CLEVER, clever, clever, clever is the best way to describe BAM Rose Cinemas’ salute to Shelley Winters: four films in which “she always seems to run afoul of water.”
One is “The Night of the Hunter” (1955). Robert Mitchum gives what many call his greatest performance: a crazed, hymn-singing preacher – “LOVE” and “HATE” are tattoed on his fingers – in search of the money hidden by an executed killer.
He marries and slays the man’s widow (Winters), then turns his evil attention to her two kids, who are saved by an old lady (Lillian Gish).
Charles Laughton’s only stint in the director’s chair is masterfully surreal and eerie. Best is the sight of Winters’ body, in the words of the man who found it, “down there in the deep place, with her hair waving soft and lazy; and that slit in her throat, like she had an extra mouth.”
Rounding out the salute to Winters, who died Jan. 14 at age 85, are George Stevens’ “A Place in the Sun” (1951), Stanley Kubrick’s “Lolita” (1962), and Ronald Neame’s “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).
BAM Rose Cinemas is on Lafayette Avenue, off Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. The mini-fest opens Wednesday and continues on and off through April 25. Details: bam.org
* Czech helmer Jan Svankmajer’s “Lunacy” (2005), which Cine File raved about after seeing it at the Rotterdam Film Festival in February, gets a two-week run starting Aug. 9 at the downtown Film Forum. Not to be missed.
Another must-see is Mary Harron’s “The Notorious Bettie Page” (2006), in which Gretchen Mol gives a hard-to-beat performance as the 1950s bondage queen. It opens April 14.