Film Details

The late Chilean/French filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011) was one of the most imaginative and prolific directors in the modern cinema. Although most of Ruiz’s 100+ features are virtually impossible to see in the U.S., tonight and next Saturday you have a chance to see two of his greatest works in rare (and essential) 35mm prints. (Both were plucked from the 16-film Ruiz retrospective presented late last year by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.) Three Crowns of a Sailor is a baroque, Wellesian noir in which a student who has committed a murder meets a drunken sailor willing to give him safe passage on his vessel. The mariner demands a payment of three Danish crowns, but also requires that the student spend the night before their departure listening to his life story. What follows is a series of dreamy, fantastic tales—tales of exotic ports of call, of bandits and brothels, of ghost ships. “In the tradition of Cocteau, Fellini, Tarkovsky; open your eyes and your mind to it.” –Time Out Film Guide. Subtitles. Color print from the Institut Français. 117 min.