BRIGHT BULB SCREENINGS, Free Double Features Every Second Thursday of the Month
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FIGHTING THE NAZIS DOUBLE-FEATURE! SEE! NAZIS CONFRONTED AND OVERCOME!
Films to be screened:
BLACK BOOK (2006, directed by Paul Verhoeven, 145 minutes, U.S.)
LIFEBOAT (1944, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 97 minutes, U.S.)
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In the mid-1980s, director Paul Verhoeven left the Netherlands to direct films in Hollywood, making a trail of audacious blockbusters, including ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL , BASIC INSTINCT, the notorious SHOWGIRLS and STARSHIP TROOPERS. BLACK BOOK marked his return to filmmaking his home country. Born in 1938, Verhoeven is old enough to remember the Nazi Occupation of Holland and worked for 15 years on the script that would be the WW2 epic BLACK BOOK.
Films to be screened:
BLACK BOOK (2006, directed by Paul Verhoeven, 145 minutes, U.S.)
LIFEBOAT (1944, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 97 minutes, U.S.)
- - - - -
In the mid-1980s, director Paul Verhoeven left the Netherlands to direct films in Hollywood, making a trail of audacious blockbusters, including ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL , BASIC INSTINCT, the notorious SHOWGIRLS and STARSHIP TROOPERS. BLACK BOOK marked his return to filmmaking his home country. Born in 1938, Verhoeven is old enough to remember the Nazi Occupation of Holland and worked for 15 years on the script that would be the WW2 epic BLACK BOOK.
In BLACK BOOK Rachel is a Jewish singer who survives personal tragedy as the Nazis occupy Holland. After a failed attempt to escape the country, Rachel joins the Dutch resistance and transforming herself into “Eva” she'll sacrifice everything to bring down the Nazi regime from within.
Again Verhoeven has constructed a grand scenario that can hold the weight of his outrageous brand of mayhem and melodrama, continually raising the stakes to dizzying heights as Eva ferrets out the Nazis vulnerabilities from right under their noses. At the time, BLACK BOOK cost three-times the biggest-budgeted Dutch film but would go on to be a financial success. In 2008, Dutch audiences picked BLACK BOOK as the greatest Dutch film ever made. Features an excellent score by Anne Dudley of the synth pop group Art of Noise.
“Black Book doesn't let the grim facts of the Holocaust get in the way of some ripping pulp.“
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
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An British expatriate in Hollywood as WW2 raged in his home country, Alfred Hitchcock's wartime films exude a special emotional urgency. Today Hitchcock's 1944 film LIFEBOAT is mainly remembered for its claustrophobic setting, those tight borders being a theme Hitchcock would return to later in his films ROPE and REAR WINDOW. LIFEBOAT deserves a special spotlight today, with its conversation about fascism having its modern relevancies and its “man against nature” premise remaining timeless.
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
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An British expatriate in Hollywood as WW2 raged in his home country, Alfred Hitchcock's wartime films exude a special emotional urgency. Today Hitchcock's 1944 film LIFEBOAT is mainly remembered for its claustrophobic setting, those tight borders being a theme Hitchcock would return to later in his films ROPE and REAR WINDOW. LIFEBOAT deserves a special spotlight today, with its conversation about fascism having its modern relevancies and its “man against nature” premise remaining timeless.
Hitchcock developed the story with novelist John Steinbeck, spinning the tale of a lone lifeboat at sea in the aftermath of a skirmish between a U.S. merchant marine vessel and a German U-boat. Among the British and American passengers is a German seaman who slowly but surely takes command of the boat. Can the allies cease their bickering among themselves and stop this conniving Nazi?
Reviewers at the time accused Hitchcock of being too generous to the German passenger, which today appears a reaction to the film creating a character who was more multi-dimensional than the typical wartime propaganda villain. The nine actors aboard this slippery rubber raft get plenty of moments to shine, from Tallulah Bankhead's seen-it-all photographer, William Bendix's working class everyman, Walter Sleazak as the smug Nazi and the great African American actor Canada Lee in a rare non-stereotypical black role of the era. The film's stark message and lack of sentimentality is underlined by Hitchcock's decision to forgo a soundtrack to augment the action. Filmmaking of the highest order from one of cinema's enduring masters.
“Hitchcock’s shifting sympathies guarantee our guilty involvement with the characters...(he) never puts his audience at a distance, we’re always being confronted by ourselves and our attitudes”
- Dan Callahan, Slant
- Dan Callahan, Slant
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