The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, April 26-May 2
Bang Bang (1971)
Directed by Andrea Tonacci
I’ve met two Brazilians in the flesh, and when I asked them what’s their country’s best film, they both said this one, and may be right. The Godard-inspired Bang Bang film starts out riotous: a man hops into taxi after almost being run over by it, and orders the driver to just advance, as he’s being chased. The nearly five-minute sequence shot is filmed from the back seat, showing both the road they’re travelling and how the men in the front seats argue about the car’s acceleration, the back-and-forth of navigation, and the financial relationship between passenger and driver. The film then continues with scenes of different characters interacting in abandoned landscapes: the passenger acts out for a mirror (we see the camera behind him) while wearing a monkey mask; three thieves play magic tricks, teleporting from one room to the next by clicking their fingers, using jump cuts and other avant-garde-like cinematic tricks. It is with the accumulation of apparently unconnected scenes that this experimental-narrative film is a thesis on the limits and tools that cinema has so far. Jaime Grijalba (May 1, 6:45pm alongside Tonacci’s Blah Blah Blah (1968) as part of a Tonacci spotlight within the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Art of the Real”)