Film Forum Reels from Depression

Over the weekend I thought I'd catch the Film Forum's series of depression movies, so I saw the downbeat 1970s junkie drama The Panic in Needle Park and the downbeat modern hobo drama Wendy and Lucy. And yeah, they sure were depressing! Worthwhile, but depressing!

But then I picked up the new Film Forum schedule and saw that the series of depression movies wouldn't start until Friday—and that the movies in the series would be Depression movies, as in "from the Great Depression." Oops!

The series starts on Friday with screenings of trailers and Mae West's I'm No Angel—at Depression prices of two bits for members and 35 cents for non-members.

Include in the festival fare are the delightful comedies My Man Godfrey and Easy Living (February 14, lovebirds!), the daring Hannah Takes the Stairs prototype Baby Face (with Blessed Event on February 15), a sure-to-be popular Vitaphone variety show (with Hallelujah, I'm a Bum on February 19), the classic comedy It Happened One Night (with Bombshell on February 22-23), the solid double-bill of 42nd Street and King Kong (February 28), and the peculiar gangster movie (with Strange Interlude parody) Me and My Gal (with Central Park on March 2).

HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS

Take The Office...mix with web culture...marinate in early Godard...leaven with the 1933 movie Baby Face...take away a budget...and you've got Hannah Takes the Stairs, the emblematic mumblecore movie playing at the IFC Center starting Wednesday. It's rough around the edges and a little slow at times, but it's well-cast and refreshing and, I think, clever. Oh—and I dig the music, too.



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