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Saturday, Oct 24, 2009
8:30 pm
The Legend of the Holy Drinker
Working with major international stars (Rutger Hauer, Anthony Quayle, Sandrine Dumas) and far away from his usual Italian base, Olmi paradoxically created possibly his quietest, most tender film to date, a portrait of an alcoholic that's a mixture of fever dream, religious reverie, and magic realism. Staggering through Paris, a homeless drunkard (Hauer, in one of his best performances) encounters a mysterious stranger who gives him 200 francs, with the only catch that he must return the money at some point to a church dedicated to St. Theresa. Suddenly flush with funds, the drunkard dedicates himself to the job of re-entering respectable life (complete with a newspaper, new wallet, and new suit), but the miseries of his past, whether in the form of ghostly visions or all-too-real acquaintances, call him away from salvation and back towards the gutter. Olmi refuses both religious metaphors and socio-political grandstanding, instead finding resonance and lyricism in Hauer's frayed shirt collar and trembling, dirtied hands.
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