Throughout the month of August, the Museum of Modern Art will screen three landmark films as part of their Auteurist History of Film, which in the past has included titles like Jaws, Annie Hall and Barry Lyndon. This month, MoMA Film centers its attention on works by Terrence Malick, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, perhaps the three most important American filmmakers of the 1970's. All films at MoMA are screened in 35mm, which makes them a must for serious cinephiles.

Days of Heaven (1978) Directed by Terrence Malick. Malick’s second feature is set in 1916, a time when Americans from across the country rode the rails looking for work. Filled with farms scenes, good old-timey music, locomotives, and maybe the best ever shots of early twentieth century farm machinery in operation, this film is an immaculate depiction of this bygone era. Lovers Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams), along with the young Linda (Linda Manz) are poor folks that flee from a troubled past in Chicago; they end up working as farm laborers in Texas. When a scheme to seduce their boss for his money goes wrong, Bill and Abby are split up, but tensions rise to an eventual breaking point. Problems in the editing room caused such frustrations, that after the film was delivered late, Malick disappeared for years, reappearing finally with The Thin Red Line in 1998.

Showing August 6, 7, 8 at 1:30pm.

Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001)- Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning…Smells like, victory.” The now famous words uttered by Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) after four fighter jets douse a portion of Vietnamese jungle. This film has an arsenal of great lines delivered by the all-star cast including Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, and Dennis Hopper among others. Combat scenes made with spectacular effects, featuring everything from jets to wooden spears, this amazing film making. Underneath all the technical brilliance, Coppola’s film is truly a psychological mind-bender. Always setting the stage with music, tribal drums, lone electric guitars, carnival sounds—the soundtrack matched with the scenes is so unnatural that it sets a totally surreal tone. Investigating the chaos and absurdity of the campaign in Vietnam we see variations on the breaking point of different men, while watching good and evil battle each other, never knowing which is which, in the most important movie ever made about Vietnam,

Showing August 13, 14, 15 at 1:00pm.

Raging Bull (1980) Directed by Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro plays Jack La Motta, a prizefighter with a self-destructive personality. La Motta has it all, a gorgeous wife, the championship belt, a great best friend but it’s not enough. He thinks the world owes him something, and with his obsessive paranoia, he eventually comes undone. This film’s gritty style of storytelling, particularly the back-and-forth wise guy dialogue, has become somewhat of trademark of Martin Scorsese, most notable in his later picture Goodfellas (1990). De Niro had a large part in the film’s script development, and it is said that De Niro was responsible for discovering and casting Joe Pesci as Joey, Pesci’s first major role. De Niro himself under went drastic physical changes to play La Motta, eventually earning himself the Oscar for Best Actor. Roger Ebert lists Raging Bull as one of the top ten best films ever made (along with Apocalypse Now), as does the American Film Institute.

Showing August 20, 21, 22 at 1:30pm.

 Have you seen all of these on the big screen?