Capital Projections: Gangland edition
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting arthouse and repertory screenings in the coming week.
ASH IS PUREST WHITE
The latest film from Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke spans 17 years in the life of Qiao (Zhao Tao), a gangster’s moll who’s devoted to Chinese underworld leader Bin (Liao Fan). She’s so dedicated to him, in fact, that she serves time on a gun charge — for a weapon he gave her — rather than give him up to the police. But when she’s released from prison five years later, she’s disappointed to learn that Bin did not wait around. As I wrote in my Washington Post review: “The film’s original title, in Chinese, translates to ‘Sons and Daughters of the Jianghu,’ suggesting a more straightforward account of gangland culture. But the poetic English title is taken from a scene in which Qiao and Bin discuss a dormant volcano. It’s a metaphor that never erupts — a constant reminder of seething passions kept in check, all for the sake of an underworld code that, in the end, only Qiao has the decency to honor.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, March 29, at Landmark West End Cinema and ArcLight Bethesda. $13 to $16.50.
THE MAKIOKA SISTERS
With local cherry blossoms reaching peak bloom, what better time to revisit the 1983 film that may be, as the above photo demonstrates, the most beautiful cinematic depiction of this ephemeral flora? Based on the 1948 novel by Jun’ichirô Tanizaki, director Kon Ichikawa’s romance tells the story of four orphaned sisters who try to find a husband for the third youngest, while the youngest and most rebellious must wait her turn. Comparing this drama to a Jane Austen romance, Slant Magazine wrote: “there’s no Mr. Darcy … nor are its heroines particularly shocked when he doesn’t materialize for them. The film is instead about finding happiness through courtship rituals that are shown to be as flawed as they are potentially useful.” The film will be screened in a 35-mm print as part of the Freer and Sackler galleries’ regular Wednesday afternoon program of Japanese classics.
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, April 3, at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
THE AFFAIRS OF CELLINI
Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) is represented in the National Gallery of Art’s permanent collections by a number of bronze medals, including one currently on view depicting his contemporary, the Venetian philologist and poet Pietro Bembo. This weekend you can see the legendary artist in a Hollywood swashbuckler from 1934. Fredric March (The Best Years of Our Lives) stars as Cellini, whose infamous autobiography, while mute concerning the artist’s homosexual inclinations, did not shy away from expressing his homicidal impulses. But the title figure, who might have been better portrayed by a more athletic actor like Errol Flynn or a hammier one like John Barrymore, doesn’t steal the show. More entertaining performances come from Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) in an Oscar-nominated turn as the Duke of Florence, Constance Bennett (Topper) as the Duchess of Florence, and Fay Wray (King Kong) as one of Cellini’s models and potential lovers. The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center will be screening a 35-mm print as part of its retrospective of movie industry power couple Fay Wray and Robert Riskin.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, March 30, at 1 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
HOLLOW TRIUMPH
This taut 1948 crime drama directed by Hungarian émigré Steve Sekely was one of the best films to emerge from the low-budget studios located on what was known as Hollywood’s Poverty Row. Paul Henreid (Casablanca) stars as small-time gangster John Muller. On the run from a gambler he ripped off, Muller finds a novel way to hide from his pursuers thanks to a fortunate coincidence: Except for a telltale scar, he’s a dead ringer for a respected psychiatrist. Cinematographer John Alton, who created brooding, black-and-white atmospheres for such noir classics as Border Incident and Mystery Street, helps the movie punch above its weight class. The National Gallery of Art will screen a 35-mm print as part of its series Hollywood’s Poverty Row Preserved by UCLA, which wraps up this weekend.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, March 31, at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
SPLIT SECOND
Dick Powell was as much of a crooner as an actor in such early films as the Busby Berkeley spectacular Gold Diggers of 1933. But as he grew out of his boyish looks, his career took a surprising turn to hard-boiled crime dramas, and that experience seems to inspire this 1953 B-movie, Powell’s first as a director. Addressing the nuclear anxiety that fueled a subset of midcentury film noir, Split Second revolves around two fugitives on the lam who begin taking hostages in an abandoned Nevada town. But there’s a catch: An atomic bomb test is scheduled to take place just a mile from their hideout. For all the explosive setup, Powell gets the most drama out of the human dynamics, with tensions flaring due not only to the mushroom-cloud-sized gorilla in the room but also to shifting alliances among the hostages — some of them romantic. Jan Sterling, whose filmography careens from the 1950 women-in-prison movie Caged to a stint as a judge on the sitcom Three’s Company, stands out as a tough, acid-tongued dame. The Library of Congress will be showing a 35-mm print of this rarely screened title. (Disclosure: I work at the Library of Congress, but did not program this film).
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, April 2, at 7 p.m. in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the Madison Building at the Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free. Seating is first-come, first-served. For the best seating options, patrons are encouraged to arrive 15 to 30 minutes before the scheduled start time.
THE CRAWLING EYE
While this week’s film program at the Library of Congress offers one midcentury response to nuclear fission, the Washington Psychotronic Film Society will be demonstrating a competing form of atomic hysteria. This 1958 sci-fi movie looks with horror at a Swiss mountainside whose ordinarily pristine snowpack has been littered with headless corpses. As the WPFS puts it, the culprits turn out to be “horrible alien creatures that like to decapitate humans from their nifty, radioactive cloud. Not only that, but they can make psychic connections with people and reanimate the dead like zombies!” Forrest Tucker, best known for TV’s F Troop, leads a mostly English cast as a scientist who may be mankind’s only hope. A contemporary review in the Daily Boston Globe called The Crawling Eye “appalling,” but to modern audiences the gargantuan peeper may seem cute and endearing.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, April 1, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
This post has been updated to correct the date of the AFI screening of The Affairs of Cellini.
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