Also this issue: Back in Black Screenwriter Walter Bernstein sees a return to an “attempted blacklist.” -Sam Adams The Devil You Don't Daredevil is anything but a good time. -Sam Adams The Hard Cell Lockdown has prison grit, and some fine touches. -Cindy Fuchs New Continuing Repertory Film Showtimes

February 13-19, 2003

screen picks

by Sam Adams

Last of the Mississippi Jukes (premieres Sun., Feb. 16, 8 p.m., Black Starz!) When we last checked in with Robert Mugge, the acclaimed music documentarian who makes his home in Secane, he was preparing a flimic survey of Mississippi juke joints, and just over three years later, here it is, with one significant shift in emphasis. Instead of trying to cover the waterfront, Last of the Mississippi Jukes centers in on a single establishment, the Subway Lounge. Located in Jackson¹s crumbling Summers Hotel, once the only establishment in town that would lodge non-whites (their ledgers bear the signatures of four freedom riders, as well as Mrs. James Brown), the Subway is, as Mugge puts it, "just a run-down, dilapidated place, and cramped. People were drinking beer out of cans sitting in plastic buckets full of ice, and these remarkable musicians were performing, whites and blacks sitting side by side, loving this music together. The place was so full of warmth and acceptance, I really felt like I was home. This was musical heaven for me."

Mugge, whose lengthy filmography includes portraits of Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins and Gil Scott-Heron, as well as regional overviews of bluegrass and blues, knows the genuine article when he sees, or, more accurately, feels it. Jukes (which will be released on DVD March 18) doesn¹t skimp on performance footage, and though the onstage cast at the Subway features few recognizable faces, it hardly matters; Vasti Jackson, the King Edward Blues Band and Patrice Moncell may not be household names, but they¹ve got the blues but good. (Alvin Youngblood Hart and O Brother¹s Chris Thomas King make ringer appearances, the latter at the ersatz juke joint Morgan Freeman opened in his home town of Clarksdale.)

Like the form of music it¹s housed for so long, the Subway has fallen on hard times. The town sought to demolish the hotel and the Subway with it, but a campaign has sprung up to raise the money to save it. And the blues? "I thought this is a tradition that¹s on its last legs," says Mugge. "I saw it as sort of a seismic shift in the culture, that this tradition that had been so important was about to die off in the land where it was born. But the blues is alive and kicking."

Muhammad Ali The Greatest (Sat., Feb. 15, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) William Klein¹s documentary opens in a burst of light and flash, but most of the action that follows comes from his constantly mobile camera and caffeinated editing. Ali the boxer doesn¹t seem to interest Klein -- an American expatriate who¹s lived in France since the liberation -- nearly so much as Ali the rebel, Ali the trash-talking poet, Ali the emblem of black masculinity, Ali as a force of nature who willed himself into being. The Greatest follows its whiz-bang opening with a quick look at the men who call themselves Cassius Clay¹s "owners," the syndicate of Louisville businessmen who gave him his first backing. Their words serve not only to expose their parochial racism -- one accuses Clay of not being "grateful" enough, while another muses that since his mother¹s maiden name is Clay, her family probably once owned Clay¹s -- but to mock the idea that anyone created the man who would become Muhammad Ali.

Split evenly between black and white footage of Ali¹s earliest title bouts in 1964, and color footage of the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" where Ali recovered his title (it was stripped after he publicly defied the Vietnam draft), Klein¹s film spends as much time on Ali¹s surroundings as on the man himself. In 1964, he pans the camera along a line of tellers at a racing track, each yelling out his pick for the fight -- a lucky thing they¹re cashiers and not betting men, since Liston is their overwhelming favorite. The shot recurs in 1974 Zaire, but the money the tellers are handling represents not small-time wagers but the much-needed cash the bout has brought into the nation (and the hands of its then-dictator). The lack of fight footage, probably due to financial considerations, becomes distracting over the long haul, though Klein does his best to animate still photos of the various bouts. (The Greatest can¹t touch When We Were Kings on Ali¹s contribution to the sweet science.) But particularly in its first half, The Greatest offers an unparalleled look at Ali out of the ring, if not with his guard down.

The Tramp and the Dictator (Mon., Feb 17, 7:30 p.m., $7, Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St., 215-446-3033) Kevin Brownlow and Michael Kloft¹s documentary digs itself into a hole early on, one it takes them a long time to get out of. Focusing on The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin¹s comic attack on Adolf Hitler, Tramp zeroes in on the parallels between the two men, but although the two were born only days apart, the film twists itself in knots trying to turn a historical coincidence into a conflict that was destined from birth. "Chaplin rose to prominence as The Tramp," the narrator intones, "while only a few years later, Hitler was a tramp." They dig that far and still don¹t mention the moustache?

Tramp, an hourlong documentary already seen on Turner Classic Movies, contains many noteworthy tidbits, like the fact that Chaplin "considered Hitler one of the greatest actors he had ever seen," or that Chaplin was misidentified as a Jew in the notorious Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew. But it suffers from a tendency to fawn over Chaplin ("One man dared to stand against Hitler." Really, one?) and the implication that The Great Dictator is an unqualified masterpiece. (Many consider it so, but just as many think it hopelessly naïve and insufficient, Chaplin¹s grasp on the sound film being nothing like his grasp on the silent.) There¹s no question Chaplin took enormous risks producing the film, but it¹s insulting to his artistry to regard it any less closely than his others.

Hidden Fortress/Throne of Blood (Sat.-Tue., Feb. 15-18, $8.50, Prince Music Theater) At long last, the answer to the question, "When will the Prince get back to showing samurai movies?" After confusing Mifune fans with such katana-impaired masterpieces as High and Low and Red Beard, the Akira-Toshirô show gets down to cases with offerings heavy and light. As with many of Kurosawa¹s movies, you¹ve seen The Hidden Fortress (Sat., 9:30 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; Tue., 7 p.m.) even if you haven¹t. If the story of two bumbling peasants who aid a white-haired general in spiriting an endangered princess through enemy territory seems at all familiar, it¹s because George Lucas openly swiped the story for Star Wars. And if the story in Throne of Blood (Sat. and Sun., 7 p.m.) seems familiar -- a power-hungry warlord is egged on by his even-power-hungrier wife -- that¹s because it¹s Macbeth. With six films down and four to go, we¹re over the hump. Don¹t slack off now.