Blog - Wednesday, December 17, 2008 17:34 - 0 Comments

Top 10 Repertory Films of 2008, Part 2.

By Anna Bak-Kvapil

6. Judex (1963) dir. Georges Franju, at Anthology

A surrealistic homage to Louis Feuillade’s 1916 Judex, the film follows its own phantasmagoric logic, as women in cat suits and men in capes chase each other through mansions and over rooftops. One scene becomes a short film in itself, as a long tracking shot follows a magician wearing an elaborate rooster mask, holding a dead dove in his hand, stalking his way through a costume ball to an ominous Maurice Jarre score.

7. Jimmy the Gent (1934) dir. Michael Curtiz, at MoMA

Opening with a montage of fatal accidents that supply the grieving clients for James Cagney’s “heir finding” racket, Jimmy the Gent crackles with energy and bristles with sassy dames, as Curtiz directs his actors to snap out their lines at a pace that rivals the patter of His Girl Friday. The jokes are hysterical, especially in a bit when Cagney asks, like an angry little boy, for more and more lumps of sugar in his tea.

8.The Passionate Friends (1949) dir. David Lean, at Film Forum

Beginning as a romance told in flashback, The Passionate Friends segues into an aching drama of marital infidelity, set against magnificent backdrops, particularly an Alpine resort. No characters are in the right, and Claude Rains is both frightening and sad as an older man trying to hold on to his attractive, younger wife. The situation culminates in the wisest and most adult resolution a film about an affair has ever reached.

9. Busting (1974) dir. Peter Hyams, BAM

Starring the inimitably mustachioed Elliot Gould as a renegade Irish cop, Busting is permeated by the gritty feel of neon-lit Seventies Los Angeles. When Gould and his partner decide to find and prosecute an L.A. crime boss, the film turns noir in its outlook; tackling the pointless and soul-killing battle vice cops wage against drug dealers years before Traffic, the action winds through peep show theaters, crack houses and back alleys. The final freeze frame brings the film to a perfect, unexpected conclusion.

10. Bonjour Tristesse (1958) dir. Otto Preminger, at Film Forum

When Bonjour Tristesse was released in 1958, French directors were the dissenting voices in a chorus of critical pans-Truffaut admired Jean Seberg’s gentle beauty, and Godard placed it third on his Cahiers du Cinéma Ten Best list. The story of a jealous daughter breaking up the marriage of her father to a well-meaning woman, it’s a family melodrama worthy of Sirk, but edited with a stylish flair that anticipates the New Wave, and prefigures Rohmer’s “pixie girls on the beach” oeuvre.