The Criterion Collection

Starting August 3, London’s BFI Southbank pays tribute to Dirk Bogarde, in a two-month-long retrospective titled He Who Dared. This dashing, enigmatic, and intensely private English actor was a major matinee idol in the 1950s; in a recent article in the Independent heralding the upcoming series, David Benedict writes about a fiercely intelligent actor who “as early as 1958 was the biggest draw at the British box office—pulling bigger audiences than Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, and Elvis Presley.” Benedict also describes a man who remained closeted for his entire career, despite taking roles in a lineup of films that were unusually open-minded in their depiction of homosexual themes. The most remarkable of these was undoubtedly Basil Dearden’s strongly political 1961 drama Victim, in which Bogarde plays a married barrister who must come to terms with his homosexuality to combat a blackmailer. The landmark film opens He Who Dared on August 3. (BFI habitués in the mood for something different have their pick—three other Criterion titles play this week: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris on July 31; Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Pitfall on August 2; and Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad, which wraps up its monthlong daily run August 4.)

There’s a bounty of blue-ribbon big-screen selections back in the U.S. as well. Let’s start way out east on the Massachusetts shore with Nobuhiko Obayashi’s hair-raising House at the Cape Ann Community Cinema in Gloucester (July 29 and 30). In Hartford, Connecticut, Nicolas Roeg’s visionary The Man Who Fell to Earth beams into Cinestudio (August 3–9). Akira Kurosawa and Charlie Chaplin continue to get plenty of screen time at New York’s Symphony Space with Rashomon (July 30), Seven Samurai (July 31), and Modern Times (July 31), and up the road, Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert’s Hoop Dreams inspires audiences at the Maysles Cinema (July 29). Right outside the city, the Tarrytown Music Hall picks Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman (July 30). The AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland, turns back the clock for Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (July 29, 30, and 31). Jacques Tati’s Mon oncle stumbles into Pittsburgh’s Regent Square Theater (July 31). Also in Pennsylvania, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute goes for Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (August 2), as well as Chaplin’s most notorious film, The Great Dictator (August 3). The Man Who Fell to Earth materializes again, this time at the Cleveland Institute of Art (July 29 and 30). The Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus reaches back to the Japanese sixties with Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom (July 29) and Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower (August 4). John Ford’s Stagecoach saddles up and rides into the Detroit Film Theatre (July 30). And Kaneto Shindo’s spooky Kuroneko drifts into Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center (July 30 and August 1).

Heading south: François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player jazzes up the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (July 31). The Webster University Film Series in St. Louis opens its arms to Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (July 29). Texas Public Radio’s Cinema Tuesdays features Ozu’s achingly beautiful if not seasonally appropriate Late Spring at San Antonio’s Santikos Bijou theater (August 2). The Austin Film Society tells a very hirsute love story with Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (August 3), and in that same movie town, Kuroneko terrorizes the Paramount (August 4). The Great Dictator turns up again at the KiMo Theatre in Albuquerque (July 30). The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley looks to the east with Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (July 30), Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (July 30), and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (July 31). San Francisco’s VIZ Cinema goes looking for trouble with Shohei Imamura’s The Pornographers (July 31). The Los Angeles County Museum of Art takes a dip in The River by Jean Renoir (July 30) and looks ahead to Late Autumn by Ozu (July 30). And Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco dances the night away at the UCLA Film and Television Archive (July 31).

Our friendly neighbors to the north offer up a fine feast of films found in the Criterion Collection as well. Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox has a veritable smorgasbord: John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (July 29), Rossellini’s Paisan (July 29), Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table (July 30), Federico Fellini’s  La strada (July 30), and Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. (August 1). Over in Vancouver, the Vancity Theatre takes viewers out for Naked Lunch (July 31 and August 1), Cronenberg’s freeform Burroughs adaptation; goes through the looking glass with Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (July 31); and shouts from the rooftops about Lindsay Anderson’s If…. (August 2). Meanwhile, the same city’s Pacific Cinematheque goes cold-blooded for Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (August 4).

Back in the Old World, the Belgian Cinematek in Brussels is up to its usual eclectic tricks with the W. C. Fields classic The Bank Dick (July 29), Sacha Guitry’s sparkling The Pearls of the Crown (July 31), Roberto Rossellini’s shattering Rome Open City (August 1), and Spike Lee’s heat-stroked Do the Right Thing (August 3). Zurich’s Filmpodium has an equally impressive variety, with Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi (July 29 and August 4), Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Tout va bien (July 31 and August 2), Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (August 3), and Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (August 3). The ERA New Horizons Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, soldiers on with more Terry Gilliam selections: Time Bandits (July 29 and 31) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (July 31). The Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon goes for laughs with Modern Times (July 30). The Eye Film Institute Netherlands in Amsterdam continues a series on Jack Nicholson with his directorial debut, Drive, He Said (July 30). The Forum des images in Paris goes on vacation with Tati’s M. Hulot’s Holiday (July 31). And the Kino Arsenal in Berlin makes room in the schedule for Playtime, Tati’s megaspectacle (August 2).