Music Box Theatre – 3733 N Southport Ave., Chicago, IL 60613
Tickets: $10
Monday, May 27 @ 7 PM
MICKEY ONE
Directed by Arthur Penn • 1965
Mickey One is on the run! Two years before the release of Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn directed what is still considered a relatively obscure and underseen stylish jazz-fueled head trip shot on location on the streets of Detroit and Chicago. Warren Beatty flexes his beautiful muscles in a classic Beatty-role of a fast-talking narcissistic stand-up comic on the run from the mob. His fears (real and/or imagined) of faceless pursuers launches him into a frightening and seemingly endless game of hide-and-seek filled with dead ends, sinister soup kitchens, shady characters of all sorts, and a monstrous Rube Goldberg contraption (operated by Kamatari Fujiwara) in front of Marina City that will spin your head. Sometimes written off as a pretentious French New Wave knock-off, Mickey One can nevertheless count Martin Scorsese and Joe Dante among its crusaders, the latter describing it as “one of the most influential movies of my youth.” Enigmatic at its best, don’t try too hard to solve the riddles of this wacked-out urban odyssey lest they come after YOU next. Featuring a brilliant jazz score by composer Eddie Sauter and saxophonist Stan Getz and shot by frequent Bresson-collaborator cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet (Au Hasard Balthazar, Tess). (RL)
93 min • Columbia • 35mm from Sony Pictures Repertory
Short: “The Cry of Jazz” (Ed Bland, 1959) – 34 min – 35mm Restored by Anthology Film Archives
Highly controversial on its release and still stunning, Chicago-born musician and composer Ed Bland’s The Cry of Jazz directly addresses the effects of white culture on jazz music. Bland financed the film himself with savings from his job as a postal worker, and shot on 16mm with a mostly volunteer crew. Featuring a score by the then unknown Le Sun Ra & his Arkestra.
Presented with the Jazz Institute of Chicago as part of JIC’s 50th Anniversary
But that’s not all:
The Auditorium at Northeastern Illinois University – Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave
General Admission: $7 • NEIU Students: $3
Wednesday, May 29 @ 7:30PM
CROSSING DELANCEY
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1988
Despite having three well-regarded features under her belt, Joan Micklin Silver had a hard time gettingher fourth financed until Steven Spielberg helped shepherd this unpretentious romantic comedy to Warner Brothers. Amy Irving stars as Izzy Grossman, a hustling New York thirtysomething with a hip job at an uptown bookstore, a rent-controlled apartment, and the unlisted phone number of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Yet in the eyes of her unimpressed Bubbie (played by venerable stage actress Reizl Bozyk in her only screen role) she remains, “…like a dog. A dog should live alone, not people… a dog.” Despite Izzy’s protests, Bubbie and a matchmaker prescribe Sam, a handsome, kind, Lower East Side pickle pusher (played by Peter Riegert) as the cure for her obvious deficiency. Even while working within the confines of an often thankless genre, Silver continues a thematic through line with her 1975 period drama Hester Street – focusing on the tensions between Old World traditions and modern life – while simultaneously preserving in late-80s amber a loving portrait of a neighborhood clinging fiercely, and in hindsight somewhat futilely, to its identity. Sam would be in his sixties now, and here’s hoping he retired before the pickle vendors below Delancey Street were replaced with a Papa John’s. (RL)
97 min • Warner Brothers • 35mm from Warner Brothers
Short: “The Big Delivery Wagon” (Jerry Fairbanks, 1951) – 11 min – 16mm
Check out the rest of the season here!
