The Mostly British Film Festival continues through the week and IndieFest opens Thursday.

A Beauty and the Beast (1946 version), Castro, Thursday. I’d be hard-pressed to think of another film that’s anything like Jean Cocteau’s post-war fantasy. It’s a fairytale, told with a charming and often naïve innocence, and contains absolutely no objectionable-for-children content. It’s also a supremely atmospheric motion picture, and one that takes its magical story seriously. But its slow pace and quiet magic never panders to unsophisticated viewers. And yet, I once saw a very young audience sit enraptured by it. See my Blu-ray review. On a double bill with No Such Thing.

Looking Through A Glass Onion: Deconstructing The Beatles White Album, Balboa, Monday, 7:30. Beatles expert Scott Freiman will use recordings and video clips as he discusses what may easily be the Beatles’ weirdest album.

A The French Connection, Castro, Friday. Perhaps the grittiest, filthiest, most realistic contemporary drama to ever win the Best Picture Oscar (and only two years after Midnight Cowboy, the other contender for that honor). A mystery and a character study about a foul-mouthed, violent, and borderline racist police detective (Gene Hackman in the best performance of his career), The French Connection sinks you into a dirty business and the people who have to do it. It also includes one of the best car chases in movie history. On a double bill with Year of the Dragon.

A A Separation, Albany Twin, Guild, opens Friday. Writer/director Asghar Farhadi demonstrates how good people can turn against each other in this harrowing tale from Iran about divorce, family responsibilities, and courtroom drama. A middle-class couple break up over an irreconcilable difference. He hires a housekeeper to care for his senile father. That housekeeper—poor, pregnant, with a young daughter in tow and a husband who doesn’t know she’s working—is clearly not up for the task. When disaster strikes, everyone ends up in court, where people are soon doubting their own words. This one will stick with you. See my full review.

Film Arts Forum: Digital Distribution Now, Roxie, Tuesday, 7:30. Judging from the description, this isn’t about DCP projection, but Internet streaming as a business model. “The Film Society’s latest Film Arts Forum will assemble a panel to debate, demystify, and debunk online distribution in all its varying forms."

Super Bowl, Balboa, Lark, Roxie, Sunday afternoon (check individual theaters for times). Why watch the big game at home when you see it on the theater screen with a large audience. The Balboa screening is free. The Roxie version, titled Superbowl XlVI: Men in Tights, promises the “Mystery Science Theater treatment” and is a benefit for SF IndieFest and the Roxie.

B A Night at the Opera, Stanford, Tuesday through Thursday. The Marx Brothers moved up in the world when they left Paramount for MGM—bigger budgets and bigger grosses. But the need to be more commercial cost them a lot of their bite. Their first MGM extravaganza has some of their best routines (“The party of the first part,” the overcrowded stateroom), but you have to sit through a dumb romantic plot, very unmarxist sentimentality, and insipid love songs. On a double bill with the Greta Garbo version of Camille, which is not an opera. If someone can explain to me the logic of this double bill, please do so.

MASH, Castro, Saturday, 5:00. I never cared much for what everyone else seems to consider an important comedy. Even in 1970, when it was new and I was right smack in the middle of its demographic, I found it only a moderately funny military comedy with pretensions of significance. I saw it again about ten years later, and felt that age had only turned it into a misogynistic, moderately funny military comedy with pretensions of significance. This may sound sacrilegious, but I preferred the TV show. I’m not giving it a grade because it has been a very long time since I’ve seen it. Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman and Kathryn Altman will appear in person for this Sketchfest event.

A All About Eve, Stanford, Friday through Monday. Here’s your chance to explore the sordid ambition behind Broadway’s (and by implication, Hollywood’s) glamour. Anne Baxter plays the title character, an apparently sweet and innocent actress whom aging diva Bette Davis takes under her wing. But Eve isn’t anywhere near as innocent as she appears. Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride. On a double bill with something called Orchestra Wives.

B Best In Show, Castro, Saturday, 2:00. Christopher Guest’s dog-show mockumentary has more than its share of hilarious moments. The rest of it is pretty funny, too. This Sketchfest event will include  Q&A with Fred Willard and Michael Hitchcock.

In festival news, Noir City continues through Sunday. And the Mostly British Film Festival opens Thursday.

B Sing Your Song, Roxie, opens Friday. Harry Belafonte is a great performer and a dedicated activist. This reverential documentary emphasizes the activism, from his high-profile importance to the civil rights movement to his current work reforming gang members. Director Susanne Rostock has made a picture that encourages you to burn with anger at the world’s injustices, and admire those who worked and sacrificed to end those injustices. But if you come into the theater because you love Belafonte’s music, you’ll be disappointed. You’ll hear bits and pieces of many a great song, but you won’t hear a single one from beginning to end. Read my full review.

Science On Screen: What Captain Kirk Can Teach Us (AKA: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Rafael, Sunday, 7:00. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the second Star Trek movie (and the first to get it right), but if I remember it correctly, it’s a fun one. Sure, the plot is silly, but the action snaps, the effects look great, and the screenplay seems to really understand the characters—something I can’t say for the first movie or even the original TV show. Buddha’s Brain author Rick Hanson will be on hand to discuss the brain’s relationship to the body, the power of positive thinking, and the "Kobayashi Maru" scenario (Star Trek fans know what that last one is).

Dashiell Hammett Marathon, Castro, Sunday. Hammett’s dark world view and direct writing style helped pave the way for film noir, and was a San Francisco original. So it’s appropriate for this year’s Noir City festival to end with six movies based on his novels. The only pictures here I’ve seen are the two versions of The Maltese Falcon. The 1931 original plays the story for laughs, and works reasonably well. But in the 1941 remake, John Huston did it right with the perfect cast and a screenplay that sticks almost word-for-word to the book. The ultimate Hammett picture, the second-best directorial debut of 1941 (after Citizen Kane), an important precursor to film noir, and perhaps the most entertaining detective movie ever made.

Live Jazz & A Great Day in Harlem, Balboa, Sunday, 5:30. Jazz and movies—two art forms that describe 20th century American entertainment. The evening’s festivities include a screening of Jean Bach’s jazz documentary, A Great Day in Harlem, and a live performance by the Jimmy Ryan Balboa Be Bop Band. As I have neither seen the movie nor heard the band, I can’t officially give this event a recommendation, but it sounds like fun.

C British Arrows Awards 2011, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Friday through Sunday. Why pay to see commercials that you would fast-forward through at home? Because these are the best of British commercials, and the British have earned reputations for great television and witty, off-the-wall humor. About 20 minutes of this hour-long presentation is very much worth watching—from a heroic tale of bakery delivery trucks to a small village where everyone’s a cider fanatic to a lesson in making low-budget Doritos commercials. But to get to these gems,  you have to sit through a lot of technical whiz-bang, supposedly heart-warming slices of life, and two poetic odes to Macdonalds. See my full review.

A Groundhog Day, Castro, Thursday (which is Groundhog Day). Is Groundhog Day a deep, spiritual meditation on the nature of human existence and the power of redemption? Or is it simply the best comedy (although not quite the funniest) of the 1990s? It’s hard to say, but as weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) relives the same day over and over again, with no changes except the ones he makes himself, there appears to be something profound going on along with something profoundly entertaining. I have a rule against giving an A+ to to any film less than 20 years old; I strongly suspect that next year I will give one to Groundhog Day. On a double bill with Caddyshack, which I saw many years ago; I wasn’t impressed with it then.

B+ Scarface (1932 version), Pacific Film Archive, Tuesday, 7:00. The best of the three films that started the 1930’s gangster genre, Scarface tracks the rise and demise of Tony Camonte, a violent thug who becomes a big shot by virtue of his total lack of virtue (Paul Muni acting a little over the top for my taste). When he first sees a tommy gun, he joyfully cries out “Hey, a machine gun you can carry!” And that’s when one is shooting at him. Soon he’s using one to mow down his enemies and innocent bystanders alike. But he does love his kid sister. In fact, maybe he loves her too much. Written by Ben Hecht and directed by Howard Hawks, and you can’t find a better team than that. Part of the series Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man.

A- Midnight in Paris, Castro, Wednesday; Opera Plaza, opening Friday. I didn’t think Woody Allen still had it in him. He hasn’t made a film this funny, this wistful, and this heartfelt in decades. And I don’t think he’s ever made one this upbeat. Owen Wilson stars as your basic neurotic, romantic, witty, oversexed, and not quite intellectual Allen protagonist in a movie that slightly resembles Allen’s 1985 Purple Rose of Cairo. As with that film, the protagonist’s intense desire to escape into a fantasy world alters reality. But this is a much more optimistic movie, one where fantasy can help one handle reality. Read my full review. On a double bill with The Moderns.

B+ Sing-A-Long Wizard of Oz, Lark, Sunday, 3:00. I don’t really have to tell you about this one, do I? Well, perhaps I have to explain why I’m only giving it a B+.Despite its clever songs, lush Technicolor photography, and one great performance (Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion). The Wizard of Oz never struck me as the masterpiece that everyone else sees. It’s a good, fun movie, but not quite fun enough to earn an A. I haven’t experienced the sing-a-long version.

The evening got off to a late start. Due to an error, the starting time was advertised as 7:00 in some publications and 7:30 in others. Rather than have people arrive a half hour into the movie, the festival organizers started the show at the later time. 7:30 is not a good time to start a double bill on a weeknight, and I didn’t get to bed until after midnight.

Festival organizer Eddie Muller took the stage at 7:30 and talked a bit about Fuller, then invited former Chronicle columnist and Creature Features host John Stanley to join him. The two talked about Fuller and newspaper work (Fuller started out as a reporter, and–not surprisingly–covered the crime beat). They talked about Fuller’s colorful vocabulary (he would describe a producer he didn’t like as a "banana head") and Muller described Fuller as the ideal American male.

The talk was entertaining and interesting, but in light of the late start, I wish they had skipped it or shortened it significantly. It was getting close to 8:00 before the movies started.

House of Bamboo (1955)
Despite the criminal-laced story, House of Bamboo didn’t feel like noir to me. It’s hard to be dark at an exotic location (Japan), and in Technicolor and Cinemascope. Besides, the story treated evil as an aberration that’s inevitably wiped out, rather than as the natural state of humanity. Robert Stack stars as an American who comes to Japan with possibly illegal motives, and gets involved with a bunch of well-dressed Yankee crooks led by Robert Ryan (who steals the picture). It’s an entertaining story, with great location footage that captures a Japan that’s both exotic and grimy.

Underworld USA (1961)
Now this is noir! And prime Sam Fuller! Cliff Robertson plays a safe cracker on a 20-year quest to avenge his father’s death. Not that his father was such a great man; a criminal himself, he had started his son on a career path that would inevitably lead to time in prison. Three of the father’s killers end up as top crime bosses, so our thuggish antihero joins up with the syndicate, makes himself liked, and starts working to destroy it from within. Told in that sleek and unforgiving Fuller style, Underworld USA presents a world where crime can become respectable, but where a thug is always a thug, especially if he was destined for that role after birth.

I didn’t get enough sleep last night, but it was worth it.

B Musical & political documentary

Directed by Suzanne Rostock

My mother was a big Harry Belefonte fan. She loved his singing voice. She very much approved of his political activism. And I suspect she found him very sexy. There were reasons for those tight pants and v-necked shirts.

Director Susanne Rostock clearly likes Belefonte, as well. Her biographical documentary, co-produced by Gina Belafonte and a company called Belafonte Enterprises, makes no attempt to show his warts. The picture celebrates the actor/singer’s talent, and even more, his activism.

Luckily, it’s a life worth celebrating. Born in Harlem and raised partly in Jamaica (the Caribbean Jamaica, not the one in Queens), Harry Belefonte started acting as a young adult. Then he discovered singing, and found fame and fortune with a singing style all his own. But as a black man in post-World War II America, he soon grew disgusted with the segregation that kept him down despite his success–and kept less successful African Americans further down still. He became an outspoken critic of racism and segregation, and soon became an important figure in the civil rights movement, working closely with Dr. Martin Luther King. He’s still an activist today, working to reform gang members and against a legal system all too eager to jail young people of color.

Rostock tells all this in her film–or more precisely, she allows Belefonte to tell it; the subject of this doc is also its narrator. Their picture encourages you to burn with anger at the world’s injustices, and admire those who worked and sacrificed to end those injustices.

But if you come into the theater because you love Belefonte’s music, you’ll be disappointed. You’ll hear bits and pieces of many a great song, but you won’t hear a single one from beginning to end. I understand this is primarily a political biography and not a concert movie, but let’s be honest here. American history is filled with heroes and heroines who devoted their lives to making this a better world, and many of them paid a far greater price for their ideals than did Belefonte. Yet Rostock chose to make this picture about Belefonte. Why? Because he’s a talented and famous singer. Giving us a few complete songs would have resulted in a longer film, but it would have also turned an interesting political polemic into a must-see movie.

I have one more complaint–this one technical. Much of the picture is taken up by old, pre-HD television clips, shot in the old 4×3 aspect ratio. Rather than pillarboxing these images (putting black bars on the side of the screen to maintain the original framing), Rostock chose to fill the entire screen with every shot. Sometimes, she crops the shots vertically–not an ideal choice but a workable one. But other times she stretches the image horizontally, distorting the picture and making everyone look fat—as you can see above.

Rostock and Belefonte have made a flawed documentary that’s still worth seeing. They could have made a much better one.

Sing Your Song opens Friday at the Roxie.

C Collection of television commercials

If you’re like me, you probably mute or fast-forward through TV commercials. So why on earth would you go to a movie theater and buy a ticket to watch an hour’s worth of advertising intended for the "telly?"

One reason is that these are, at least in theory, the best–the commercials that have won the elite British Arrow Awards. For another reason, they’re British. Whatever we think of English dentistry and cooking, every PBS fan knows that they make great television. And the British tradition of off-the-wall humor stretches back from Gilbert and Sullivan through Beyond the Fringe and Monty Python to Wallace and Gromit. (Am I hitting enough stereotypes here?)

British Arrow Awards 2011 will screen Thursday through next Sunday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I did not screen these in time for last week’s newsletter.

Unfortunately, surprisingly few of these commercials are funny–intentionally or otherwise. To get to the laughs, you have to sit through a lot of technical whiz-bang, supposedly heart-warming slices of life, and two poetic odes to Macdonalds.

But the funny ones are excellent. What starts as a romantic war epic turns into a heroic tale of bakery delivery trucks. Two commercials introduce us to the small village where everyone seems exceptionally devoted to making wonderful cider. Impressive computer animation show us an exceptionally bad-ass way to manufacture a car, and creates a whimsical fantasy world that was so impressive I can’t recall what it was selling.

But the funniest commercial was probably one of the cheapest–a lesson in how to make your own low-budget Doritos commercial. A man addresses the camera as he explains the importance of such elements as conflict, suspense, and rolling your R’s. The lesson cuts frequently to variations of a pathetically bad little film that only gets worse with each "improvement."

I even liked a couple of non-funny commercials. One was an inspirational tale about a paraplegic athlete–which turned out to be hawking Johnny Walker. Another, which was a true public service announcement, warned of the dangers of Christmas tree fires.

One smartphone ad tried to be funny with three offensively stereotypical dumb blondes. Perhaps I found it particularly offensive because one blonde was named Maya and another one Brittany–the names of my youngest daughter and future daughter-in-law.

The program starts with the Bronze award winners, followed by those who took home the Silver, and ending with the "Best Commercial of the Year," which was not the best one on the program. Oddly, the Bronze collection contained most of the truly entertaining commercials. Perhaps the Arrow judges don’t use my criteria.

All told, I’d estimate that you’ll find about 20 minutes of great entertainment in this hour-long collection. For the rest, you may long for the fast-forward button.

Noir City opens today (Friday) and runs through the week and a bit beyond.

A A Separation, Embarcadero Center, opens Friday. Writer/director Asghar Farhadi demonstrates how good people can turn against each other in this harrowing tale from Iran about divorce, family responsibilities, and courtroom drama. A middle-class couple break up over an irreconcilable difference. He hires a housekeeper to care for his senile father. That housekeeper—poor, pregnant, with a young daughter in tow and a husband who doesn’t know she’s working—is clearly not up for the task. When disaster strikes, everyone ends up in court, where people are soon doubting their own words. This one will stick with you. See my full review.

A The Wages of Fear, Pacific Film Archive, Saturday, 8:10. Four poverty-stricken Europeans, desperately stranded in South America, take on a frightfully dangerous job because their only other choice is starvation. They agree to transport a very large quantity of nitroglycerin, in two ill-equipped trucks, across poorly-maintained mountain roads. You’ll find few other thrillers this painfully suspenseful. But Wages of Fear is more than just a thriller. Director and co-writer Henri-Georges Clouzot had some strong opinions on poverty, exploitation, and American economic imperialism, and he used this nail-biting movie to discuss them. An exceptional work. Part of the series Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Cinema of Disenchantment.

B+ Safety Last, Stanford, Friday, 7:30. Harold Lloyd’s iconic image, hanging from a large clock high over a city street, comes from this boy-makes-good-by-risking-his- neck fairytale. Lloyd made better pictures, but even run-of-the-mill Lloyd is damn funny. And once he starts climbing that building, there’s nothing run-of-the-mill about this Lloyd. The laughs–and thrills–don’t stop. On a double-bill with Hot Water, another Lloyd feature, but one  that I haven’t seen in decades. Dennis James will accompany both movies on the Stanford’s Wurlitzer organ.

A- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Oakland Paramount, Friday, 8:00. Corrupt political bosses appoint a naive, young idealist (James Stewart) senator because they think he’s stupid. The second and best film in Frank Capra’s common-man trilogy, Mr. Smith creeks a bit with patriotic corniness today, and seems almost as naive as its protagonist. But it has moments–Stewart’s speech about how “history is too important to be left in school books,” for instance–that can still bring a lump to your throat. And it’s just plain entertaining.

B Medicine for Melancholy, Pacific Film Archive, Thursday, 7:00. One could describe this low-budget indie as the African-American version (and the Bay Area version) of Before Sunrise. We discover the two characters as they discover each other, maneuver around their mutual attraction, and talk about their very different attitudes about life and race. Tracey Heggins and a pre-Daily Show Wyatt Cenac make attractive and likable leads, and for the first hour they’re completely worth spending time with. But two-thirds of the way through the movie takes a wrong turn to nowhere. Beautifully shot with a color palette so desaturated it often looks like black and white. Read my more in-depth report. Part of the PFA’s annual African Film Festival, which is odd because Medicine for Melancholy is not an African film.

C- Gone With the Wind, Stanford, Saturday through Thursday. I have a weakness for big historical epics, but the biggest of them all just leaves me flat. First, there’s the blatant white supremacy. I’m used to racism in old movies, and generally just winch at it. But Gone with the Wind goes over the top. The entire story is based on the assumed inferiority of African Americans (called darkies in the dialog because the Hayes Office wouldn’t let them use the word nigger), and the presumption that slavery is their natural and rightful place. All that is made worse by the large number of people who even today find this movie’s attitudes acceptable. Leaving racial issues aside, the first part is pretty good, but boredom sets in after the intermission. In fact, the post-war section is kind of like a slasher flick; x number of characters have to die before the movie ends and you can go home. The picture has one thing going for it: It used color far more creatively and effectively than any previous movie.

A The Artist, Marina, opens Friday. Michel Hazanavicius just made a silent movie about the death of silent movies. Even more amazing than that, he pulls it off, creating a warm, funny, heartfelt, and occasionally sad story of a Hollywood star’s fall from grace as talkies ruin his career. Meanwhile, a struggling actress who loves him becomes a star in the new medium of talkies. Hazanavicius fills the picture with funny bits that illuminate the characters, the setting, and the medium. A black-and-white, narrow-screen, silent film is a hard sell in today’s market, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see that The Artist found an audience. Read my full review.

A Red Desert, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Saturday, 7:30; Sunday, 2:00.  No one has ever called Michelangelo Antonioni’s study of pollution and madness a thriller, yet it filled me with a sense of foreboding and dread that Alfred Hitchcock seldom matched. Monica Vitti holds the screen as a housewife and mother struggling to maintain her slipping sanity. It’s no surprise she’s breaking down; her husband manages a large plant that’s spewing poison into the air, water, and ground (Antonioni made absolutely sure that his first color film would not be beautiful). Through her mental deterioration, she plans to open a shop (without any clear idea of what she’ll sell), flirts with one of her husband’s co-workers (Richard Harris, dubbed into Italian), worries about disease, and attends a party that stops just short of an orgy. Carlo Di Palma’s brilliant camerawork adds to the sense of mental isolation; I’ve never seen out-of-focus images used so effectively. A brand-new 35mm print.

A drama/mystery

• Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi

One seldom finds clear heroes and villains in family turmoil. When marriages fail and people lose their temper, you’re most likely to find good people on both sides, angry and flawed, but trying to do the right thing.

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi understands that very well. He demonstrates how good people can turn against each other in this harrowing tale of divorce, family responsibilities, and courtroom drama.

The film’s Iranian origin makes it appear as a political film almost by default. After all, many in our government and media want war with Iran, and that generally involves discouraging us for thinking of Iranians as human beings. Besides, the Iranian government has developed a bad habit of oppressing filmmakers.

But any politics you find in A Separation come from your imagination. The government only appears in the form of family and criminal courts, and these seem to be reasonable and even humane. I don’t know if this reflects the reality of the Iran court system as Farhadi sees it, or if the government insisted on being portrayed this way.

The story begins in family court. Simin wants a divorce from her husband, Nader. She admits he’s a good man, but she wants to leave the country (why and where to is never explained), and he won’t leave with her because he’s responsible for his Alzheimer-inflicted father. He agrees to the divorce, but refuses to give up their 11-year-old daughter.

No longer willing to live with her husband, Simin moves in with her mother. But before she does, she arranges for another woman, Razieh, to come in daily to do housework and care for her senile father-in-law. But Razieh is clearly not up to the job. She’s very pregnant, tires easily, has a young daughter in tow, and is hiding the fact that she’s working from her own unemployed husband. She tries her best, but her work is a disaster waiting to happen.

Disaster happens. When it does, Nadar loses his temper, and Razieh suffers a miscarriage. Soon Razieh and her husband are accusing Nadar of "murdering" their unborn child, and he’s facing prison.

The film’s second half becomes a mystery, filled with difficult-to-answer questions. Did he know she was pregnant (not all that obvious in the devout Razieh’s black cheddar)? Did she really fall down the stairs? When did the fetus actually die?

But the legal questions still take a backseat to the emotional ones. It becomes a story of two married couples, each with problems aggravated by the incident and legal issues. Everyone is doing what they believe is right, and soon people are doubting their own words.

I said earlier that the film isn’t political, but it is about class differences. One family is middle class and relatively secular. The other poor and very religious. Without these differences, the conflict would never have happened. And once it has happened, class stereotypes effect everyone’s behavior.

Cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari uses a direct and intimate style here. He shot many scenes with a long lens, which tends to isolate characters from their surroundings–an important reflection on those characters’ emotional states. The camera is often handheld, adding to the tension.

Farhadi has given us a portrait of two families on the verge of breakdowns. By refusing to give us clear good and bad guys, he’s made a remarkable motion picture. This one will stick with you.

Start with a large selection of American feature films. They could be your all-time favorites, the ones you own, or AFI’s most recent 100 Best American Films list. Or simply the unsubtitled movies currently in theaters.

Now, remove all of the films where the protagonist–the central character or hero–is portrayed by a white actor (or actress).

That gives you a considerably smaller list. But let’s make it smaller:

Out of that tiny list, remove any titles where the lead role really couldn’t be played by a white person. Perhaps it’s based on a true story–you can’t very well star Brad Pitt in Hotel Rwanda. Or where the story is specifically about race, so that making the character white would have been an entirely different story. In the Heat of the Night would have just been a mystery if it had starred Marlon Brando. Also, remove anything that was made for a predominantly non-white audience, such as Tyler Perry’s work

Got anything left? Okay, remove all films where this non-white protagonist is a cop, criminal, or member of the military.

You may have one movie left–perhaps Night of the Living Dead. But there’s a good chance you won’t have any.

I’m sure you already see what I’m driving at. Hollywood studios and independent distributors have always been shy about casting non-whites in lead roles. They need a reason–and it has to be a good one. In fact, even when the story is about race, studio heads prefer a white protagonist (see The Help; or better yet, don’t see it).

It all comes down to the invisibility of whiteness. Americans see a white doctor, a white scientist, or a white high school student, and we think “doctor,” “scientist,” and “student.” But when we see a black doctor, scientist, or a high school student, we notice skin color. In a movie, an actor’s race inevitably becomes part of their character–unless they happen to be white.

But why is it okay if the protagonist of color is a cop, criminal, or member of the military? I suspect that studio executives believe that Americans can accept non-whites in those particular careers. How often have Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, or or Will Smith gotten to play characters who didn’t fit one of these categories? Occasionally, but not often. In I Am Legend (a movie I liked very much), there’s absolutely no reason why Smith’s character, a brilliant scientist and doctor, is also a Lieutenant Colonel. It was just a way to make him more palatable to the perceived audience.

The good news: The trend changed a bit in the last 15 years, especially in children’s films. Family-friendly comedies such as Dr. Dolittle, Spy Kids, and The Game Plan all had non-white leads in stories where race simply wasn’t an issue. None of these are great films (although I liked the first Spy Kids very much), but they broke the racial barriers more than any serious drama I can think of. Perhaps the studios could figure out that the kids who grew up on these movies are now old enough for adult fare, and adjust their casting practices accordingly.

But I doubt it.

Both movies deal with men in dangerous jobs–a common subject for Hawks. The PFA screened both movies in 35mm prints that were recently struck by the Library of Congress.

(As I write this, the PFA’s web site appears to be down. If you can’t get to any of the links, my apologies.)

James Cagney plays a champion race car driver in The Crowd Roars. He’s got a girlfriend (Ann Dvorak) who–for some unexplained reason–he doesn’t want to introduce to his family. That’s bad to begin with, but worse when he brings his kid brother (the extremely innocent-looking Eric Linden) into the business.

The Crowd Roars Trailer

The characters and relationships seem silly and plot-driven. Why does Joe–Cagney’s character–feel ashamed of his girlfriend? Why does she stick with him when he acts like such a jerk? If Joe feels so strong about keeping his kid brother innocent, why bring him into such a rough profession? But then, this is the sort of picture where, early on, a sidekick kisses a pair of baby shoes and puts them in his car before a race–no way that guy will live to the fadeout.

The girlfriend’s name is Lee, which sounds very Hawksian; he liked giving his ingénues masculine names. But her helpless blubbering over a boyfriend who mostly ignores her is a far cry from Hawks’ usually strong women.

Despite the name cast and director, The Crowd Roars feels like a B movie–quick-paced, witty, and over in 85 minutes. I enjoyed it the way I enjoy Bs–with lowered expectations. If it were my first Howard Hawks experience, I would have left wondering what the fuss was all about.

I liked Tiger Shark a lot more, despite Edward G. Robinson’s awful Portuguese accent. He plays Mike Mascarenhas, the captain of a tuna fishing boat based in San Diego–a skilled fisherman and a decent human being, but with a fierce temper and utterly lacking in social skills.

He’s unlucky with the ladies, but has a very good best friend, Pipes (Richard Arlen). Hawks was great at male friendship, and the way they support each other, lie for each other, and protect each other is touching.

Mike eventually finds and helps a woman in need(Zita Johann), and she agrees to marry him out of gratitude. She doesn’t love him. Of course she’s going to meet the tall and handsome Pipes, and you can probably guess where the story will go from there.

Much of the film was shot on location, and some of the scenes of tuna fishing feel more like a documentary than narrative. Hawks really wanted to show us how those big fish get from the ocean to those tiny cans.

Houston Branch’s original short story was called Tuna. I guess someone felt that Tiger Shark made a better title. The title fish show up in several scenes.

Finally, some festivals! For Your Consideration: A Selection of Oscar Submissions From Around the World runs through the week at the Rafael. And German Gems plays the Castro on Saturday, then heads north to Point Arena for Sunday. You’ll find my capsule reviews for two German Gem films at the bottom of this newsletter.

In non-festival news, the Pacific Film Archive started its Henri-Georges Clouzot retrospective last night, and its Howard Hawks one today. The Robert Bresson retrospective starts Thursday.

The Golden Globes, Balboa, Sunday, 4:00. Watch the other movie awards show on the big screen with Reed Kirk Rahlmann acting as MC. Only $5.00.

A Red Desert, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Thursday, 7:30 (two additional shows next week). No one has ever called Michelangelo Antonioni’s study of pollution and madness a thriller, yet it filled me with a sense of foreboding and dread that Alfred Hitchcock seldom matched. Monica Vitti holds the screen as a housewife and mother struggling to hold onto her slipping sanity. It’s no surprise she’s breaking down; her husband manages a large plant that’s spewing poison into the air, water, and ground (Antonioni made absolutely sure that his first color film would not be beautiful). Through her mental deterioration, she plans to open a shop (without any clear idea of what she will sell), flirts with one of her husband’s co-workers (Richard Harris dubbed into Italian), worries about disease, and attends a party that stops just short of an orgy. Carlo Di Palma’s brilliant camerawork adds to the sense of mental isolation; I’ve never seen out-of-focus images used so effectively. A Brand-new 35mm print.

A+ Grapes of Wrath, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Friday, 7:00. No one associates serious social criticism with classic, studio-era Hollywood. Yet this 20th Century-Fox production of John Steinbeck’s flip side of the California dream pulls few punches. The ending may be less shocking than Steinbeck’s original, but as the desperately-poor Joad family moves from Oklahoma to California in their rickety truck, only to find poverty, bigotry, and exploitation, the picture shows us an America where mere survival is a victory of sorts and revolution a logical reaction. Nunnally Johnson produced and wrote the screenplay, and John Ford directed, but a lot of credit must go to studio head Darryl Zanuck for the courage to make a film that exposes the ugly underbelly of American capitalism. Part of an Alameda County Library series on Steinbeck’s novel.

B+ The Colors of the Mountain, Rafael, Sunday, 3:30. On one level, this is a funny tale about adorable boys who love soccer, set against beautiful mountain scenery. On another, and more important level, it’s about the harsh realities of third-world life when caught between violent revolutionaries and an utterly heartless government. At first, Manuel’s life seems good. His family is poor, but not desperately so. They have electricity and running water, and his parents buy him a brand-new soccer ball for his birthday. Then the revolutionaries mine the makeshift soccer field, and soon after that the army arrives. Writer/director Carlos César Arbeláez shows us the effects of political upheaval through the eyes of someone too young to understand what’s happening, but old enough to be horrified. Part of For Your Consideration: A Selection of Oscar Submissions From Around the World.

A+ Double Bill: Sanjuro & Seven Samurai, Film Society/New People Cinema, Thursday. Putting anything on a double bill with the 3½-hour Seven Samurai seems odd, but Sanjuro is short, light, and funny enough to go against something big and heavy. When a masterless swordsman (Toshiro Mifune) reluctantly helps a group of naive young samurai clean up their clan, the result is an action comedy and genre parody that ties with The Hidden Fortress as Kurosawa’s lightest entertainment. See my Kurosawa Diary entry. Seven Samurai earns this double bill’s A+. The basic story–a poor village hires warriors to defend them against bandits–has been retold many times since, but Kurosawa told it first and told it best. A great drama about class differences that’s also a great action movie. See my Kurosawa Diary entry.

Rifftrax Presents Night of the Shorts III: The Search For Schlock, Castro, Thursday, 8:00. Three Mystery Science Theater veterans continue to add snarky—and very funny—commentary to bad movies. Or, in this case, bad educational shorts. The opening night for Sketchfest.. For more on RiffTrax, see RiffTrax Report and RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 from Outer Space.

A Double Bill: Harakiri & Yojimbo, Film Society/New People Cinema, Wednesday. Only Akira Kurosawa had better samurai films than Masahiro Kobayashi’s Harakiri.  A samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) comes to a fort and asks permission to kill himself, then tells a harrowing tale of poverty made unbearable by the strict samurai code. Kobayashi reveals the cruelty, arrogance, and hypocrisy of feudal Japan’s social structure. In Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, a masterless samurai (Toshiro Mifune) wanders into a small town torn apart by a gang war. Disgusted by everyone, he uses his wits and amazing swordsmanship to play the sides against each other. In the hands of Akira Kurosawa, the result is an entertaining action flick, a parody of westerns, and a nihilistic black comedy all rolled into one. Read my Kurosawa Diary entry.

B+ Black Power Mixtape, Castro, Monday. The nature of the civil rights movement changed dramatically in the mid-to-late 1960’s, and this American/Swedish documentary tracks the black power movement from Stokely Carmichael’s heyday until heroin ravaged Harlem. The film’s Swedish origin is something of a gimmick. Most of the footage consists of news footage shot by Swedish crews for Swedish television. Occasionally we get the original narration with English subtitles, but most of the narration comes from recent interviews with African-American activists, and the point of view is definitely theirs. The result is an intriguing and informative overview, if considerably one-sided. Little attention is given to the bad decisions, reverse racism, and raging sexism that warped the movement. Read my full review. On a double bill with the 1973 concert documentary Wattstax, which I haven’t seen since before it was released.

Comedy Short Subject Night, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30. The Keaton short, “One Week,” is one of his best (it’s also the second one he made and the first he released). Chaplin’s “One AM" is a strange one—almost a solo performance. I can’t vouch for the other two shorts.

A+ Rear Window, United Artists Berkeley, Thursday, 8:00. Alfred Hitchcock at his absolute best. James Stewart is riveting as a news photographer temporarily confined to his apartment and a wheelchair, amusing himself by watching his neighbors (none of whom he knows) and guessing at the details of their lives. Then he begins to suspect that one of them committed murder. As he and his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) begin to investigate, it slowly begins to dawn on us that they’re getting into some pretty dangerous territory (something they don’t realize until it’s almost too late). Hitchcock uses this story to examine voyeurism, urban alienation, and the institution of marriage, as well as to treat his audience to a great entertainment.

Sweet Smell of Success, Castro, Sunday. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Burt Lancaster’s Broadway noir for me to trust my memory with a wholehearted recommendation. But not by much. Lancaster risked his career by producing this exploration of the seamy side of fame and by playing a truly despicable character. The result, if I recall correctly, is fantastic. Tony Curtis co-stars, from a script by Ernest (North by Northwest) Lehman. On a double bill with The Duellists, which I haven’t seen in an even longer time and don’t recall being all that impressed with.

A+ Casablanca, Stanford, Friday. What can I say? You’ve either already seen it or know you should. Let me just add that no one who worked on Casablanca thought they were making a masterpiece; it was just another movie coming off the Warner assembly line. But somehow, just this once, everything came together perfectly. On a double bill with Lubitsch’s World War II comedy, To Be or Not to Be (not to be confused with the Mel Brooks remake); I haven’t seen this one in a very long time but I remember liking it.

German Gems

Both films at the Castro on Saturday.

B+ Above Us Only Sky (Über uns das All), 4:30. Writer/director Jan Schomburg gives us a sad yet sexy story about the secrets that separate us from those we love the most. Schomburg spends the first 15 minutes showing us that Martha (Sandra Hüller) is very happily married, even though she can’t help feeling that husband is hiding something. Then, without warning, he commits suicide. She begins to hunt for an explanation, which may make you think that this will turn into a thriller. It doesn’t. The reasons for his mysterious and tragic act take a back seat to the main story–that of a young woman dealing with profound and sudden grief. With frightening swiftness, long before the emotional scars heal, she throws herself headlong into a new relationship with a guy who vaguely reminds her of her late husband. Her new man is nice, intelligent, and sensitive, but he can’t help feeling that she’s hiding something. The ending is a little too upbeat. As near as I could tell, the title is not a reference to John Lennon.

B Westwind, 7:30. Two young women–17-year-old twins–come of age while Communism begins to unravel in this effective but predictable story of forbidden love. East German athletes and extremely close siblings, Doreen and Isabel travel to Hungary to train for international competition. It’s 1988, and Hungary is already considerably looser than East Germany. They meet and flirt with some West German boys, which seems harmless enough even after their supervisor warns them warns them about westerners. But when Doreen falls head over heels in love with one of the boys (it’s mutual), both their future as athletes and the twins’ close relationship is threatened. Screenwriters Ilja Haller and Susann Schimk, and director Robert Thalheim, paint an image of a Communism that feels warm and friendly at first glance, and repressive when you look closer. For instance, the athletic camp they’re staying in looks positively idyllic, but it’s surrounded by a barbed-wire fence (which allows for some Pyramus and Thisbe imagery).