2013 NYFF Masterworks Sidebar Unearths Cinematic Glories

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 20 September 2013 04:17

Written by Jack Angstreich

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has recast its New York Film Festival "Masterworks" sidebar under the new rubric, "Revivals", this year featuring a handful of outstanding classics in beautiful 35mm prints.

Arthur Ripley's underrated, experimental, early film noir, The Chase, about a down-on-his-luck ex-GI who tries to help the beautiful wife of a menacing gangster who employs him as a chauffeur, is being shown in the fine UCLA restoration print. The Chase boasts outstanding credits — a screenplay by Philip Yordan, adapted from one of Cornell Woolrich's "Black" series novels, and photographed by the great Franz Planer — but Ripley's demonstrates an authorial sensibility that can also be detected in his later Thunder Road. Some of the nightmarish elements and unorthodox structure must be owed to Woolrich but the elegance of the realization must largely be credited to Ripley's mise-en-scène. Robert Cummings is characteristically lackluster as the hero but Steve Cochran as the heavy provides the requisite menace while Michele Morgan — still alive at age 93! — as the wife radiates the necessary glamour; however, the film is stolen, unsurprisingly, by Peter Lorre as the gangster's henchman.

Screening with The Chase are two short, recent animated films directed by Mark Kausler and produced by Greg Ford, presented here in digital video: It's The Cat! (2004) and Some Other Cat (2012) — these successfully attempt to recapture the distinctive qualities of 1920s and 1930s Hollywood cartoons, replete with period music.

Nicholas Ray's first feature, the classic film noir They Live by Night, about a pair of young lovers on the run, is one of the most impressive debuts in the history of cinema. Based on a classic crime novel, Thieves Like Us by Edwin Anderson — and later filmed by Robert Altman in the early 1970s, this features the most memorable performances of Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, as the doomed lovers. The film was screened in a handsome, restored print.

Another recent Ray restoration in a very fine print was also shown:  the wonderful The Lusty Men, about an ex-rodeo-performer — played with effortless aplomb by Robert Mitchum — who takes up with a younger ranch-hand (Arthur Kennedy, effectively cast) trying to earn big money on the circuit. The great cinematographer Lee Garmes achieves an evocative, lyrical naturalism while Susan Hayward shines as the ranch-hand's wife. Arthur Hunnicut as a voluble ex-rodeo-star steals every scene he is in.

The digital restoration of Martin Scorsese's magnificent Edith Wharton adaptation, The Age of Innocence, screened from a DCP, was deeply unsatisfactory with disastrous loss of detail, even at 4K, and range of contrast. Under such circumstances, one's attention is directed to the work of the actors and the film's score, both of which are stellar.

For more information, go to: www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

The 51st New York Film Festival
Septermber 27 - October 13, 2013

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