Siskelfilmcenter.org Website Review

A nine-film series devoted to the great Italian director who combined visual splendor with vivid characterizations and a tragic sense of The groundbreaking best of British theater, straight from the London stage. Becker saw like no other filmmaker. He created entire worlds from the smallest details.--Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice From January 4 to 31, the Gene Siskel Film Center, in collaboration with the Institut Français and the Cultural Services of the French Embas*y, presents ten films by Jacques Becker, an important yet neglected director whose career forms a bridge between French cinema’s Golden Age of the 1930s and its New Wave of the 1960s. From January 4 through 31, the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates the art of the docu*entary in a special way with the series Stranger Than Fiction: Docu*entary Premieres. Identity in its many meanings and permutations is the theme that weaves through seven features and two shorts, as the subjects of these films explore what it means to be true to themselves, true to their values, and true to their dreams. Something for the ages...at once illuminating and confounding, heady but playful. It is also seldom less than entertaining.--J. Hoberman, For fans of Marker's thoughtful, introspective film-essays, it's largesse--THE OWL'S LEGACY is his purest self.--Danielle Burgos,