* indicates a capsule review from Chicago Tribune archives.
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State St.
312-846-2800
siskelfilmcenter.org
*”The Bridge on the River Kwai” **** (U.S./U.K.; David Lean, 1957). The great pacifist WW II adventure story, told with all Lean’s yarn-spinning mastery, from Pierre Boulle’s novel about a company of British prisoners of war who build, in the Burmese jungle, a bridge that commandos Bill Holden and Jack Hawkins plan to blow up. Cast off-type as Col. Nicholson, Alec Guinness won an Oscar, as did the movie, Lean and Boulle.
3 p.m. Sat., 6:30 p.m. Tue.
*”The Wild Child” **** (France; Francois Truffaut, 1970). Truffaut’s most compassionate film: a period 1806 drama based on the real-life case of a wild boy found in the woods and brought, painfully but surely, to civilization. With Jean-Pierre Cargol as the boy, Victor, and Truffaut himself as his mentor and historian, Dr. Jean Itard. A glorious work — though, in a way, it closed a chapter on Truffaut’s first filmmaking era. 6:15 p.m. Sat., 3 p.m. Sun., 6 p.m. Tue.
