British director Stephen Frears made his international reputation with a series of relatively low-budget, richly textured films made in his home country, including “My Beautiful Laundrette,” “Prick up Your Ears” and “Sammy and Ros
The American Museum of the Moving Image will present a six-film retrospective, Stephen Frears’s England, that includes such early works as “Gumshoe” (a comical homage to film noir starring Albert Finney), “Bloody Kids” (a rarely-screened teen drama from 1979) and concludes with a preview screening of “Dirty Pretty Things” and a Pinewood Dialogue with Frears, moderated by David Schwartz, the museum’s chief curator of film.
“To me, Frears is at his best with this kind of urban drama,” said Schwartz. “His films have this life-spilling-off-the-screen quality. He has a feeling for the complexity and messiness and the gritty poetry of urban life. All the films in this series have that, and ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ is a return to that atmosphere.”
Saturday, July 5
2 p.m.
Gumshoe
Columbia, 1971, 88 mins. With Albert Finney. Finney produced and starred in Frears’s feature debut, playing a Liverpool bingo caller who fancies himself a Bogart-style detective. As with “The Grifters,” Frears spoofs film noir while crafting a complex thriller.
4 p.m.
My Beautiful Laundrette
Orion Classics, 1985, 93 mins. With Daniel Day-Lewis. Frears made his international reputation with this richly textured direction of novelist Hanif Kureishi’s portrait of immigrant life and gay romance in Thatcher-era England.
Sunday, July 6
2 p.m.
Bloody Kids
U.K., 1979, 91 mins. In this high-octane, anarchic youth film, two teens go on a Saturday-night spree that includes girls, booze, and murder. Deemed too violent for theaters, the film was shown on TV.
4 p.m.
My Beautiful Laundrette
See Saturday, July 5, 4 p.m.
Saturday, July 12
2 p.m.
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
Cinecom, 1987, 97 mins. With Frances Barber, Ayub Khan Din. Written by Hanif Kureishi. In this sprawling multi-cultural anti-Thatcher comedy, a middle-class liberal couple engages in open adultery while social upheaval roils around them.
4 p.m.
Prick Up Your Ears
Samuel Goldwyn, 1987, 110 mins. With Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave. Oldman is astonishing as the openly gay playwright Joe Orton in Frears’s comic and disturbing adaptation of the John Lahr biography.
Sunday, July 13
2 p.m.
Bloody Kids
See Sunday, July 6, 2 p.m.
4 p.m.
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
See Saturday, July 12, 2 p.m.
Monday, July 14
7 p.m. Preview Screening and Pinewood Dialogue with Stephen Frears
Dirty Pretty Things
Miramax, 2003, 94 mins. With Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo. Returning to the milieu of his London films of the 1980s, Frears is “at the top of his form” (Variety) in this romantic drama/thriller set in London’s immigrant underworld. After the screening, Frears will discuss his career in a discussion moderated by David Schwartz, chief curator of film. Tickets: $12 public/$8 members. 718-784-4520. At the AMC Empire 25, 234 West 42nd St., Manhattan.
For more information call 718-784-0077 or go to www.movingimage.us.
