The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 22-28
Atlantic City (1980)
Directed by Louis Malle
Is there a filmmaker as successfully diverse as Louis Malle? The man who gave us the Hitchcockian French noir Elevator to the Gallows, the delightfully sociopathic Zazie dans le Métro, and, later, the World War II drama Au Revoir Les Enfants—among many others—also had a handful of significant entries in American cinema including the definitive talk piece, My Dinner With Andre, in 1981. A year prior, he made Atlantic City, shooting the ghostly setting on location in all its decay and decadence, with an unmistakably American vision that’s both cheap and reeks of money (despite it being a French-Canadian production). Malle’s Frenchness comes out, not just in his musical collaboration with frequent Jacques Demy composer Michel Legrand, but also in the blasé manner in which he characterizes the film’s unconventional relationships: at the center are Sally (Susan Sarandon), a casino seafood bar waitress, and her 33-years-senior ex-hoodlum gambler lover, Lou (Burt Lancaster), who is also lover to an old, poodle-obsessed Betty Grable lookalike (Kate Reid). Meanwhile, Sally’s sister is carrying the child of her estranged husband, who’s immediately given a bad hand when he attempts to play in the world’s famous playground. Atlantic City is about big dreams and even bigger disappointments, but there’s always hope that one can start over as easily as rubbing lemon juice over one’s bosoms to purge the lingering fishy smell after a long day (you’ll see). Kristen Yoonsoo Kim (February 25, 5pm; March 1, 7pm; March 3, 6:45pm at Anthology Film Archives’s “Gimme Shelter: Hollywood North”)