Movies

Women and people of color figured more prominently in popular films in 2019 than in any other year measured, according two new reports released this week. The studies, published annually by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and U.C.L.A.’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, examined films released in the last dozen years.The U.S.C. report found that 31 of the top 100 grossing films in 2019 featured a lead or co-lead actor of color, an increase from a record set in 2018, when 27 such films were counted. Women, meanwhile, also bested a record set the previous year. They were the lead or co-lead in 43 of the 100 films, up from 39 in 2018.For both groups, the figures are more than double what they were a little more than a decade ago. (In 2007, the first year of U.S.C.’s report, just 13 of the top 100 films featured people of color in a lead role, and 20 featured women.) But they still lag behind the demographics of the country as a whole, which the Census Bureau counts as 40 percent nonwhite and 51 percent female.Trailing both demographic and box office trends this year were the nominations of major awards organizations — including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts — which went overwhelmingly to white actors. Stacy L. Smith, the founder of the U.S.C. initiative, singled out both groups in a statement.“It is clear that Hollywood is taking steps to create more inclusive stories and that those films are connecting with audiences,” she said. “Yet, there is also a very obvious disconnect between what sells tickets and what garners awards points.”As opportunities for women and people of color in front of the camera have increased significantly, gains in powerful behind-the-scenes positions have been more modest, the University of California, Los Angeles, report shows. Only 14 percent of directors of high-grossing films last year were people of color, according to the report, a bump compared with 2011 (the first year analyzed) but a 5 percent decrease from 2018. Women directors, driven by the success of movies like Lorene Scafaria’s “Hustlers” and Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” continued a steady climb since 2011, but still worked on just 15 percent of top films.Among the 11 heads of major film studios — the executives tasked with deciding what movies are made and by whom — 91 percent were white and 82 percent were male, U.C.L.A. found.Are most successful films white and male because of audience preferences, or in spite of them? Yet a third study released this week — from the advocacy group ReFrame, authored by U.S.C.’s Smith — sought to answer that question.The existence of a female lead or co-lead had no significant effect on box office performance, the report found. But, contrary to longstanding conventional wisdom in Hollywood, films led by people of color performed better than white-led films when controlling for other factors.“This is a finding that cannot be ignored and is consistent with what activists, advocates and artists have been saying for years,” Smith said. “Stories with underrepresented leads or co-leads make money. Period.” More

Cast as a leading man from early in his career, Kirk Douglas, who died Wednesday at 103, commanded the screen with a booming voice and chiseled physique, but he also showed enough humility to allow for more complicated heroes — and even a couple of outright heels. At the height of his powers, Douglas broke away from his studio handlers, formed his own production company, and joined forces with Hollywood rebels and outsiders like Stanley Kubrick and Dalton Trumbo. Here are 13 films that illustrate his range, durability and swarthy magnetism.1947‘Out of the Past’[embedded content]It’s a mark of Kirk Douglas’s charmed career that his second feature is widely considered a film noir staple, though his casting as a straight-up heavy would turn out to be a rarity. Of the beautiful shadows in Jacques Tourneur’s classic tale of double-crosses and bad romance, Douglas looms as the darkest, a crime boss who summons a small-town gas station attendant (Robert Mitchum) to do a job for him. The two men have a past together, when the gangster hired Mitchum’s then-private eye to track down his diabolical mistress (Jane Greer), who split to Acapulco with $40,000 of his money. The femme fatale puts them at odds.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1949‘Champion’Based on a Ring Lardner short story, “Champion” is a boxing drama as tough and tormented as its hero, a poor Irishman (Douglas) who accidentally stumbles into the undercard of a fight and winds up brawling his way toward the top of the profession. Yet this isn’t the inspirational tale of an underdog made good, but a gritty film noir about an impulsive drifter whose moxie and ragged charm are short-circuited by a nasty temper and a stubborn pridefulness. When he fails to honor the dictates of the game’s corrupt elites, it threatens his career — and his life.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon and Vudu.1950‘Young Man With a Horn’As in “Champion,” Douglas plays a poor, willful iconoclast who refuses to play by the rules, but “Young Man With a Horn” has a more luscious, romantic quality, courtesy of the director Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”). Inspired by the short and influential life of jazz soloist Bix Beiderbecke, the film starts with Rick Martin as an orphan who scrapes together enough money to buy a trumpet. Under the tutelage of an accomplished jazzman (Juano Hernández), he becomes a prodigy, but his improvisational flair, in music and in life, leads to strained relationships and a descent into alcoholism. Lauren Bacall’s turn as a woman of ambiguous sexuality is a fascinating footnote, but the alternately joyful and bittersweet performance sequences are most enduring.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes and Amazon.1951‘Ace in the Hole’Hays Code censors, Paramount Pictures and American moviegoers rejected Billy Wilder’s caustic satire in 1951, but time has only affirmed its ugly truths about tabloid journalism and its corrosive effect on society. Douglas’s willingness to play the heel, combined with his man-of-the-people charisma, made him the ideal choice to star as Chuck Tatum, a former big-city journalist who creates a media sideshow around a man trapped by a New Mexico cave-in. Feeding the story as much as reporting on it, Chuck gives himself scoop after scoop while turning the site itself into a tourist trap. “Ace in the Hole” decries journalistic malpractice, but it reserves plenty of contempt for the culture at large, which feeds off the story voraciously without thought to the human consequencesWhere to watch: Rent it on iTunes and Amazon.1952‘The Bad and the Beautiful’The director Vincente Minnelli’s highly charged drama about an unscrupulous movie producer and the three successful careers he both launched and sabotaged gets at the contradictions of Hollywood, where dreams are made and discarded with breathless speed. Gathered together at a studio office, a director (Barry Sullivan), an actress (Lana Turner), and a screenwriter (Dick Powell) each flash back to their experiences working with the producer (Douglas) who nurtured their talent, only to betray them. They swear off working with him again, but as the scorpion in this scorpion-and-the-frog scenario, Douglas is awfully persuasive.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1954‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’Photographed in CinemaScope and Technicolor, and supervised by Walt Disney himself, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” remains a model of Disney live-action cinema — broad, silly, colorful and loaded with wonders. The underwater discoveries of the Nautilus, a wondrous submarine commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo (James Mason), may be the main attraction, but Douglas’s robust performance as a master whaler offered early proof that the force of his personality couldn’t be blunted by spectacle. His song-and-dance number, “A Whale of a Tale,” suggests a future in musicals that he never got around to pursuing.Where to watch: Stream it on Disney Plus. Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1956‘Lust for Life’The same overweening passion that propels and destroys Douglas’s characters in “Champion” and “Young Man With a Horn” applies to his take on Vincent van Gogh in “Lust for Life,” a biopic that follows the artist deeper into an obsession that eventually kills him. Working again with the director Vincente Minnelli, whose eye for color aligns with van Gogh’s, Douglas opens the film as a Protestant missionary who devotes himself to helping the poor in coal country, then pivots when he discovers painting, a craft that leads to frustration, poverty and madness. “Lust for Life” is perhaps best remembered, however, for van Gogh’s contentious back-and-forth with Paul Gauguin (Anthony Quinn), a relationship in which shared interests curdle into vicious rivalry.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1957’Paths of Glory ‘Every bit as scabrous as his “Dr. Strangelove” — and nearly as funny, though the laughs stick in the throat — Stanley Kubrick’s antiwar film offers Douglas as a beacon of sanity and decency in the midst of an irrational, needlessly tragic situation. As leader of the 701st Regiment of the French infantry during World War I, Douglas’s Colonel Dax gets the order to attack a heavily fortified German position. When this impossible mission inevitably fails, his superiors try to save face by ordering three men to be executed for cowardice, and it’s up to Dax to defend them in court-martial. In measuring the absurdity of the situation against the human cost of war, Kubrick draws a stinging conclusion about how wars are waged and who pays the price.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1957‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’With slick-backed hair and an irrepressible grin, Douglas plays Doc Holliday as a quick-fingered outlaw who always has the drop on his enemies and looks pleased with his own virtuosity. “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” pairs him with Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, a lawman who steps down from his post and enlists Holliday in a showdown in Tombstone, Ariz, against the murderous Clantons. John Sturges’s unfussy telling of this famous Wild West story casts two legends-in-the-making as two legends-in-the-making and allows their chemistry to carry his diverting Western forward.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1960‘Spartacus’Though stirring as a tribute to rebellion and justice against authoritarian rule, “Spartacus” doubles as a monument to Douglas himself: his chiseled physique, his booming voice, his noble bearing and his political sympathy toward the disenfranchised. Douglas would tweak that image throughout his career, but not in Stanley Kubrick’s sumptuous sword-and-sandal epic about a slave who leads a rebellion against the Roman republic. Spartacus isn’t a particularly rich character — Kubrick would later distance himself from the film for this reason — but the scope and grandeur of the production remains seductive, and its reputation has rightly improved since a 1991 restoration.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1962‘Lonely Are the Brave’Douglas helped end the blacklist by securing a screenplay credit for Dalton Trumbo on “Spartacus,” and their working relationship continued with this utterly unique western, which upends a conservative genre with a strong leftist bent and anticipates the revisionist westerns that would arrive later in the decade. Photographed in stark black-and-white, “Lonely Are the Brave” stars Douglas as a cowboy who first appears to be ambling through the Old West … until he directs his horse across a New Mexico highway. A rebel and an anarchist, he deliberately gets himself thrown in jail in an effort to break out a friend who’s been arrested for helping illegal immigrants.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1964‘Seven Days in May’Fresh off his electrifying thriller “The Manchurian Candidate,” the director John Frankenheimer continued to engage in the insidious politics of the era with “Seven Days in May,” which imagines a plausible future when the military orchestrates a coup against a sitting American president. With Burt Lancaster as the general who spearheads the coup from his post on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Douglas plays his Pentagon subordinate, who catches wind of the plot and works frantically behind the scenes to stop it. Frankenheimer’s no-frills, black-and-white, documentarylike style adds to the sensation that American democracy could collapse under the right circumstances.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube.1978‘The Fury’Douglas was 60 years old when “The Fury” was released to theaters, and the film’s director, Brian De Palma, allots much of his screen time to marveling over him as a physical specimen, whether he’s gunning down assailants in the Middle East or performing acrobatics across the elevated train tracks in Chicago. De Palma’s terrific follow-up to “Carrie” also delves into psychic powers, casting Douglas as a former C.I.A. agent trying to find his son, who’s been abducted by the government as part of a telekinesis program. Amy Irving plays a powerful young psychic who tries to help him, and John Cassavetes is delectably evil as the old colleague who’s behind the kidnapping.Where to watch: Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube. More

Ivan Kral, a Czech-born musician whose integral role in the Patti Smith Group, along with his work as a filmmaker who chronicled the earliest days of the CBGB scene, made him a key figure in New York’s creative underground of the 1970s, died on Sunday at his home in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 71.His wife, Cindy Hudson, said the cause was cancer.Mr. Kral also played in an early incarnation of Blondie and worked with Iggy Pop, John Cale, John Waite and Noel Redding, the former bassist with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, either co-writing songs for them or contributing bass, guitar or keyboard parts to recordings by them.A romantic song he wrote with Ms. Smith, “Dancing Barefoot,” was covered by myriad acts, including U2, Pearl Jam and Simple Minds. A throbbing new wave piece he wrote with Iggy Pop in 1981, “Bang Bang,” was covered by David Bowie six years later on his album “Never Let Me Down.”On Monday, Iggy Pop posted a tribute on Twitter: “Dear Ivan, you were a great guitarist/writer, a handsome guy, a true rock believer, and a great credit to me and the Czech Republic.”John Waite, who wrote songs with Mr. Kral on three albums in the 1980s — including “Every Step of the Way,” which reached No. 25 on the Billboard pop singles chart — described Mr. Kral in an email as “a gifted songwriter,” “a cultured European” and a “kick-ass NYC guitarist.”Ivan Kral was born in Prague on May 12, 1948, and came to the United States in 1966 with his parents as refugees. His father, Karel Kral, was the United Nations reporter for the Czechoslovak news agency C.T.K.; in that capacity he helped alert the world to the threat of a Soviet invasion of his country, which came about two years later. His mother, Otylie (Hajmaarova) Kral, was a botanist who played classical piano.Mr. Kral had refugee status in the United States until 1981, when he became an American citizen.Before settling with his family in New York, he had played with a rock band in Prague named Saze, which later became successful in Czechoslovakia. Amid the gritty New York of the early ’70s, he formed a band, Luger, which became part of the glam-rock scene at Max’s Kansas City and was the opening act on Kiss’s earliest shows. He later played in the singer Shaun Cassidy’s backing group before joining the nascent Blondie.Mr. Kral, a poetry fan, met Ms. Smith at one of her downtown readings and helped smooth her transition from poetry to music. He played bass and guitar on her debut album, “Horses” (1975), one of the first punk albums and one of the most influential albums of its era for its stripped-down sound, its integration of music and poetry and its presentation of women. In 2020, “Horses” was entered into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.He went on to play on, and write for, all of her band’s crucial early albums: “Radio Ethiopia,” released in 1976; “Easter,” which made Billboard’s Top 20 two years later; and “Wave,” which had similar chart success in 1979.Mr. Kral collaborated with Ms. Smith on two of her most high-energy songs, “Ask the Angels” and “Pumpin’ (My Heart),” from “Radio Ethiopia,” as well as the grinding rocker “25th Floor,” from “Easter,” and three compositions on “Wave,” notably the poignant “Citizen Ship.” That song’s poetic lyrics alluded to Mr. Kral’s life as a refugee and ended with Ms. Smith violently shouting his name toward the end to assert his identity in a new world.“Ivan was my guitar brother in the group,” Ms. Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye said in an email. “He brought a pop sensibility to our improvisations, and helped us along our path to becoming a true rock ’n’ roll band.”During his time in Ms. Smith’s group, Mr. Kral, using a 16-millimeter camera, began filming acts at local concerts, including the New York Dolls, Jayne County and Queen. He assembled the footage into a film, “Night Lunch.” He went on to focus on then-unknown punk groups like the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads, shooting them silently before working with the filmmaker Amos Poe to edit in sound from the bands’ demo recordings.“I had all these three-minute rolls of film,” Mr. Kral told The Ann Arbor News in 2010. “I decided I had enough to make it into 50 minutes. I spliced it together in one day.”The resulting film, “The Blank Generation” (1976), has served as source material for scores of exhibitions and music documentaries.In 1979, after Ms. Smith retreated from music to concentrate on her family, Mr. Kral started working with Iggy Pop. He played on his 1980 album, “Soldier,” and on its follow-up, “Party,” the next year, for which he co-wrote nearly every song. After moving to Los Angeles, he wrote music for films, notably the score (with Bruce Brody) for the 1981 Barry Levinson movie “Diner.”Back in New York, he wrote scores for three underground films by Mr. Poe. He also recorded “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” a live album with John Cale, an original member of the Velvet Underground.After the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Mr. Kral returned to Prague and began working with many local artists to develop a thriving rock scene there. He also worked as a solo artist, releasing 15 albums during his lifetime, most of them in the Czech Republic.Mr. Kral composed a memorial song for Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, titled “Rest in Peace,” which he performed on national television in tribute to Mr. Havel after his death in 2011.In addition to his wife, Mr. Kral is survived by a brother, Pavel.His final solo album, “Smile,” is to be released this month. Later this year, his English-language biography, written by his wife, will be published under the title “Bloc, Shock, Rock.” More

Albert Lewin’s gloriously Technicolor modern myth “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” is almost unique — a staid yet outlandish star-vehicle that is also an exercise in by the book surrealism.The movie, which stars Ava Gardner and James Mason in the title roles, is at the Quad Cinema, digitally restored to sensational effect. A more transgressive surrealist like Luis Buñuel might have found “Pandora” hilariously sanctimonious but it casts a spell just the same.Based on the legend that inspired Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman,” “Pandora” has the doomed-to-wander sea captain cast anchor off the coast of a picturesque Spanish town, circa 1930. On shore and mad with desire, the men of the expat community are metaphorically sipping champagne from the slipper of the Indiana-born American singer, Pandora Reynolds (Gardner).One hapless suitor kills himself, another demonstrates his adoration by pushing a beloved racing car off a cliff. Moments after agreeing to marriage, Pandora spots the mysterious yacht and impetuously dives into the sea. Swimming nude to the boat, she discovers its sole occupant, a dourly enigmatic Dutchman (James Mason), painting her portrait.An arrogant matador (Mario Cabré, a former torero who had an onset affair with Gardner) further complicates the plot as the various love stories unfold amid a clutter of surrealist bric-a-brac — disembodied hands entwined in a tangled fisherman’s net, a racing car speeding past a headless Greek statue, a geometric chess set designed by Lewin’s friend Man Ray (who also painted Gardner’s portrait).Lewin, an MGM producer who took a break from the epic “Quo Vadis” to make “Pandora,” a movie he wrote as well as directed, was not only a serious art collector but an English major at Harvard. Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and “The Rubaiyat” are among the movie’s literary references. More evocative are the bullfights and Lost Generation shenanigans — a madcap cabana party with men in evening attire and women wearing swimsuits dancing the Charleston by the sea — seemingly cribbed from “The Sun Also Rises.” Pandora is sister to Lady Brett Ashley (a role Gardner would play in the 1957 Hollywood version of the Hemingway novel).None of this sat well with the movie’s original critics. The closest to a mixed review was written by Howard Thompson in The New York Times. Thompson noted the “brilliance and invention” of the cinematography and name-checked the camera man Jack Cardiff, celebrated for his ravishing work in Michael Powell’s “Black Narcissus” and “The Red Shoes.”“Pandora” has an abundance of local color (including one of the longest flamenco numbers in any movie without the name “Carmen” in its title) but color itself is a greater attraction. Gardner shows up at a bullfight wearing an outfit of seafoam green that is so intense it may as well be the only green in the movie or maybe the universe.Reviewing “Pandora” on DVD in the Times, Dave Kehr felt the colors were off, noting “that pixels can’t always restore what fading chemicals have taken away.” In this new restoration they have.Pandora and the Flying DutchmanFriday through Feb. 13 at the Quad Cinema, Manhattan; 212-255-2243, quadcinema.com.Rewind is an occasional column covering revived, restored and rediscovered movies playing in New York’s repertory theaters. More