PRINCESS BLADE
Japan, 2001. Director: Shinsuke Sato
Tues., May 28, 9:30 p.m., Egyptian
Fri., May 31, midnight., Egyptian
A warrior princess avenges her mother's death.
Danny Clinch
Pleasure and Pain
*THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
U.S.A., 1937. Director: John Cromwell
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., David Niven
Sat., May 25, 1:45 p.m., Harvard Exit
No, not Zelda, Zenda: the hunting lodge where King Rudolf of Hentzau is imprisoned by his dastardly brother Black Michael to prevent his rival's marriage to the icy Princess Flavia until the opportune appearance of the King's exact look-alike in the person of vacationing Englishman Rudolf Rassendyll (Colman) who . . . you get the idea. The fourth of six big-screen adaptations, Zenda is the quintessential sword-and-intrigue film. Its supporting cast is as good as '30s studio work gets: Raymond Massey, C. Aubrey Smith, and an absurdly young David Niven as the King's spunky aide-de-camp. Comedienne Madeleine Carroll is grossly miscast as the slave-of-duty princess, and if you think one Ronald Colman is tiresome, wait till you see two. But every time the blahs threaten, in comes an over-the-top Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to chew some scenery as the Greatest Swordsman in All Europe. Pure fun. Free! R.D.
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
U.S.A./Great Britain, 1970. Director: Billy Wilder Cast: Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, Genevi趥 Page
Sun., June 9, 4:00 p.m., Egyptian
Billy Wilder got away with alternating the cynic (Sunset Blvd., Ace in the Hole) and the sentimentalist (The Emperor Waltz, Sabrina) for decades, but by the early '60s (The Apartment; One, Two, Three; Irma la Douce) the cynic got the upper hand, and 1964's sour, unfunny flop Kiss Me, Stupid effectively killed his career. In Holmes we see Wilder groping for a new formula, enriching the old winking sexual innuendo—Dr. Watson begins to suspect his buddy Sherlock is gay—with dashes of gaslight melodrama (a mysterious damsel in distress), the occult (the Loch Ness monster), even politics (an anti-war speech by Queen Victoria). None of it works. And none of the players—Robert Stephens as The Great Detective, Colin Blakely as Watson, Genevi趥 Page as The Woman—has sufficient charisma to keep us focused as the desultory plot wanders its way. Even the lovely wide-screen Scottish scenery isn't enough to keep you awake. R.D.
PUMPKIN
U.S.A., 2002. Director: Adam Larson
Cast: Christina Ricci, Hank Harris, Brenda Blethyn
Thurs., May 30, 4:30 p.m., Harvard Exit
Sun., June 2, 9:30 p.m., Egyptian
A sorority girl mentors a disabled athlete and, in due course, takes to liking him.
PURSUED
U.S.A., 1947. Director: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Alan Hale
Sat., June 1, 1:45 p.m., Harvard Exit
Shown as part of SIFF's tribute to cinematographer James Wong Howe, Pursued features menacing, unsettling atmospherics thanks to his chiaroscuro lighting and stark camera work. The spiritually desolate frontier-town ambiance directly anticipates such "dark" Westerns as High Noon and The Searchers. For as long as he can remember, Jeb Rand (Mitchum) has been driven to discover the origins of a blurry, persistent memory of childhood tragedy. Like the similarly chronologically scrambled Memento, this Western-noir teases us relentlessly by beginning with a climax and unfolding towards The Big Secret via flashback and incremental revelation. Slowly we learn of the old vendetta between Jeb's birth family and the cold, driven patriarch of the Callums, his adopted clan. Mitchum is captivating as the haunted antihero, positively exuding inner conflict through busted knuckles, stoic cowboy swagger, and sad, sad eyes; Wright turns in an uncharacteristically chilly performance as Jeb's tragic femme fatale. Bleak, violent, and utterly humorless, Pursued is stunning psychodrama at its most psycho. Free! Peter Vidito
QUITTING
China, 2001. Director: Zhang Yang
Wed., May 29, 7:00 p.m., Pacific Place
Sat., June 1, 4:00 p.m., Pacific Place
His prize-winning Shower was a hit at SIFF last year, but the barely tolerable sentimentalism that Zhang brought to that picture goes overboard here. Compounding problems is a basically familiar tortured-artist-in-recovery narrative that might seem daring in Chinaour hero smokes heroin, listens obsessively to the Beatles, and yells at his parentsbut is awfully tame by Western standards. Its unfortunate, because Quitting begins with a clever, funny conceit: Suzhou River star Jia Hongsheng plays himself, and his actor parents play themselves, in the tale of how the handsome young performer got hooked on smack during the mid-90s. Various real-life figures including Zhang comment on Jias problems, while the actor and his loving family members are also directly interviewed. In this way, Zhang plays with the artifice of his story but buries such self-reflexivity under maudlin kitchen-sink drama. As Jia grudgingly learns to be more sincere, you wish Zhang were less so. B.R.M.
