To local cinephiles, few holiday traditions are more beloved than The Brattle Theatre’s annual screenings of “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), which runs Friday through Monday. It’s never a bad idea to revisit Frank Capra’s humanist masterpiece for the holidays, but it feels particularly essential in times of hardship and unease. Reading the news lately, one could be forgiven for thinking we’ve fallen into the dark Pottersville timeline, which only makes the pure goodness of Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey resonate all the more. Adding to the magic: this year the film returns in all its 35 mm glory, which means, if you listen close enough, you can hear an angel get its wings at each reel-change bell. Merry Christmas, movie house.
Of course, it’s possible you prefer a little more bite to your holiday cheer. To that end, the Brattle has this year lined up a weekendlong series titled “Alt-Xmas Late Shows,” providing a welcome dose of yuletide counterprogramming. The series begins Friday with the grindhouse-slasher classic “Don’t Open Till Xmas” (1984), about a deranged killer bent on slaughtering unsuspecting mall Santas (it’s wildly entertaining, in a sicko sort of way, if not particularly suspenseful; it’s not difficult to guess what’s going to happen to each new character who shows up in a red suit). Saturday brings John Waters’ 1974 masterpiece “Female Trouble” (all together now: “I better get those cha-cha heels!”), while Sunday’s screening is Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s dark fairy tale “The City of Lost Children” (1995). The series closes Monday with Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999), featuring what can only be considered a Christmas party for the ages.
The first semester of the Harvard Film Archive’s double feature series “New Dog, New Tricks” comes to a close Saturday with two all-time classics of cinematic adolescence. First up is Nicholas Ray’s epochal “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955), in which James Dean more or less defined on-screen teen angst for an entire generation. It’s paired with a 16 mm print of “High School” (1968), in which legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman turns his cinema verite lens on the real-life teenagers of Philadelphia’s Northeast High School. As usual for the series, the two features are bridged by “Hot-Rod and Reel!” (1959), yet another classic Roadrunner cartoon from Chuck Jones. High school was a long time ago for some of us (and is about to close for the holidays for others), but these films will bring us right back – for better or for worse.
Though it has spanned four months and dozens of films, the Harvard Film Archive’s massive retrospective of Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse could in a certain sense be thus far considered truncated: The HFA’s brief emergency closing due to flooding in early October forced the postponement of several screenings. On Monday, the last rescheduled film of the series graces the HFA’s screen, at last bringing this amazing series to a close. “Every-Night Dreams” (1933) is one of the earliest films in the series, but it already displays Naruse’s signature themes of family struggles, focusing as it does on a single mother balancing a job as a bar hostess with the care of her young son. “Every-Night” is presented on a new 35 mm print with live musical accompaniment by Robert Humphreville – a suitably special finale to this incredibly special series.
Tuesday marks the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, and The Brattle joins forces with Lovestruck Books for a double feature of classic Austen adaptations. Perhaps the better known of the two is Joe Wright’s much-loved 2005 take on “Pride and Prejudice,” starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. It’s paired with Autumn DeWilde’s puckish, underseen “Emma.” (2020), starring Anya Taylor-Joy alongside a slew of now-famous faces, including Mia Goth and Josh O’Connor. That these two films strike such different tones while remaining largely true to Austen’s text is a testament to the timelessness of the author’s work, and suggests it will continue to be adapted for another 250 years yet.
On Wednesday, The Brattle welcomes to its stage legendary writer-director Whit Stillman for a 35th anniversary screening of his debut feature “Metropolitan” (1990). One of the defining indie-film hits of the ’90s, “Metropolitan” is a gentle, impeccably written hangout dramedy about a clique of snobbish, Harvard-educated New York socialites (or rather, UHBs – “urban haute bourgeoisie”) who welcome into their fold self-proclaimed “committed socialist” Tom Townsend. Stillman has fun at the expense of his characters’ pretensions (one insists on reading literary criticism rather than actual novels, the quicker to glean their conversation points), but it’s clear that he also has a great deal of affection for them, and there’s immense pleasure in sitting in on their endlessly boozy Manhattan Christmas parties. After the feature, Stillman will be present for a Q&A, which promises to be a sparkling conversation of its own.
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.
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