Moviegoer

Note: During the Printemps du Cinéma (March 16-18) any screening costs only €3.50.
www.printempsducinema.com

March 7-18. Cinéma du Réel: A major international documentary festival. €4-50.
www.cinereel.org

March 11-18. Paris Tout Court: The capital’s international short film festival. €4-30.
L’Arlequin, 76, rue de Rennes, Paris 6. Mº Rennes. 01 45 44 28 80. www.paristoutcourt.org

March 14-16. The European Independent Film Festival: A fantastic arena for indie filmmakers from around the world.
Bibliothèque nationale, 11, quai François Mauriac, Paris 13. Mº Bibliothèque. 08 70 44 97 90. www.ecufilmfestival.com

Cruising
Dir. William Friedkin

Following the box office smashes that were The French Connection and The Exorcist, Hollywood golden boy Billy Friedkin directed a series of ambitious films that would fail to generate the dollars and praise of his earlier successes. Perhaps one of the oddest of these later works is Cruising (1980), a police thriller starring Al Pacino as an undercover cop in New York City’s 1970’s gay club world, out to catch a serial killer hidden amongst its ranks. As the investigation progresses and Pacino fully integrates the freewheeling sex and drug culture that marked the pre-AIDS era, the lines between work and play begin to blur, as his own sexual identity of “tough straight cop” is thrown into disarray.

Make Way for Tomorrow / “Place aux Jeunes” (1937)
dir. Leo McCarey

Between Duck Soup (1933) and The Awful Truth (1937), director Leo McCarey is best known for making some of Hollywood’s greatest screwball comedies. But when it comes to melodrama, his 1937 classic Make Way for Tomorrow easily takes top billing. This simple and incredibly heartbreaking story follows an elderly couple (Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore) forced, by economic hardship, to live separately after fifty years of marriage. Through a series of crushing events, McCarey recounts their final days together, culminating in an unforgettable “second honeymoon” sequence that, as Orson Welles reportedly once said, “would even make a stone cry.”
Opens Jan 23. Cinémas Action. www.actioncinemas.com

Zabriskie Point (1970)
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

Combat Rock
February 6 – 12
The eighth annual festival Est-ce Ainsi Que Les Hommes Vivent? has chosen “Combat Rock” as this year’s theme. Expect nearly 80 films of diverse genres and styles and languages, from Easy Rider, to a recent documentary on Joy Division and homage to key figures, plus, lest we forget, some live music! €4-6 per event. See website for details.
Cinéma l’Écran, 14 passage de l’Aqueduc, 93200 Saint Denis. Mº Basilisque de Saint-Denis. 01 49 33 66 88. www.combatrock.fr

The ongoing Beaubourg retrospective of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami and Spanish director Victor Erice is a chance for viewers to discover—or to rediscover in the case of hardcore cinéphiles—works by two influential filmmakers of the last quarter century.

Ida Lupino Retrospective

As an actress, Ida Lupino once referred to herself as a “poor man’s Bette Davis,” and her various leading roles opposite the likes of Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and Robert Ryan revealed her to be a double-edged femme fatale, at once weak and ambitious, vulnerable and deadly. With the glassy eyed appearance of a deer caught in the headlights who suddenly decides to take revenge on the car, Lupino gracefully stormed through some of Hollywood’s best film noirs, including Nicholas Ray’s brilliant On Dangerous Ground (1954), Raoul Walsh’s gangster classics They Drive By Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), and Don Siegel’s prison-exploitation madhouse Private Hell 36 (1954).

Probably the closest thing in Paris to summertime baseball, the annual free outdoor film festival at the Parc de la Villette draws thousands of film fans and families to its nightly screenings. With newly added corporate sponsorship, including Ben & Jerry’s “Free Cone Night” and Ciné Cinéma’s “Free Fan Night,” this year’s fest promises to be the movie buff’s equivalent of Bat Day at Yankee Stadium.
The 2007 edition takes the title “First Class and Coach,” offering a selection of French and international classics surrounding themes of class, privilege, and the ever-recurring “rags to riches” storyline of so many Hollywood favorites.

For almost fifty years now, film guru and raconteur Jean Douchet has acted as a sort of Parisian movie magnet, bringing together the various filaments that make up its diverse world of cinéphiles. Douchet, who began his career with legendary Cahiers du Cinéma critics-cum-filmmakers Truffaut, Godard, and Rivette, has for several decades worked all aspects of the film world, from director to actor to critic to historian. Nearing eighty but still running on full steam, he recently published one of the most comprehensive studies to date on the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague, F. Hazan, 2004), and continues to contribute a monthly column to Cahiers on new DVD releases.

On April 11, the Action will premier an all-new 35mm print of Sidney Lumet’s bank heist classic, Dog Day Afternoon/Un après-midi de chien (1975). Easily one of his greatest screen roles, Al Pacino stars as Sonny, a married bisexual who decides to rob a Brooklyn bank to pay for his male lover’s sex change, taking eight employees hostage and turning the siege into a two-day media blitz. Based on true events and powered by Lumet’s flair for depicting the urban underbelly of 70’s New York, Dog Day Afternoon presents a city overflowing with racial and political tensions, where one gunshot is liable to ignite everything into flames.