THU JUNE 2, 2022 7:30 PM

CHINATOWN / SORCERER

$8.00 (member) ; $13.00 (general admission)

Aero Theatre | Introduction by film critic Joshua Rothkopf. Video Introduction by filmmaker William Friedkin, moderated by screenwriter Josh Olson.

‘BLEAK WEEK: Cinema of Despair’ Series 

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ABOUT THE FILMS:

CHINATOWN, 1974, Paramount, 131 min, USA, Dir: Roman Polanksi. 

Jack Nicholson gives one of his greatest performances as 1930s private eye J.J. Gittes, maneuvering through a nightmarish L.A. netherworld of cheating husbands, stolen water rights, incest and murder, as he desperately tries to save beautiful Faye Dunaway from her raptor-like father (John Huston). Writer Robert Towne’s magnificent, thoroughly pessimistic portrait of Los Angeles has been widely hailed as the best script of its era.

FORMAT: 35mm

SORCERER, 1977, Paramount, 122 min, Dir: William Friedkin. 

Friedkin’s visually stunning film follows small-time crook Roy Scheider from Brooklyn to the sweltering South American jungles, where he lands a job hauling nitroglycerine with hard-luck losers Bruno Cremer and Francisco Rabal. Rather than simply remake Henri-Georges Clouzot’s famed WAGES OF FEAR, Friedkin re-imagined the story as a bleak, cosmic vision of man vs. nature, climaxing in the mind-bending image of Scheider and crew literally pushing a loaded truck across a spindly rope bridge.

FORMAT: DCP