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AUGUST 23
It’s only recently that European theorists like Jean Baudrillard and the Clash have begun to discuss the “drama of consumption” and feeling “lost in supermarket.” Hollywood, however, has been making a field of dreams out of the humble department store at least since Miracle on 34th Street (the first one, that is). In 1951’s I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Susan Hayward stars as a fledgling fashion designer who must decide whether or not to sell out to a big department store. (Oddly enough, teenage Edythe Marrener had studied fashion design at a Brooklyn vocational high school before moving to Hollywood and changing her name to Susan Hayward.) Made by German director Percy Adlon four decades later, Rosalie Goes Shopping (pictured) is much more arch: Rosalie (the blithely corpulent Marianne Sagebracht) is a German woman married to an Arkansas crop duster and addicted to shopping. Her fraudulent antics are apparently supposed to be an examination of American consumerism, but Adlon is better at candy-colored decor than critiques of capitalism. At 12:30 p.m. at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. FREE. (202) 272-2448. (Mark Jenkins)