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This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival is beginning to wind down. Sunday was the last non-workday of the festival. I attended two events, and hit the jackpot both times.

The Mel Novikoff Award Ceremony and The Lady Eve

More than anyone else, Mel Novikoff helped bring repertory cinema to the Bay Area. The SFIFF’s Mel Novikoff Award honors someone who has helped keep a love of cinema alive. This year, the Award went to critic and historian David Thomson.

Thomson is such an obvious choice I found myself wondering why it took so long. The author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and many other books, he’s considered by many to be the greatest living film historian. And he’s local, a British subject who’s made his home in the Bay Area.

I like to patronize used bookstores, and I always go right to the Cinema section. Despite their popularity, you rarely see his books there. People must be reluctant to part with them.

After introductions by Rachel Rosen and Sony Classics’ Michael Barker, Jeff Dyer interviewed Thomson. So highlights;

• Thomson on Novikoff: "I lived around the corner from Mel’s office. Every other morning I would bump into him. He had an electricity, an energy, and grace, quite amazing. He had that buzz that was characteristic of great showman. And he was so much fun to be with."
• Jeff Dyer described a game using Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary. You read one of the brief, very opinionated biographies, and someone else has to guess who that person is. Dyer played the game with the audience; the winner got a dollar.
• On the original response to the encyclopedia: "Authors expect the world is waiting to acclaim them." It took six months before anyone bothered to review his book.
• "I taught a class at Stanford two years ago Very smart kids. But their knowledge of film history was not that good. A lot of people think it began in the late 70s."
• "Actors are not quite there in the way the rest of us try to be. There’s a terrible temptation to decide you like them and be kind to them."
• "The movies that interest me the most are about the face."

Next came the Q&A with the audience:

• I got to ask the first question, and I asked about old films being screened digitally: "I have very mixed feelings. I love film as celluloid. I’ve handled it. I love that part of it."
• "People went into the dark to see things that were impossible. Places they couldn’t visit….What film has done is show us the world you couldn’t see. The wonderful privilege of voyeurism."
• "Have the movies made us better? I can’t see it. They have filled our time and diverted us from other things."
• "The remote allows you to be experimenting. It’s frightening. But it’s staggering."

He then introduced the movie he chose to be screened in his honor, The Lady Eve. "It was released a few weeks before I was born. They weren’t aware of that coincidence. The film is sublimely unaware of the war."

Then they screened the movie.

Thomson made a great choice in picking The Lady Eve. To my mind, it’s the perfect screwball comedy. You’ve got lovable con artists lifting money from wealthy snobs, and you’ve got Barbara Stanwyck at her sexiest, wrapping Henry Fonda around her little finger. We don’t generally associate Fonda with comedy, but he’s wonderful here as the shy and naïve son of a wealthy family–a man who’d rather study snakes in the Amazon than go into his father’s beer business. He’s the perfect mark for Stanwyck’s card shark.

I’ve seen The Lady Eve many times (I own the DVD), but it’s been 30 years or more since I’d seen it theatrically. And yes, that is the way to see it, with hundreds of other people laughing with you.

The Festival screened The Lady Eve off one of the most film-like DCPs I’ve ever seen. The grain structure was very visible, and there were even some scratches.

Manos Sucias

The 6:45 start time was almost upon us when the SFIFF volunteers finally let the audience into the Kabuki‘s tiny Theater 2. By the time I got into the auditorium, almost all the seats were taken. I got one in the front row, which in this particular auditorium is too close even for me.

But the movie, produced in part by San Francisco Film Society (which also produces this festival), was well worth the wait and the bad seat.

First-time director Josef Kubota Wladyka uses the thriller formula to examine the society of of rural Colombia, where paramilitary forces and ruthless drug cartels control everything. And yet, somehow, people carry on, loving their families and trying to make the best of things.

Two brothers, barely on speaking terms at first, team up to deliver a very large shipment of cocaine. The coke is contained within a large, old torpedo, and they must tow it, via a small motorboat down river, into the ocean, and up to Panama. The container looks absurd, but it stays underwater and is rarely visible.

Older brother Jacobo (Jarlin Martinez) is stable, but hurting. The warlords killed his wife and son. Younger brother Delio (Cristian Advincula) is full of enthusiasm and hope. He’s only 19, a new father enthusiastically in love with his girlfriend and baby. He’s also an aspiring rapper.

It’s the end of them if they’re caught. But things will be worse if they don’t deliver all of their shipment. In that case, Delio’s family will be killed, as well. The suspense is built into the story, and the last half hour is as harrowing as these things go. The ending is not comforting.

But Manos Sucias does more than hold us in suspense. It shows us how society works in a part of the world rarely visited by outsiders. We see how people live, earn money, and find unique and original ways of transportation.

I’m giving it an A.

Manos Sucias has not yet found an American distributor. But you have two more chances to see it at the festival. It plays tonight (Monday) at 8:30, and Thursday (the last day of the Festival) at 6:00. Both screenings are at the Kabuki.

After Sunday’s screening, Wladyka, producers Elena Greenlee and Márcia Nunes, and cinematographer/co-writer Alan Blanco came up for Q&A. Here are some highlights:

• How did you ended up shooting a film in Colombia? "I was backpacking in South America. As we were traveling, we were finding hidden beaches and towns under siege. We were told about narco submarines. After that, making a movie about it was always in the back of my mind."
• On working with the communities: "We had to collaborate with people to get their blessing."
• Cinematographer Blanco on shooting on a low budget under difficult conditions: "We knew we’d develop material and shoot no matter what…We knew we had to be flexible with weather and such….I don’t recommend shooting on water."
• On using locations in what’s effectively a warzone: "We had to ask if a location was safe. And safe today didn’t mean safe next week."

Filed under: Awards, Comedy, Festivals, SFIFF, Thriller | Comments Off on A Classic Comedy and a Colombian Thriller: Sunday at the San Francisco International Film Festival