, the film cunningly takes a belly stab at the hypocrisies of the nation’s church and state. Ultimately banned by the Spanish government, it none-theless went on to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. New 35mm print!

(NOBI, Kon Ichikawa, Japan 1959, 108 min., Japanese with subtitles, 35mm)

In the waning days of World War II, a group of retreating Japanese soldiers in the Philippines attempt to survive the advancing American army, hostile Filipino peasants and, worst of all, hunger. Ichikawa’s tour de force, co-written by his wife and creative partner, Natto Wada, offers some of screen history’s most potent visual proof of war’s dehumanizing effects. “A masterpiece.” —Pauline Kael. New 35mm print!

(Robert Altman, France/UK 1990, 138 min., 35mm)

After a decade of adapting stage plays for the screen and experimentation in television, director Altman returned to form with this unconventional and moving biopic exploring the close but difficult relationship between the brothers Van Gogh, artist Vincent (Tim Roth) and art dealer Theo (Paul Rhys). Julian Mitchell’s script, based on letters between the two men, allows Altman to make some potent observations about the age-old uneasy alliance between art and commerce. The gorgeous cinematography is by Jean Lépine.

Program Notes

Vincent & Theo

In a career populated by experimentation in every type of genre, Vincent & Theo is the only biopic that Robert Altman ever attempted. And even though the life of Vincent van Gogh had been filmed several times, Altman’s film is different from all the others, fiction and documentary alike. It is less about the mysteries of art or the misunderstood genius, than it is the complex relationship between Vincent and his brother Theo. Indeed, it is based on the correspondence between the two. The film compares the life of the brothers as the one tries to paint and the other tries to sell the paintings. As the title implies, it is as much about Theo as it is about Vincent.

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter. He started painting later in life and all of his more than 2000 works were completed in the ten years prior to his death. He lived in poverty, was supported mostly by his brother and suffered from mental illness. Even though he was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, selling only one painting, today his paintings and drawings are some of the world’s best known, and his work sells for millions of dollars.

Theo van Gogh was Vincent’s younger brother and an art dealer. His unfailing support of Vincent was never rewarded with successful sales, although it allowed the painter to concentrate on painting without financial considerations. Theo contracted syphilis, which ultimately lead to madness in an unfortunate parallel of his brother.

Most biopics about artists have a large problem in how to represent the artwork. Vincent & Theo is more concerned with seeing how the artist saw, not showing us what he painted. The canvases are treated very casually in the film. Altman is more interested in the financial aspect of art practice. While the film opens with a 1980’s auction in London of one of Vincent’s paintings for millions of dollars, the paintings are not even a focus of the film. The scene dissolves into the 1880’s where Vincent and Theo are discussing an art career. He bookends the auction with the brothers talking about money – rather than making a comment on the commercialization of art, he seems to be pointing out one of the main aspects of the brothers’ relationship. Money, directly or not, was the main point of contact for the brothers. Altman has taken the story of a great artist and his rejection during his lifetime and found in it a theme he has contemplated before: he has said “Basically, my point of view with Vincent & Theo was that I was trying to do the story not of a famous person but of a failed person.”
Altman had spent the decade before making this film directing theater and experimenting in television, and being virtually ignored by Hollywood. Vincent & Theo was not only received with much critical success, both in the US and abroad, but had the largest audience of any of his films since Nashville. It led to the “renaissance” of Altman’s career, at least in the eyes of Hollywood, and his next film was the extremely successful The Player.

~Patti Doyen, Vault Manager, Motion Picture Department

(PARIS NOUS APPARTIENT, Jacques Rivette, France 1960, 140 min., French with subtitles, 35mm)

Rivette’s mysterious account of Parisians in the late ’50s is perhaps the most philosophical of all films of the French nouvelle vague. A young student searches for a tape of guitar music by a Spaniard who may or may not have committed suicide. During her quest, she encounters numerous individuals—including an American expatriate in flight from McCarthyism—all haunted by an impending sense of doom and a paranoid belief in worldwide conspiracy. The quintessential film about Paris bohemia in the late ’50s is peppered with cameos from Rivette’s fellow new-wavers: Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Demy. A new 35mm preservation print from the British Film Institute will be screened.