|
9.11.09 - 10.31.09
FOOTSTEPS AND FOG: BRITISH FILM NOIR French film scholars coined the term Film Noir to describe a particular cycle of American films dealing with dark themes (crime, betrayal, fatalism, and general post-war malaise) often imbued with a signature shadowy visual style. Though less well known, and with their own distinct sensibilities and variations, British filmmakers also made some fascinating contributions to this enigmatic genre. Our selection includes vaunted masterworks like Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), as well as rarities like the notorious No Orchids for Miss Blandish (St. John L. Clowes, 1948)–what’s more, this program provides the opportunity to see many rare archival prints which are being shipped in from the UK. Shot in locales from London to the Lake District and beyond, this program aims to shine a light on the darkness from across the pond. Saturday October 17 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
THE THIRD MAN
(1949) Directed by Carol Reed 
Graham Greene’s first screenplay unspools against the backdrop of a post WWII Vienna still under control of the Allied authorities. Joseph Cotten stars as a beleaguered pulp novelist unwittingly embroiled in a vast conspiracy. Orson Welles famously plays the amoral Harry Lime, a charismatic racketeer haunting the back alleys and underground sewers of the ruined city. Greene’s world-weary script is brilliantly enhanced by Carol Reed’s expressionistic visual style, not to mention Anton Karas’ indelible zither score. A commercial and critical success on its initial release, The Third Man is now widely recognized as a masterpiece of film noir and a high point in the history of British cinema. Based on the story by Graham Greene. Screenplay: Graham Greene. Cinematographer: Robert Krasker. Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard. 35mm, B/W, 100 min. NIGHT AND THE CITY
(1950) Directed by Jules Dassin  Richard Widmark’s trademark combination of sleazy glibness and sweaty desperation finds its ideal expression in the role of London club tout and compulsive striver Harry Fabian. Described by a rival as "an artist without an art," Fabian attempts to make his mark as a promoter in the Greco-Roman wrestling racket, a sport that takes brutality to the level of art both in and out of the ring. With its chiaroscuro cinematography and stylized portrayals of underworld characters—Francis L. Sullivan as a grotesque club owner, Googie Withers as his ambitious wife, Herbert Lom as a vicious racketeer, Polish champion wrestler Stanislaus Zbyszko as "Gregorius the Great"—the film sketches a place that is nominally London but really a realm of fevered urban imagination. The recurring image is of Fabian scrambling through dark alleys, trying and failing to get ahead of his fate—an appropriate motif for director Jules Dassin, who made the film while in exile from McCarthy-era Hollywood. —Juliet Clark, Pacific Film Archive. Twentieth Century Fox. Based on the novel by Gerald Kersh. Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck. Screenplay: Jo Eisinger. Cinematographer: Max Greene. Cast: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan. 35mm, B/W, 95 min. Sunday October 18 2009, 7:00PM* ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT
(1938) Directed by Arthur B. Woods 
Just released from prison, small-time hustler Shorty Matthews (Emlyn Williams) pays a visit to an old girlfriend–only to find her murdered in her room. Assuming the cops will finger him for the crime, he hits the road, finding refuge with long haul truckers, and later with a dance hall hostess (Konstam) and a sex crime fetishist (Ernest Thesiger, in a memorable performance). Not to be confused with the American film starring Humphrey Bogart, this British proto-noir is unapologetically gritty. "An exceptional thriller with fine feeling for locale–seedy dance halls, rain-swept highways, shabby pubs." – Elliot Stein (adapted from a note from Film Forum). ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE
(1939) Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst 
Ralph Richardson stars as Kobling, an upwardly mobile barber desperate to escape the crushing poverty of his grubby neighborhood. When his status-conscious wife racks up debts at the local department store, Kobling pays the proprietor with stolen Pounds Sterling. When the cops trace the store’s bank deposit to stolen bills, the proprietor threatens Kobling with blackmail. What begins as a petty theft soon turns to murder and a frightening witch-hunt by the townspeople. With noir-ish elements, this frank and fatalistic drama paints a nightmarish vision of working class Britain. * Please note the early start time. Friday October 23 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
New Print!
THE LONG HAUL
(1957) Directed by Ken Hughes 
Racketeering is the principal cargo in this well-tuned tale about a trucker in trouble. Victor Mature (in a role intended for Marlon Brando) plays Harry Miller, a deactivated G.I. stranded in England with his Liverpudlian wife. Harry signs on as a driver for a lorry combine only to find that mobsters rule the road. Joe Easy (Patrick Allen), the ruthless thug who runs Easy Hauling, plays it fast and loose with his freight, but not as loose as his curvaceous cohort Lynn (Diana Dors, the British Monroe). Once Harry catches sight of her, Dors becomes the soft shoulder on a road to nowhere. Though Hell Drivers emphasizes rivalry among the drivers themselves, both of these big wheelers saw the hauling biz as a shiftless world of lowballers and hijackers. Caught up in the momentum, Harry must choose between a pedestrian life with wife and child and the felonious fast lane. The Long Haul offers no rest stop for the wicked. ––Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive. Based on the novel by Mervyn Mills. Producer: Maxwell Setton. Screenwriter: Ken Hughes. Cinematographer: Basil Emmott. Editor: Raymond Poulton. Cast: Victor Mature, Diana Dors, Gene Anderson. 35mm, B/W, 88 min. HELL DRIVERS
(1957) Directed by Cy Endfield 
Cy Endfield, another of this series’ refugees from the Hollywood blacklist, delivers a raw critique of capitalist exploitation in the form of a full-throttle thriller. Stanley Baker plays an ex-con who drifts into a job hauling gravel for Hawlett’s, a trucking company where only the desperate need apply. Spurred on by openly ruthless management, marginal men—including pious, naive "Italian" Herbert Lom and a young Sean Connery—vie to beat the pace set by the unhinged Irishman at the wheel of truck Number 1: Patrick McGoohan, before he was The Prisoner’s Number 6. There’s plenty of action in the rattle and roar of trucks careening along country roads, but the film’s suspense comes from social pressures rather than speed as the rivalry between Baker and McGoohan becomes increasingly explosive. The ultimate use of all those rocks is never mentioned; hauling endless tons of cargo in a race none of them can ever really win, the drivers are embodiments of labor as a road to nowhere. —Juliet Clark, Pacific Film Archive. Saturday October 24 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
THE CLOUDED YELLOW
(1951) Directed by Ralph Thomas 
When British secret service agent (Trevor Howard) gets the axe, he finds a job cataloging butterflies for an eccentric family, the Fentons, on a remote English estate. But this seemingly benign business is fraught with danger once he falls for his boss’s niece Sophie (Jean Simmons), a troubled young woman who is accused of murdering a local farmhand. Determined to prove her innocence before the cops can arrest her, the pair embark on a thrilling chase across Britain’s Lake District. With echoes of both Gaslight and Hitchcock, The Clouded Yellow is a thoroughly entertaining thriller. Based on the story by J. Green. Producer: Betty E. Box. Screenplay: Janet Green. Cinematographer: Geoffrey Unsworth. Editor: Gordon Hales. Cast: Trevor Howard, Jean Simmons, Sonia Dresdel, Barry Jones. 35mm, B/W, 95 min. THE OCTOBER MAN
(1947) Directed by Roy Ward Baker 
"I couldn’t have done it . . . could I?" In a twist on the wrong-man theme, this hybrid of playful murder mystery and psychological melodrama stars John Mills as an innocent man whose own self-doubt makes him a suspect. After a bus accident kills a child in his care and leaves him with a fractured skull and troubled mind, Mills seeks refuge in a small hotel whose very proper residents greet him with a mixture of curiosity and condescension. When an attractive lodger goes out to post a letter and doesn’t return, the neighbors, the police, and Mills himself all begin to wonder whether he might be responsible. Erwin Hillier’s cinematography shrouds the action in an atmosphere of misty, pervasive melancholia, and Mills brings an otherworldly, fretful presence to Eric Ambler’s alternately sardonic and empathetic scenario, which hints at the struggles of men shattered not by accident but by the recent war. —Juliet Clark, Pacific Film Archive. Based on the novel by E. Ambler. Producer: Eric Ambler. Screenplay: Eric Ambler. Cinematographer: Erwin Hillier. Cast: John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman. 35mm, B/W, 110 min. Monday October 26 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH
(1948) Directed by St. John L. Clowes 
"It has all the morals of an alley cat and the sweetness of a sewer!" blared a contemporary review of this controversial 1948 noir. No Orchids bubbled forth from the depths of British Poverty Row studio Renown to shock the English nation with its casual brutality (multiple murders in cold blood in the opening reel, another killing involving a grandfatherly innocent bystander) and leering perversion ("I don’t have ta drink ta want you," opines one ruthless Romeo). The film concerns a hard-partying society dame who falls for her vicious kidnapper, a crime syndicate overlord. Simultaneously revolting and revolutionary, its Z-grade budget, inexpressive cast, and total disregard for bourgeois sensibility make No Orchids play like some unholy alliance of Ed Wood and Georges Bataille, a Poverty Row Grand Guignol. Monthly Film Bulletin declared it "the most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen"—in other words, unmissable. —Jason Sanders, Pacific Film Archive.Based on the novel by James Hadley Chase. Producer: George Minter. Screenplay: St. John L. Clowes. Cinematographer: Gerald Gibbs. Cast: Jack La Rue, Linden Travers, Hugh McDermott. 35mm, B/W, 102 min. NOOSE
(a.k.a. The Silk Noose)
(1948) Directed by Edmond T. Greville 
"We don’t have any gangsters here," claims a London newspaper editor to his hot-to-trot reporter from Chicago at the beginning of this energetic programmer, a fascinating combination of American noir aesthetics with British slang, style, and location. Yankee fashion hound Linda Medbury (Carole Landis, who died tragically after the film was made) quickly proves her boss wrong, uncovering a ruthless London crime ring led by the fast-talking Bar Gorman and the slick Sugiani, neither of whom will stop at killing women to keep their empire going. Fortunately Linda’s got her British hubby on her side, an ex-commando who’s organized a gang of his own (complete with Chelsea jerseys) to help smash the syndicate. A John Alton–esque sense of light and shadow, as well as director Edmond Greville’s impressive visual flourishes, provide a flair that’s pure Hollywood noir, but the zippy insults, class concerns, and seedy postwar settings are as British as they come. —Jason Sanders, Pacific Film Archive. |