“The Prisoner of Shark Island,” “Young Mr. Lincoln,” Museum of the Moving Image, July 3-5One of the most exciting film events of the summer is the Museum of the Moving Image’s not quite complete retrospective dedicated to John Ford, which includes 20 films directed by the man whom the critic Andrew Saris, in his essential book “The American Cinema” (1968), called one of the architects of a “cinema of memory.” A good place to start is with two different takes from Ford on the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, made three years apart.“The Prisoner of Shark Island” concerns the story of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, who, in the film’s treatment of the story, is wrongly accused as a co-conspirator in the murder of Lincoln because he treated John Wilkes Booth for a leg injury in the middle of the night without recognizing him. Even if the film is an example of Ford’s “tendency toward historical amnesia,” as his biographer Joseph McBride describes it, and involves a certain amount of racial caricature, visually it’s one of the strongest and most inventive of Ford’s early period, especially when the action turns to the titular prison.“Young Mr. Lincoln” is the less thrilling but deeper portrait of Lincoln (Henry Fonda), who, in the film, according to the writer Geoffrey O’Brien, “exhibits at once a radiant sincerity and the devious subtlety of a trickster.” Focused on Lincoln’s early life, including his establishment of a law practice, the film is very much a companion piece to “Shark Island,” even if at first glance they seem nothing alike. Think about it this way: “Young Mr. Lincoln” is a vision of the idealized past Ford lamented in “Shark Island.”“A Poem is a Naked Person,” Film Forum, opening July 1The documentarian Les Blank, who died in 2013, is best known for “Burden of Dreams” (1982), his film about the making of Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo.” But his best work can be found in the series of music documentaries he made beginning in the late 1960s, especially “The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins” (1970) and “A Well Spent Life” (1971). So the growing excitement for “A Poem is a Naked Person” (1974/2015) is understandable, given that its subject is the southern blue-eyed soul revivalist Leon Russell and that the film has never been released publically. Featuring vibrant concert footage and behind-the-scenes peaks into the studio, it’s also an engaging portrait of the weird and local in Oklahoma, where Russell was born and, at the time of filming, still resided.“Amy,” Brooklyn Academy of Music, opening July 2This portrait of the late pop-soul singer Amy Winehouse comes courtesy of Asif Kapadia, who crafted a similar film about death and celebrity with “Senna” (2010). The film refuses to condemn or praise, but it’s not hard to see what could and should have been changed, and who shouldn’t have been part of Winehouse’s life. In the end, I was left thinking of a well-known line from “This Be The Verse,” a poem by Philip Larkin: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do.”“The Princess of France,” Film Society of Lincoln Center, through July 2Matías Piñeiro’s latest film, about an acting troupe in Buenos Aires that is reconnecting in order to record a radio-play adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” once again proves that he is one of the most underappreciated filmmakers working today, a gifted, agile storyteller and muted stylist who understands the poetry of the close-up. (To read the full review of “The Princess of France,” click here.)
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