Film Forum's Return of the Double Features

Double features. These wonderful cinematic dinosaurs roamed the earth back before megaplexes hit and caused the great extinction. In order to sell as much of their film product as possible to exhibitors, the studios would often sell their top movies along with other B movies to force theaters to show both. This meant movie audiences often would see two movies back-to-back- the double feature! Moviegoers could sit back and eat popcorn, mello-rolls, drink original Original Coke, heavy pet, and watch two movies for the price of one.

As time went on the studios were legally prevented from these block booking tactics, and television ate into movie screening time. Most people no longer went and sat in the movie theater for a whole day anymore. So theaters moved towards showing one A-level movie over and over (on however many screens they had) to maximize the audience. Double features were relegated to drive-in movie theaters and second-run houses that specialized in film festivals- making the double feature a rare connoisseur's delight. Well, for the next 3 1/2 weeks, New York's Film Forum is showing a Double Feature Festival, hooking-up movies like a cinematic Grindr.

Here are my recommendations that are guaranteed to double your fun:

Friday 8/19
Vertigo (1958) & Rear Window (1954)

Two well-known Hitchcock classics. Personally I would show Rear Window first because Vertigo feels a little long- but no matter. Seeing both of these on the big screen is a must. Vertigo because it's an effective psychological use of color and image and Rear Window because it's a wonderful use of camera perspective... and because they both star the lovable Jimmy Stewart.

Monday, 8/22
Sunrise (1927) & Nosferatu (1922)

The silent film era was uniquely able to innovate storytelling through the use of images and F.W. Murnau was masterful at it. His Oscar-Winning romantic drama Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is beautiful and touching to look at, and its vision of The City makes me want to move to this crazy, magical place.

Earlier, Murnau went for the dark side of the film image with his Dracula (1931) progenitor, Nosferatu. Some people love Bela Lugosi's Dracula, but I put my money on Max Schreck's Count Orlok. Creeparific.


Friday 8/26
Psycho (1960) & Repulsion (1965)

Let's go crazy! Whether it's the shower scene or Mama Bates in the basement, Psycho is one of Hitchcock's best shockfests. Anthony Perkins' portrayal of Norman Bates became iconic, creeping around the edges of "normalcy", hiding his true proclivities away in that famous hotel.

In Repulsion, poor Carol (Catherine Deneuve) also has a problem relating to other people, but for her, hiding away in her sister's apartment doesn't help. It intensifies her madness until the walls are reaching out to her. Literally. Polanski's impressive first English-speaking film is terrific and hints at ideas he would explore later in his horror classic Rosemary's Baby (1968). This film duo may give you nightmares. I'm just sayin'...

Sunday, 8/28
Singin' in the Rain (1952) & The Band Wagon (1953)

Two musicals made a year apart covering two eras of the movies.
Singin' has Gene Kelly & Co. dancing through the birth of the talkies, and Band Wagon has Fred Astaire dancing through the end of his character's movie musical career.

Directors Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli both excelled at filming musicals: Donen and Kelly's athletic dancing perfectly capture the excitement of the beginning of the sound era when musicals could finally take flight; and Minnelli's sensitive filming style and Astaire's graceful movements make us empathize with endings as well as beginnings. And both feature the excellent writing of Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the unparalleled hoofing of Cyd Charisse.

Monday, 8/29
The Bicycle Thief (1948) & Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Two movies- two important bikes. Bicycle Thief is pure Italian neo-realism and Pee Wee pure '80's escapism. Two great tastes that taste great together.

On a persnickety side note, I prefer the title Bicycle Thieves to the oft-used The Bicycle Thief. It represents the central relationship of the film of the father and his son better than the singular version. But that's just me.


Friday, 9/2
Ed Wood (1994) & Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

First watch the touchingly wacky Tim Burton-directed bio-pic of the infamous B-movie director and then watch one of Wood's best-worst films. Look for Bela Lugosi's stand-in through most of the latter.


Saturday, 9/3
Badlands (1973) & Days of Heaven (1978)

If it's possible to overdose on too much breathtaking natural cinematography, these two might just kill you. Terrence Malick's two movies about couples who break the law are very different in tone- but oh-so gorgeous to see on the big screen. As usual, Malick's visuals link man and nature and our baser instincts.

Sunday, 9/4
City Lights (1931) & Modern Times (1936)

Hands down these are my two favorite Chaplin films. City Lights in particular is such a beautiful blend of comedy and touching romance, that I dare you not to cry at the end. I dare you!
You can cry at the end of Modern Times too if you like- it's just not required- especially since the song playing at the end is "Smile."

Thursday, 9/8
The Maltese Falcon (1941) & The Thin Man (1934)

Dashiell Hammett is known as one of the fathers of the modern crime novel- so it's natural that his work would be the basis for some of Hollywood's best film noirs. The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man take two different approaches to his material, however. Falcon is a dyed-in-the-wool crime movie with a conflicted hero, shadowy criminals, and twists and turns.

Thin Man takes a more urbane and comical look at the crime story with Nick and Nora Charles (the sublime William Powell and Myrna Loy) bantering and drinking their way through the first of a series of hit films. So whether you like your men thin or fat (Sydney Greenstreet in Falcon is a rotund masterpiece), these two crime-classics are the stuff that dreams are made of.

Friday, 9/9
Notorious (1946) & His Girl Friday (1940)

If I were forced to choose the two best Cary Grant movies out of his long Hollywood career, I could not settle on just two. So Film Forum made the task easier by selecting the two best Cary Grant movies written by Broadway playwright and screenplay doctor extraordinaire Ben Hecht. Notorious pairs Grant with Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's tale of a party-girl who marries a suspected German spy (the very suspectable Claude Rains) in order to catch him in the act of espionage. Is she doing it for love of country, or for love of Grant? Just don't drink the coffee.

In His Girl Friday Grant and Rosalind Russell verbally rat-a-tat Hecht's sharp dialogue like a couple of fencing pros, creating one of the smartest romance films of the Forties. Grant and Hecht also worked on Gunga Din (1939) and Monkey Business (1952) but that's for another double feature.

Sunday 9/11
Laura (1944) & Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Gene Tierney was one of the most beautiful leading ladies of the Forties and these two movies show her off at her best. In Laura she is the beguiling girl in the painting at the center of one of the best murder mysteries ever made, and in Leave Her to Heaven, she is the woman who will do anything to keep her man- even if it means giving Darryl Hickman a swimming lesson. Whether in black and white or blazing Technicolor, Tierney was gorgeous- and if you like Vincent Price, he's in both movies too.

Tuesday, 9/13
Double Indemnity (1944) & Mildred Pierce (1945)

Hollywood loved making movies out of James M. Cain's novels, and these are two of his best. Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck headline the Billy Wilder noir classic Double Indemnity as a couple who can't keep their hands off each other. That spells trouble for Babs' husband.

Mildred Pierce came along a year later and because Cain's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice were such successful murder novels, director Michael Curtiz decided to turn Mildred Pierce into a noir film too- even though the murder that opens the movie never happens in Cain's book.

Mildred Pierce the movie is an exquisite blend of noir and women's film and Joan Crawford's performance was career-defining- even if she'd already had a hugely successful career for almost twenty years before she made Mildred. If you wanted to add a third Cain marital murder movie, Lana Turner and John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) should finish off the night nicely. But that might be overkill.

So those are the Film Forum's choices. What's your dream double-feature?

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of...

TCM Big Screen Classics is bringing one of my favorites to movie theaters around the country on Sunday, 2/21 and Wednesday 2/24! It's the 75th Anniversary of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and if you've never seen it, now's your chance!
Maltese Falcon isn't the first film noir. In fact it's not even the first time this Dashiell Hammett story was adapted for the screen.

But John Huston's version has the definitive, dark, gritty look that would be copied in detective movies throughout the '40's and '50's- a style that would later be called Film Noir. Quite an accomplishment for Huston's directorial debut. While Huston certainly grasps the shadowed look of noir- what I think he really excels at in his films is wrangling a talented cast- and Maltese Falcon is a tour de force.

Humphrey Bogart had made a name for himself as a world-weary tough guy in films like The Petrified Forest (1936), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and High Sierra (1941), but none of those roles impacted his career like Sam Spade. Bogart seemed tailor-made for this tough-talking, conflicted private detective whose baggy eyes have seen more than their fair share of tough breaks. This is the movie where Bogart's screen persona found the perfect vehicle to become legendary. He'd do it again a year later in Casablanca (1942).

Mary Astor had been making movies for about twenty years when she took on the role of Brigid O'Shaughnessey. Some would say that at 35, Astor was looking at the backend of her Hollywood career. But some of Astor's best work was just ahead. Astor's usual stock in trade was portraying high born ladies who had to struggle with a hidden, burning desire like her third side of the love triangle in Victor Fleming's classic Red Dust (1932). Astor exuded an upper-crust vibe with a smoldering, lower class inner life. So, O'Shaughnessey's hidden layers of truth were right up her alley. As Spade peeled her slowly, Astor was both sinister and vulnerable, making this broad's tearful downfall warranted- but regretful.

The character actors filling out the rest of the cast were just as well-suited to their roles. Sydney Greenstreet made his screen debut as blimp-like criminal boss Kasper Gutman, laughing and grunting his lines with delicious abandon. Peter Lorre gets to play an early gay character, perm-headed Joel Cairo. How do we know he's gay? Cause he "smells like lavender" and practically fellates his cane in one scene. It's those little cues that directors like Huston liked to slip by the censors of the time.

Bogart, Greenstreet, and Lorre were so great together, Warner Brothers teamed them up again in Casablanca and Passage to Marseilles (1944). Rounding out the team was reliable Elisha Cook Jr. doing his best neurotic toughie act, getting smacked around and getting heated about it.

So there are plenty of reasons to go and see The Maltese Falcon. Much fewer to miss this classic bird.