prⅳate cinema berlin, september 6, 8:30 pm: the driver + gone in 60 seconds

[prⅳate cinema berlin]

"[...] I don't like geographic license. It's hard to make a theoretical 
argument against it. After all, in a fiction film, a real space becomes 
fictional. Why shouldn't a car chase jump from the Venice Canals to the Los 
Angeles Harbor thirty miles away? Why shouldn't the exit from a skating rink in 
Westwood open directly onto Fletcher Bowron Square in Downtown Los Angeles, 
fifteen miles east? But one fiction is not always as good as another, and like 
dramatic license, geographic license is usually an alibi for laziness. Silly 
geography makes for silly movies. The best Los Angeles car chase movie is 
stubbornly, even perversely literalist. Director Toby Halicki realized Dziga 
Vertov's dream: an anti-humanist cinema of bodies and machines in motion. His 
materialist masterpiece was the first manifesto for a cinema of conspicuous 
destruction, centered in the South Bay, the unglamorous southern coastal region 
of the Los Angeles basin, stretching from Long Beach to El Segundo, that would 
later become the domain of William Friedkin, Quentin Tarantino and Michael 
Mann, who would accidentally rename the most familiar icon of South Bay movies, 
the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Vincent Thomas was San Pedro's representative in the 
state assembly for many years, but he hasn't been canonized yet, not even in 
Pedro. Accidents happen, but some lies are malignant. They cheapen or 
trivialize the real city. [...]"

There really isn't much we have to add to Thom Andersen's praise for "Gone in 
60 Seconds" (see www.piratecinema.org/trailers/#20150906-01, from "Los Angeles 
Plays Itself", itself coming to Prⅳate Cinema in the not-so-distant future) -- 
the film is really that good, once it picks up speed. What we can add however 
is Walter Hill's "The Driver" (Isabelle Adjani's first Hollywood movie, still 
pre-"Possession", even though she claims that this was the role that ruined her 
career), mostly for comparison, and Claude Lelouch's "C'était un rendez-vous", 
not as famous as "Trafic" or "Week-end", but certainly the most convincing 
eight minutes of reckless driving in the history of French cinema.

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                                                            prⅳate cinema berlin
                                                                u kottbusser tor
                                                    sunday, september 6, 8:30 pm

                                                                            9 pm
                                                                      the driver
                                                         walter hill 1978 87 min

                                                                        10:30 pm
                                                              gone in 60 seconds
                                                        toby halicki 1974 97 min

                                                                        12:15 am
                                                          c'était un rendez-vous
                                                       claude lelouch 1976 8 min

                                                                  12 seats, rsvp
                                                          first come first serve
                                                       location in separate mail

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