PANIQUE

Directed by Julien Duvivier
Starring Michel Simon & Viviane Romance

(1947) In the end-of-the-tramway-from-Paris suburb Villejuif, suspicion and gossip run rampant. Immediate: last night’s murder of an old maid in that vacant lot near the church. Ongoing: bearded, aloof shutterbug Michel Simon’s Monsieur Hire (real name: the “foreign”-sounding Hirovitch). Is he a peeping tom? A pervert? Not the ideal spot for back-from-the-slammer Viviane Romance to start a new life – but then there’s sleazy old flame Paul Bernard hanging around. And her very open window is just across from Hire’s – who proves to have another life. Long unseen anywhere, Duvivier’s first film back in France after WWII Hollywood stint has steadily gained stature, not least because it’s that rare thing: an adaptation of Belgian crime titan Georges Simenon that’s actually darker than the original (his novel Mr. Hire’s Engagement), with its final shot, amid the village carnival that must still go on, the most callous – and doomed – thrill ride in film history. DCP restoration. Approx. 91 min.
12:30, 4:20, 8:10

“Duvivier’s mastery is complete, showing him at his peak.”
– David Shipman

“A sordid, intriguingly nasty movie… Duvivier’s psychological thriller is a devastatingly effective job of visual storytelling… in terms of how the sequences are planned, and how they build, it’s an unusual, near-perfect piece of film craftsmanship.”
– Pauline Kael

“The brilliance of Duvivier’s direction, his deceptively random accumulation of details and then his sudden, explosive demonstration of the viciousness and cruelty of a mob and the astonishment and torment of the hunted are of superior and adult quality. Thanks to a brilliant performance by Michel Simon as the victim of cruel abuse, the elements of irony and poignance are strongly evolved… a thoroughly fascinating and sardonic social comment from the screen.”
– The New York Times

PEEPING TOM

Directed by Michael Powell
Starring Carl Boehm & Anna Massey

(1960) “All this filming, it’s not healthy.” Writer Leo Marks: “How would you like to open the film?” Director Michael Powell: “With a kill.” The bodies pile up as camera assistant Carl Boehm moonlights as “private” photographer of scantily clad women, while working on his own “documentary” with the world’s most lethal tripod. Obviously, this perverse examination of “scoptophilia” wasn’t the expected from the director of such artistically acclaimed works as Thief of Bagdad and The Red Shoes and Powell’s career was effectively destroyed by the critical savaging: “The sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing” – “It’s been a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom” – “The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeing Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer.” In the ensuing decades, the film’s stature has skyrocketed, with critics and audiences continuing to cringe at its unsettling mayhem, their nerves already lacerated by the garish color photography and design, as well as the jangling piano-and-bongo score; but now relishing the seemingly endless and blackly playful variations on “seeing” and identity: the blind character who “sees” Mark’s true nature; the amateurish, yet chilling, b&w home movies of eight-year-old Mark and his psychologist father, played by Powell’s son Columba and the director himself; the casting of Powell favorite Raymond Massey’s daughter Anna (in her debut) and The Red Shoes’ Moira Shearer – both as victims; even the name “Mark Lewis” was conjured up by screenwriter/WWII codemeister Leo Marks (later the devil’s voice in Scorsese’s Last Temptation). DCP restoration. Approx. 101 min.
2:20, 6:10, 10:00

“A consciously nightmarish inspiration for a new generation of American filmmakers”
– Andrew  Sarris

“From Peeping Tom and 8 1/2 you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films.”
– Martin Scorcese

“Powell’s masterpiece, a seductive, brightly colored thriller about the sub-rosa fascinations of the cinema.”
– Dave Kehr