The Criterion Collection

There must be something in the air here in New York this week, because the breezy films of Sacha Guitry are making an appearance not only in our new Eclipse set but also on the big screen at the Museum of Modern Art. As part of their ongoing series French Comedy, Gaumont Style, a tribute to the world’s oldest movie company, MoMA is showing Guitry’s snappy costume comedy The Pearls of the Crown on August 1 and 2 and his romantic roundelay Quadrille on August 5. Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque is in a light Gallic mood as well, as their look back at Rohmer’s Moral Tales goes on, with screenings of My Night at Maud’s (July 30), La collectionneuse (July 31), and Claire’s Knee (August 5). TIFF also continues its retrospectives of Kurosawa and Pasolini with two very different films, Madadayo (August 2) and Salò (August 3), respectively.

Plenty of other Criterion titles are getting the big-screen treatment in the coming seven days. Moving east to west: Boston’s historic Brattle Theater is all hot and bothered with In the Mood for Love (August 5); New York’s Film Forum shows us that Lubitsch touch with The Smiling Lieutenant; the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theater in Rochester takes viewers to a mad, mad world with Time Bandits (August 3); Columbus’s Wexner Center shows its love for Italian cinema twice over with a double feature of Amarcord and Divorce Italian Style (August 5); Cleveland’s Institute of Art dances away with The Red Shoes (July 30–31); the Detroit Film Theatre throws a hell of a dinner party with Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (July 31); Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center goes deep into the artist’s mind with a weeklong run of 8½ (July 30–August 5); Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts takes viewers to Paris (Breathless, July 30–August 1) and way out west (Stagecoach, August 1); and the Flicks in Boise resurrects Harry Lime for a showing of The Third Man (August 3).

Of course, it wouldn’t be a repertory roundup without a little (or a lot of) Kurosawa. Films from the timeless Japanese master can be viewed at Vancouver’s Pacific Cinematheque (The Bad Sleep Well, Dodes-ka’den, Kagemusha, The Lower Depths, July 30–August 5); St. Louis’s Webster University (Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, July 30–August 1); the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Springs, Maryland (Red Beard, July 30–August 1); Ciné in Athens, Georgia (Seven Samurai, July 30–August 5); Nashville’s Belcourt Theater (I Live in Fear, July 31–August 2); Columbia, Missouri’s Ragtag Cinema (Ran, July 31); Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archives (Sanjuro and Scandal, July 31, and The Idiot, August 4); Rochester’s Dryden Theater at the George Eastman House (Stray Dog, August 5); and the Flicks in Boise (Ikiru, August 5).

A quick look over the Atlantic reveals that Renoir’s The Lower Depths is playing August 1 at Paris’s Cinémathèque française, where Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is also showing, on July 31. And one more out-of-this-world screening to note: The Man Who Fell to Earth beams down to London’s BFI Southbank on July 30 and 31, as part of their Film Science: Future Human series.