One of the great visionary science fiction films, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1980 “Stalker” ( (star) (star) (star) (star) ), will be revived at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday. For those who haven’t seen it, Tarkovsky’s strange film becomes as powerful a Christian religious/spiritual saga as anything by Carl Dreyer or Robert Bresson.
Scripted by sci-fi authors Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the film is a metaphysical quest-tale about a near-ascetic guide or “stalker” (Alexander Kaidanovsky) who escorts a rational scientist (Nikolai Grinko) and a cynical writer (Anatoli Solonitsin) through the mysterious, deadly “zone”: a forbidden area sealed off by the government after being struck by a meteorite. Supposedly, he is guiding them to the room of their heart’s desire.
But what we see–gray fields wreathed in mist, abandoned tracks, tunnels flooded with water, everything in collapse or decay–seems a world in twilight, struggling toward illusory escape or redemption. The analogies with the 1979 Soviet Union are obvious. But “Stalker” is also a technical/visual marvel, shot in eerie tableaus, excruciatingly long takes and tracks that fray one’s nerves to the snapping point.
Also at the Film Center: two more stylish thrillers by the fascinating Japanese genre director Seijun Suzuki. 1956’s “Victory Is Mine” (6 p.m. Friday and Sunday), Suzuki’s Nikkatsu Studio debut, is a conventional, if nicely shot, racetrack melodrama. But the 1958 “Voice Without a Shadow” (7:15 p.m. Friday, 4:15 p.m. Sunday), based on a novel by Japanese detective story writer Seicho Matsumoto, is a virtuoso display of byzantine plot and black-and-white Cinemascope imagery. The story: A switchboard operator accidentally hears a killer, then meets him face to face.
The Film Center is at Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard. Call 312-443-3737.
– Nicholas Ray’s 1955 juvenile delinquent masterpiece “Rebel Without a Cause” ( (star) (star) (star) (star) )–at 8:45 p.m. Monday on the Chicago International Film Festival’s Cinema Under the Stars series, is rarely screened, as it will be here, in its proper color and widescreen format. This feverish tale of three hectic days in the life of a troubled kid from a middle-class family, drawn into a whirlpool of delinquency, switchblade fights, romance, danger and cliffside chickie runs, the movie is both actor James Dean’s finest hour and an amazing summation of the terrors and unease of the ’50s.
Also on the series is a landmark of ’60s unease: Mike Nichols’ 1967 “The Graduate” (8:45 p.m. Wednesday), the Dustin Hoffman comedy of infidelity and conformity, based on Charles Webb’s novel. And the original “That’s Entertainment!” (8:45 p.m. Tuesday), director Jack Haley Jr.’s spectacular 1974 compilation show of the cream of the MGM Golden Age musicals.
All movies are shown at the outdoor Skyline Stage on Navy Pier. Call 312-644-3456.
– The Chicago Undergound Film Festival, an ambitious effort to continue the funky, avant-garde, defiantly independent and deliberately scandalous movie tradition, exemplified by mavericks Andy Warhol, George Kuchar and Robert Frank, kicks off at 7 p.m. Thursday at the International Cinema Museum, 319 E. Erie St. The feature attraction: Rachel Amodeo’s “What About Me” (with Johnny Thunders and beat poet Gregory Corso).
The festival proper–or improper–begins at 3 p.m. Friday, with multiple showings at two halls in the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan Ave. Dozens of films and videos, short and long, are on the schedule, along with three special guests. At 6:30 p.m. Friday: the Underground’s Grand Satanic Master, Kenneth Anger, will appear with five “Magick Lantern Cycle” films, topped by 1953’s “Eaux d’Artifice”: a watery phantasmagoria of nocturnal fountain shots, set to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” recently selected for the National Film Registry.
Anger’s more notorious films, also screened, include the 1947 naval masochistic/erotic nightmare, “Fireworks” (made when he was 17), “Kustom Kar Kommandos” (1965) and the infamous 1969 “Invocation of My Demon Brother,’ with its frowsy demonic rituals and minimalist Mick Jagger score. The piece de resistance is Anger’s most influential film, “Scorpio Rising” (1963), with its lurid biker-Nazi iconography and pre-MTV pop-rock track.
At 4 p.m. Saturday: Rev. Ivan Stang of the Church of the Subgenius, with four films from various stages of his peculiar career. Included: a 1991 Subgenius commercial for MTV, 1978’s “Reproduction Cycle,” 1973’s “Let’s Visit the World of the Future” and 1971’s “Ducks Ya Yas” a Robert Crumb-inspired drug movie about which Stang says: “Gimme a break, I was only a senior in high school.”
The third guest, Canada’s Guy Maddin, is the ingenious movie parodist, whose deadpan comedy and knack for replicating low-budget ’30s cinema style, made oddball gems of movies like “Tales of the Gimli Hospital” in 1988. Maddin will show his lesser-seen 1986 short, “The Dead Father,” another ’30s parody.
Other fest films, unscreened, include “R Is for Roaches” and “Beyond the Door” (Friday) and “The Adventures of El Frenetico and Go-Girl” (Saturday). Michael Flores of the Psychotronic Film Society speaks on “Censorship in Cinema” at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
For schedules and information, call 312-866-8660.
– At the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport Ave., on its weekend 11:30 a.m. matinees: a reprise of the excellent “Manhattan by Numbers” by director Amir Naderi and, on the Ray Harryhausen series, director Nathan Juran’s puckish 1964 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “First Men in the Moon.”
Call 312-871-6604.
