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A Big Screen Must-See, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH 70th Anniversary Screening June 25.

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THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH 70th Anniversary – Marilyn Monroe classic comedy screens at Laemmle’s historic Royal Theatre on June 25.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the 70th anniversary of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955), which features one of the signature pop culture images of the 20th century and of its star, Marilyn Monroe (standing astride a subway grate while her skirt billows up to her shoulders). Billy Wilder produced, directed, and, with George Axelrod, cowrote the film version of Axelrod’s smash Broadway comedy about marital infidelity. It provided a prime vehicle for Monroe. The film screens one night only, Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00 P.M. at the historic Laemmle Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.

Axelrod’s play opened on Broadway in 1952 and ran almost three years before being adapted for the screen. Seasoned stage actor Tom Ewell scored a major career hit and a Tony Award for his portrayal of a philandering New York publisher who agonizes over straying with “the Girl Upstairs” while his wife and young son are on a two-month summer vacation in Maine. Wilder wanted to cast newcomer Walter Matthau, but Ewell was permitted to reprise his role when Monroe was cast as “the Girl” and the vehicle was rewritten to showcase her. Despite this shift, Ewell won a Golden Globe for his skillful comedic performance, the best of his career.

Wilder had taken on the project for its farcical approach to adultery but was “straitjacketed” by the censorious Production Code and could not sidestep its restrictions as he first thought. Therefore, the emphasis was placed on Monroe’s character, which some reviewers felt unbalanced the story. However, the film is still told from Ewell’s point of view, and even though his milquetoast is no match for Monroe, their innocent sexual bantering still registers, with his lustful fantasies countered by Monroe’s sweet sexuality. Perhaps the best way to view the film is as a satire on mid-century morals and 1950s sexism. Wilder takes a somewhat broad approach, and the light cartoonish style works effectively to generate copious laughs.

Monroe is delightful and incandescent, and the film, a major box-office hit, remains memorable because of her. At the time of its original release in 1955, Delmore Schwartz in The New Republic called her a different type of screen siren, representing “a new attitude, which Miss Monroe embodies with such natural and joyous ebullience.” Who could argue? The subway grate image, depicted in a 26-foot statue, Forever Marilyn, by artist Seward Johnson in 2011, further immortalized Monroe’s legacy as the greatest star in movie history. You can currently see the statue in downtown Palm Springs, and now you can see the movie that inspired it on June 25 at the Royal. It is a perfect opportunity to see on the big screen the magnetism of Marilyn Monroe that resonates to this day.

CROUPIER 25th Anniversary Screening with Clive Owen in Person June 4 at the Royal.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 25th anniversary screening of ‘Croupier,’ the sleeper hit that helped to save the specialized movie business during a dry period at the beginning of the 21st century. Mike Hodges, the director of the British crime thriller ‘Get Carter’ with Michael Caine, had his most acclaimed film since then when he directed ‘Croupier.’

Clive Owen, who had mainly appeared in British television dramas before this, rose to full-fledged movie stardom as a result of this movie. He plays an aspiring writer who takes a job at a casino where he juggles a few romantic relationships and also has to contend with a robbery threat. Alex Kingston, Gina McKee, Kate Hardie, and Nicholas Ball costar. The script was written by Paul Mayersberg, who also wrote Nicolas Roeg’s ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and ‘Eureka,’ as well as Nagisa Oshima’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.’

The film opened in England in 1999 but made few waves at the box office. When it came to America in 2000, veteran marketing executive Mike Kaplan (who had worked frequently with Stanley Kubrick, Lindsay Anderson, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, and Malcolm McDowell) devised a whole new marketing campaign that highlighted Owen’s resemblance to tough-guy Hollywood stars like Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark. The strategy worked, and the picture lit up art house screens for several months, eventually reaching mainstream theaters as well.

The New York Times’ Stephen Holden called the film “a breezy meditation on life as a game of chance,” and he added, “Clive Owen conveys a sharp, cynical intelligence that rolls off the screen whenever he widens his glittering blue eyes.” Newsweek’s David Ansen declared, “Coolly hypnotic, the lean British sleeper ‘Croupier‘ is a reminder that movies don’t have to wave their arms and scream to hold our attention.” Roger Ebert wrote that Owen has “the same sort of physical reserve as Sean Connery in the Bond pictures.”

Newsday’s Gene Seymour wrote, “Not since 1971 has British director Mike Hodges made a movie as deep, dark and compelling as this thriller.” British film journal Sight and Sound concurred that “Hodges is unfailingly professional in matching style to story.”

The movie’s success catapulted Owen to full-fledged stardom, and he went on to work with many of the world’s top directors and stars. He earned an Oscar nomination when he costarred with Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman in Mike Nichols’ ‘Closer.’ He costarred in Spike Lee’s ‘Inside Man’ with Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. Owen was part of the large ensemble cast in Robert Altman’s Oscar-winning ‘Gosford Park.’ He had the leading role in Alfonso Cuaron’s futuristic thriller ‘Children of Men.’ He played Sir Walter Raleigh to Cate Blanchett’s Queen Elizabeth in ‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age,’ then re-teamed with Roberts in ‘Duplicity.’ He also starred with Juliette Binoche in Fred Schepisi’s ‘Words and Pictures.’

Owen scored on television as well, starring in Steven Soderbergh’s acclaimed medical series ‘The Knick.’ He earned an Emmy nomination playing Ernest Hemingway in Philip Kaufman’s ‘Hemingway and Gelhorn,’ co-starring with Nicole Kidman. In Ryan Murphy’s TV miniseries ‘American Crime Story,’ Owen played President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair. And he recently played an older version of detective Sam Spade in ‘Monsieur Spade.’

Mike Kaplan will introduce the screening by reporting on its troubled but ultimately triumphant history. Owen will participate in a Q&A after the film.

RAN, Akira Kurosowa’s final epic masterpiece, back on the big screen May 23.

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There are movies. There is cinema. And then there is auteur cinema. All are best experienced theatrically, but the last category, in particular, necessitates the big screen, the darkness, the audience of strangers. Next week, we are thrilled to once again unveil Ran, the 27th film by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress).

In its epic scale, stylistic grandeur and tragic contemplation of human destiny, Ran (literally, “chaos” or “turmoil”) brings together the great themes and gorgeous images of the director’s life work. A brilliantly conceived meditation on Shakespeare’s King Lear crossed with Japan’s 16th-century civil wars, it stars the great Tatsuya Nakadai (Kagemusha, High and Low, Yojimbo, Hara Kiri) as Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging ruler who decides to abdicate and divide his land equally among his three sons, unleashing an intense power struggle as his sons and daughters-in-law scheme for power and revenge. A spectacular adventure punctuated by epic battle scenes, Ran was, at the time of its release, the most expensive film ever made in Japan, with breathtaking color and a visual splendor that remains unparalleled. (Kurosawa devised the entire film in watercolors ten years before production began). Named Best Foreign Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle and Best Film of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics, Ran was also Oscar-nominated for Best Director, Cinematography, and Art Direction, with Emi Wada winning for her dazzling, three-years-in-the-making costumes.

“Spectacular! Among the most thrilling movie experiences a viewer can have!” -The New York Times

“Awe inspiring! Takes its place among the major screen versions of Shakespeare. The battle scenes are horrifying, yet extraordinarily beautiful.” -The Village Voice

“Kurosawa’s late-period masterpiece, transposing King Lear to period Japan, is one of the most exquisite spectacles ever made, a color-coordinated epic tragedy of carnage and betrayal—passionate, somber, and profound.” -New York Magazine

Claude Lelouch retrospective featuring cinephiles’ ultimate date-night movie, A MAN AND A WOMAN.

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Next week we’ll begin a Claude Lelouch retrospective at the Royal with a week-long engagement of his 1966 double Oscar and Palme d’Or winner A Man and a Woman, newly restored by Rialto Pictures. April 26 through April 30 we’ll also screen his films Les Miserables, And Now My Love, Rendezvous, Cat and Mouse, La Bonne Année, and Bolero (Les Uns et les Autres).

“A tender, visually stirring film of rejuvenating love between a widow and a widower: Trintignant and Aimée share a candid romance while balancing the demands of career and parenthood. It’s a touching, realistic look at a burgeoning adult romance, with each participant encumbered by a past tragedy, causing them to proceed delicately. Also famous for Francis Lai’s gorgeous, swooning score…Quite possibly one of the sweetest love stories ever captured on screen.” – Wilson Chapman, IndieWire

“How to resist a pairing as photogenic as Aimée and Trintignant? I couldn’t take my eyes off either of them.” – Anthony Quinn, The Independent

“The final scene should go down in history as one of the most romantic ever put to film.” – Far Out Magazine (U.K.)

“Beautiful… breathtaking.” – The New York Times

“Probably the most efficacious make-out movie of the swinging ’60s.” – Pauline Kael

“Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman is a film as simple and complicated as its title implies. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Original Screenplay, it chronicles the tentative, tender romance between a widow and a widower, irresistibly drawn to one another despite the heavy weight of past tragedies. Newly restored in 4K, the film features two of the most iconic and attractive stars of French cinema photographed in a beautiful mix of color and black-and-white—the kind of thing the big screen was made for, never mind that the story is much more intimate than epic.

“Every Sunday, script supervisor Anne (Anouk Aimée) travels north from Paris to Deauville to visit her young daughter, Francoise, at boarding school; racecar driver Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) does the same to visit his young son, Antoine. One wintery Sunday, Anne misses the last train back to Paris and gets a ride home with Jean-Louis, and sparks fly each time they lock eyes across the car. Both say they are married and still wear their rings, but they eventually reveal to each other that their respective partners have passed away—though, for Anne in particular, the memory of her stuntman husband, Pierre (Pierre Barouh), feels very much alive.

“Upon arriving in Paris, Jean-Louis asks Anne if she would like to drive up to Deauville together the next weekend. What follows is a delicate dance between the two as they grow closer while still keeping a small, safe distance—enough room for the ghosts of their partners to hover between them. It’s an undeniably adult yet no less swoon-worthy depiction of two people falling in love, in which seemingly small gestures like Jean-Louis gripping the back of Anne’s chair during lunch—wanting to be closer to her but resisting the urge to put his arm around her—say more about their growing connection than all the flowery dialogue in the world ever could.

“There is a lot that makes A Man and a Woman one of the most timeless romantic dramas ever committed to celluloid, but it would be a lie to say that the film’s two lovely stars don’t top the list. Not only are they almost unbelievably nice to look at, but they also have a natural chemistry that makes it impossible not to be invested in their characters’ love story. The film thrives on them and their emotions; every time they glance at each other and smile, as though they seemingly can’t believe their good luck in finding one another, you can feel that warmth in your own heart.

“Aimée’s performance as Anne, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, is deeply poignant; her struggle to reconcile her burgeoning love for Jean-Louis with her ongoing love for Pierre, and the feeling that she is somehow betraying him by falling for another, is complex and moving. Meanwhile, Trintignant makes Jean-Louis a figure of irresistible magnetism who nonetheless has insecurities about his new romance that the film brings to amusing, affecting life via voiceover. After all, how does one win the affection of a woman when your competition is dead and cannot do anything more to hurt his chances? Perhaps if Pierre had lived and their relationship had time to sour, instead of being cut short in such an idealized state, it would have been easier, Jean-Louis muses.

“A Man and a Woman also utilizes flashbacks that are effective in telling us how our protagonists’ partners died as well as in showing us how powerful their love was in life, and why it’s so difficult for them to resign such love to the past and move on. The film is strongest when it relies on images like these and the aforementioned small glances and gestures between Anne and Jean-Louis—a shared moment of laughter on a boat with their children, a spinning embrace on a deserted Deauville beach, a surprise moment of eye contact across a busy train platform—yet the script, co-written by Lelouch with Pierre Uytterhoeven, is nonetheless intelligent when it chooses to speak out loud.

“Lelouch, who also served as the film’s cinematographer and supervised this new restoration, shot A Man and a Woman partially in color and partially in black-and-white simply because of budget constraints, yet the result fits the film’s story so well you’d assume it was a more purposeful stylistic choice. (If a film shot on a shoestring budget is capable of looking this good, why does the industry bother spending millions of dollars on films that look a million times worse? Though, to be fair, they don’t have stars like Aimée and Trintignant to photograph.) And just when you thought the film couldn’t possibly be any more stylish in that quintessentially twentieth-century French cinema way, Francis Lai’s enchanting musical score arrives on the scene and uplifts everything.

“A Man and a Woman is quite possibly the cinephile’s ultimate date night movie and most definitely a romance that will win you over.” ~ Lee Jutton, Film Inquiry

 

Lisa Cholodenko on her newly restored HIGH ART: “I wanted it to be deep and real and as dangerous as it should be.”

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Beautifully restored by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, Lisa Cholodenko’s 1998 lesbian romantic drama High Art is now considered a queer classic, and it is ten times more potent on the big screen. The protagonist is Syd (Radha Mitchell), whose life changes after a chance meeting with her upstairs neighbor, Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy). Lucy, a once-celebrated photographer, lives an enthralling life with her drug-addicted German girlfriend, (Patricia Clarkson), that draws Syd in. Before she can catch her breath, Syd discovers dark truths of life on the edge, is forced to confront the price of her professional ambition. We are proud to open the film April 18 at the NoHo.

Cholodenko recently sat for an interview with Gay City News:

Q: The magazine in High Art is called “Frame,” and what I admire about your film is how you frame your characters and your scenes.

A: I was amused by “Frame” as the title for a magazine — the double entendre of the obvious connection to a photography and she is “framing” Lucy and is being “framed” by the artworld.

Q: But you immerse viewers in their world, which frames them. Your gaze frames the characters — shots of Syd in the bathtub, or Lucy behind her camera.

A: In my mind, what was interesting was that it was sexy, and the allure of coming into this world that was forbidden and kind of dangerous but sort of elite. At that time, that heroin chic moment was really glamorized in art and fashion photography. Selling things was commodified. I wanted it to feel you were walking in there and there was something sexy about it.

Q: There is a line in the film when Syd and Lucy are driving upstate — the light “lures you, then it’s gone.” Syd is lured by the bright light that is Lucy. Can you talk about creating the dynamic between these characters?

A: I always like the magic hour, that moment when it is really liminal and in-between. You are right there, and it’s going to go in an instant. I like that reference to the light, and as a filmmaker, that’s kind of obvious. I saw Lucy as someone who is intense and detached, and that is partly because of who she is and the power dynamic between them. She’s unattainable, and she talks about that in her career — that she slipped out and couldn’t go the distance. She went underground. Drug addicts and particularly heroin addicts are like that — intense and they slip out.

Q: Syd is empowered by her relationship with Lucy. Can you discuss that aspect of the film?

A: I see sexuality as fluid, so who one is attracted to can be affected by who you are connecting to intellectually or emotionally or by a power dynamic of what are you going to do for me, or what am I going to do for you? Or you are enamored by that human. It can be unexpected. I never saw Syd’s sexuality as definitive. I didn’t see it as a coming out story. Here is this charismatic, mysterious, talented, sexy, dangerous woman [Lucy] who is fixated on her and that was alluring to Syd. In terms of the contrast with her boyfriend, James, Gabriel Mann is sweet and has effete qualities, and Ally has swagger—I wouldn’t call her butch. But it was who is wearing the pants in a way.

Q: Your films feature themes of a stranger infiltrating a group and finding their identity through interactions and power struggles with others. Why does that cuckoo-in-the-nest theme resonate with you?

A: The disrupter story — isn’t that the fun comedy of manners? I think there is something about the allure of people you don’t know and what you can project onto them. As you get older you probably see more clearly who they are, but people can have a magic when you don’t know them, and they are projecting onto you what you want to see. There’s a dynamic — not necessarily the real deal — but it moves us towards something else we need to be responsive to.

Q: What can you say about the emphasis on and depiction of female pleasure in High Art in particular and your work in general? There were so few films that depicted female pleasure so I’m glad High Art did.

A: It was something I wrote. It was in my mind and own experiences. I wasn’t consciously comparing it to or thinking about where I placed in the chronology of lesbian films. I wanted it to be deep and real and as dangerous as it should be. There weren’t that many films depicting lesbian sex and relationships, and they seemed dated, and were about queerness and coming out. I am not telling that story, per se. I wanted to go into a world that I understand and that I am attracted to.

Q: High Art is a queer classic. What observations do you have about your film being so beloved?

A: It is interesting to watch it. I can see where the culture changed. There is so much cigarette smoking, which is unbelievable to me! We screened a few years ago at Sundance, and during the Q&A, younger women said it doesn’t feel dated to us, but it feels relevant to our lives now. I like that. Whatever it was in the design, acting, casting, or subject that it has a transcendent quality. I worked really hard. It holds up as a human story, and that is what I am most proud of. And if it is a gay classic, that is awesome!

Q: What reflections do you have about the film after all these years? Do you see flaws you want to fix, or marvel at how you got it made?

A: I was joyful to make the film. It was really hard. Were we going to be able to do it at the final hour because of the money? We pulled it together. There are very few scenes that look like we didn’t have enough time, or money, or lighting equipment. That’s not to pat myself on the back. It was restricted what we could do in a low-budget film. Looking at it now, I like how it is scrappy or flawed — that I used non-actors, or the ashtrays were overflowing. I was a student when I made that film. Tami [the cinematographer] could put the camera on her shoulder and we could run down into subway and steal a shot. It was a really different time.

Q: How do you think this film’s critical and commercial success helped your career as a filmmaker?

A: Obviously, you make a film, and it gets distribution and notice, then people notice you. When people asked would I do episodic TV, I raised my hand. I did episodes of “Homicide” and “Six Feet Under.” Meanwhile, Jeff, one of the producers on High Art paid me to keep writing. He produced “Laurel Canyon.” I read [other people’s] scripts, but nothing was compelling. I had it in my head to write my own thing. I was writing it for myself; what do I want to watch? If there is something I want to say, I’d rather do that and write my own script than try to make something fit that is coming my way.

Alan Rudolph’s CHOOSE ME: Special Restoration Screening Tribute to Bob Laemmle with Keith Carradine, Lesley Ann Warren, and more April 3

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Alan Rudolph’s ‘Choose Me‘ Special 4K Restoration Screening Tribute to Bob Laemmle with costars Keith Carradine, Lesley Ann Warren, and producer David Blocker in person April 3.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a special 4K restoration screening of writer-director Alan Rudolph’s 1984 comedy-drama fable ‘Choose Me‘ as a tribute to the late Bob Laemmle, owner of Laemmle Theatres, who died in January. The film screens Thursday, April 3 at the historic Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles at 7:00 P.M. Costars Keith Carradine and Lesley Ann Warren will appear in person for a Q&A, joined by producer David Blocker. Bob Laemmle was a long-time supporter of Alan Rudolph and ‘Choose Me’ notably had a lengthy run of several months at the Royal in 1984 and 1985.

Alan Rudolph has been in the forefront of the American indie movement since his breakout arthouse hit ‘Welcome to L.A.’ in 1976. As a protégé of Robert Altman, he specializes in romanticism and fantasy with quirky characters. Set mostly in a nocturnal Los Angeles, ‘Choose Me‘ is essentially a lyrical roundelay among five characters: Nancy (Genevieve Bujold), a radio psychologist who goes by the nom de radio “Dr. Love” and dispenses advice to the lovelorn but is maladjusted herself; Eve (Lesley Ann Warren), a former sex worker who owns a bar in a seedy neighborhood; Mickey (Keith Carradine), a released mental patient who may still be quite mad; Pearl (Rae Dawn Chong), an alcoholic aspiring poet; and her wayward husband Zack (Patrick Bauchau). Working on a low-budget, Rudolph achieves high style collaborating with cinematographer Jan Kiesser and production designer Steven Legler and a soundtrack of soulful late-night jazz for the noirish atmospherics.

Critics embraced the film, with Vincent Canby in the New York Times noting how Rudolph features Los Angeles “as much of fairy-tale town as the Emerald City. It’s this quality that makes ‘Choose Me‘ an adult fable of expressive charm.” Janet Maslin, also in the Times, called the characters “garrulous, love-starved loners,” and praised the film “as free-flowing meditation on love, commitment, jealousy, radio call-in shows and just about anything that comes to mind.” Roger Ebert called it “an audaciously intriguing movie…about the endless surprise of human nature.” The Washington Post cited it as “a movie of manners leavened with sophisticated farce…locates the searching quality of contemporary sexual attitudes as well as any this year.” Pauline Kael noted the comedy-fantasy quality, calling it “crazy bananas,” and “in a magical, pseudo-sultry way — it seems to be set in a poet’s dream of a red-light district.”

Our guests have all enjoyed lengthy show business careers, and among their highlights are Academy Award recognition for both Keith Carradine (Best Song Oscar, “I’m Easy” from 1975’s Nashville) and Lesley Anne Warren (Best Supporting Actress nomination, 1982’s ‘Victor, Victoria’). Warren has had an extensive career on stage, screen, and television, including TV’s ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’; memorable movie performances in ‘Clue’ and ‘Life Stinks’; and she gave a Golden Globe-nominated performance (among multiple Globe nominations and one win through the years) in Alan Rudolph’s ‘Songwriter’ in 1984.

Carradine has enjoyed a more than five decades career since his debut in Robert Altman’s ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’ in 1971, appeared memorably on Broadway in ‘Will Roger’s Follies,’ and collaborated with Rudolph several times, including ‘Welcome to L.A.,’ ‘The Moderns,’ and ‘Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.’ Notably, both Warren and Carradine are still active in entertainment with numerous projects.

David Blocker has produced several Rudolph films: ‘Choose Me,’ ‘Trouble in Mind,’ ‘The Moderns’ (those three with co-producer Carolyn Pfeiffer), ‘Made in Heaven,’ and ‘Equinox.’ His numerous works in television garnered an Emmy for the TV movie ‘Don King: Only in America’ (1997).

 

 

“It’s a fantasy, a comedy, a musical, and a tragedy all at once.” Godard’s A WOMAN IS A WOMAN Opens Friday at the Royal, March 28 in Glendale.

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From Bilge Eberi’s recent New York Magazine piece about the new restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman is A Woman:

“I don’t know whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy,” Jean-Luc Godard said about his film A Woman Is a Woman in 1961, not long before it opened. “At any rate, it’s a masterpiece.” The director, who at the time had released just one feature, was being characteristically cheeky. Later in that same interview, he admitted that the movie was an uneasy mix of influences. Shot in CinemaScope and color, it was meant to be a spectacle, “a set designer’s film,” that he had deliberately improvised and rushed. Though A Woman Is a Woman (now on the big screen again in a 4K restoration) is billed as a “neorealist musical,” in truth it is neither. It has music but almost never when anyone’s singing. The production stole shots on the street amid the unsuspecting working-class pedestrians of Strasbourg–Saint-Denis, but Godard often used these images for absurd scenarios. The visual scheme is deliberately dissonant, with the bold primary colors of the costumes and the set dressing clashing against drab, gray, real-life backgrounds.

This gorgeous film’s premise is a simple, humanist, and not particularly dramatic one, of the type that the Italian neorealists treasured, but it’s been given an absurd, comic-romantic spin. A young woman, Angela (played by Godard’s muse and future wife Anna Karina), wants to have a baby, but her distant boyfriend, Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy), doesn’t want to impregnate her because he has a bicycle race that weekend, so his best friend, Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who also pines for her, steps in.

The director had completed two features before A Woman Is a Woman. 1960’s lovers-on-the-run caper Breathless, still the most iconic of New Wave films, had been a phenomenon, while the political drama Le petit soldat (shot in 1960 but not released until 1963) was held back by controversy. Heavily anticipated, A Woman Is a Woman came at a kind of make-or-break moment for the Nouvelle Vague; its subsequent box-office failure, alongside the financial disappointment of Francois Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960), would prompt some pundits to prematurely proclaim the movement’s demise.

In truth, things were just getting started. A Woman Is a Woman would establish Karina as a star. She won a Best Actress award at that year’s Berlin Film Festival. Watching her saunter, stare, smile, and sigh through this movie, it’s not hard to see how an entire generation of cinephiles fell in love — not just with her, but with the idea of her, and with the incipient world she represented. Her colorful costumes and playful delivery convey effervescence, and yet there’s a deep sadness within. Originally from Denmark, she stumbles with French dialogue and pronunciation, and we can sense the awkwardness; Godard even includes a couple of blown takes. He’s in love with her imperfections, and so are we. But what an incredibly tough position to be in as a performer.

The picture also furthered the invigorating experimentation that defined so much of the director’s monumental career. Breathless had started as a somewhat conventional project that Godard turned into an irreverent formal free-for-all; the noirish, plaintive Le petit soldat had enough genre elements to mistake it for something more traditional. But A Woman Is a Woman seems to have been conceived by someone who sought first and foremost to demystify the filmmaking apparatus.

It has the rhythms, gestures, and mood of a musical, often without the actual music. A song might start right before cutting out completely in the next shot. Direct sound clashes with expressionistic (and sometimes just plain nutty) audio choices. Loud, cartoonish sound effects punctuate each line in a lovers’ squabble. An ostensibly serious scene starts with the actors curtseying to the audience. Angela works at a strip club where women’s clothes come off not through dances but via jump cuts; their faces are expressionless and their bodies immobile, as if they’ve been reduced to deadpan pin-up poses. One night, Angela and Emile have an argument where they refuse to speak to each other, communicating entirely via book titles, each of which they pick out while lugging a giant floor lamp around for illumination. The most coordinated thing anyone does in the movie might be to gracefully and rhythmically brush the dirt off their feet before going to bed.

But beneath all this color and artifice and levity runs something deeper and more personal. It’s not just Karina’s performance that conveys a subdued, counterintuitive melancholy. Godard’s subsequent films with his muse (as well as a couple without her, such as his 1963 masterpiece Contempt) would be inspired by their tumultuous relationship, and here, too, amid all these stylistic flourishes, we sense a very real anxiety — about love, about family, about commitment, about the future, and about the fundamental inscrutability of relationships. Director and actress had already broken up and gotten back together before making A Woman Is a Woman; it wouldn’t be the last time. Not long after the shoot ended, Karina would discover she was pregnant, and they would hastily marry; she would miscarry a couple of months later. Their marriage continued in increasingly chaotic fashion. They made eight films together, including a couple after their final separation and a couple in the middle of it.

Though Godard always tended to be gnomic about such matters in interviews (honestly, he tended to be gnomic about pretty much everything), his work embodied the personal storm. His formal daring was inextricably linked to the emotional turbulence in his life: The frantic innovation of his films is a projection of a mind and a heart at unrest. In deconstructing cinema, the movies seek to deconstruct life itself. (For Godard, I doubt there was much of a difference between the two.)  A Woman Is a Woman, despite its surface frivolity, its confectionary experimentalism, is about a man and a woman who don’t understand one another, but who somehow love each other even more because of it. It’s a fantasy, a comedy, a musical, and a tragedy all at once.

SIDEWAYS 20th Anniversary Screening, Discussion and Book-Signing March 20, 2025 Laemmle Monica Film Center

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 20th anniversary screening of one of the most acclaimed movies of the 21st century: Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning ‘Sideways.’ The March 20 screening at the Monica Film Center is held in conjunction with the publication of the new book, ‘Sideways Uncorked: The Perfect Pairing of Film and Wine,’ written by critic and journalist Kirk Honeycutt and his wife, Mira Advani Honeycutt. Mira comes to the project with 25 years of experience as a wine journalist. They will be joined by the Oscar-nominated producer of ‘Sideways,’ Michael London.

‘Sideways,’ based on a novel by Rex Pickett, was adapted for the screen by Payne and his frequent collaborator, Jim Taylor. It follows a weeklong journey through Santa Barbara wine country by two mismatched pals, a teacher and unsuccessful writer, played by Paul Giamatti, and a part-time actor played by Thomas Haden Church. Along the way they have encounters with two tantalizing women (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen). The sharp, often hilarious insights into character energize the film.

When the film opened in the fall of 2004, it earned universally rave reviews. Kirk Honeycutt wrote the very first review out of the Toronto Film Festival. He declared, “The slapstick is perfectly timed and executed. As with the best comedies of Billy Wilder and Blake Edwards, laughs derive from excruciating pain, both emotional and physical.” Roger Ebert praised the film as “the best human comedy of the year—comedy because it is funny, and human, because it is surprisingly moving.” Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote, “Payne has created four of the most lived-in, indelible characters in recent American movies.”

Both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association named ‘Sideways‘ as the best film of 2004. The screenplay was named the year’s best by those two groups, along with the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Writers Guild of America. Payne and Taylor also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film earned Academy nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Acting nods for Church and Madsen.

The film had an influence beyond the world of cinema. In one key scene in the film, Giamatti declaims against merlot and declares pinot noir to be the far superior wine. Sales of pinot noir soared all over the country after the film’s release.

‘Sideways‘ ended up grossing more than $100 million, a huge score for a film that started its life as a small arthouse release.

Kirk and Mira Honeycutt will be selling and signing copies of their book before and after the screening on March 20. Alexander Payne had high praise for it: “The Honeycutts’ account of ‘Sideways‘ and its reverberations is so thorough that even I learned things I hadn’t known. A delightful, accurate chronicle with great wine tips.” Leonard Maltin called ‘Sideways Uncorked’ “an astute and entertaining book about the making of a great American film and its aftermath in the world of wine.”

Producer Michael London has many other distinguished credits, including ‘House of Sand and Fog,’ ‘The Family Stone,’ ‘The Visitor,’ ‘Milk,’ and ‘Trumbo.’