Chicago Reader review: Like most people with a cat phobia, Val Lewton, the legendary producer
of RKO’s horror cycle, was fascinated by them. His first film (1942),
eerily directed by Jacques Tourneur, is dedicated to his fetish. Based
on a wholly fabricated Serbian legend about medieval devil worship, Cat People
describes the effects of this legend on the mind of a New York fashion
designer (Simone Simon) who believes herself descended from a race of
predatory cat women. More a film about unreasoning fear than the
supernatural, this work demonstrates what a filmmaker can accomplish
when he substitutes taste and intelligence for special effects. Don Druker
This is a Jellied Reels presentation. Details of their other screenings can be found here.
Chicago Reader review: Arguably Stanley Donen’s masterpiece, and undoubtedly one of the most stylistically influential films of the 60s, Two for the Road
(1967) follows a couple (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) through four
successive trips through the south of France, telling the story of the
dissolution of their marriage by cutting from one time level to another.
The literate script is by Frederic Raphael, and Eleanor Bron
contributes a hilarious cameo as the ultimate University of Chicago
graduate. Dave Kehr
This is a 35mm screening in the 'Projecting the Archive' series at BFI Southbank.
BFI introduction: One of the most accomplished British films of the 1930s, this fantasy melodrama boasts a wonderful ensemble cast headed by one of the industry’s finest imports: Conrad Veidt. Set in that most evocative, claustrophobic locale, the English boarding house, Jerome K. Jerome’s play brings together characters from different classes to play out its drama of sexual and class politics, reflecting on relationships and generational shift. The script was co-written by Alma Reville (Alfred Hitchcock’s wife and early collaborator), whose sensitive depiction of female characters is one of the film’s greatest assets, particularly Rène Ray as the put-upon maid and Beatrix Lehmann as a bitter spinster.
The latest season of theLondon Review of Book’s long-running film series continues its exploration of visions of London created by non-British filmmakers throughout 2026. First up for the new year is the golden-age British film noirNight and the City. It was Jules Dassin’s last film before he was blacklisted by Hollywood. He declared that he had not read the novel by the now-cult writer, Gerald Kersh, on which it was based. It follows the attempts of a small-time American con artist Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark on definitive, anti-heroic form) to establish himself shattered post-war London’s wrestling rackets. With a production history as vivid as its tangled plot, Night and the City was widely misunderstood upon release, but is now regarded as a classic of the genre: ‘A work of emotional power and existential drama that stands as a paradigm of noir pathos and despair,’ according to the film scholar Andrew Dickos.
IntroducingNight and the City, and discussing it afterwards with regular host Gareth Evans, will be the novelist, occasionalLRBcontributor and screenwriter Ronan Bennett (Top Boy,Public Enemies,The Day of the Jackal).
Time Out review: Bizarre film noir
with Richard Widmark as a small time nightclub tout trying to hustle his way
into the wrestling rackets, but finding himself the object of a
murderous manhunt when his cons catch up with him. Set in a London
through which Widmark spends much of his time dodging in dark alleyways,
it attempts to present the city in neo-expressionist terms as a
grotesque, terrifyingly anonymous trap. Fascinating, even though the
stylised characterisations (like Francis L Sullivan's obesely outsized nightclub king) remain theoretically interesting
rather than convincing. Inclined to go over the top, it all too clearly
contains the seeds of Jules Dassin's later - and disastrous - pretensions. Tom Milne
This monumental historical epic set in the 13th century, four-years-in-the-making yet slipped into semi-obscurity, was recently restored in 4K and is finally available in all its grandiosity on the IMAX screen and part of the Restored strand.
Chicago Reader review: Shot in 1990, as Kazakhstan was asserting its independence, this brutal
historical epic by Ardak Amirkulov charts political intrigue among the
Kipchaks, a confederation of tribes on the steppes of central Asia,
before they were overrun by Genghis Khan. At 165 minutes this is a
pretty long haul, and the shifting alliances mapped out in the dark and
claustrophobic first part can be difficult to follow; the payoff comes
in the second part, which opens out into dramatic locations and bloody
battle as the Mongols lay siege to Otrar. The film’s respectful
treatment of Islam was welcomed in Kazakhstan as a celebration of
national identity, though Amirkulov’s attitude may be more ambivalent:
as Genghis Khan prepares to execute the governor of Otrar, he points out
two holy men whose marginal religious differences have allowed him to
divide and conquer. J R Jones
BFI Southbank introduction: This epic tale of the Napoleonic wars and Poles’ participation in
them provides Wajda with an opportunity to consider thorny questions
around heroism and patriotism. A young nobleman partakes in the
conflict, fighting for Poland’s freedom while searching for his own
self. Wajda worked with a higher budget and on a much larger scale to
create this visually dazzling CinemaScope drama, which examines
nationhood and national identity.
Chicago Reader review: By far the most underrated of Sam Peckinpah's films, this grim 1974 tale
about a minor-league piano player in Mexico (Warren Oates) who
sacrifices his love (Isela Vega) when he goes after a fortune as a
bounty hunter is certainly one of the director's most personal and
obsessive works—even comparable in some respects to Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano
in its bottomless despair and bombastic self-hatred, as well as its
rather ghoulish lyricism. (Critic Tom Milne has suggestively compared
the labyrinthine plot to that of a gothic novel.) Oates has perhaps
never been better, and a strong secondary cast—Vega, Gig Young, Robert
Webber, Kris Kristofferson, Donnie Fritts, and Emilio Fernandez—is
equally effective in etching Peckinpah's dark night of the soul. Jonathan Rosenbaum
