FILM CLASSICS

KEITH UHLICH

The Congress (2013, Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/Belgium/France/Unit ed States/India)

Do aging actresses dream of electric sheep? In Ari Folman’s part-animated/part live-action speculative fiction, Hollywood star Robin Wright, playing a version of herself, has her body scanned so that she can perform onscreen in perpetuity. But this virtual life extension proves prelude to a larger societal breakdown that, like this month’s new release, Mad God, isn’t quite as dystopic as it may initially seem. Writer-director Ari Folman loosely adapts a novel by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, best known for Solaris, a similarly mind-bending (and -altering) tale of humanity transcending its own boundaries. Wright is brilliant in the lead role, particularly in the scanning scene where she is “directed” through multiple emotional states, each of them faked to the point that they become ineffably and movingly real. (Streaming on MUBI.)

House of Bamboo (1955, Samuel Fuller, U.S.)

Sam Fuller’s spectacular widescreen noir begins with the discovery of a dead body at the foot of Mount Fuji (punctuated by an iconic extreme close-up of a woman screaming). No-nonsense army man Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack) comes to the Land of the Rising Sun to investigate, uncovering a plot involving racketeer Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), whose designs on Eddie prove to be oddly romantic. Leave it to Fuller to twist the tropes of the time to his thematic advantage: There is a woman, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), who comes between the two men, but the emotional crux of the film is Sandy’s unspoken queer longing for Eddie, which adds a provocative layer to the tensions the film is exploring on either side of the American and Japanese cultural divide. Whether between people or countries, it is in the implied spaces where the true drama of life occurs. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)

Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union) What is the Zone? It’s whatever you make of it according to Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterwork, which he adapted from the novel Roadside Picnic by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. For the movie’s purposes, the Zone is the verdant wilderness where the title character (Alexander Kaidanovsky) leads a Writer (Anatoly Solonit-

syn) and a Professor (Nikolai Grinko) to a “Room” that purportedly grants the wishes of whoever crosses its threshold. The threats the trio faces are all imaginary, which doesn’t mean, necessarily, that they don’t exist. Among Tarkovsky’s greatest talents is his ability to evoke menace (and much, much more) from even the most serene landscape, and the contemplative pace of the film only adds to the frequent perils of mind, body and spirit. By the time something otherworldly does occur onscreen it hits with the force of a true religious revelation, where you doubt your own eyes in the face of the seemingly improbable. (Streaming on YouTube –MosFilm Channel.)

Party Girl (1958, Nicholas Ray, United States)

Did you hear the one about the lawyer who fell for the showgirl? In this colorful crime drama from Rebel Without a Cause’s Nicholas Ray, crippled attorney-to-the-underworld Tommy Farrell (Robert Taylor) swoons over

danseuse Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse), which doesn’t much please his gangster employer Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb). The pressures of the love triangle, and of Farrell’s desire to go straight for his girl, are a consistent delight, as is the widescreen cinematography of Robert Bronner, which helps brings this fantastical version of crime-ridden Chicago to life. Best in show, however, are two musical numbers featuring Charisse, one of which — where she fends off the attentions of two lusty men with trumpets while decked out in a flowing pink ensemble — among the greatest hoofer sequences ever filmed. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.) n

Cyd Charisse in Party Girl