DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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The Silver Theatre’s ‘s 75th Anniversary
On September 15, 1938, the Silver Theatre opened its doors for the first time. While the theatre lay dormant for some years, in 2003 the AFI reopened the space that is now one of America’s great repertory cinemas. This Sunday, the AFI celebrates with a free screening of the very first program to play at the Silver. Four Daughters (pictured) is a musical dramedy that marked the screen debut of actor John Garfield (The Postman Always Rings Twice). Director Michael Curtiz went on to make a little movie called Casablanca. Also on Sunday’s program is the cartoon “Cracked ice,” a feature for cartoon pig W.C. Squeals directed by Frank Tashlin (The Girl Can’t Help it), and a vintage 1938 newsreel. Sunday’s re-presentation of the Silver’s first screening will be hosted by Arch Campbell. The AFI is also screening 35mm prints of favorite film from 1938, like the Fred and Ginger vehicle Carefree (September 13-16), Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (September 13-15 and 17), The Adventures of Robin Hood (September 14-15 & 17-18) and the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn screwball classic Bringing up Baby (September 14 & 15).
View the trailer for Four Daughters.
September 13-18 at the AFI Silver. Sunday’s Four Daughter’s presentation is free. Other screenings of films in this series only are $5.
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The Plastic People of the Universe
The Embassy of the Czech Republic’s Mutual Inspirations Festival presents this 2001 documentary about one of the great underground rock bands, a group who counts Václav Havel and Lou Reed among their friends and champions. Formed a month after the Prague Spring of 1968, The Plastic People were heavily influenced by Frank Zappa (the band took their name from a Mothers of Invention song) and the Velvet Underground, and also recorded a prog-rock Passion Play. The documentary uses archival footage and interviews with Havel, Reed and band members.
View a clip from the documentary featuring guitarist Gary Lucas.
Tonight, Thursday, September 12 at 7:00 pm at West End Cinema.
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A pioneer of the Czech New Wave, director Jiří Menzel turns 75 this year. The director visits Washington this weekend to talk about his films, his relationships with fellow Czech artists, and the censorship he faced in his native land. This Saturday, the National Gallery of Art hosts A Day with Jiří Menzel. The director will be on hand to introduce two of his most celebrated films, both adaptations of work by novelist Bohumil Hrabal. Closely Watched Trains (pictured,1966) is on the surfance a coming-of-age film about a young man who wants to lose his virginity, but in Menzel’s hands it becomes a black comedy about the frustations of life under German Occupation. SFMOMA’s Judy Bloch describes Larks on a String (1969) as “an absurdist setting reminiscent of Svankmajer or Boro, this is a bleak wonderland, an island of love and small philosophies in a world where typewriters and films and souls are relegated to the heap, waiting to be rescued, or melted down.”
View the trailer for Closely Watched Trains.
Closely Watched Trains screens Saturday, September 14 at 2:00 pm. Larks on a String screens Saturday, September 14 at 4:00 pm. The director will appear in person at both screenings. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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This weekend the Freer Gallery launches its series Pages of Beauty and Madness: Japanese Writers Onscreen with director Mikio Naruse’s 1954 adaptation of a novel by Yasunori Kawabata, perhaps best known for his collection of Palm-of-the-hand Stories. According to the Freer, “So Yamamura plays Shingo, the patriarch of a lower middle-class Tokyo family whose son is openly cheating on his dutiful, long-suffering wife, Kikuko (Setsuko Hara). Inspired partly by a fear that old age is slowly claiming his mental faculties, Shingo goes to increasingly greater lengths to restore Kikuko’s happiness and tear his son away from his longtime mistress.” The gallery will be showing a 35mm print.
Friday, September 13 at 7:00 pm at the Freer. Free.
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An escaped mental patient (teen idol Frankie Avalon) goes on a killing spree, and seeks out a handicapped young girl (Donna Wilkes) linked to him by a blood transfusion. Whether that description has you at “mental patient,” “Frankie Avalon,” or “blood transfusion,” the Washington Psychotronic Film Society has a movie for you. This 1982 film was the only theatrical feature made by director Alan J. Levi, who went on to direct episodes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and TV movies like Knight Rider 2000.
View the trailer.
Monday, Septemper 16 at 8:00 at McFadden’s.
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Also opening this week, director James Wan follows up his excellent horror smash The Conjuring with Insidious: Chapter 2. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
