To kick off its inaugural “Dread of Winter” series of thrillers and other tales of foreboding, The Brattle Theatre hosts a new 4K restoration of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s influential 1953 thriller “The Wages of Fear,” running Friday through Monday. Yves Montand stars as Mario, a down-on-his-luck French expat in a South American shanty town who is recruited, with three other social outcasts, for what amounts to a suicide mission: driving two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin through 300 miles of rough jungle roads to seal off a raging fire at an oil derrick. The suspense is, of course, self-explanatory, combining the flaring tempers of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” with the ticking time bomb of “Speed.” But what really sets “Wages” apart is Clouzot’s hard-edged view of humanity at its worst, as exemplified by Mario and his rough-necked cohorts, but even more by the ruthless American oil company who blithely sends them off to an almost-certain fate (that the dynamic of this seedy town on the edges of society is so immediately recognizable in America 70 years later is as chilling as anything in the film itself). If nothing else, the wintertime potholes on the side streets of Somerville won’t seem nearly as bad on the ride home.
Any history of genre filmmaking or special effects cinema likely begins in earnest with George Méliès, the French magician turned filmmaker who engineered some of the very earliest cinematic “tricks” at the dawn of the 20th century with a series of wildly inventive and influential shorts. To celebrate this earliest of auteurs, the Harvard Film Archive is kicking off a series titled “The Illusory Tableaux of Georges Méliès,” bringing together three thoughtfully curated programs showcasing the director’s work. Saturday’s program, “The Optical Tricks of a Cinemagician,” naturally shines a spotlight on Méliès’ pioneering use of special effects as an extension of his previous career as a show-biz conjurer, while “Only in Dreams: The Evils That Lurk” brings together some of the director’s darker and more phantasmagorical works on Sunday (a third program, slated for Feb. 9, is titled “Voyages through Earth, Sea and Space”; this is where you find Méliès’ most famous work, 1902’s “A Trip to the Moon”). All three programs feature a mix of 35 mm and digital prints and will be accompanied by live music by Martin Marks.
One of the pleasures of following genre film is the way in which certain titles, after being roundly dismissed at the time of their release, slowly develop a deeply devoted cult following. Such is the case of Karyn Kusama’s “Jennifer’s Body” (2009), a box office bomb now revered as one of the most delightful teenage fright flicks of its day. Megan Fox stars in the title role, a high school vamp who is sacrificed by a visiting indie-sleaze rock band for a shot at Satanic superstardom. Unfortunately for them – and her classmates – Jennifer isn’t as virginal as she’d let on backstage, and the ritual transforms her into a cheerleader succubus who begins feasting her way through the student body. Written by “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody (whose then-inescapable success likely made the film a victim of misplaced backlash), “Jennifer’s Body” is simply a smart and bloody good time, filled with one-liners and a delightful supporting cast, including future Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried and cult scream-king Kyle Gallner. The film screens Sunday at the Somerville Theatre, hosted by local drag legend Throb Zombie as part of Fangoria Magazine’s Gash Festival.
With the Somerville’s 70 mm projectors out in full force for Brady Corbet’s VistaVision epic “The Brutalist,” it would be a waste not to take the opportunity to play an old favorite or two in their ultrawide glory. On Monday and Tuesday, the theater hosts a pair of special 70 mm screenings of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood” (2019). The film itself has quickly earned its place as one of the director’s most beloved, featuring career-best performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt and a shaggy-dog storyline featuring some of the filmmaker’s most memorable scenes. But it is also, first and foremost, a love letter to the Hollywood of the late ’60s, which makes its lingering shots of Los Angeles landmarks all the more poignant in light of the devastating wildfires that continue to wreak havoc on the City of Angels. As you spend the evening with Rick, Cliff and their neighbor Sharon Tate, spare a thought for the city they call home and consider donating to the charity of your choice.
In conjunction with the Goethe-Institut Boston and the Wicked Queer Film Festival, The Brattle kicks off on Tuesday a fascinating monthlong series titled “100 Years of Queer German Cinema.” Though certain political forces may try to convince one otherwise, queer culture has been with us since the dawn of civilization, and trailblazing German filmmakers have been portraying it in startlingly frank terms since the art form began. The series begins Tuesday with one of the very earliest gay-themed features, Richard Oswald’s “Different from the Others” (1919). Conrad Veidt (whose career would include everything from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” to “Casablanca”) plays a gay concert pianist who seeks protection from a blackmail scheme, only to run afoul of Paragraph 175, the law forbidding homosexuality in the Weimar Republic. That same law, of course, led to the film itself being banned, and subsequently nearly destroyed by the Nazis; long unavailable and feared lost, the film screens in a new restoration with an introduction by Harvard’s Anne Dymek. The series continues every Tuesday for the remainder of February and presents a fascinating “secret history” of world cinema.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.