Cinematheque Film Schedule

United States | 1961 | Marlon Brando

At one time or another Rod Serling, Sam Peckinpah, and Stanley Kubrick all worked on this moody Western that ended up being the only movie Marlon Brando ever directed. A thinly-veiled retelling of the story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the movie follows a brooding outlaw (Brando) who seeks revenge on his old partner in crime (Karl Malden), now a respectable lawman with a family. Shot in VistaVision on the Monterey coast, the...

Italy, West Germany | 1968 | Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet

Renowned Dutch keyboard player (and period instrument advocate) Gustav Leonhardt portrays Johann Sebastian Bach in this minimalist but moving film that looks at the last 27 years in the composer’s life through the eyes of his wife. Straub-Huillet’s classic is far from a traditional biopic and costume drama; for one thing, all the music in it was performed and recorded live before the camera, often in single takes. “Beautiful…Has the air of a crystal-clear meditation.”...

United States | 1968 | Gerald Sindell

We celebrate the publication of the new book World Film Locations: Cleveland (Intellect Ltd, 2016) with a special screening of a little-known, locally shot feature film, followed by a panel discussion. The book, edited by Alberto Zambenedetti, Assistant Professor of Italian and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto, is the latest in a series of books that explore the movies shot in major cities around the world. Double-Stop, one of 40+ movies covered in...

United States | 1960 | Leslie Stevens

Warren Oates had his first significant movie role in this nearly lost, recently rediscovered and restored crime film by the creator of TV’s The Outer Limits. Originally condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, this suspenseful, salacious, low-budget movie follows two disreputable California drifters, Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Oates), as they stalk and spy on a beautiful young blonde with a home swimming pool and a bored husband. Duke, a low rent Lothario, wheedles...

United States | 1958 | Vincente Minnelli

The Musical Theater Project and the Cinematheque join forces to present a special screening of the beloved Lerner and Loewe musical that won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1958 (along with eight others, a record at the time). Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan star in this charming color and scope concoction, an original screen musical (not a stage adaptation) set in turn-of-the-20th-century Paris, about a young French waif who is being trained...

United States | 2015 | Gus Van Sant

Matthew McConaughey, Naomi Watts, and Ken Watanabe star in the new film by Gus Van Sant, which was shown in competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. The movie follows an American math professor as he journeys to Japan with the intention of killing himself in the lush “suicide forest” of Aokigahara at the foot of Mount Fuji. He meets a similarly depressed Japanese businessman in the woods. Music by Mason Bates. DCP. 110 min.

United States | 1960 | Leslie Stevens

Warren Oates had his first significant movie role in this nearly lost, recently rediscovered and restored crime film by the creator of TV’s The Outer Limits. Originally condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, this suspenseful, salacious, low-budget movie follows two disreputable California drifters, Duke (Corey Allen) and Boots (Oates), as they stalk and spy on a beautiful young blonde with a home swimming pool and a bored husband. Duke, a low rent Lothario, wheedles...

West Germany | 1965 | Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub

Heinrich Böll’s novel Billiards at Half-past Nine, which traces 50 years of German social and political history through the story of a three-generation family, is bracingly brought to the screen in this stripped down, non-chronological, hour-long adaptation. Straub-Huillet’s first feature planted the flag for their radical reimagining of cinema. Subtitles. Preceded starting at 6:45 by two Straub-Huillet shorts: Machorka-Muff (1963), a satire of militarism and another Böll adaptation; and The Bridegroom, the Comedienne and the...

Belgium, France | 2015 | Alice Winocur

The second feature directed by the writer of the Oscar-nominated Mustang stars Matthias Schoenaerts as a French Afghan war vet with PTSD. He is hired by a wealthy but shady Lebanese businessman to protect his wife (Diane Kruger) and child at his lavish villa on the French Riviera. But do you really want a security guard who’s prone to anxiety and hallucinations even when all is calm? “A notable, unusual existential thriller…Terrifically suspenseful.” –Kim Newman,...

United States | 1920 | Oscar Micheaux

The earliest surviving feature by the most famous maker of “race” films, Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951), is also the earliest surviving feature directed by an African American. (It’s a silent movie shown here with a new recorded score by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky.) Made as an angry retort to the overt racism in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Within Our Gates follows an educated mixed-race woman as she tries to raise funds in...

Japan | 2015 | Hirokazu Kore-eda

The latest film from the acclaimed Japanese director of Maborosi, Nobody Knows,and Still Walking is a gentle portrait of three twentysomething Japanese sisters, abandoned by their parents many years ago and living together in their grandparents’ home. When their estranged father dies, they are joined by a teenage half-sister they did not know about. From an acclaimed graphic novel. “A delicate, unforced meditation on the bonds of family and the joys and wonders hidden in...

United States | 2016 | Paul Schrader

From off the streets of Cleveland comes this colorful, darkly funny, violent tale of three ex-cons (Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Matthew Cook) who botch a kidnap job intended to insure their cushy retirement on easy street. This gritty, grungy, over-the-top crime movie was shot in northeast Ohio with contributions from numerous Cleveland Institute of Art students. Director Paul Schrader also co-stars. “Relentlessly twisted, violent, funny…As the unhinged, doped-up loose cannon of the group, Willem...

Japan | 2015 | Hirokazu Kore-eda

The latest film from the acclaimed Japanese director of Maborosi, Nobody Knows,and Still Walking is a gentle portrait of three twentysomething Japanese sisters, abandoned by their parents many years ago and living together in their grandparents’ home. When their estranged father dies, they are joined by a teenage half-sister they did not know about. From an acclaimed graphic novel. “A delicate, unforced meditation on the bonds of family and the joys and wonders hidden in...

United States | 2016 | Paul Schrader

From off the streets of Cleveland comes this colorful, darkly funny, violent tale of three ex-cons (Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Matthew Cook) who botch a kidnap job intended to insure their cushy retirement on easy street. This gritty, grungy, over-the-top crime movie was shot in northeast Ohio with contributions from numerous Cleveland Institute of Art students. Director Paul Schrader also co-stars. “Relentlessly twisted, violent, funny…As the unhinged, doped-up loose cannon of the group, Willem...

Belgium, France | 2015 | Alice Winocur

The second feature directed by the writer of the Oscar-nominated Mustang stars Matthias Schoenaerts as a French Afghan war vet with PTSD. He is hired by a wealthy but shady Lebanese businessman to protect his wife (Diane Kruger) and child at his lavish villa on the French Riviera. But do you really want a security guard who’s prone to anxiety and hallucinations even when all is calm? “A notable, unusual existential thriller…Terrifically suspenseful.” –Kim Newman,...

United States | 2016 | Craig Atkinson

Winner of the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, the first movie directed by the cinematographer of Detropia explores the rapid militarization of U.S. police forces. From the streets of Ferguson to the halls of Congress, this wide-ranging and unsettling film looks at the state of policing in contemporary America. “Chilling.” –Variety. “Eye-opening.” –The New Yorker. DCP. 72 min.

France | 2014 | various directors

We first showed this program of eight French animated short films from the 2015 Annecy International Animated Film Festival on Art House Theater Day, 9/24/16. It was such a strong program, we have decided to bring it back. Selected by the Annecy Festival’s Artistic Director, the eight movies reflect the diversity and excellence of French animation, and have subtitles when needed. Program includes: Alison, Yul and the Snake, Tigers Tied Up in One Rope, Sunday...

United States | 2016 | Craig Atkinson

Winner of the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, the first movie directed by the cinematographer of Detropia explores the rapid militarization of U.S. police forces. From the streets of Ferguson to the halls of Congress, this wide-ranging and unsettling film looks at the state of policing in contemporary America. “Chilling.” –Variety. “Eye-opening.” –The New Yorker. DCP. 72 min.

Italy | 1962 | Michelangelo Antonioni

Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, and Monica Vitti star in Antonioni’s celebrated marital drama that chronicles 24 hours in the lives of a Milanese novelist and his distraught wife. As in much Antonioni (L’Avventura, Blow-Up), the film has great formal beauty, an elliptical narrative, and lengthy sequences shot in real time. In 1963, Stanley Kubrick listed it as his seventh favorite film of all time. Long out of theatrical release in the U.S., La Notte hasn’t...

United States | 1941 | Spencer Williams

Actor Spencer Williams (1893-1969), best known for playing Andy in the Amos ‘n’ Andy TV show, also starred in and directed one of the most successful “race” films of all time, The Blood of Jesus. Set in a rural village, the film focuses on a dying woman whose soul is being fought over by both an angel of God and an agent of Satan. The latter lures her to a decadent jazz club. Preceded at...

Japan | 1986 | Juzo Itami

Long out of theatrical release, this foodie favorite was made years before food movies became their own genre. Described by its director as a “ramen Western,” Tampopo is a satirical comedy in which a Shane-like long-distance trucker stops by a small noodle shop on the outskirts of Tokyo one day. Appalled by what he orders, he proceeds to instruct the owner, a middle-aged widow, on all things noodle related—so that she can turn her sorry...

United States | 1976 | Arthur Hiller

The first of Gene Wilder’s four pairings with Richard Pryor is the best—and one of Wilder’s essential movies. Wilder plays a meek book editor traveling on an L.A.-to-Chicago train, where he witnesses the murder of another passenger. Soon he’s fearing for his own life, while trying to find the killer. Eventually he joins forces with a petty thief. With Jill Clayburgh, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty, Clifton James, Ray Walston, Scatman Crothers, Richard Kiel, and Fred...

Italy | 1962 | Michelangelo Antonioni

Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, and Monica Vitti star in Antonioni’s celebrated marital drama that chronicles 24 hours in the lives of a Milanese novelist and his distraught wife. As in much Antonioni (L’Avventura, Blow-Up), the film has great formal beauty, an elliptical narrative, and lengthy sequences shot in real time. In 1963, Stanley Kubrick listed it as his seventh favorite film of all time. Long out of theatrical release in the U.S., La Notte hasn’t...

West Germany | 1975 | Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub

Arnold Schoenberg’s unfinished, 12-tone opera—about prophecy vs. demagogy as seen in the conflict between two biblical brothers—receives a spare but surprisingly effective treatment in this singular music film by the avant-garde team of Straub-Huillet. “This is great cinema. Grade: A+.” –Dennis Schwartz. Subtitles. DCP. 105 min. Preceded at 6:30 by Straub-Huillet’s 15-min. Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's “Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene” (W. Germany, 1973), a condemnation of anti-Semitism based on both a Schoenberg letter to...

Japan | 1986 | Juzo Itami

Long out of theatrical release, this foodie favorite was made years before food movies became their own genre. Described by its director as a “ramen Western,” Tampopo is a satirical comedy in which a Shane-like long-distance trucker stops by a small noodle shop on the outskirts of Tokyo one day. Appalled by what he orders, he proceeds to instruct the owner, a middle-aged widow, on all things noodle related—so that she can turn her sorry...

France | 1938 | Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir’s 1930s films, which include Boudu Saved from Drowning and Grand Illusion, rank among the greatest glories of world cinema. La Bête Humaine, made right before the director’s 1939 masterpiece The Rules of the Game, is a muscular Zola adaptation that stars Jean Gabin as a train driver propelled toward self-destruction by his overwhelming passion for the sultry wife of a deputy stationmaster. This powerful screen romance bridges the worlds of fatalistic 1930s French...

France | 1958 | Louis Malle

Louis Malle’s first film—made when he was 25 and seen here in a new digital restoration in its correct 1.37 aspect ratio (for the first time)—is a nail-biting film noir. A French Vietnam vet (Maurice Ronet) and his mistress (Jeanne Moreau, in a star-making turn) plot the “perfect” murder of her wealthy husband—until an elevator breaks down a few floors from the crime scene! Miles Davis improvised the jazz score; the great Henry Decaë did...

Australia | 2015 | Martin Butler, Bentley Dean

Australia’s official submission for next year’s Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film is a tribal romance set on a small, remote, picturesque volcanic island in the South Pacific. The movie follows two young, star-crossed native lovers who thwart their elders and even threaten their society by running off together when one of them is promised in marriage to another. “A beautiful odyssey with strong spiritual undertones.” –Screen Int’l. Nauvhal with subtitles. DCP. 100 min.

Australia | 2015 | Martin Butler, Bentley Dean

Australia’s official submission for next year’s Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film is a tribal romance set on a small, remote, picturesque volcanic island in the South Pacific. The movie follows two young, star-crossed native lovers who thwart their elders and even threaten their society by running off together when one of them is promised in marriage to another. “A beautiful odyssey with strong spiritual undertones.” –Screen Int’l. Nauvhal with subtitles. DCP. 100 min.

United States | 2015 | Trey Edward Shults

We hope you had a pleasant Thanksgiving Day. Now watch the Thanksgiving from hell in this darkly comic and absolutely riveting indie drama, maybe the best film seen at this year’s Cleveland Int’l Film Festival. Krisha, a sixtysomething ex-flower child, returns for a holiday gathering to the extended family she mysteriously abandoned ten years earlier. Director Trey Edward Shults even acts in his tense, anxious debut feature, and Krisha Fairchild’s performance has been likened to...

France | 1958 | Louis Malle

Louis Malle’s first film—made when he was 25 and seen here in a new digital restoration in its correct 1.37 aspect ratio (for the first time)—is a nail-biting film noir. A French Vietnam vet (Maurice Ronet) and his mistress (Jeanne Moreau, in a star-making turn) plot the “perfect” murder of her wealthy husband—until an elevator breaks down a few floors from the crime scene! Miles Davis improvised the jazz score; the great Henry Decaë did...

United States | 2016 | Lee Wilkof

Canton-born actor Lee Wilkof, who has appeared in almost 100 movies and TV shows since the late 1970s, is probably best known for originating the role of Seymour in the original off-Broadway production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. But he was also nominated for a Tony Award for his role in the Broadway revival of Kiss Me Kate. Now he has made his debut as a film director, and he appears in person...