Black Christmas/The Godfather Parts I And II

[December 17th, 2008]

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. Nice work if you can get it, kid. Me, I’ll take a gun and an out-of-town job and a dame to louse it all up. Even at Christmas. Especially at Christmas. It’s like the second-person narrator snarls at the opening of Blast of Silence: “When the Better Business Bureau rings the Christmas bell, the suckers forget there’s such a business as murder, and businessmen who make it their exclusive line. Like you. Baby Boy Frankie Bono, out of Cleveland.”

The NW Film Center didn’t forget. Beneath the branches of its two-week film noir series Black Christmas, the most impressively grimy gift is Blast of Silence (9 pm Friday, Dec. 19). The 1961 mob picture, with that accusatory narration by blacklisted writer Waldo Salt, exists in a New York City so casually sordid that when the hero sexually assaults an old flame, he’s still invited to stay for coffee. Director Allen Baron—an unknown then, an unknown now—cast himself as Frankie, the hired killer who trails a mid-level Mafia boss to his suburban home and his Harlem mistress; watching Blast is like seeing the last episode of The Sopranos through the eyes of the guy sent to whack Tony.

The rest of the series is more familiar, though no less acidic: William Holden, cravenly accepting the role of waxwork Gloria Swanson’s kept man in Sunset Boulevard (6 pm Friday, Dec. 19); cinema’s most frightening premeditated murder in the tunnel-of-love sequence midway through Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (7 pm Saturday, Dec. 20); and Sterling Hayden, Hollywood’s most underrated tough guy, all brickheaded cool in The Asphalt Jungle (7 pm Sunday, Dec. 21).

Across the dirty river at the Hollywood Theatre, Hayden is back—shot in the neck and forehead, crashing forward into his plate of veal Parmesan—in The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather films have been restored as pristine 35 mm prints (Part I screens at 7 pm Monday, Dec. 22 and Wednesday, Dec. 24; Part II screens at 7 pm Tuesday, Dec. 23 and Thursday, Dec. 25)—what else do I need to tell you? This Christmas, you have two entertainment options. You can drink eggnog with your children, singing carols around the yule log. Or you can act like a man!