The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, August 12-18
It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Directed by Stanley Kramer
Boy, Kramer must have been craving a comedy for some time. A break in a run of moralistic “message films,” Mad World is a cathartic burst of rib-damaging mania. The premise, simple: an expanding caravan of everyday folk hotly pursue a treasure buried under a “big W.” The consequences… well, we’re just lucky Southern California is still with us. Does it have a statement to make about greed, about what a suitcase of cash can cause in a person? Sure, but that’s beside the point. The endless whirlwind of slapdash and one-liners, with a gauntlet of comedy all-stars (from Milton Berle to Buster Keaton to Jerry Lewis) to match, never settles in its two-and-a-half hours. Appropriately presented in gargantuan 70mm. Max Kyburz (August 15, 16, 2pm at the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big! 70mm”)
