On the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck, we’re celebrating the centenary of a Hollywood icon with a spotlight on one of his best performances. In Peter Yates’s 1973 The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Robert Mitchum stars as a two-bit gunrunner forced to choose between betraying his fellow gangsters and risking more jail time. With its depictions of the gritty side of Boston and its sympathetic embrace of its outlaw characters, this taut crime thriller represents the 1970s Hollywood suspense film at its starkest. Watch it now in its complete edition, with an audio commentary by the director.
Also up this week: a pair of films that bring the iconography of classic rock ’n’ roll to life, a landmark of Italian neorealism, and a double bill of irreverent gems by Robert Downey Sr.
Tuesday’s Short + Feature: These Boots and Mystery Train
Music is at the heart of this program, which pairs a zany music video by Finnish master Aki Kaurismäki with a tune-filled career highlight from American independent-film pioneer Jim Jarmusch. In the 1993 These Boots, Kaurismäki’s band of pompadoured “Finnish Elvis” rockers, the Leningrad Cowboys, cover a Nancy Sinatra classic in their signature deadpan style. It’s the perfect prelude to Jarmusch’s 1989 Mystery Train, a homage to the King of Rock ’n’ Roll and the musical legacy of Memphis, featuring appearances by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Joe Strummer.
Bicycle Thieves: Criterion Collection Edition #374
Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning masterpiece is one of the ultimate touchstones of Italian neorealism, a movement that turned a compassionate gaze on the everyday struggles of real people. Set in postwar Rome, this classic of world cinema is both a powerful look at the toll of economic desperation and a deeply moving depiction of the relationship between a father and a son. The complete edition includes a program on the history of Italian neorealism; a 2003 documentary about screenwriter and longtime De Sica collaborator Cesare Zavattini; and a collection of interviews with screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico, actor Enzo Staiola, and film scholar Callisto Cosulich.
Friday Night Double Feature: Putney Swope and Chafed Elbows
Kick off your weekend with two irreverent underground classics from iconoclastic New York filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. A mainstay on the midnight-movie circuit, 1969’s Putney Swope is an eccentric comedy that mines gloriously chaotic racial satire from the tale of a Madison Avenue advertising agency that inadvertently elects its only black board member as its chairman. Composed primarily of still 35 mm photographs and processed at Downey’s local Walgreens, the 1966 Chafed Elbows focuses on the outrageous misadventures of a Manhattanite going through his “annual November breakdown.”
from The Criterion Current http://ift.tt/2uscun8
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