THIS WEEK! Scott MacDonald program 2, Ozu + Judith Rosenberg & S.F. Cinematheque’s Weekend of Live Cinema Posted on February 18, 2010 by Brecht Andersch
Yasijiro Ozo's That Night's Wife
Just a quick note to appraise all and sundry of at least a portion of the cream of this week’s Bay Area rep film offerings: This Thurs (that is, Tonight) graces us with the second program of Scott MacDonald’s 3-part contribution to 75 Years in the Dark: A Partial History of Film at SFMOMA: Some American Experiments. This rather underwhelming title masks an over-stuffed sausage of a program composed of excitingly disparate parts, including early animation classics like Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), and the Ub Iwerks/Disney Steamboat Willie (1928), as well as major Avant-Garde classics such as Man Ray’s Le retour à la raison and Maya Daren’s Ritual in Tranfigured Time. Great as these all are, I’m especially anxious to see Frank Stauffacher (mastermind of the museum’s legendary Art in Cinema series)’s incredibly rare Zig-Zag, and The Bells of Atlantis by Ian Hugo (one-time husband of Anïs Nin, who was incarnated by Richard E. Grant [He of the Bulging Eyes] in Philip Kaufman’s Henry and June). All-in-all, this show promises 80-or-so minutes of alternating or intertwined sublimity and surprise—like a canister of snakes, only 100% pleasurable.
I became aware of Judith Rosenberg rather slowly. During my somewhat frequent attendance of silent film at the Pacific Film Archive, I began noticing a strange sensation—a growing excitement at the anticipation of films she was scheduled to accompany (to give some background—I’ve been known to beat a hasty retreat when confronted by music I found to have a deleterious effect on the event as cinema.). My vocabulary of musical terms is limited, but I believe her improvisatory work incorporates elements of French Impressionism, Wagnerian thunderbolts, and the occasional bit of Modernist dissonance to produce the most intoxicating musical melange I’ve ever encountered in conjunction with silent celluloid. I haven’t encomiums enough to describe the rapture she imparts—go experience it for yourself, and feel free to write back angrily if you disagree. The film she plays to Friday night at the PFA, Ozu’s That Night’s Wife, should work perfectly with her twinkling magic: it’s a little-known fact that the American-influenced early works of Ozu give his stateside maestros a run for their money in the entertainment dept, while fully displaying the seeds of the transcendent genius of Transcendental Cinema Ozu was to become… (more…)
