LAST-MINUTE PLANS: Orpheus At The Logan Square International Film Series

By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on May 9, 2012 7:20PM

This Sunday's bike-in screening at The Hideout is a harbinger of one of the greatest thing about the warmer months in Chicago: Outdoor film screenings. The summer schedule for outdoor cinema tends to pick up in June and hit full stride for July and August, but one of our favorite incarnations is getting the ball rolling even earlier this year.

The Logan Square International Film Series begins a string of Wednesday night screenings of classic movies at Comfort Station beginning tonight with Jean Cocteau's ineffable Orpheus. This rendition of the Greek myth, in which the musician Orpheus must descend into the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice, was set in contemporary (i.e. late 1940s) Paris. Like the other chapters of the director's Orphic Trilogy, this is vividly realized and imaginatively constructed, with dreamlike reverberations lingering long after the final frame. Once you travel through Cocteau's mirrored portal, you're never quite the same.

The series will continue with Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville on May 16, Blade Runner on May 23 and a unrevealed title to be determined by a contest on May 30. If it sounds like some sort of trap to attract hardcore cinephiles across Chicago into one place using the titles that most of them can't resist watching over and over again, that is no accident. The film series began in programmer Peter Kaplan's living room as a neighborhood movie night, and now enters a second year in a more accommodating public setting. Comfort Station, the little Tudor Inn seemingly dropped into Logan boulevard and rescued from a life as a lawn-mower shed serves as the new home base.

There's no ticket price, with only donations allowed. You are asked to make a free reservation online if you plan to go. Bring chairs or blankets.

Orpheus plays tonight at 8 p.m. at Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee.