BAMcinématek presents Under the Influence: Scorsese/Walsh, a 12-film series pairing Martin Scorsese works with their inspirations from Raoul Walsh’s seminal oeuvre, Mar 12—26 Opens with Walsh’s Regeneration, featuring live piano by acclaimed silent film accompanist Steve Sterner The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor for BAMcinématek and BAM Rose Cinemas. Brooklyn, NY/Feb 12, 2014—From Wednesday, March 12 through Wednesday, March 26, BAMcinématek presents Under the Influence: Scorsese/Walsh, pairing six Scorsese classics with their inspirations from Raoul Walsh’s seminal oeuvre. The still-undervalued Walsh’s lean, mean portraits of gangsters, knack for evoking gritty urban locales, and assured handling of white- knuckle action provide a virtual template for modern-day maestro (and avowed Walsh admirer) Martin Scorsese’s work. Viewed side by side, the films of these two iconic auteurs reveal a fascinating and ongoing creative dialogue across the generations. One of the great action directors of the Hollywood studio era, Raoul Walsh was the swaggering, manly-man artist behind some of the best movies to star James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Errol Flynn. ―Walsh’s explosive outcast characters were bigger than life,‖ said Martin Scorsese, whose own violent, masculine oeuvre is just as full of explosive outcasts. ―Their lust for life was insatiable, even as their actions precipitated their tragic destiny. The world was too small for them.‖ Walsh was ―probably Scorsese’s single most important influence,‖ wrote critic Dave Kehr (Moving Image Source), even if Scorsese’s debts to Michael Powell, Luchino Visconti, and other filmmakers have been more widely acknowledged over the years. Indeed, Walsh’s influence upon Scorsese is so consistent that his filmography provides a sort of hidden road map through Scorsese’s body of work. Under the Influence: Scorsese/Walsh aligns some of each directors’ key films as a way of illustrating the many homages paid within. Walsh, a rugged sailor and cowboy and the son of a prominent Irish-born clothier, had little in common biographically with the working-class Italian-American Scorsese. But Scorsese, a child of New York City's Little Italy, connected emotionally to Walsh’s authentic evocation of the city’s teeming street life. Walsh shot his early feature Regeneration (1915—Mar 12) in the actual slums of Five Points, framing a melodramatic redemption story (street kid turned gang leader falls for pretty social reformer) in a stark, ―beautifully atmospheric‖ (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times) style that emphasizes the unglamorous faces and locations. Gangs of New York (2002—Mar 26) is set 50 years earlier, but Scorsese meticulously recreated the same rough-and-tumble lower Manhattan milieu on the soundstages of Cinecittà as the backdrop for the epic rivalry between the terrifying Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis) and plucky Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio). Fighting over a pretty ingénue as well as control over their territory, Bill and Vallon enacted an archetypal Hollywood scenario across Scorsese’s astonishing Hell-on-Earth canvas, which looks and feels as much like a Western or a medieval epic as a traditional gangster film. The competing fire brigades in Gangs of New York are a tip of the hat to a morbidly funny sequence in Walsh’s unclassifiable pre-Code wonder The Bowery (1933—Mar 25), a rollicking celebration of anarchy and bad behavior in which a debauched tavern keeper (Wallace Beery, uninhibited as ever) and a scheming con man (George Raft) compete for the hearts and minds of their vivacious polyglot community. Reveling in pre-Code political incorrectness, The Bowery ―balances a gleeful fascination with the thornier sides of human nature with aw-shucks sentimentality and biting wit‖ (Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun), and Walsh never passes judgment on this pair of scoundrels, who (like many of his characters, and Scorsese’s) were actual historical figures. Walsh’s affinity for individualism, as distinguished from John Ford’s or Howard Hawks’ emphasis on family and community, gives his filmography a modern resonance. Walsh’s films are always ―willing to go with the instincts of their wayward loners‖ (David Thomson), and so are Scorsese’s. Repeating a pattern evident in Regeneration and The Bowery, Scorsese often made his heroes and villains opposite sides of the same coin—doppelgangers with similar backgrounds but varying levels of morality and violence. So it is in Mean Streets (1973—Mar 13), in which tragedy looms over the friendship between a repressed Catholic mafioso (Harvey Keitel) and a pugnacious loose cannon (Robert De Niro); and in Casino (1995—Mar 23), Scorsese’s epic chronicle of organized crime in Vegas, in which a master mobster (De Niro) is undone by his indulgence of an incorrigibly vicious enforcer pal (Joe Pesci). If gangsters are almost synonymous with Scorsese, they were also key to Walsh, who revisited their milieu periodically across a span of decades. ―An epic poem of a gangster flick‖ (Elliott Stein, The Village Voice) and in Scorsese’s words, a ―twisted Horatio Alger story,‖ The Roaring Twenties (1939—Mar 24) offered a sociopolitical take, depicting trench mates turned rival bootleggers James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as men of promise disenfranchised by World War I and later the Great Depression. White Heat (1949—Mar 17) turned to psychology, fashioning gangster Cody Jarrett (Cagney) as a migraine-addled, mother-fixated psychopath. Cagney’s uninhibited, career-best performance surely inspired De Niro’s turn as Travis Bickle, the unhinged vigilante (―You lookin’ at me?‖) at the center of Scorsese’s failed-city symphony Taxi Driver (1976—Mar 16), which Janet Maslin of The New York Times called ―brilliantly acted and rhapsodically beautiful‖. Scorsese’s sourcing of Walsh extended beyond the gangster genre. Laced with Gershwin and Kern- Hammerstein tunes, The Man I Love (1947—Mar 18) combines romance, music, and film noir as only a master director could, as torch singer ―Petey‖ Brown (Ida Lupino) divides her affections between two unworthy men, sleazy lounge lizard Robert Alda and morose jazz pianist Bruce Bennett. Walsh’s unique film provided the template for New York, New York (1977—Mar 19), in which it’s clear that temperamental sax player De Niro is the only man for chanteuse Liza Minnelli—but will they stay together? Scorsese shot the ending both ways and picked one at the last minute, after a chaotic production that swerved away from noir and toward the essence of MGM’s Technicolor musicals (check out the climactic, gigantic musical-within-a-musical number) and permitted the stars to improvise some wonderfully alive banter: the opening V-E day sequence, in which De Niro turns on the charm and Minnelli shoots down one pick-up line after another, is a New Hollywood high water mark. Seemingly generations apart in style, both directors’ boxing biopics take an acute interest in the ways that class and celebrity, as much as pugilistic prowess, shape their title characters’ lives. As breezy as the off- hand confidence of its star, Errol Flynn, Gentleman Jim (1942—Mar 14) chronicles the rise of and turn- of-the-century fighter James J. Corbett, while Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980—Mar 14 & 15) anatomizes the fall of World War II-era champ Jake LaMotta through De Niro’s unforgettable, physically transformed star turn. The straightforward deep focus presentation of Gentleman Jim’s Corbett-John L. Sullivan fight and the pure filmmaking of Raging Bull’s famous ring scenes, choreographed like dance moves and filled with tiny blood-and-sweat details, take different routes to the same destination—an unflinching depiction of the sport’s punishing brutality. For press information, please contact: Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / [email protected] Hannah Thomas at 718.724.8002 / [email protected] Under the Influence: Scorsese/Walsh Schedule Wed, Mar 12 7:30pm: Regeneration Live accompaniment by Steve Sterner Thu, Mar 13 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: Mean Streets Fri, Mar 14 2, 4:40, 9:45pm: Raging Bull 7:15pm: Gentleman Jim Sat, Mar 15 7, 9:45pm: Raging Bull Sun, Mar 16 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: Taxi Driver Mon, Mar 17 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: White Heat Tue, Mar 18 4:30, 7, 9:15pm: The Man I Love Wed, Mar 19 4:30, 7:30pm: New York, New York Sun, Mar 23 2, 5:30, 9pm: Casino Mon, Mar 24 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: The Roaring Twenties Tue, Mar 25 7, 9:15pm: The Bowery Wed, Mar 26 4:30, 7:45pm: Gangs of New York Film Descriptions All films in 35mm unless otherwise noted. The Bowery (1933) Directed by Raoul Walsh. With Wallace Beery, George Raft. In the 1890s, surly Lower East Side saloon owner Chuck Connors (Beery) dukes it out with nemesis (and Brooklyn Bridge jumper) Steve Brodie (Raft), plays father figure to a ragamuffin street urchin (Jackie Cooper), and woos sweet Lucy Calhoun (Fay Wray). Walsh colorfully evokes the rambunctious melting- pot atmosphere of Gay '90s New York in this very pre-Code (and very un-PC) comedy. 35mm archival print Tue, Mar 25 at 7, 9:15pm Casino (1995) 178min Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone. Scorsese’s blistering ode to obsessive ambition charts the Mafia’s inextricable role in the glamour and brutality of Las Vegas. Through the eyes of gambling prodigy Sam ―Ace‖ Rothstein, the film depicts the mob’s tight grip on Sin City’s casino scene throughout the 1970s, followed by its swift loss of control in the 1980s. Featuring a hallucinatory opening title sequence courtesy of Saul and Elaine Bass, a soundtrack overflowing with vintage pop hits, and an Oscar-nominated performance by Sharon Stone, this epic depiction of American greed and corruption—slightly misunderstood and under-appreciated upon its release—is now ripe for reconsideration.