SIFF Picks: Films for Classic Movie Fans at Seattle International Film Festival 2026

 

In the twelve years I have covered Seattle International Film Festival for Watching Classic Movies, the event and the number of archival offerings have gotten exponentially smaller. For those who define classic movies as being the studio age of Hollywood, the pickings have become increasingly slim. However, while the archival slate is lighter, there are still many documentary and modern classic offerings for those with an interest in film history and the overall culture behind it. This year's festival takes place May 7-17 at SIFF Cinema and several other venues around the city.

Queen Kelly (1929) 

Director Erich von Stroheim was notorious for his grand, impossible cinematic visions. By shooting higher than reality would allow, he never got quite what he wanted, but still succeeded in creating unusual and enduring classics like Greed (1924), Foolish Wives (1922), and The Wedding March (1928). In keeping with his reputation, Queen Kelly is more famous for on-set drama that led to it being incomplete rather than its content. Star Gloria Swanson objected to von Stroheim’s methods, including his instructing an actor to dribble tobacco juice on her hand and excessive multiple takes. She had him fired, leaving future archivists to cobble together the film as best as possible. This new restoration (the first after a 1985 attempt) uses previously unseen material and the director’s shooting script to fill out the end of the story.

Prisoners of the Earth (1939) 

One of the best things about SIFF is how it always includes a classic film in the “International” and this year it is an Argentine classic helmed by Mario Sofici, one of the country’s most celebrated directors. Its artistically rendered story of the trials of indentured workers on a yerba maté plantation is especially relevant in this moment.

Boorman and the Devil (2026) 

Director John Boorman (Deliverance) thought he had the opportunity of a lifetime when after the culture-altering success of The Exorcist (1973), he was offered the job of directing Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). This documentary traces the production from the anticipation of a sure hit to the disaster it would become from beginning to end.

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 

Long-time festival guest DJ NicFit has previously created live soundtracks for flicks like The Dark Crystal(1982) and The NeverEnding Story(1984). While this horror classic might seem like a dramatic departure from previous NicFit productions, it fits neatly into the DJ’s themes of exploring the dread and peril within fantasy. Also of note, Nightmare on Elm Street star John Saxon’s final resting place is in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery, a few feet north of the graves of his martial arts teacher Bruce Lee and Lee’s son Brandon.

The Best Summer (2026) 

The nineties were a unique time of DIY ethos in music and film. Some of the key bands who were a part of that cultural explosion appear in this found-footage music fest documentary by prolific music video director Tamra Davis. The groups include Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Beck, Pavement, Rancid, The Amps, and Bikini Kill, many of whom continue to mold our culture.

Broken English (2025) 

If the nineties were about the intertwining mediums of DIY culture, the sixties were about breaking apart a restrictive culture and mining the pieces for deeper humanity and a new world. With her work in music and film, Marianne Faithfull embodied that rebellion. The film’s unusual structure and framing mechanism of a "Department of Not Forgetting” suits its equally unusual and impactful subject.

Barbara Forever (2026) 

The independent filmmaker Barbara Hammer also pushed culture beyond its boundaries with a bold, queer, feminist vision that blasted out intimate truths in 16mm. She worked for five decades, so there’s plenty to unravel in this collection of archival footages, images, and audio interviews. They reveal a prolific, fearless, and influential artist who showed new possibilities to future generations of filmmakers.

SIFF Picks: 5 Films for Classic Movie Fans at Seattle International Film Festival 2025

 

There's an intriguing array of films both new and archival that may appeal to classic film fans at Seattle International Film Festival 2025, which takes place in theaters from May 15-25 and online with a selection of films from the main fest May 26-June 1. While the festival doesn't offer nearly as many archival choices as it used to, what it does offer is choice: 

 

Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972) 

[Screening information] 

Holly Woodlawn of Andy Warhol Factory fame gets a perfectly surreal and wacky showcase for her unusual talents in this long thought to be lost, but now restored film. With a Bette Midler song and an unmistakable voice cameo from Lily Tomlin, this fervently unserious flick revels in its gags and unending goofiness. It’s not for common tastes, but anyone with a love for camp, trash, and unconventional wit and hijinks will love it. 

 

The Glass Web in 3-D (1953) [Screening information] 

Though lead John Forsythe is typically bland, this noir moves along at a good pace and is a fun watch. Edward G. Robinson blazes with the charisma our protagonist lacks and, in an amusing touch, plays a collector of art just like he was in real life. The film is an odd choice for 3D, and it was more popular in 2D when it was released, but a recent restoration by 3-D Film Archive should bring new life to the format. Whatever the genre, screenings of 3-D Film Archive restorations are always a blast, and this film should be great with a crowd. 

 

Jean Cocteau (2024) 

[Screening information] 

While using multi-talented artist Jean Cocteau’s own words and images to explore his work has undeniable power, the execution of this film is orderly and conventional in a way that doesn’t mesh with the spirit of the artist. It is pleasant, beautiful, and works both as a tribute and an as introduction for those who are curious about the French surrealist, but ultimately it lacks inspiration. It is nevertheless a must-see for classic film fans at SIFF. 

 

Chain Reactions (2024) 

[Screening information] 

The documentary Chain Reactions (2024) features five writers and directors reflecting on the influential horror flick The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Ultimately though, the film is about more than one movie. In discussing the effect Tobe Hooper’s grimy masterpiece had on them, Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, and Karyn Kusama also reflect on the power of cinema itself and how a single movie is infinite in the way it affects each viewer in a unique way. A basic set-up is all that is required with minds this brilliant; director Alexandre O. Philippe was wise to let these knowledgeable and insightful participants mold the creative direction of the film. While it will be most rewarding for Chainsaw fans, any film fan can relate to the way a single movie can shift your perspective and even change your life. That said, the plentiful gore will turn away some viewers. 

 

Riefenstahl (2024) 

[Screening information] 

Leni Riefenstahl is notorious for making propaganda films for the Third Reich, with the jarring pictures of her shaking Hitler’s hand evidence of a lasting scar on a legacy of great film craft. The chilling and gripping Riefenstahl is more about the effect of that association on the filmmaker’s legacy than her work. While physically and mentally strong, Riefenstahl’s ego was easily wounded. She is shown to be elated when she views her own work and infuriated that her association with the Reich has blocked her from the praise she feels she deserves. As a result, she falls into denial, and is shown frustrating multiple interviewers who receive rage rather than remorse when they present her with proof of what she supported. Footage of hate-filled speeches from the time and her own stories of abuse at the hands of Nazi men reveal how much the filmmaker was and remained in denial and cold to the suffering with which she was associated. Informed by newly available archival materials, it’s a complex portrait of a complicated woman which provides plenty of food for thought in the present day.

Movies for Classic Film Fans at the 50th Seattle International Film Festival

 

The 50th Seattle International Film Festival is celebrating the half-century mark with a typically adventurous roster of films, including a selection of intriguing archival offerings. In addition to screening in theaters from May 9-19, select films can be viewed via streaming from May 20-27. Unfortunately the latter option does not include the archival movies, but the option is nevertheless welcome as a way to increase access to this fascinating and diverse festival.

My top picks for classic film fans can be viewed here: 

Documentary Picks at SIFF--Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy and Douglas Sirk: Hope as in Despair

 

While there are several documentaries that will be of interest to classic film fans at Seattle International Film Festival 2023, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy and Douglas Sirk: Hope as in Despair were of particular interest to me. In different ways both films explore the powerful external elements that shape cinema and how they are so often rooted in challenging emotions. The film titles link to the festival screening information for each documentary. 

Having read and reviewed the source material, Shooting Midnight Cowboy by Glenn Frankel, there was a hint of familiarity to Nancy Buirski’s documentary about the production of the film Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy. Like the book, it acknowledges the deep debt Midnight Cowboy owed to its source material, the book by James Leo Herlihy and it likewise gives the actors and other participants in the production the space to speak candidly on the personal and societal impact of making the film and the turbulent times it reflected. 

Buirski explores those times thoroughly, with extensive footage of the rapidly changing, violent, and rebellious world in which Midnight Cowboy was made. Coupled with deeply emotional and insightful commentary from players including Bob Balaban, Jon Voight, and Jennifer Salt, you come away with a better understanding of both the film and the era. For that reason, the documentary has general appeal beyond classic movie fandom. 

One element that Buirski gives more attention is the feeling that this was a film about misfits made by a band of misfits. That fact was made more remarkable when Midnight Cowboy became the first X-rated film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The very establishment (though in her own way rebellious) Elizabeth Taylor looks a bit surprised, if not unpleased to see the film’s win as she announces it, reinforcing the juxtaposition of a rebellious production with an industry struggling to maintain relevance in a rapidly shifting landscape.

German director Roman Hüben’s Douglas Sirk: Hope as in Despair is a more spare, elegant production which hones in on a tragedy that ultimately shaped the tone of the also German filmmaker’s Hollywood melodramas (among them Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows). Hüben bases his film on the discoveries he made at the Douglas Sirk Archives housed in the Cinémathèque Suisse. There he found the revealing calendar/diaries his second wife Hilde Bary kept on his behalf. 

In his research Hüben learns that Sirk’s first wife Lydia Brinken apparently became a Nazi out of spite because it angered her that her ex-husband had married a Jewish woman. She also used current German laws to forbid him from seeing his son, who also became a Nazi. The boy became an actor at an early age, so the devastated Sirk was only able to see him on the screen. 

The film explores how this heartbreaking turn of events molded Sirk’s style, which showed direct references to what had happened and hit emotional notes that seemed clearly influenced by his loss. Jon Halliday, the author of Sirk on Sirk offers the most revealing insights into how that affected the filmmaker, though he told him very little of what happened. Also welcome is the insight of the two directors who most effectively translated the Sirk style: Todd Haynes in a new interview and Rainer Maria Fassbinder in archival footage; both men understood that while the filmmaker used a distinctive visual style, his true essence was in the way he explored emotional content. 

While Hope as in Despair reveals an artist managing a life-altering loss, Hüben also explores Sirk's joy in work, and accurately describes his output as “films made by someone who loves people.” With a combination of film clips and interviews, a story of perseverance in the face of trauma emerges. It is ultimately a story with a strong upside, centering a man with a great sense of humor who led a productive life to the very end. 

The 49th Seattle International Film Festival is in theaters from May 11-21 and streaming May 22-28.

The 49th Seattle International Film Festival 2023: Picks for Classic Film Fans

 Seattle International Film Festival is back in theaters May 11-21 and streaming May 22-28. As always, there’s plenty on the schedule to please classic film fans. Here are my picks for 2023:

Archival Films 

There’s not much in the way of selection or adventurous picks for archival offerings this year, but The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Seven Samurai (1954) are all films that especially need the big screen treatment to be fully enjoyed and should be a treat to see in restored versions. I can’t remember the last time a classic sci-fi flick was included on the schedule and the tale of a scientist who finds his stature alarmingly reduced is particularly fun due to all those enormous props and an encounter with a monstrous kitty cat. Midnight Cowboy is a story best experienced in total immersion and an epic like Seven Samurai must be seen blown up as large as possible.

Documentaries 

Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy tells the story of the legendary Oscar-winning film in two ways: how the culture of its times breathed life into the production and how it subsequently had its own cultural effect. 

Douglas Sirk – Hope as in Despair bases its exploration of the influential German filmmaker who made a splash in Hollywood via interviews and entries about the man from his wife’s journal. 

A Disturbance in the Force tells the history of the once mocked and now mocked and celebrated The Star Wars Holiday Special, a 1978 television production that a mortified George Lucas tried to bury, but that keeps coming back to life for Star Wars fans. The poetically eccentric experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas gets the spotlight in 

Fragments of Paradise, an appropriately experimental documentary which features footage from his extensive visual diaries. 

Classic televisions fans can get a closer look at a television legend with Being Tyler Moore, which features interviews with Rob Reiner and James L. Burrows.

Fly-By-Night at Noir City: First Time In a Movie Theater Since 2020

 

I hadn’t thought a lot about when I would want to go back to the movie theater after the pandemic had kept me away for so long, but I knew I didn’t want to make a big deal of it. It seemed best to me to be as spontaneous and unbothered about it as possible. When the opportunity came up to attend Noir City, the film festival produced by the Film Noir Foundation, I decided it was a good time to come back, because the last film I attended in a theater was at Noir City 2020. 

My return film was the last of the festival: Fly-By-Night (1942). It was the perfect way to come back. I sat in my favorite seat in the back of the Egyptian Theater and felt safe because the screening was well-attended, but not crowded. I was able to keep my focus on the film. 

Authors and film noir experts Vince and Rosemarie Keenan introduced the film. They’re a charming duo and I appreciated their pointing out that this was an early writing credit for Sidney Sheldon. 

I’d never heard of Fly-By-Night and I purposely avoided reading anything about it before I watched it. I try to do this with Noir City screenings as much as possible, because I’ve always been able to trust their curating. It’s one of the rare places I can be truly surprised by a film. 

The Keenans noted that this zippy B-production was in essence a knock-off of Hithcock's The 39 Steps (1935). It does have a lot of the same elements: a man and woman being thrown together by chance, his attempts to clear his name, her growing interest in this mysterious man, and the devious elements and spy drama around them. 

I loved the screen pedigree of the stars: Nancy Kelly is most famous for playing the unfortunate mother in The Bad Seed (1956), Richard Carlson is best known as the scientist in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). And here they are together, long before those roles, in what can best be described as a comic spy adventure. 

It’s impressive what director Robert Siodmak was able to pull off with a low budget and brief running time. Some of the stunts are so absurd you’d expect to see them in an eighties action flick, but they somehow fit in this quasi-noir setting. Terrifying things happen in this movie: murder, kidnapping, even bodily disfigurement, but it’s all whipped together in a frothy, lighthearted way. It’s astounding that it works so well. 

Kelly and Carlson are a great team. It’s clear that Kelly's character is hungry for a little excitement and Carlson not only offers that, but an appreciation of her grit and independent spirit. It’s also refreshing to see a female role in which she is never helpless or on the sidelines, but rather an active participant in any fight, stunt, or challenge that arises. 

It’s clear that Fly-By-Night was never meant to be more than a light entertainment, but it’s so well done that it’s worth a rewatch. It was a satisfying way to re-enter the movie theater. Noir City always comes through. 

Many thanks to SIFF for providing tickets for the film.

45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival: Mexican Superstars Maria Felix and Pedro Armendariz in Enamorada (1946)

Before I put SIFF to rest for another year, I wanted to share one more film I enjoyed at the festival. It is the Mexican drama Enamorada (1946), starring María Félix and Pedro Armendáriz. For years I’ve admired the Mexican superstar Félix’s laser-focused gaze in photos from the forties and fifties and wondered about her films. I was delighted to finally see why she is a legend in her home country. I’d seen and enjoyed Armendáriz in the Hollywood films Fort Apache and 3 Godfathers (both 1948), but here I saw him for the first time in a leading role.

Félix is the staunchly feminist daughter of the richest man in her town and Armendáriz is a revolutionary who kidnaps him to try to force him to give him money before he kills him. When he also falls in love-at-first-sight with Félix, he decides call off the firing squad in the hopes that returning the old man will give him a chance with his daughter. Of course that is a ridiculous plan. Of course it works.

In his introduction to the film, SIFF programmer Marcus Gorman mentioned that Félix had only done European films outside of Mexico. She understandably felt that the roles available to her in Hollywood would be too demeaning. While Armendáriz found essentially dignified roles in American films, he rarely had the chance to star. One starring role Armendáriz did win in Hollywood was in The Torch (1950), a remake of this film, opposite Paulette Goddard. It is likely that Félix would not have had the opportunities he did, and that at best she would probably have ended up in supporting roles similar to those Katy Jurado did if she wanted to keep her dignity as well.

Enamorada is light on plot, focusing more on the fireworks between Armendáriz and Félix. For the most part this is satisfactory, though occasionally the pace slackened and I wished for something a little meatier. It is a gorgeous film though, with several beautifully-shot scenes in a cathedral that are effectively filmed to show the all-encompassing power of the church in this conservative community.

Armendáriz and Félix are the true draw of the film and they are a lively pair. They both have eternally raised left eyebrows and fire in the belly, but other than that, they are contradictory in a novel way. This is because in a way they switch traditional gender roles. With his long eyelashes and tender eyes, Armendáriz is almost pretty; as ruthless as he can be, he tends to lead with his heart in a traditionally feminine way. On the other hand, Félix is more handsome than pretty and with the liberal use of slaps and firm determination to have things her own way; she is somehow vigorously feminist in a time and culture where that was rare and her behavior would have been seen as masculine.

This odd juxtaposition gives the film its energy. The pair has great chemistry in their comic bits and the subtle role reversal adds an extra layer of interest in these scenes. When they inevitably connect, it makes sense, because in thoroughly irritating each other, they have also awakened themselves to new possibilities.

I’m glad I finally got the chance to see Félix in action. It was amazing to see her for the first time on the big screen. I would love to see more of her and Armendáriz’ work in the films they made in their home country. Maybe another screening next year SIFF?

45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival: The Remarkable Recovery of the Homegrown Spec-fi Flick As The Earth Turns (1938/2019)

One of the most exciting discoveries in the archival offerings of Seattle International Film Festival 2019 is a silent spec-fi film that has been out of circulation for eighty years. Made in Seattle by director, producer and star Richard Lyford, As the Earth Turns (1938) is an innovative, exhilarating independent production. This Friday, a restoration of the film with a new score will screen at SIFF Uptown with restoration producer Kim Lyford Bishop and restoration producer/score composer Ed Hartman scheduled to attend.

As the Earth Turns opens in a conflicted world, where Europe is at war. Young, ambitious American reporter Julie Weston (Barbara Berger) begs her editor for better opportunities, and gets it when he sends her to a Naval radio station to look for stories in the flood of messages constantly streaming into the base. She gets a big one: the mysteriously named Pax sends a wire demanding peace, or else he while increase the length of the day five minutes.

Pax isn’t taken seriously at first, but when he does successfully change time, and then follows up on his promises of earthquakes and weather changes (shades of climate change); government officials begin to take him seriously. However, it is the clever Julie and her associates who ultimately uncover the mystery of Pax and his ironically destructive approach to seeking peace.

Lyford was only twenty-years-old when he made As the Earth Turns, and by that time he’d already written 50 plays and made nine unreleased films. He clearly had a remarkable knack for filmmaking; while the film is clearly low-budget, the production is far from cheap. Lyford combines sleek, innovative effects work with a lively story, able cast, and intertitles that have a pleasing touch of wit. His fascinating model work (including a gorgeous “high-tech” airplane) anticipates the great sci-fi flicks of the 1950s, while his camera work is off kilter and inventive in an Avant garde way.

In a uniformly appealing cast, Berger is the stand-out. Unlike the glamour girl reporters in Hollywood productions of the time, she is refreshingly natural and straightforward. It’s a shame this was her only film role.

Lyford is also magnificent in a slightly campy, but ultimately touching performance as Pax. With a raised eyebrow and shaking fist, he is enormously entertaining, but never excessively cartoonish. He clearly had the ability to master any aspect of filmmaking and embraced the indie spirit of doing whatever it took to get the job done.

Hartman’s new score is a fine complement to this new release. It is period appropriate, but with a modern feel, which is appropriate for the forward-thinking tone of the film.

Seattleites will enjoy the extensive location shooting amidst Pacific Northwest greenery. There are also scenes set on the streets of Seattle, on Boeing Field, and at Gasworks Park when it was still a functioning gas plant.

Lyford would eventually move to Hollywood, where he would direct documentary shorts for Disney. He is perhaps most famous for his television documentary Island of Allah (1956) and the short The Titan: Story of Michelangelo (1950), a film which won the Academy Award for documentary feature.

This is a festival must-see for fans of classic film. It’s a marvelous discovery. Tickets for the 6/1 screening can be purchased here.

45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival: A Norwegian Biopic of Ice Skating Star Sonja Henie

Sonja: the White Swan (2019) is a biopic of skating star Sonja Henie, who made records as an athlete and sparkled briefly, but potently as a movie queen in Hollywood musicals. I don’t know enough about this phenomenally successful athlete/actress to be able to say whether it succeeded in telling her story, but it does reveal a fascinating character. Starring as Henie, Ine Marie Wilmann portrays a complex, passionate woman. The film around her doesn’t always rise to the level of her performance, but it is magical when it does.

Sonja moves around in time, showing the origins of Henie’s skating passion and occasionally dipping back into the past to shed light on her present. From the beginning, she possesses a ferocious belief in herself. She summons success as much as achieving it. When athletic fame brings her to Fox Studios, she will take no less than a four picture deal, thwarting studio head Darryl F. Zanuck’s efforts to try her out in small parts before taking a real financial risk.

Henie is the same in her relationships, demanding that her family move from Norway to be with her in California and then molding their lives to her satisfaction. When she hires an assistant, she expects the same fealty, having her move in so that her employee’s life is in service to her. At first, this behavior is mildly disturbing, but as the story progresses, her ruthless nature reveals itself more fully and it is chilling.

While it is undeniable that the Henie portrayed here was capable of horrific behavior, just as often the things she did that caused scandal would hardly inspire a raised eyebrow if done by a man. Driving a hard bargain or indulging in free love and afternoon champagne were not the domain of women then, and to this day can be the cause of scorn.

In the end, I didn’t recognize the Henie I’d seen in the movies here. Even the gorgeous scenes where her film production numbers are reproduced with magnificent glamour don’t capture the button-nosed sweetness of the star. Wilmann does much with the material she is given though, portraying a woman capable of great cruelty, but also delightfully indulgent in the pleasures of life.

The film as a whole played unevenly for me. In her rise to fame, we see her successes in great detail. As she declines, much of the action plays off-screen, sometimes related in voiceover, which made her fall difficult to engage with on an emotional level. The early scenes pop with an almost sensual energy, buoyed by a punchy modern soundtrack full of electronic beats and upbeat soul and hip hop that instead of seeming anachronistic, does much to express Henie's passionate drive. That feeling devolves into a bland second act, where some scenes are lit so dimly that it is hard to make out what is happening.

In a coda with a sequence of film clips featuring the real Henie, the star is presented in her later years, happily married and apparently thriving. We see where she ended up, but precisely how she got there remains a mystery.

This is worth a view based on Wilmann’s remarkable performance and the punch of the early scenes and movie sequence reproductions.

Tickets for the final SIFF screening of the film on 5/27 can be purchased here.

45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival: A Collage of James Mason Clips in Invest in Failure (Notes on Film 06-C, Monologue 03) (2018)

While I think that it is usually best to go into a film cold in order to enjoy it fully, the work of Austrian filmmaker Norbert Pfaffenbichler benefits from some explanation. His experimental works are accessible, but require preparation. Invest in Failure (Notes on Film 06-C, Monologue 03) (2018), which features clips from 160 James Mason films is a riot if it catches you in the right frame of mind.

The film is the final installation in Pfaffenbichler’s Monologue Trilogy, a series of films in which he has compiled clips of male movie stars in surreal juxtapositions of moods, ages, and situations. In the first two films, which featured Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff, his stars interacted with themselves in different roles. I had the opportunity to watch the Karloff film, A Masque of Madness (2013) at SIFF 2014 and found it mesmerizing to watch the actor performing with himself across time, even chasing himself at one point.

This time Pfaffenbichler shakes things up by adding women to the mix. Mason is shown loving, beating, berating and romancing his leading ladies in seventeen thematic episodes. Unlike the Karloff film, Mason disappears from the screen for lengthy periods as the women in his cinematic life regard him with disappointment, fear, and very occasionally admiration. It is in essence a violent portrait with a sprinkling of lust and romance to make it a shade more palatable.

Pfaffenbichler uses sound and music to challenge the emotions evoked by these clips, placing lushly romantic music with grim imagery or adding repetitive clicks and the like to increase the tension of a sequence. It is this editorial hand that makes the film more compelling than the strictly-themed collection of clips it first appears to be.

I hate to say that a film is not for everyone, but I have to admit this might move too slowly and erratically for those who prefer a conventional narrative. It’s worth a look for fans of classic film though and especially Mason fanatics. While firmly advancing through its structured themes, it is also curiously freeing, because it releases the viewer from narrative storytelling and allows somewhat untethered exploration of all the feelings, images, and sounds that make movies, and their stars, so thrilling.

The SIFF screening of this film includes Austrian filmmaker Virgil Widrich’s amusing short Copy Shop (2001).


Tickets for the May 30 screening of Invest in Failure (Notes on Film 06-C, Monologue 03) can be purchased here.

45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival: Picks for Classic Film Fans

The schedule for the 45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival is out, and it is a jawdropper. SIFF is going to be an especially happy place for classic film fans this year. With restorations, rediscoveries, and a diverse array of voices, the selection is especially tantalizing.

This year’s festival runs from May 16 to June 9, and I’ll be writing about several screenings in more detail as the month progresses. For now, here are my recommended flicks. All film titles link to schedule and ticket purchase information:

Silent

The Phantom of the Opera (1925) with Live Soundtrack by the Invincible Czars
This is the third time the Austin, Texas-based indie band The Invincible Czars have provided musical accompaniment for a silent at SIFF. I loved the knowledge of music history, creativity, and craft that went into their score for John Barrymore’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), which they performed at SIFF 2017, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with for another horror silent.

As the Earth Turns (1938)
Shot in Seattle, this newly remastered sci-fi thriller has been out of circulation for 80 years. Seattle native Richard Lyford directed and starred in the film, which includes location footage of Boeing Field and Gasworks Park. I love that even the new score has been composed by a Seattle composer, Ed Hartman.

Spies (1928)
Fritz Lang’s take on the thriller is his penultimate silent film. Of epic length, but fast-paced, there are many elements which would eventually become genre tropes and spy gadgetry in this mixture of intercultural agent romance and intrigue. SIFF will be screening a 2K restoration.

Documentary

Barbara Rubin & the Exploding Underground (2018)
A brisk portrait of the brief life of Barbara Rubin, an experimental filmmaker who boldly established herself in the primarily male arenas of  movies and Orthodox Judaism in 1960s New York. The story of the woman who introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground is bound to be interesting.

Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019)
Via recordings he made while writing his autobiography, Miles Davis himself gets to narrate much of this straightforward and thorough documentary about the legendary jazz trumpet player. Former loves, family, bandmates, and experts present a justifiably critical, but empathetic portrait of an artist, who had a reputation for being difficult, but whose impact on and complete adoration of music is undeniable. Movie fans will love the in-depth segment on the unorthodox way Davis created the soundtrack for the Louis Malle film Elevator to the Gallows (1958).

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018)
The polarizing, long-time New Yorker critic Pauline Kael gets the documentary treatment in a film that alternates her own words and life with clips of the films she reviewed.

Storm in My Heart (2018)

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011) director Mark Cousins examines race and privilege in Hollywood by comparing the lives of stars Susan Hayward and Lena Horne. Born in the same year, on the same day in Brooklyn, these talented women had dramatically different careers. The film primarily consists of the Fox musicals Stormy Weather (1943) and With a Song in My Heart (1953) , which starred Horne and Hayward respectively, playing side-by-side on two quarters of the screen, while text with trivia about the women and their lives occasionally appears on the other half of the screen. At first I found the presentation headache-inducing and the comparison not as compelling as I'd hoped, but the story gradually builds and deepens. You begin to understand the exhaustion both actresses felt as women in Hollywood, but how much more profoundly draining it was for Horne as a black woman. A tonal shift in the final ten minutes of the film firmly establishes that divide.

International

Enamorada (1946)
I have been dying to see the films of Mexican movie star María Félix for years. After being limited for so long to admiring her in stills, I’m excited that I will be seeing her in action for the first time on the big screen,costarring with Pedro Armendáriz (From Russia with Love [1963]). The restoration of the print was overseen by Martin Scorsese, who has done so much to bring classic international film to a wider audience.

I Am Cuba (1964)
A gorgeous film that is notorious for its Soviet propaganda, but celebrated for magnificent cinematic technique. Whatever you think of the politics of these four stories of Cubans struggling under the Batista dictatorship, Mikhail Kalatozov’s long, climbing tracking shots are a baffling wonder.

Directed by Women

The Bigamist (1953) and The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Kino Lorber will present restorations of two of the best films Ida Lupino directed. Both broke new ground: The Bigamist covered sensational subject matter with a sympathetic approach while The Hitch-Hiker was unusually brutal subject matter for a female director at the time.

Between the Lines (1977)
Director Joan Mickin Silver’s (Chilly Scenes of Winter [1979]) joyful and devastating film about a group of journalists working for an underground newspaper in Boston touches on the same takeover anxiety that plagues the industry today, but is for the most part about the lives of these difficult, but intriguing people. Baby faces abound in this flick that came early in the careers of Bruno Kirby, Jeff Goldblum, John Heard, Lindsay Crouse and Jill Eikenberry.

Sonja: The White Swan (2019)
Norwegian filmmaker Anne Sewitsky directs this biopic of skating star Sonja Henie, who was all smiles in her Hollywood movies and apparently the exact opposite off-screen.

Cult

The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (1985)
Every description I see of this Japanese new wave musical about a manufactured pop duo compares it to another movie: Rocky Horror Picture Show, A Hard Day’s Night, The Apple. All of these comparisons are apt, but insufficient to appropriately describe this silly, chaotic, and immensely entertaining movie. With zombies, manga, inventive slapstick and wall-to-wall music, there’s always something interesting, and sometimes astounding, happening. While there will be three screenings of the film at varying times of day, this is definitely a Midnight must-see.

DJ NicFit Presents Fantastic Planet (1973)
DJ NicFit returns to SIFF (last year’s production: spinning sounds to Highlander[1986]) to parallel the sounds of The Flaming Lips with this beautifully bizarre French animation sci-fi classic.

I’m not a big fan of Billy Wilder’s Cold-War comedy 1,2,3(1961), but I did want to mention the festival screening. It’s a good opportunity for fans of the director and star James Cagney to see the film on the big screen.

The 44th Seattle International Film Festival: Jean Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)

It was impressive to see a full theater for the Sunday afternoon screening of Jean Renoir’s Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936). I didn't expect this lesser known work of the director to get such a turnout. The film played at SIFF Cinema Uptown for the third weekend of the 44th Seattle International Film Festival.

René Lefèvre is the titular Lange, a publishing company clerk who longs to find an audience for his Arizona Jim cowboy stories. He’s never been to the American West, but clearly the movies and a big imagination have given him lots of ideas. His salacious boss Batala (Jules Berry) decides to publish the stories, but tricks the young man into signing away his rights to them.

Batala then appears to die in a train wreck, inspiring the workers at the publishing company to continue on as a collective. Together, they make the Arizona Jim stories a sensation. When their devious boss makes a surprise return, Lange becomes determined to keep the rights to his work at any cost.

Renoir’s leftist ode to socialism brought him both praise and danger as Germany began to advance upon France. When encouraged by the Communist party, he was happy to make more films in that vein as a way to fight fascism. He secured a visa to the United States when the Nazis also showed interest in his filming talent.

Monsieur Lange is Renoir in the middle of his career, on the edge of making his greatest work. While films like La Chienne (1931) and Boudo Saved from Drowning (1932) had plenty of bite, the director would soon take his talent for poking at social convention and human absurdity to a transcendent level with films like La Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939). This production sits balanced between those two periods.

Renoir captures a typically busy cast of characters, always in motion or conversation, rarely taking time to reflect on their actions. They don’t have the charm of his later ensembles, where even the most shallow characters have some power to seduce, but they are funny and sweet. You want them to succeed. 

Though Lefèvre’s passion for his cowboy world is endearing, the rest of his personality is a bit of a blank compared to his costars. You find yourself caring more for his ideals, or the happiness of his devoted girlfriend Valentine (Florelle), than him.

It was a treat to see this rarely screened film in a restored print. While there were some moments where the image would get fuzzy, it was of essentially consistent clarity and the sound was remarkably good.

The 44th Seattle International Film Festival: Hal (2018) and Being There (1980)

Last night at SIFF Cinema Uptown, I enjoyed the first SIFF screening of Amy Scott’s documentary about filmmaker Hal Ashby, Hal (2018). Brilliantly edited, compassionate, and full of insightful interviews, I learned a lot about this director who I have always admired, but I realize now not fully understood. 

I've always found Ashby to be a rabble-rousing rebel, but he is only that if striving for peace, love, and human connection is rebellious. Perhaps that is true; I hope not. Where the studios he worked with are concerned, the rebel label fit. He always had to fight to fulfill his artistic vision.

Ashby found his first Hollywood success as an editor, winning his only Academy Award for his work cutting In The Heat of the Night (1967). That film was one of several he made with his mentor and friend, director Norman Jewison. While Ashby was married five times and fathered a daughter, it is clear that his most significant bond was with Jewison, who understood this workaholic, peace-loving rebel and gave him his first opportunity to direct: The Landlord (1970).

The film starred a baby-faced Beau Bridges as a trust fund kid who buys a building in the black ghetto with gentrification on his mind, but finds himself increasingly involved with his tenants. A work of great idealism and anger at the status quo, it would possess all the elements of Ashby’s best work: empathy, eccentricity, and a core built on vibrant relationships.

Scott follows Ashby through these great works (and the less satisfying productions to follow), which form one of the most remarkable runs of artistic and commercial success in the film industry. After The Landlord there was Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), and Being There (1979). They are all iconic works, created with frequent resistance from the studio, which Ashby and his savvy associates fought off with determined fidelity to their work.

Scott weaves together a wild brew of letters, interviews and vintage footage, pacing it all as if she is seducing a viewer with waning interest. It really pops, confidently drawing you into Ashby’s passions. In a Q&A following the screening, producer Brian Morrow mentioned how many more recordings of Ashby they had and other fascinating stories that couldn’t be included in the film. Her fidelity to flow over the lure of all those other elements pays off.

Ashby’s complexities are slowly revealed as the focus shifts occasionally from the work that consumed him to his less successful personal life. A teenage father, he abandoned his daughter, and after those five tries, he abandoned the idea of marriage in favor of taking up with a series of girlfriends who could accept that his true love was film. Childhood trauma also colored his life, as he was all peace and love in expressing his art, but less placid when it came to confronting his own demons.

Unfortunately, Ashby could not maintain his all-consuming passion for film and work in an industry focused on profits. It was painful, but moving to see people he worked with like Jewison and Rosanna Arquette tear up with regret that he was not able to launch a third act and fulfill his ambition. Perhaps Ashby is not in the upper pantheon of directors as he deserves, but here you see many who have worked with, admired, and understood this uniquely gifted filmmaker.

During the post-film Q&A I asked the film's producer Brian Morrow if anything he learned about Ashby during the production had surprised him. He talked about the overwhelming amount of audio content the director left behind and how impressed by the extent that he was a “wildly committed artist,” who would refuse to compromise his vision. He talked about remarkable clips where the director said he understood white privilege and the challenges of racial identity. It sounds like he was ahead of his time.

In addition to Morrow, Ashby’s friend, former LA Weekly critic Michael Dare, shared some memories about the director; one of the best to be revealed later in this review. 

I was also amused that the projectionist leaned out to ask a question. That’s the first time I’ve seen that!

One of Ashby’s best films, Being There (1979) screened at SIFF Cinema Uptown the next afternoon. Starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, and Melvyn Douglas, the D.C. set drama might be more relevant today that it was upon release.

Sellers is Chance, a gardener who has spent his entire life in the home of a wealthy man. Chance appears to be on the spectrum, emotionally disconnected and possessing the intellectual development of a child. Obsessed with television, his understanding of the world is almost entirely drawn from the shows he watches, flipping constantly through channels. When the old man dies, he is abruptly thrust into a world he has never seen up close.

Instead of struggling, the empty slate Chance presents to the world is like a blank check for this dignified, well dressed white man. He finds himself in the home of a dying millionaire (Douglas) with a loving, but lonely wife (MacLaine) who falls hard for him. His benefactor is well-connected, granting him an audience with the president (Jack Warden), who like everyone else sees his simple talk about gardening as profound musings about life.

Chance becomes a celebrity: invited on talk shows and circulating with the international elite. Everyone sees what they want to see in his pleasant talk. Only Douglas’ doctor, played with intelligent compassion by Richard Dysart, understands the truth about this simple man. His is an important character that can be found in the best of Ashby’s films: the one who truly sees into people. It is Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude and Beau Bridges in The Landlord. Dysart knows that Chance is not a towering intellectual, but he also understands the people in his orbit and how the truth is something they construct to create their own safety. It’s all chillingly familiar.

During the Q&A for Hal, Dare mentioned that the famous ending was not in the script and made up by Ashby on the set. Making that unusual scene happen depended on winning over the on-set spy Lorimar had put on the director. He told an amusing anecdote about how the director convinced the young man that he didn’t want to be responsible for blocking this remarkable shot. I hope that he realizes how important his cooperation was for film history.

Hal screens again at The 44th Seattle International Film Festival on Sunday, 6/3, 12:30pm at the SIFF Cinema Uptown.

The 44th Seattle International Film Festival: Belle de Jour (1967)

The audience attending Belle de Jour (1967) at the SIFF Cinema Uptown last night alternated between stunned silence and nervous giggles, a clear sign that Luis Buñuel’s tale of desire has retained its power over time. In a new 4K restoration from the original negative, the colors popped and Catherine Deneuve looked icily serene as she played a wealthy housewife rebelling against convention by pursuing her fantasies.

Deneuve is a young wife of leisure, somewhat happily married to, if a bit emotionally disconnected from a surgeon (Jean Sorel). His cheerful wholesomeness is at odds with her S&M-tinged sexual fantasies. Anxious to relieve the tension these daydreams create, she begins to work afternoons in a high end brothel, where she is called Belle de Jour. There a violent criminal becomes obsessed with her, a fact which both frightens and arouses her, and brings her fantasy life into harsh reality.

I was delighted to see that the house of Yves Saint Laurent was a donor to the restoration effort. The designer created Deneuve’s costumes, which do as much to establish her character as anything she says or does. The military-influenced structure, and the epaulettes on her shoulders, are a vivid reminder of the way society restricts fantasies like hers. On the other hand, she also garbs herself in furs, leathers and one particularly kinky-looking shiny, black raincoat which point to her animalistic and adventurous side.

Deneuve's YSL raincoat, from a 2016 exhibit at Seattle Art Museum honoring the designer Photo: A Classic Movie Blog

Buñuel’s fetishistic camera adds to the erotic appeal of those artfully crafted costumes. His obsession with shoes is especially pronounced, as he lingers on shiny pumps with pilgrim bucklers and patent leather boots that scream danger and perversion. He gives the same treatment to the objects in his heroine’s life, sweeping over an array of perfectly arranged bottles on her bathroom counter to announce her return to safety and order after her first afternoon at the brothel.

The highly-disciplined craft of these elements: the camera, costumes and Deneuve combine to create an erotic, dangerous tension which keeps the viewer intrigued and excited, but also uneasy. Much like the BDSM it reveals, Buñuel’s film demands the release of that tension, without regard for propriety and fully in service to desire. It is this boldness that gives Belle de Jour a timeless edge.