Jan 18. - UP ON THE ROOF at UnionDocs
As iconic as the skyline they grace are New York’s pigeons, a heritage that is fast becoming a part of the past. An affectionate tribute and fond farewell, JL Aronson’s Up on the Roof (2008) documents the last gasp of Williamsburg’s pigeon coops as rapid gentrification and higher rents drive out not only its long-time residents, but also its long-time traditions. Through rooftop conversations with old-guard bird keepers, Aronson captures the art, skill, history, and enjoyment, of pigeons. So strong is the bond between these men and their birds that, as one person jokes, it helps save marriages, because it gives husbands and wives a little break from each other once in a while. Several men convey a loving dedication to birds because they helped keep them off street and away from drugs, as well as in school (as their parents often threatened to destroy the coop if they received bad grades).
But it is this lifelong passion that seems to be missing: the current flock of pigeon breeders began in their youth, but it seems that none of today’s youth is showing interest in birds, so the tradition is dying off. More menacing, however, is the influx of new tenants and landlords who are not only unfamiliar with the rich heritage of pigeons, but they don’t care about it. A couple complaints later, and the birds are gone. And with them goes an irreplaceable treasure. Aronson, thankfully, stepped in and recorded the fleeting memories of a pastime that is, sadly, fading irrevocably into the past.
Lovers of “old New York” and those wanting to learn about an important piece of cultural history will not want to miss Up on the Roof when it plays UnionDocs this evening. For one night only, the birds will fly again, performing their ethereal, aerial ballet to a soundtrack by Brooklyn’s own Oneida.
See the pigeons in action here, courtesy of YouTube.
Preston Sturges: Subversive Screwball
From December 24 to January 1, Film Forum will be hosting Essential Sturges, a series comprised of 10 of the director’s best-loved films, including several early films, rarely screened, which he scripted for other directors. In addition to this overview of the director’s career, Blank Screen NYC will provide daily updates as the series progresses. The full schedule is available on Film Forum’s website HERE.
From 1940 to 1944, writer/director Preston Sturges unleashed an unheralded torrent of cinematic anarchy. While his career began in the 1930s as a screenwriter, and he continued directing into the early 1950s, it is this five-year period that proved to be the most fertile in his career. The back-to-back releasing of Christmas in July (1940), The Great McGinty (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan’s Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) is among the most impressive runs in film history. He took the screwball comedy from its inventors Hawks, Capra, La Cava, and Wellman, and made it completely his own. While 1930s screwball was characterized by machine gun dialogue, Sturges used words like music, composing sharp, elegantly eccentric dialogue, and then allowing listeners to revel in slightly cryptic phrases like, “I positively swill in his ale!” (That phrase, in fact, was so good that it was used in two different movies!)
Sturges somehow channeled the pandemonium of the Marx Brothers into a sedate, middle class milieu, and unearthed an encyclopedia of white-collar hypocrisy, idiosyncrasy, and hilarity. Small towns and big cities, ocean liners and offices—none of them are safe from Sturges’ apocalypse. Only those that jettison their safe, conveniently ways and embrace the chaos are able to come out on top. Invariably, a Sturges film starts with an idealist—be it the earnest herpetologist (Henry Fonda) of The Lady Eve, the office worker who dreams of writing advertising slogans (Dick Powell) in Christmas in July, or the comedy director (Joel McCrea) who longs to make a “serious” movie (whatever that may be) in Sullivan’s Travels. These All-American good-boys face hardship with an almost nationalistic sense of pride (which is only the tip of Struges’ subversive humor), and however fantastic or unrealistic their goals may be, they are allowed to follow them wholeheartedly, regardless of the mayhem that may ensue. In short, Sturges lets dreams come true—even if they result in nightmares.
Talk about a screwball world, the real heroes of these films are not the delusional idealists, but their opponents: liars, thieves, card sharks, con-artists, opportunists, racketeers—not to mention bums, alcoholics, and anyone else with a chronic, insuppressible eccentricity. Who can resist gambler Barbara Stanwyck’s hardboiled allure in The Lady Eve? Try as he might, even Fonda must eventually capitulate.
Often it takes a deus ex machina to bring temporary resolution to the most cockeyed circumstances—such as The Palm Beach Story’s unemployed lovebirds-turned-gold diggers (Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert) who find everything they want in a pair of rich, Florida siblings except each other, or the overly patriotic small town girl (Betty Grable) of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek who says “farewell” to a mysterious soldier named “Ratskywatsky” (she thinks that’s his name) and wakes up pregnant. Such happiness, however, can only be short-lived. And perhaps that is what lies behind Sturges’ subversive smile—the knowledge that as soon as the movie ends and the lights go up, the fantasy is over. All of us—those in the movie and those in the audience—must eventually return to reality, whether we like it or not. Thankfully, we still have Sturges’ movies, which allow us to escape whenever we want.
