SABOTEUR

(1942, Alfred Hitchcock) Robert Cummings on a cross-country lam from a phony sabotage rap, uncovers a spy ring led by crypto-Nazi Otto Kruger. Echt Hitchcock: saboteur Norman Lloyd’s smirking glance out of a cab window while the Normandie sinks. Rehearsal for North by Northwest, with spectacular Statue of Liberty climax. DCP. Approx. 108 mins.
12:30, 4:10, 7:50

HAPPY 102nd BIRTHDAY, NORMAN LLOYD
Today, Election Day, is the 102nd birthday of Norman Lloyd, the legendary actor/director/producer who made his feature debut in the title role of Hitchcock’s Saboteur. His appearance in last year’s Trainwreck makes him the oldest working actor in history.  Mr. Lloyd turned 18 on this date in 1932 – the day FDR was elected to his first term.

“The Hitchcock film par excellence.”
– David Shipman

“For his first thriller set in America, which he made in 1942, Alfred Hitchcock runs loopily through a gamut of genres, filming in a range of settings, from California to New York, to depict a country that lives in the image of its movies… The final scene, atop the Statue of Liberty, features a moment of pure, nightmarish horror, yet Hitchcock leavens the shock with a comically surreal triviality: at a time of war, life hangs, more than ever, by a thread.”
– Richard Brody

DUCK SOUP

NEW RESTORATION

(1933, Leo McCarey) Making the world safe for Marxism, Groucho’s Freedonian President Rufus T. Firefly takes on Sylvania, while Chico hawks peanuts, Zeppo croons, and Harpo dives into the lemonade. DCP. Approx. 70 mins.
2:40, 6:20, 10:00

“The brothers broke the classical structure of movie comedy and glued it back again haphazardly, and nothing was ever the same.”
– Roger Ebert

“Duck Soup’s debauched satire of petty warfare and monied politics has a potent resonance equaling its vaudevillian absurdity.”
– Max Kyburz, Brooklyn Magazine

“THE MARX BROS.’ MOST ANARCHIC FILM! The boys at their absolute zaniest, taking the piss out of politics one sight gag at a time.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

“The Marx Brothers’ best movie…The antiwar satire is dark, trenchant, and typical of Paramount’s liberal orientation at the time.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“The Marx Brothers’ most barbed film, a silly-serious sideswipe against war, politics and the entire concept of heroism…a series of wildly elaborate set-pieces – the mirror scene is perhaps the greatest physical comedy routine in slapstick history – and mind-scramblingly relentless one-liners (‘I got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it!’). Genius just about covers it.”
– Tom Huddleston, Time Out (London)