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Home , Anthony Harvey, Charles Vanel, Claude Lanzmann, Fanny and Alexander, Far from Heaven, Hannah and Her Sisters

MoMA CELEBRATES THE 75th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FILM CRITICS CIRCLE BY INVITING MEMBERS TO SELECT FILM FOR 12-WEEK EXHIBIITON

Critical Favorites: The New York Film Critics Circle at 75 July 3—September 25, 2009 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters & The Celeste Bartos Theater

NEW YORK, June 19, 2009 —The celebrates The New York Film Critics Circle’s (NYFCC) 75th anniversary with a 12-week series of award-winning films, from July 3 to September 25, 2009, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. As the nation‘s oldest and most prestigious association of film critics, the NYFCC honors excellence in cinema worldwide, giving annual awards to the ―best‖ films in various categories that have all opened in New York. To mark the group‘s milestone anniversary, each member of the organization was asked to choose one notable film from MoMA‘s collection that was a recipient of a NYFCC award to be part of the exhibition. Some screenings will be introduced by the contributing film critics.

Critical Favorites: The New York Film Critics Circle at 75 is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, in collaboration with The New York Film Critics Circle and 2009 Chairman Armond White.

High-resolution images are available at www.moma.org/press.

No. 58

Press Contacts: Emily Lowe, Rubenstein, (212) 843-8011, [email protected] Tessa Kelley, Rubenstein, (212) 843-9355, [email protected] Margaret Doyle, MoMA, (212) 408-6400, [email protected]

Film Admission: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights 4:00–8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders. The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org

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SCREENING SCHEDULE

For schedule of introductions by selecting film critics, please visit www.moma.org

Friday, July 3

7:00 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. 1936. USA. Directed by . Screenplay by . With , , George Bancroft, Lionel Stander. ―Forget the abysmal 2002 remake. The original, directed by Frank Capra and written by Robert Riskin, is a screwball delight. This comedy pithily pits small town values against big city opportunism and mendacity. guy Longfellow Deeds (Cooper), a greeting card versifier from a small town in Vermont, is probably Capra‘s least complicated hero, while Babe Bennett (Arthur), the newspaper reporter who falls in love with him even as she‘s writing exploitative stories making fun of his rube-like ways, is among his most conflicted and complex heroines‖ (Leah Rozen, People Magazine). NYFCC Best Picture, 1936. 115 min.

Saturday, July 4

4:00 . 2002. USA. Written and directed by . With , Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, . ―Why did the New York critics vote a movie about a 1957 housewife as 2002‘s best? Because Far from Heaven is pure cinema. Because Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, as her gay husband, are in peak form. And because director Todd Haynes, channeling ‘s magnificent obsession with shadows and symbols that define character, creates an imitation of life from half a century ago that holds up a cracked mirror to the here and now‖ (, Rolling Stone). NYFCC Best Picture, 2002. 107 min.

7:30 Fargo. 1996. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. With Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare. ―Fargo stands at the top of [the ‘] oeuvre: funny, violent, and dark, set in a universe where a kidnapping plot‘s venal miscreants are forced to live by Murphy‘s Law. Frances McDormand delights as the unflappable Chief Marge Gunderson, who calmly cleans up messes and solves the case. Snowy but never cold, this film still dazzles with its unpredictability and harsh sense of justice. Oh yeah—and the woodchipper‖ (Marshall Fine, Star Magazine). NYFCC Best Picture, 1996. 98 min.

Sunday, July 5

2:00 The Best Years of Our Lives. 1946. USA. Directed by . Screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood. With , , , . ―The Best Years of Our Lives was released in 1946, as American servicemen returning from the struggled with readjustment to civilian life. But the picture isn‘t just a dated time capsule. It resonates today, largely because the performances—from Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Frederic March, Teresa Wright, and —are so uniformly superb, and so piercing. Cinematographer Gregg Toland‘s framing underscores each character‘s sense of isolation and, ultimately, connection‖ (Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com). NYFCC Best Picture, 1946. 163 min.

Monday, July 6

4:00 . 2004. USA. Directed by . Written by Payne, . With , Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh. ―Sideways may look like a standard midlife crisis, buddies-on-the-road movie, but don‘t be fooled. It‘s remarkably sweet and funny and sad. At a time when most comedies are little

2 more than gagfests peopled by joke-bots, its humanity should be doubly prized—even if, unlike Paul Giamatti‘s wine connoisseur, you like Merlot‖ (Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor). NYFCC Best Picture, 2004.126 min.

Wednesday, July 8

8:00 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. 1936. USA. See Friday, July 3

Thursday, July 9

4:30 The Best Years of Our Lives. 1946. USA. See Sunday July 5

8:00 Far from Heaven. 2002. USA. See Saturday July 4.

Friday, July 10

4:30 Sideways. 2004. USA. See Monday, July 6.

8:00 Fargo. 1996. USA. See Saturday, July 4.

Saturday, July 11

2:00 . 2000. USA/Great Britain. Directed by , . Screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick, based on an original work by Lord and Park. With Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, , Jane Horrocks. ―In their first full-length feature, Nick Park and the distinctive Aardman claymation artists behind Wallace and Gromit conjure a perceptive, funny, detail perfect fable about group effort and Anglo-American relations among fowl of the Greatest Generation. If The Great Escape or Stalag 17 were retold with animated chickens—and the chickens had lips (and the voice talents of Mel Gibson and , among any)—well then, a great war epic might look something like this‖ (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly). NYFCC Best Animated Film, 2000. 85 min.

5:00 . 1960. Italy. Written and directed by . With , Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee, Yvonne Furneaux. ―To address Fellini‘s La Dolce Vita in seventy-five words is blasphemy—a quickie replacing an orgy. The sensual 1960 masterpiece is expansive, a feast, the definition of what it was to live the good life in postwar Rome for a people who knew suffering and deprivation, and defiantly chose life. Anita Ekberg is Venus incarnate, a statue that has stepped off her pedestal into the audience‘s open arms—and those of the magnetic Marcello Mastroianni! Magnifico!‖ (Thelma Adams, Us Weekly). NYFCC Best Foreign Film, 1961. In Italian; English subtitles. 174 min.

8:30 Umberto D. 1952. Italy. Written and directed by . With Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Ileana Simova. ―The heroic era of reached its climax (and box-office disaster) with this wrenching portrait of an elderly, middle-class pensioner slowly losing his home and his dignity. With its episodes of deliberately undramatic activity, Umberto D. comes close to achieving an ideal announced by André Bazin—the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality—and

3 foreshadows the observational cinema of filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chantal Akerman. With its unabashed emotion, it also breaks your heart‖ (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). NYFCC Best Foreign Film, 1955. In Italian; English subtitles. 89 min.

Sunday, July 12

12:30 Shoah. 1985. . Directed by . ―The NYFCC named Claude Lanzmann‘s magisterial nine-and-a-half- hour account of the extermination of six million Jews the best documentary of 1985. Shoah is an historic documentary as well as a great, unique film and, in addressing the issue of representation, a rigorous work of film-philosophy. Refusing to ―reconstruct‖ the past, Lanzmann compels viewers to imagine the unimaginable. For all its devotion to detail, Shoah is a film that ultimately unfolds in the mind‘s eye‖ (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice). NYFCC Best Nonfiction Film,1985. 564 min. with a one-hour intermission.

Monday, July 13

4:30 Umberto D. 1952. Italy. See Saturday July 11.

8:00 La Dolce Vita. 1960. See Saturday July 11.

Wednesday, July 15

4:30 Spellbound. 1945. USA. Directed by . Screenplay by , Angus MacPhail. With , , Rhonda Fleming, Leo G. Carroll. ―Bergman won the NYFCC‘s Best Actress award for Alfred Hitchcock‘s thriller and The Bells of St. Mary’s, released, along with Saratoga Trunk, at the height of her popularity in late 1945. Cast as a dishy ‗dream detective‘ who unlocks shell-shocked vet Gregory Peck‘s unconscious to solve a murder, it‘s a stylish, fascinating window into contemporary attitudes toward psychiatry, as filtered through the disparate sensibilities of Hitchcock, producer David O. Selznick, screenwriter Ben Hecht, and Salvador Dalí, who designed the famed fantasy sequence‖ (Lou Lumenick, The New York Post). NYFCC Best Actress, 1945. 116 min.

8:00 The Lion in Winter. 1968. Great Britain. Directed by . Screenplay by , based upon his play. With Peter O‘Toole, , , John Castle. ―Daggers dance in the glances between Peter O‘Toole and Katharine Hepburn as King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, his imprisoned wife, in a witty drama that roars with political, sexual, and familial intrigue, The Lion in Winter. Named Best Picture of 1968 by the Circle, the film takes place in a muddy, unwashed 1183, as the king tries to choose a successor among his sons. But it‘s the wary, well-worn respect between the old monarch and his long-suffering but still-dangerous queen that give the film its heart‖ (Kyle Smith, The New York Post). NYFCC Best Picture, 1968. 134 min.

Wednesday, August 5

4:00 The Lion in Winter. 1968. Great Britain. See Wednesday July 15.

4 7:00 (Les roseaux sauvages). 1994. France. Directed by André Téchiné. Screenplay by Téchiné, Gilles Taurand, Olivier Massart. With Élodie Bouchez, Gaël Morel, Stéphane Rideau, Frédéric Gorny. ―Five French youths in the early face their own sexual awakening through pop music, movies, and the . François maintains his affinity with Maïté while also being drawn to working-class Serge, who competes for Maïté along with the right-wing student Henri. These emotional conflicts are delicate yet devastating. Téchiné observes nature and human nature through a series of epiphanies‖ (Armond White, New York Press). In French; English subtitles. NYFCC Best Foreign Film, 1995. 110 min

Thursday, August 6

4:00 Wild Reeds (Les roseaux sauvages). 1994. France. See Wednesday, August 5.

Saturday, August 15

1:30 Spellbound. 1945. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Ben Hecht, Angus MacPhail. See Wednesday, July 15 NYFCC Best Actress, 1945. 116 min.

Sunday, August23

2:00 Chicken Run. 2000. USA/Great Britain. See Saturday, July 11.

Wednesday, August26

7:00 Les Diaboliques. 1955. France. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Screenplay by Clouzot, Jérôme Géronimi, René Masson, Frédéric Grendel. With , Véra Clouzot, , . ―Les Diaboliques is to bathtubs what Hitchcock‘s Psycho is to showers. Clouzot‘s black- and-white chiller unfolds in a boys‘ boarding school in rural France, where the tyrannical headmaster is marked for murder in an intricate plot hatched by his wife (Véra Clouzot, the director‘s wife) and mistress (Signoret). Suspense builds slowly as we come to realize that nothing is as it seems at first. The 1996 Hollywood remake is best forgotten‖ (V. A. Musetto, The New York Post). In French; English subtitles. NYFCC Best Foreign Film, 1955. 110 min

Thursday, August 27

4:00 . 1990. USA. Directed by . Screenplay by Scorsese, Nicolas Pileggi. With , Ray Liotta, , Lorraine Bracco. ―Goodfellas is, of course, a movie of great style—the classic tracking shots, the New Wave freeze frames, the jittery editing. And of course, a movie of great performances. But more than any other mob movie this is a movie about lifestyle. And more than any Martin Scorsese film, a film not about sin or redemption, but temptation itself. How could anyone ever aspire to be a gangster? Just watch‖ (Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger/Newhouse). NYFCC Best Picture, 1990. 146 min.

5

Friday, August28

4:00 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 1948. USA. Written and directed by . With , , , . ―Huston‘s (im)morality tale about greed and gold is one caustic take on the human condition; it‘s easily one of the more cynical pictures to come out of a Hollywood studio without the name ‗‘ attached. Humphrey Bogart was never seedier or sweatier; John‘s pop, Walter Huston, somehow manages to out-cackle and out-coot that other famous Walter (Brennan). P.S., Don‘t even think about asking to see those bandits‘ badges‖ (David Fear, Time Out New York). NYFCC Best Picture, 1948. 124 min.

Saturday, August29

1:30 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 1948. USA. See Friday, August 28.

7:30 Goodfellas. 1990. USA. See Thursday, August 27.

Sunday, August 30

12:30 Shoah. 1985. France. See Sunday, July 12.

Monday, September 7

4:30 . 1973. Italy/France. Directed by Frederico Fellini. Screenplay by Fellini and Tonino Guerra. With Pupella Maggio, Magali Noel, Armando Brancia, Ciccio Ingrassia. After nearly a decade of descending into the phantasmagorical murk, Federico Fellini re- emerged with this wistful autobiographical dreamplay about his memories of growing up in an Italian coastal village in the fascist ‘30s. The movie is nostalgia raised to the level of poetry. What lends it added poignance is that Amarcord, with its indelible folk images (who could forget the peacock in the snow?) and its sentimental evocation of small-town life, now summons our own nostalgia for an era when art filmmakers could be unblushing populists. (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly) Best Picture (1974) 125 min.

8:00 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). 2007. Romania. Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu. With Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Alex Potocean. - Set two years before the bloody downfall of the Ceausescu regime, Cristian Mungiu‘s brilliant, suspenseful exemplar of the new Romanian cinema tracks the ordeal, by turns harrowing and surreal, of a college student‘s efforts to negotiate her best friend‘s black-market abortion and that of the abortion itself. Graced by superb performances and quietly stunning camera work, Mungiu‘s portrait of female friendship and oppression becomes a window on a corrupt, brutalized society approaching total collapse. (Karen Durbin, Elle) Best Foreign Film (2008) 113 min.

Wednesday, September 9

4:00 . 1950. USA. Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. With , , , . Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s quintessential backstager revived Bette Davis‘s career and gave Thelma Ritter and two of

6 their earliest plum supporting roles. Almost 60 years after its release, All About Eve remains one of the most quotable movies ever made: Filled with venomous barbs about ego, ambition, fame—and that nastiest of all species, the critic—the film says as much about what it means to be a star as to be a fan. (Melissa Anderson, Village Voice) Best Picture (1950) 138 min.

Thursday, September 10

4:30 Les Diaboliques. 1955. France. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Screenplay by Clouzot, Jerome Geronimi, Rene Masson, Frederic Grendel. With Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel. Georges Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques'' (1954) is to bathtubs what Hitchcock's "Psycho'' is to showers. Clouzot's black-and-white chiller unfolds in a boys' boarding school in rural France, where the tyrannical headmaster is marked for murder in an intricate plot hatched by his wife (Vera Clouzot, the director's wife) and mistress (Simone Signoret). Suspense builds slowly as we come to realize that nothing is as it seems at first. The 1996 Hollywood remake is best forgotten. (V.A. Musetto, New York Post) Best Foreign Film (1955) 110 min.

7:00 (My Uncle). 1958. France/Italy. Directed by . Screenplay by Tati, Jacques Lagrange, Jean L'Hote. With Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Alain Becourt, Adrienne Servanti. Once a comic icon to rival Chaplin, Jacques Tati has been increasingly overlooked in recent decades. And yet his films, which chronicle the tug-of-war between nature and technology, have never been more relevant. In 1958‘s Oscar-winning ―Mon Oncle,‖ Tati‘s everyman alter ego, , navigates a dehumanized modernity in which stark suburban mansions isolate inhabitants obsessed by gadgetry. How prescient was Tati‘s vision? Answer that question the next time you bypass the bookstore for your Kindle, or Twitter instead of talk. (Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News) Best Foreign Film (1958) 120 min.

Friday, September 11

4:30 Wall-E. 2008. USA. Directed by . Screenplay by Stanton and Jim Reardon. With Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard. There‘s never been anything in animation like the first 40 minutes of ―Wall-E,‖ a magical juxtaposition of a joyous song from ―Hello, Dolly!‖ with a vision of a barren earth whose sole inhabitant – except for a cockroach – is a little trash-compacting robot that can‘t stop building skyscrapers of garbage. And the latter section of the film, a satire of rampant consumerism dressed up as genial comedy, redoubles the daring of this masterpiece. (Joseph Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal) Best Animated Film (2008) 97 min.

Saturday, September 12

2:00 All About Eve. 1950. USA. Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. See Wednesday, September 9.

8:00 A Clockwork Orange. 1971. Great Britain. Written and directed by . With Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke. A notorious 1971 movie based on a scandalous 1962 book, Stanley Kubrick‘s ―A Clockwork Orange‖ went its own way in explicating the violent abandon of Alex (Malcolm McDOwell), who with his vicious droogs beat, rape and rob their way across a moonscaped London to the strains of Beethoven‘s Ninth (and ―Singin' in the Rain‖). Although his film was condemned for its futuristic/nihilistic view of humanity-to-be, and long-banned in Britain for a copycat assault, Kubrick‘s argument was an aesthetic one: Alex, a derailed esthete at heart, was really a victim of bad taste. It‘s the visual gag in what remains an alarming movie.

7 (John Anderson, Newsday/Variety) Best Picture (1971) 137 min.

Sunday, September 13

2:30 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). 2007. Romania. See Monday, September 7.

Monday, September 14

4:30 . 1986. USA. Written and directed by . With Woody Allen, , , . Released in a year of filming dangerously (Blue Velvet, River’s Edge), Woody Allen‘s career-high romantic roundelay achieves the bold by, paradoxically, hewing within the boundaries. The set up is Chekhovian, even conventional: A trio of urbanite sisters is psychologically transformed by middle age, marriage and personal need. And still, the drama that Allen mines, from his strongest ensemble cast to date and a vivid NYC, yields a grace that‘s close to mysterious. (Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York) Best Picture (1986) 106 min.

Wednesday, September 16

4:30 Amarcord. 1973. Italy/France. See Monday, September 7

Thursday, September 17

4:30 In the Heat of the Night. 1967. USA. Directed by Norman Jewison. Screenplay by , based on the novel by John Ball. With , , Warren Oates, . Philadelphia homicide detective (Sidney Poitier) gets drawn into a murder mystery in 1967 Sparta, Mississippi. The victim‘s widow (Lee Grant) convinces him to help a bigoted police chief (Rod Steiger) solve the crime. Race relations ignite when a white suspect slaps Tibbs. In Stirling Silliphant‘s screenplay, Tibbs takes the hit. At Poitier‘s insistence, his Tibbs strikes back, furthering the liberation of black men in American cinema. ―They call me Mr. Tibbs.‖ They‘d better! (Dwight Brown, NNPA Syndication/BlackPressUSA.com) Best Picture (1967) 109 min.

Friday, September 18

4:30 Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. 1964. USA/Great Britain. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Written by Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George. With , George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens. "I was talking one day with Alastair Buchan from the Institute of Strategic Studies and he mentioned the novel Red Alert, which was published in 1958. I read it and of course I was completely taken by it. Now Red Alert is a completely serious suspense story. My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came when I was trying to work on it. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully one had to keep leaving things out of it which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny, and these things seemed to be very real" (Kubrick). NYFCC Best Director, 1964. 94 min.

8:00 A Streetcar Named Desire. 1951. USA. Directed by . Screenplay by Oscar Saul. With , , , . (David Edelstein, New York Magazine) Best Picture (1951) 125 min.

Saturday, September 19

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2:00 Wall-E. 2008. USA. Directed by Andrew Stanton. See Friday, September 11.

4:30 Fanny och Alexander (). 1982. Sweden/Germany/France. Written and directed by . With Gunn Wallgren, , Ewa Froling, Bertil Guve. "Fanny and Alexander" was Ingmar Bergman's warm, generous swan song to the cinema (though in fact he made several films after it). Set in turn of the century provincial Sweden, it's at once a family epic, a portrait of the artist, a story, a fairy tale, a tribute to the theater, and a summing up of the themes that haunted his career. Only here, Bergman's demons are sumptuously transformed into artifice and play. (David Ansen, Newsweek) Best Foreign Film (1982) 188 min.

8:00 Mon Oncle (My Uncle). 1958. France/Italy. Directed by Jacques Tati. See Thursday, September 10.

Sunday, September 20

2:30 A Streetcar Named Desire. 1951. USA. Directed by Elia Kazan. See Friday, September 18.

5:30 . 1981. . Directed by Hector Babenco. Screenplay by Babenco and Jorge Duran. With Fernando Ramos Da Silva, Jorge Juliao, Gilberto Moura, Marilia Pera. Of the great film performances by children, few can compare to Fernando Ramos da Silva‘s poker-faced urchin in Pixote, Hector Babenco‘s unremittingly bleak portrait of street children in the exurban favelas of São Paulo. That Ramos died at the hands of Brazilian police six years later only adds to the film‘s near-unwatchable poignancy. The penultimate scene, in which Pixote suckles at the breast of the prostitute Sueli (Marília Pera) has the haunting starkness of a Goya painting. (Dana Stevens, Slate) Best Foreign Film (1981) 130 min.

Monday, September 21

4:30 Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander). 1982. Sweden/Germany/France. See Saturday, September 19.

8:00 . 1937. France. Directed by . Screenplay by Renoir and . With , , Eric von Stroheim, . No Less a personage than Franklin Delano Roosevelt hailed Jean Renoir‘s 1936 Grand Illusion as a notable contribution to world peace, but as Renoir himself ruefully remarked, three years later the world was at war again. Nonetheless, Grand Illusion remains a testament to the talents of Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and Marcel Delio on the French side, and and Dita Parlo on the German side in forging a hopeful Franco-German fraternity that has endured cinematically through War and to this day. (Andrew Sarris. New York Observer) Best Foreign Film (1938) 94 min.

Wednesday, September 23

4:30 La Grande Illusion. 1937. France. Directed by Jean Renoir. See Monday, September 21.

8:00 Hannah and Her Sisters. 1986. USA. Written and directed by Woody Allen. See Monday, September 14.

Thursday, September 24

9 4:30 In the Heat of the Night. 1967. USA. Directed by Norman Jewison. See Thursday, September 17.

Friday, September 25

4:15 Pixote. 1981. Brazil. Directed by Hector Babenco. See Sunday, September 20.

10