The sudden, unexpected closing of New Yorker Films on Monday, February 23^rd sent shock waves through the film community and still has me reeling. It doesn’t seem possible that this distributor, which has been in operation for 43 years and was founded by Dan Talbot in 1965, can be out of business overnight. But the reality is slowing sinking in along with mixed emotions of sadness and anger. Where are the Spielbergs, Lucases and Cruises of the film industry who profess to love the films of Kurosawa, Bertolucci and the French New Wave and other major film movements that New Yorker Films has always represented? Why haven’t any of them stepped forward to ask what they can do? Maybe they have and it’s more complicated than that. One thing is certain; this is going to have a terrible impact on international film distribution in this country. But venting is useless at this point. Instead I want to express my deep admiration and appreciation for Dan and his company and the wonderful film education he provided me.        

As someone who first became aware in the late sixties and early seventies that film was much more than just an entertainment medium, New Yorker and Janus Films were my portel into other worlds, offering me fresh points of view and a back door entry into cultures and countries I knew little about. Janus Films (founded in 1956) is now owned by Jonathan Turrell and Peter Becker, who also own the Criterion Collection – and thank god for them – but with the demise of New Yorker Films, the number of independent film distributors continues to shrink. They’re an endangered species and we need to support the ones that are still struggling to survive in these financially strapped times – Facets Multimedia, Kino, Zeitgeist Films, Milestone Films, Flicker Alley and many more.   

Yet the void left by New Yorker Films is huge for this is the distributor who offered us the richest, most eye-opening smorgasbord of world cinema year after year, always cherry picking the most visionary, imaginative and influential artists who were currently working in the medium around the globe – Robert Bresson,  Yasujiro Ozu, R.W. Fassbinder, Bernardo Bertolucci, Peter Watkins, Alain Resnais…the list is endless.  Thanks to them I was able to sample amazing work from the German New Wave of the seventies – my first exposure to Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Fassbinder and actors such as Klaus Kinski and Hanna Schygulla. In fact, the seventies was a time when many new film movements were born and flourished in such countries as Australia, Switzerland, Senegal, Brazil, Hungary and Japan; New Yorker Films was there to introduce us to the best of the breed.     

In no particular order, here are some of the New Yorker Films that helped change the way I looked at movies and thought about them.  

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (French title: Ascenseur pour l’echafaud, aka Frantic [1958])

This may well have been the first New Yorker Film release I ever saw. It was during my high school years and I was struck immediately by its visual elegance and nervous energy. Although I didn’t yet know the term “film noir,” this Louis Malle thriller with its tale of a robbery-murder gone terribly awry, presented me with an inspired example of the form while also employing some of the techniques of the emerging French New Wave – shooting in the streets, the use of natural sound, an editing style that matched the rising apprehension and anxiety of the two ill-fated lovers (the mesmerizing Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet). The evocative score by Miles Davis was also responsible for introducing me to his music and sent me off on a search for more French soundtracks featuring jazz artists.

JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY (1960)

Speaking of jazz, it’s hard to think of a more joyous and exhilarating musical snapshot of the Newport Jazz Festival circa 1958 than this remarkable record with its who’s who of jazz legends captured on film for posterity – Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington, Jack Teagarden, Gerry Mulligan. Blues, gospel and R&B artists were featured too such as Big Maybelle, Mahalia Jackson and Chuck Berry but one of the undeniable highpoints was Anita O’Day’s scene-stealing entrance as she stepped over muddy ground in her glass slippers to reach the stage and brilliantly scat her way through “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Tea for Two.” The seemingly simplistic approach of the cinematographers (Bert Stern, Courtney Hesfela, Raymond Phelan) allowed all of the featured musicians to “create” their own atmosphere and screen presence without any pretentious razzle-dazzle to distract from the music. A model concert film that truly captures a time and place in music history.      

HELEN, QUEEN OF THE NAUTCH GIRLS (1973)

This documentary short, directed by Anthony Korner and written by James Ivory, is a 31 minute portrait of the famous Helen (aka Helen Khan & Helen Jairag), one of the most popular singing and dancing stars of Indian cinema and my first exposure to Bollywood. Film clips from some of Helen’s movies (she made almost 300 of them!) are wildly eclectic in style and presentation, a fusion of Western pop culture and Eastern exotica. I tried for years to see some of her movies, an impossible feat for someone living in Athens, Ga. before the VHS explosion of the mid-eighties. Although she has a minor role in James Ivory’s Bombay Talkie, Helen is a force of nature to be reckoned with in such delightfully over the top films as Gumnaam (1965), a Bollywood take on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (one of the film’s best musical numbers was sampled in the beginning of Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World in 2001),  and Jewel Thief (1967), a James Bond/spy thriller imitation with insanely irresistible musical numbers. By the way, HELEN, QUEEN OF NAUTCH GIRLS is available as an extra on the DVD of Bombay Talkie.    

PARTNER (1968)

There is more imagination and excitement bursting forth in every frame of this experimental version of Dostoyevsky’s The Double than probably any other film made in 1968 though it probably looks like a relic from another planet at this point in time. The mixture of radical politics and Freudian psychology was Bernardo Bertolucci’s reaction to the social unrest and student riots of the sixties in Europe and the director’s refusal to follow a conventional narrative is as refreshing as it is bewildering and eventually exhausting. Pierre Clémenti, like Klaus Kinski, has one of those unique screen presences that many directors have exploited to great effect – Luis Bunuel in Belle de Jour (1967), Pier Paolo Pasolini in Porcile (1969), Dusan Makavejev in Sweet Movie (1974).     

POINT OF ORDER (1964)

Emile de Antonio’s documentary, edited down from 188 hours of television footage from the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, depicts the Republican Senator from Wisconsin as the paranoid demagogue he became during his climb to power. Using fear of the communist threat as his weapon, he destroyed countless lives and careers before he came apart in this historic trial which makes for riveting real-life drama. Produced by de Antonio and New Yorker’s Dan Talbot, POINT OF ORDER was a new type of documentary for its time – one which made its editorial and political case from existing footage (with no new material shot), letting the principal players reveal their true selves and, in McCarthy’s case, the mask was removed, revealing a sick pathetic man underneath. While detractors of de Antonio would criticize him for manipulating and reassembling footage to express his radical views, that was the beauty of it and it would lead to even more controversial work such as In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Millhouse: A White Comedy (1971).      

AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD (1972)

Like Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Werner Herzog’s hallucinatory epic is also a journey into the unknown and eventual madness. This was the first time I had seen Klaus Kinski in a major role (his bit parts in Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Circus of Fear (1966) showed little indication of his eccentric genius) and he inhabited the role of Lope de Aguirre so completely that the movie often had the immediacy of a documentary, charting the Spanish explorer’s slow descent into dementia as his obsession with finding the mythical El Dorado takes him and his expedition deeper and deeper into the jungle. The last shot of Kinski alone on a raft surrounded by corpses and chattering monkeys as he drifts into oblivion is hard to forget.     

XALA (1975)

A wickedly funny and caustic satire, XALA tells the story of an arrogant, corrupt businessman who suddenly finds himself impotent after a curse is placed on him. As he searches desperately for a cure, he undergoes a series of humiliating procedures that results in his final degradation as the recipient of a group spitting ritual. Senegal filmmaker Ousmane Sembene’s intention was to present a metaphoric critique of the nouveau power elite in contemporary Senegal and the movie was heavily censored in its own country as a result. Yet XALA offers an insider view to Americans of a culture rarely glimpsed and is much more accessible than you’d expect.     

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973)

Jean Eustache’s epic, 215 minute psychological/sexual drama is a one-of-a-kind film that captures the Parisian Left Bank in the early seventies in its portrait of a triangle, composed of Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), Marie (Bernadette Lafont) and Veronika (Francois Lebrun). Unlike most films which are plot driven, Eustache prefers the art of conversation and there is a confessional tone to his film which establishes an intimacy between the audience and his trio, despite their often alienating behavior and laughable self-absorption. If it sounds like a talkathon in the manner of an Eric Rohmer film, it is rarely dull and yields considerable pleasure as the viewer is able to see the characters’ weaknesses and strengths much clearer than they can themselves.    

DON GIOVANNI (1979)

Joseph Losey’s criminally overlooked film version of the Mozart opera is a treat for the eyes and ears and an excellent introduction to the form for opera novices. And I have a special fondness for it, having visited and seen many of the locations where it was filmed in Venice and Vicenza, Italy.      

THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977)

This was actually the first film I saw from the emerging German New Wave cinema of the seventies and it was a strange, disorienting experience. A distinctly European take on Hollywood film noir, Wim Wender’s movie often seem more concerned with style, tone and atmosphere than story. And Dennis Hopper’s bizarre, drugged-out gangster actually works well as a contrast against Bruno Ganz’s depressed, cerebral picture framer. The supporting cast was of particular interest since many of them were played by directors (some peers, some mentors of Wender’s  – Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Peter Lilienthal, Daniel Schmid, Jean Eustache, and Gerald Blain).     

GATES OF HEAVEN (1978)

Errol Morris’s first documentary is the one that established him as a filmmaker with a unique and original take on American society and subject manner –  and it still holds up well today. Set in California, Morris’s film focuses on what happens when property containing a pet cemetery is sold for a housing development and the graveyard “occupants” have to be transferred to another location. It turns out to be a traumatic experience for both the pet owners and the mortuary staff and Morris presents it as a portrait of alienation and despair, filmed in a style that suggests the paintings of Edward Hopper at times.    

EDVARD MUNCH (1974)

Easily one of the most innovative examples of how to make a historical film that feels contemporary and relevant, this portrait of the Norwegian symbolist painter by Peter Watkins has a distinct “you are there” quality that captures the spirit of the obsessive artist best known for his works, “The Scream” and “The Vampire.”

There are too many more New Yorker Films to name that have stimulated and challenged and entertained me over the years. The question now is what will happen to them? Will the New Yorker Film library be sold or will it be locked up in litigation for years? Will it end up like Ingmar Bergman’s film library which is now owned by some businessman in Colorado who was granted the rights in a lawsuit? Whatever the outcome, I salute Dan, his staff and New Yorker Films for a long and worthy run and am grateful I was able to benefit from the fruits of his tireless labor.