THU JUNE 2, 2022 7:30 PM CHINATOWN / SORCERER $8.00 (member) ; $13.00 (general admission) Aero Theatre | Introduction by film critic Joshua Rothkopf. Video Introduction by filmmaker William Friedkin, moderated by screenwriter Josh Olson. ‘BLEAK WEEK: Cinema of Despair’ Series Tickets are no longer on sale for this event.
ABOUT THE FILMS: CHINATOWN, 1974, Paramount, 131 min, USA, Dir: Roman Polanksi. Jack Nicholson gives one of his greatest performances as 1930s private eye J.J. Gittes, maneuvering through a nightmarish L.A. netherworld of cheating husbands, stolen water rights, incest and murder, as he desperately tries to save beautiful Faye Dunaway from her raptor-like father (John Huston). Writer Robert Towne’s magnificent, thoroughly pessimistic portrait of Los Angeles has been widely hailed as the best script of its era. FORMAT: 35mm SORCERER, 1977, Paramount, 122 min, Dir: William Friedkin. Friedkin’s visually stunning film follows small-time crook Roy Scheider from Brooklyn to the sweltering South American jungles, where he lands a job hauling nitroglycerine with hard-luck losers Bruno Cremer and Francisco Rabal. Rather than simply remake Henri-Georges Clouzot’s famed WAGES OF FEAR, Friedkin re-imagined the story as a bleak, cosmic vision of man vs. nature, climaxing in the mind-bending image of Scheider and crew literally pushing a loaded truck across a spindly rope bridge. FORMAT: DCP