Before he screamed “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!,” mugged as The Joker, and co-starred with Adam Sandler in Anger Management, Jack Nicholson made a reputation as an actor of fierce control and subtlety.

After spending a decade in the exploitation trenches with grindhouse compatriots Roger Corman and Monte Hellman, Nicholsonmade a sudden jump to stardom playing washed-up ACLU lawyer George Hanson in Easy Rider at the age of 32. The role set the pattern for the next glorious decade: with an Old Hollywood sense of star power and a scruffy, definitely R-rated attitude, Nicholson straddled generations.

Five Easy Pieces, 1970.

The hippies saw a genteel but like-minded rebel; their parents found a rough-edged, neurotic link to earlier Method luminaries like Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. Nicholson’s work with some of the foremost New Hollywood directors (Bob Rafelson, Roman Polanski, Hal Ashby) speaks for itself and stands capably for the strengths of the era. Nicholson and the films he made were ferociously adult — angry, righteous, ultimately mellowing out. Our sampling of Nicholson’s ’70s best— Five Easy Pieces, The Fortune, The King of Marvin Gardens, Chinatown, and  The Passenger— documents a radiant personality breaking and re-making the rules of acting.

The King of Marvin Gardens, 1972.

Chinatown, 1974.

For many in attendance, the highlight of last year’s Cannes Film Festival wasn’t Terrence Malick’s grand and ambitious The Tree of Life, but Aki Kaurismäki’s low-key, unassuming Le Havre. Inarguably Finland’s best-known filmmaker — his only close competition is his brother, Mika — Kaurismäki belongs to an elite group of directors able to combine a distinct cinematic vision with a deep, humanist generosity toward their characters. Think Renoir, Ozu, or Keaton, three of the director’s influences: like Renoir, Kaurismäki’s concern for the people who populate his films is rooted in a keen awareness of class; like Ozu, he delights in static compositions splashed with primary colors; and like Keaton, his heroes are stoic and his humor deadpan. As Roger Ebert has noted, Kaurismäki “has created a world all his own, and you can recognize it from almost every shot.”

Scene from LE HAVRE, 2011.

That’s particularly true of his latest effort, a wry comedy that finds a Tatiesque community in the port city of Le Havre, France, sheltering a young Gabonese immigrant from the authorities as they try to reunite him with his mother. Even though it deals with a serious issue, the film is relentlessly funny and optimistic, a fable for our times that delights in the power of working-class solidarity and basic human kindness. It’s also gorgeous: a sworn devotee of 35mm, Kaurismäki uses the run-down, seaside beauty of the location to its full advantage, creating frames full of aquatic blues and greens and reminding us that, in his words, “film is light, digital is electricity.” We’re very excited to be hosting an exclusive three-day run of this wonderful film, and to celebrate, we’ll also be screening three other Kaurismäki classics: the Oscar®-nominated The Man Without a Past (Jan. 17), the blackly comic The Match Factory Girl (Jan. 24), and the unique literary “adaptation” La Vie de Bohème (Jan. 31) — one of whose characters returns as the protagonist of Le Havre!