The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 9-15
Inferno (1953)
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker, the journeyman’s journeyman, came the closest anyone ever came to out Hitching Hitch with Inferno. Doing something with 3D even Hitch couldn’t dream up, he strands Robert Ryan’s tycoon bastard in the desert and gives him nothing but his wits to survive. He’s got to climb down a mountain with a useless leg, all the while plotting revenge for the faithless wife and treacherous subordinate who conspired to turn him to carrion. Baker’s desert grows mythic thanks to the third dimension, every lovely vista the promise of more miles to hobble for poor, miserable Ryan. Baker was never as elegant or vicious again, smiling wryly while during the most grueling slog. Ryan, in the high heat, plotting the murder of two beautiful people living it up while the sun eats him alive, is like Baker’s own auteurist status raging against his place in history. The journeyman’s loneliest journey, is the one to acceptance as a master. Here, anyway, he proved more than up to the task. Scout Tafoya (November 13, 8:35pm; November 16, 2:25pm; November 18, 5:10pm; November 19, 9:55pm; November 21, 5:30pm; November 26, 10:30pm at Film Forum’s “3-D Auteurs”)