film classics

The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton, United States)

KEITH UHLICH

For his only directorial effort, actor Charles Laughton chose to adapt a fanciful horror of a novel by Davis Grubb about a bestial preacher/serial killer who terrorizes a West Virginian family. Robert Mitchum brilliantly plays the evil reverend, Harry Powell, who insinuates himself into the lives of the Harper family (Shelley Winters plays the mother, Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce the two children), at first to secure an illicit payout courtesy the jailed patriarch Ben (Peter Graves). But it’s clear Powell most gets off on the power he wields over people (a potent early image is a closeup of his switchblade piercing through his pants pocket — the sexual charge of the moment is unmistakable). The children eventually go on the run and are taken in by the kindly and protective Rachel (Lillian Gish), who treats Powell like the demon-in-flesh he truly is. Laughton approaches the story like an adult fairy tale with shadow-laden deep focus photography by Stanley Cortez and a poetic screenplay by James Agee heightening the aura of unearthliness. And yet somehow the disturbing feelings the film evokes, particularly about the nature of good and evil, are all-too-recognizably human.

(Streaming on AppleTV.)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, W. Germany)

A standout in the already towering filmography of German writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul reworks Douglas Sirk’s great melodrama All That Heaven Allows into a much more grittily thematic, if still lushly visual romance. Emmi (Brigitte Mira) is a 60-something German widow and window cleaner who happens into a friendship, and then a love affair, with Moroccan guest worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). Their relationship exposes the micro and macro racial fault lines in post-war Germany, as both family members and complete strangers let their hatred get the better of them. Fassbinder’s blend of the soberly quotidian (the down-in-the-muck ambience of political, economic, and spiritual poverty that envelops all the characters) with the luxuriantly theatrical (see, for example, the dreamlike lighting in the bar in which Ali and Emmi first meet) is beyond compare and especially astonishing given that he shot the film in just under two weeks as an exercise in-between larger productions. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)

Beau Travail (1999, Claire Denis, France)

One of the ten greatest films of all time according to Sight and Sound’s recent once-a-decade poll, Claire Denis’ loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd will reorient your sense of what cinema can be. The slender narrative is concerned with the repressed longings

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FILM CLASSICS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20 of a French Foreign Legion soldier, Galoup (Denis Lavant), for his arrestingly beautiful comrade, Gilles (Grégoire Colin). That slim outline allows Denis and her frequent cinematographer Agnès Godard to take a visually and aurally suggestive approach as Galoup’s obsession leads him down multiple paths of destruction. There are balletic scenes of the soldiers doing training exercises in the heat of the African republic Djibouti, and the exotic locale itself is part and parcel with Denis’ career-long fascination with the colonialist impulses of her French homeland. (And might the subjugation of a country also relate in some way to the subjugation of the self?) The film also features one of the greatest final scenes in cinema, as the stifled Galoup cuts loose to the Italian Eurodance group Corona’s “Rhythm of the Night.”

(Streaming on Criterion.)

Shoah

(1985, Claude Lanzmann, France)

Claude Lanzmann’s epochal Holocaust documentary is often marketed as a nine-and-ahalf-hour film when it is actually two features (“First Era” and “Second Er”a) of four-plus hours each that complement the other. Eschewing re-enactments, Shoah engages with the horrors of the past entirely through the present — via discursive interviews with survivors of the concentration camps and the Warsaw ghetto, as well as haunting (and haunted) imagery of the land where the camps stood. Lanzmann stokes both the imagination and the intellect, most powerfully in “First Era’s” climactic sequence, which provocatively links a modern-day conglomerate to the business-as-usual Nazi war machine. The film also uses repetitions (imagery of trains pulling into and out of stations; interviewees parroting back interviewer questions) to show how fluid the truth can be under the pressure of day-to-day life. To remember this terrible period of history is to grapple with it enduringly and endlessly. (Streaming on Amazon.) n

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Any occasion to celebrate a new casino is always a worthwhile enterprise because, you know, I love to gamble. Which is why — huzzah — having Parx Casino Shippensburg drop anchor on February 3, (you know, pending PGCB testing and approval). I don’t care how far away Cumberland County is — its 500 slot machines and 48 electronic table positions, and a first-class 100-seat restaurant. Bet. With that, I should add that, closer to Philly and its suburbs at Parx Casino Bensalem, their Xcite Center’s live schedule for February is highlighted by the Feb 24 appearance of the rudest comedian that Australia has ever bred — and that’s saying something -— Jim Jefferies. Expect cocaine jokes, drinking jokes, misogynistic jokes, and cocaine jokes. He likes cocaine jokes. Who doesn’t?

Not touching on the cocaine — not the humor, and not the powder — is homeboy comedian Todd Glass who returns to his Philadelphia stomping grounds at Helium Comedy Club February 23 through 26. Unpredictably obtuse and abstract, Glass is always a breath of fresh air cision that won’t get countermanded. Most times, everybody else along the chain doesn’t want to be responsible for this artist guy who wants to paint here for some unfathomable reason. When I went the first time to ask to paint (it’s important to do it in person), the guy I was directed to wasn’t the boss, but he was in charge. People in that position are rarely receptive. He didn’t take to the idea (his body language said,”this could only be trouble.”) and he told me to call back later and talk to Paul. The guys behind the meat counter were watching. They had the same body language. They also had knives. And blood on their aprons. as his comedy stylings are never punchline-punchline-punchline but more of a feel-good slap and tickle.

When I got through to Paul Whitman, he couldn’t have been nicer. I told him what I wanted to do, and he was all for it. When I showed up on that cold morning he just waved from behind the counter. That was all I needed. I was in with the boss.

Fischer’s is a step back into another era—not to a Disney caricature of the neighborhood butcher, but to a time of long-term relationships. Fischer’s offers a product rather than dazzle you with marketing, which I find refreshing. It doesn’t cover every square inch of wall space with incentives and provocations. The store feels spare but unmistakably genuine — a location scout’s dream.

Let me stick with the nice vibing for a minute because humanity and goodwill is not a thing in which I normally traffic. The Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Academy of Music is hosting the 21st Century Broadway musical Come From Away from February 7 to February 12, and the excursion is life-affirming. Dealing as it does with the real-life interactions of a Newfoundland community welcoming 38 U.S.-based planes forced to land in Canada after the horror on Nine-Eleven, the story is soaked in loving humanity and tenacity. That’s better than Valentine’s Day, right?

Back to cynicism, few authors — musical or otherwise – can wrap snark in a blanket of character-driven narrative as has Elvis Costello in his now 45+ year career. On the verge of releasing a box set of his work with Burt Bachrach, Elvis Costello & The Imposters is performing at the Wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem, PA. No. I have never been there, but I suggest this is the time to go.

And back to cocaine, on February 10, the decadent liege of hair metal, Mötley Crüe, with Def Leppard hit up the Hard Rock Live at Etess Arena at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City in Jersey. No stripper pole is safe. n awoman stood at the meat case and asked questions of a patient butcher while trays of chicken and red meat were being loaded onto the racks. People would come in and ask when a certain dish or preparation would be ready. Plates of food were shuttled to the window as they emerged from the kitchen. A man with a guitar on his back stopped to get chicken nuggets and soup to take with him for lunch. Occasionally I would have to move my easel (a maneuver perfected over thirty years in the field) while someone looked for soup in the case. Everybody needed two pulls to get in. The doors opened with a suction noise and pulled themselves closed, resisting the intrusion.

The sounds and aromas reminded me of the Amish butcher shop of my Pennsylvania youth. Every so often, the door to the meat locker at the other end of the room would open with a metallic cuh-jank of the hand lever, and close with a solid chunk, briefly volunteering glimpses of large hunks of meat.

This is not a place with a public restroom, but the cold weather and my morning coffee got the best of me, and I had to ask. I was sent through the back room with the directive that if I ended up outside, I went too far. It was a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood set, with equipment of the trade and people at their business everywhere I looked. A guy peeling potatoes into a large pot, roasted chickens being carried past on a spit. If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen, you know the pace and the choreography.

Paul Whitman never stopped moving. Behind the counter or on the phone, he was a blur. Paul went out the front door and came back three or four times while I painted, each time with a hesitation at my easel to tell me I was doing a nice job. He is a gentleman, kind to everyone no matter their tone.

When I was done, a big guy came over from behind the meat case, red smears across his waist, knife in his left hand. He fished a phone out of his pocket, smiled and said,”can I take a picture?” I said of course. n

Swedish medical man Helmer Jr. (Mikael Persbrandt), take precedence. Though in a clever twist, they’re more than aware of their status as replacements. That’s just one of many meta touches woven throughout (another is that the first two seasons of the series exist in the world of the third and are a prime irritation to several of the hospital staff). Like von Trier’s great Nymphomaniac, Exodus is a brilliantly told extended joke, creepy and funny in equal measure, and building to a literally demonic punchline that is as cackle-inducing a career-capper as one could hope for.

[N/R] HHHH

Avatar: The Way of Water (Dir. James Cameron). Starring: Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Kate Winslet. Back we go to the planet Pandora, where blue giants named Na’vi reign and “Sky People” (us colonizing Earthlings) mostly do them dirty. Writer-director James Cameron’s long-gestating sequel to his 2009 sci-fi epic picks up the tale of former Marine-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his warrior wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their now sprawling interspecies family — most notably teenage Kiri, motioncaptured by Sigourney Weaver — as they go on the run from the first film’s resurrected villain Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The narrative and its attendant dialogue are, par for the course for Cameron, often risibly simplistic. Yet this perversely allows the computergenerated sights and sounds (mastered for 3D and High Frame Rate technology) to shine. Sully and his family hide out among a seashore tribe for much of the three-plus- hour running time so the visions are primarily water-related. And Cameron seems as much in his element bombastically redoing the sink-the-ship climax of Titanic (this time with indigo aliens!) as he does allowing his digitally-augmented cast to swim at length with a whale-like species that talks telepathically…with subtitles! The artistic hubris is astounding, and the movie often jaw-droppingly justifies the ego trip. [PG-13] HHH1/2

The Eternal Daughter (Dir. Joanna Hogg). Starring: Tilda Swinton, Carly-Sophia Davies, Zinnia Davies-Cooke. A coda of sorts to her two-part semi-autobiographical features The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II, writer-director Joanna Hogg’s latest uses ghost story trappings to examine and excavate the stormy relationship between a mother and daughter. The most inspired decision is the casting of Tilda Swinton as both the elderly Rosalind and the middle-aged Julie, the latter of whom Swinton’s own child, Honor, played in The Souvenir diptych. Julie — a filmmaker searching for inspiration for her next project — takes her mother to a remote hotel that the older woman once frequented in her youth, a place where strange occurrences (eerie sounds in the night; ghostly figures peering from windows) are a given. The creep factor works its magic for a while, as does Swinton’s general excellence in both roles. Yet the reveal of what’s actually going on is pretty evident from frame one, and rarely possessed of the metaphoric and emotional resonance that would make this anything more than a selfabsorbed curio. [PG-13] HH n

VALLEY / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12 flote and April 29 for the new Champion, jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s exploration of haunted boxer Emile Griffith)

Movies move us through familiar and unfamiliar worlds. Watching non-mainstream movies is more otherworldly in the 19th Street Theatre, an Art Deco plaster palace opened and closed to “photoplays” in 1928. The show begins with the glittering marquee and glowing façade with butterflies and elephants. Inside the ornate auditorium, recently restored to bejeweled glory, I’ve relished the basketball doc-

Six days a week, I drive 19 urban, suburban, and country miles to Brig O’Doon, the best-damned coffee-and-conversation house in Bucks County and beyond. Every day but Monday, when the Brig is closed, I clean the cobwebs with a savory dark roast, a hearty pumpernickel bagel, and a healthy chat with, say, a singles-bar bartender in swinging ’60s Manhattan or a Playboy Club bunny in swinging ’60s London. Easing into the morning is easy in an inviting space with 6-by-7-foot windows that lighten the darkest moods; life is just as breezy on a slateand-stone patio graced by rose bushes and pots of backyard-grown umentary Hoop Dreams and the Shakespearean dramedy In the Bleak Midwinter. Across the street, at the smaller, starker Theatre514, I’ve communed with the visionary, wacky directors Pedro Almovodar (Julieta) and Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin). Seeing nearly 200 films over 33 years on 19th Street makes me a tribal investor. (514 and 527 N. 19th St., Allentown; 610-433-8903; civictheatre.com)

Old books demand sensing: touching, smelling, scouring. Quadrant Book Mart & Coffee House, the Valley’s oldest literary emporium, is a sensory paradise. Its 50,000-plus used volumes exude a comforting aroma of dusty paper, cloth, and leather. Arrangements are pleasantly haphazard, matching the mismatched windows on the antique brick exterior. Modern first editions share a room with “Disasters”; a Charles Lindbergh memoir shares a table with a pigeon encyclopedia. The sense of a wildly eclectic, eccentric library intensifies in a sitting alcove within three sides of shelves. This personal collecting vibe continues in a book-lined, buzzing café specializing in hearty, zesty fare: Tex-Mex omelet, grilled spinach/wild rice wrap, and chocolate-and-raspberry latte. (20 N. 3rd St., near Center Square, Easton; 610-252-1188) flowers. The menu brims with tasty, twisty treats: spicy avocado toast; aioli steak melt; sweet-potato chili; cold-pressed organic beet juice infused with lemon, ginger, and carrot. A tag team of young staffers are remarkably quick, polite, cheerful, and neat; they guarantee that the Brig is remarkably clean. These good citizens are mentored to mentor each other by owner Patrick Mullaney, who runs the former general store as a hospitality center and free-range forum. Voraciously curious, he has the methodical mindfulness of Socrates and Columbo; I dig our pin-balling debates about baseball and the Bible. Our friendship began 13 years ago when my late mother and I stopped at the Brig during our weekend country cruises. Patrick always gave Mom two pieces of multi-grain bed to take home, a gift of kindness that made the Brig my best retreat. (239 Durham Rd., east of Route 611, Ottsville; 610-8476844; brigodooncoffeehouse.com)

Covered bridges are time tunnels. Those timber-trussed chambers zoom passengers to the days before highways and wristwatch GPS when cows and horse(less) carriages sputtered through passageways built to imitate calming barns. The Valley’s seven-time tunnels are part of a very pleasant 50-mile tour from suburban Allentown to rural Kreidersville. All seven are painted barn red, five cross the same creek, and two anchor a park with a zoo. Wehr’s has the most picturesque setting, a grassy bank with picnic tables. Bogert’s is the longest and busiest, close to a fish hatchery and a Native American museum. The jazziest interior belongs to Manasses Guth, named for a pioneer settler. Those slanted, crisscrossing supports resemble wooden whale bones. (discoverlehighvalley.org) n