Westwood — Film Noir Blonde

Laura Linney plays Patricia Highsmith, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema opens at the Crest Theater in Westwood

Laura Linney

Laura Linney plays the role of crime writer Patricia Highsmith in the new stage drama “Switzerland,” by Joanna Murray-Smith, at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. The play opens Friday and runs through April 19.

Highsmith (1921-1995), a Texas-born novelist and short-story writer, was much admired in Europe and is considered part of the Existentialist tradition started by Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Kafka and Camus. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film adaptation of her novel, “Strangers on a Train,” which she published in 1950, put her career on the fast track.

In the play, Highsmith is near the end of her life and residing in the Swiss Alps. A visit from a young American man (played by Seth Numrich) sets the drama in motion.

“There’s something sort of exotic about [doing theater in Los Angeles],” Linney told the LA Times.

The Geffen Playhouse is at 10886 Le Conte Ave. in Westwood.

Also starting Friday in Westwood: The Crest Theater, in association with Emerging Pictures, will present the 20th annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema – a first-time look at some of France’s most exciting modern cinema. Rendez-Vous runs through March 19.

The Crest Theater is 1262 Westwood Blvd.

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Classic ‘Rashomon’ kicks off Kurosawa tribute at the Crest

By Mike Wilmington

Akira Kurosawa of Japan is the “sensei” (or master): a genius of filmmaking and the father of the modern action-adventure movie.

He was one of the three giants of the Japanese Cinema’s Golden Age (with Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi). He was also a devotee of American action cinema, of film noir and of American Westerns, especially the films of his friend and mentor John Ford.

Kurosawa pioneered an explosive, ingenious cinematic style of multiple camera use and rapid-fire editing that went beyond Ford and revolutionized action moviemaking, enormously influencing Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch”), Arthur Penn (“Bonnie and Clyde”), Sergio Leone (“A Fistful of Dollars,” a remake of “Yojimbo”), John Sturges (“The Magnificent Seven,” a remake of “Seven Samurai”), Don Siegel (“Dirty Harry”), Clint Eastwood (“The Outlaw Josey Wales”) and many others.

But Kurosawa’s incandescent scenes of violence do not exist in a moral void. Instead, the sensei’s films are infused with a truly adult and humane perspective on life, a mature observation of character and humanity, and a deep sense of the tragedy that faces us all.

Kurosawa has his cinematic peers: Bergman, Fellini, Renoir, Hitchcock, Welles. But he has no superiors, not even his idol John Ford. His films are, like Kurosawa himself, matchless.

You can see five of them on the big screen at the Crest Theater in Westwood during a monthlong tribute to Akira Kurosawa as a part of their salute to foreign filmmakers. The theater will screen one of Kurosawa’s samurai classics every Sunday at 5 p.m. The schedule is as follows:

Sunday, March 1: “Rashomon” – 1950 (1 hr. 28m) The legendary classic about four contradictory views of a murder: the film masterpiece that put Kurosawa, and Japanese cinema, on the international map.

Seven Samurai poster

Sunday, March 8: “The Hidden Fortress” – 1958 (2 hr. 6m) The most comical of Kurosawa’s samurai adventure epics, about a warrior who helps rescue a princess. One of the films that most inspired “Star Wars.”

Sunday, March 15: “High and Low” – 1963 (2 hr. 23m) Inspired by an American crime novel by Ed McBain, this great film noir is about a kidnapping and a businessman who will lose everything if he pays the ransom.

Sunday, March 22: “Yojimbo” – 1961 (1 hr. 50m) The great samurai film, revolving around a cynical warrior who plays both sides in a town feud against each other.

Sunday, March 29: “Seven Samurai” – 1954 (3 hr. 27m) Seven gutsy independent samurai, led by an idealistic veteran warrior, defend a village against vicious marauding bandits. One of the greatest and most exciting films ever made.

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