La Ciudad

viewed February 26, 2000 at the Castro

For full information about this film, click here

The most interesting moments of tonight's trip to the Castro were the retro trailers that showed prior to the feature.  They were part of a lengthy retrospective of Columbia Pictures' classics -- the three trailers were for Picnic, Shampoo and Gilda.  They were all very fascinating -- Picnic was lusty 50's melodrama, Shampoo with Warren Beatty and his character's lack of commitment while swinging through the 70's, and Rita Hayworth as 40's icon of lovely but fearsome womanhood.

All three were far and away more glamorous than the feature.  It was a good movie, but I am wary of films who choose neo-realism as a strategy to lend their films more weight, especially when they have an agenda like this one.  That is not to say that director/writer/editor David Riker is not noble for making a film that exposes the outrages of immigrant life in urban New York, using real immigrants as his non-professional cast, and shot in stark black and white.  But let's call a spade a spade: this is melodramatic agitprop laden with bitter twists of fate.  After viewing one cruel, hopeless story after another, you wonder if the immigrants should rise up against the city or Riker's bleak imagination.  His ironic stories read like O. Henry for Latinos, only crueller, to the point of sadism, one could say.   However, the last few minutes -- a beautiful succession of facial close-ups that really make us take notice of the souls living within each individual -- redeem him to his subjects. 

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