CINEMA REBORN - The Three Hottest Tickets - MIRROR (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR, 1975) + MR. KLEIN (Joseph Losey, France, 1976) + ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Sergio Leone, Italy, 1968)

Andrei Tarkovsky

MIRROR

By the look of the advance bookings It appears that Andrei Tarkovsky’s MIRROR  may well be the most popular film at this year’s CINEMA REBORN.

Which just raises the question “Is Andrei Tarkovsky the most revered film-maker of our age.” You judge.

"Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [of us all], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream". INGMAR BERGMAN

"His unusual sensitivity is both overwhelming and astounding. It almost reaches a pathological intensity. Probably there is no equal among film directors alive now." … "I love all of Tarkovsky's films. I love his personality and all his works. Every cut from his films is a marvelous image in itself.” AKIRA KUROSAWA

"Tarkovsky's works separate me completely from physical life, and are the most spiritual films I have seen”. ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

MICHAEL HANEKE voted for Mirror on his top 10 films in the Sight & Sound directors' poll and later said that he has seen the picture at least 25 times. 

"I remember, the first time I saw a Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I did not know what to do. I was shocked by it. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before". ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU 

“Have you seen Mirror?  I was hypnotised! I’ve seen it 20 times. It’s the closest thing I’ve got to a religion – to me he is a god". LARS VON TRIER

If you are convinced book now through this link to the Randwick Ritz webpage.  Mirror screens twice. Friday 29^thApril at 8.15pm and Sunday 1 May at 10.30 am.

https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/mirror-1975-2k-restoration

Joseph Losey

MR. KLEIN

The great David Thomson gives well over a page to Joseph Losey in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, a rare honour. He charts the rises and falls in Losey's career but when he gets to Mr. Klein his enthusiasm for the director rekindles:

"...in 1976 Losey regained distinction with Mr Klein,  the Borgesian study of a conniving art dealer in occupied Paris haunted by the possibility of a Jewish double. It is a very controlled film, with more stress on decadent high society than the approaching Gestapo. But the trap it poses is gripping and intelligent, and there is even a trace of sardonic humour watching the magnificent alienation of Alain Delon. Mr Kelin was among the best of Losey's films and one wondered if its urgency came in part from the discovery of a new environment - Paris." 

Mr Klein  screens twice. Thursday 28 April at 11.15 am and Sunday 1 May at 5.15 pm

Bookings at https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/mr-klein-1976

Sergio Leone

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

Thomson also likes Sergio Leone's great western. "...his best film: a mess of double-crossing stars, manic close-ups, and Rothko-like masses of colour and space." Still, after its release outside Italy in a cut down version, it took a while for Once Upon a Time in the West  to amass a critical consensus about its place in the pantheon. Now directors such as Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, and Breaking Bad's  Vince Gilligan^[ cite the film as an influence on their work. It has also appeared on prominent all-time critics lists, including Time's 100 greatest films of the 20th century and Empire's 500 greatest movies of all time, where it was the list's highest-ranking Western at number 14. In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls, it was ranked the 78th-greatest film ever made in the critics' poll  and 44th in the directors' poll.

Leone's intent was to take the stock conventions of the American Westerns of John Ford, Howard Hawks, and others, and rework them in an ironic fashion, essentially reversing their intended meaning in their original sources to create a darker connotation. The most obvious example of this is the casting of veteran film good guy Henry Fonda as the villainous Frank, but many other, more subtle reversals occur throughout the film. According to film critic and historian Christopher Frayling, the film quotes from as many as 30 classic American Westerns.

The major films referenced include:

• The Comancheros (1961): The names "McBain" and "Sweetwater" may come from this film. 
• Johnny Guitar (1954): Jill and Vienna have similar backstories (both are former prostitutes who become saloonkeepers),
• The Iron Horse (1924): West may contain several subtle references to this film, including a low-angle shot of a shrieking train rushing towards the screen in the opening scene, and the shot of the train pulling into the Sweetwater station at the end.^[48]
• Shane (1953): The massacre scene in West features young Timmy McBain out hunting with his father, just as Joey does in this movie. The funeral of the McBains is borrowed almost shot-for-shot from Shane.^[48]
• The Searchers (1956): Leone admitted that the rustling bushes, the silencing of insect sounds, and the fluttering grouse that suggests menace is approaching the farmhouse when the McBain family is massacred were all taken from The Searchers. 

Screen twice. Saturday 30 April at 7.45 pm in Cinema Five and  Tuesday 3 May at 1.00pm on the Ritz's biggest screen in Cinema One

Bookings at https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west-1968

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You can now read or download a free copy of the 76pp Cinema Reborn 2022 catalogue (front page above) with critical commentary by Noel Vera,Tony Rayns, David Hare, Adrian Martin, Ehsan Khoshbakht, Rod Bishop, Janice Tong, Jane Mills, Mark Pierce, Adrian Danks, Marshall Deutelbaum, Margot Nash, Scott Murray, Pamela Hutchinson, Annouchka De Andrade, Helen Goritsas, John Baxter and Geoff Gardner. The Randwick Ritz has put up a link to the online catalogue and you access it,

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE 2022 CATALOGUE.

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