“The Nightmare” — Film Society of Lincoln Center (through June 11)Rodney Ascher returns to fringe subjects, following the Kubrick conspiracy theorists of “Room 237” (2012), with a documentary about those who suffer from intense and frightening bouts of sleep paralysis in “The Nightmare.” The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, first lets the victims describe their dream-states through interviews, allowing the connections between their stories to develop; then Ascher recreates those scenes through mini-horror films, starring the real people playing themselves, inert in their beds and watching the monsters who haunt their sleep emerge before them. Since there is no explanation for why people suffer from sleep paralysis or why some fall into bouts of lucid dreaming that replicate the worst images from their subconscious, the film takes the characters’ testimony at face value, refusing to offer criticism of their unexplainable ailment — an interesting approach to a subject so shrouded in mystery.“Liliom” — Anthology Film Archives (Wednesday, June 10)Frank Borzage’s expressionist love story “Liliom” (1930) is one of the many adaptations of Ferenc Molnar’s 1909 play of the same name — Fritz Lang adapted the play for the screen four years later, Orson Welles played the title role in a radio-adaptation in 1939, and the play provided the source material for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s musical “Carousel,” first produced on Broadway in 1945. Borzage’s dream-like take on the story is a slice of romantic masochism, focusing on Julia’s obsession, even into the afterlife, with the carnival-barker title character, despite the fact that he consistently abuses her. The film features a few masterful sequences, some of the best in Borzage’s career, including the early scenes of Julia and Liliom on the carousel, her desire manifested in the blurred spinning, and Liliom’s eventual departure from earth via a train heading into the sky. The film screens as part of the “This is Celluloid: 35mm” series, running through June 21.“The Damned” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Friday, June 12)Joseph Losey’s nuclear-age thriller, about a group of radioactive children kept hidden underground by the government as part of a plan to populate the inevitable post-fallout world, was made a decade into the director’s exile from the United States. After avoiding a subpoena from the House of Un-American Activities for his alleged communist links, Losey fled to Paris, eventually settling in London, where he would work, and achieve his greatest international successes, in the final stretch of his career. While not as perverse as his pre-exile films — “The Boy with the Green Hair” (1948) and “The Prowler” (1951), in particular — and not as acclaimed as his later work with the playwright Harold Pinter — “The Servant” (1963) and “The Go-Between” (1971), especially — Losey’s “The Damned” deserves to be seen. And as the critic Dave Kehr has noted, it clearly influenced the later work of Stanley Kubrick. “The Damned” is playing as part of BAM’s “Black & White ’Scope: International Cinema” series, which runs through June 16.“A Pigeon Sat on a Bench Reflecting on Existence” — Film Forum (through June 16)Roy Andersson’s “final part of a trilogy on being a human being” is also his best film, a perfect introduction to his unique brand of tragic humor. Read our review of the film here. “Magnificent Obsession” – Museum of Modern Art (Wednesday, June 10)Douglas Sirk’s colorful weepie about a wealthy playboy who, after being indirectly responsible for the death of his neighbor, a well-respected local physician, and later the blinding of his wife, decides to devote his life to her needs. Rock Hudson plays Bob Merrick, the playboy, and Jane Wyman gives one of her best performances as Helen. The plot is one of Sirk’s most ridiculous — Merrick decides to study medicine and help cure Helen’s blindness, and does so at an alarming pace — but storyline is only one, and maybe the least, of the concerns when watching a Douglas Sirk film. Stay for the, um, magnificent and emotional use of space and color. The film screens as part of the “Glorious Technicolor: From George Eastman House and Beyond” series, which runs through August 5.
↧