2012 Summer - Film Noir Series
Come beat the heat with some chilling "film noir"!
Films will screen at The Depot, 246 South Nash Street, Hillsborough at 5:00 pm
Admission is free - donations to the Hillsborough Arts Council and the Orange County Cultural Center will be gratefully accepted.
Sunday, July 15
'Scarlett Street' starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea
Sunday, August 12th
Sunday, September 16th
'Detour', directed by Edward G. Ulmer
Sunday, September 16th
'Detour',
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Starring: Tom Neal and Ann Savage
Year: 1945
“As I drove off, it was still raining and the drops streaked down the windshield like tears. “
Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour begins when hitchhiker Al Roberts (Tom Neal) accepts a ride from affable gambler Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald). When Haskell suffers a fatal heart attack, Roberts, afraid that he'll be accused of murder, disposes of the body, takes the man's clothes and wallet, and begins driving the car himself. He picks up beautiful but sullen Vera (Ann Savage), who suddenly breaks the silence by asking, "What did you do with the body?" It turns out that Vera had earlier accepted a ride from Haskell and has immediately spotted Roberts as a ringer. Holding the threat of summoning the police over his head, Vera forces Roberts to continue his pose so that he can collect a legacy from Haskell's millionaire father, who hasn't seen his son in years
It was made by a tiny studio for around $20,000 dollars, it runs 68 minutes, and it’s as dark and dreamy as they come. It’s so dark and dreamy in fact that nowadays it comes close to collapsing under its own weight and turning into camp. That’s okay. It’s still great.The movie starts with a guy walking along a dark road at night looking for a ride to bum. By the end that hitchhiker’s taken on the identity of a dead man, wrangled with a femme fatale, and found himself completely lost.
The whole script sparkles with some of the best pulp dialogue ever put on screen:
“That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you. Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.”
“I guess at least an hour past before I noticed those deep scratches on his right hand. They were wicked, three puffy red lines about a quarter inch apart. “
“In spite of that, I got the impression of beauty, not the beauty of a movie actress, mind you, or the beauty you dream about with your wife, but a natural beauty, a beauty that's almost homely, because it's so real.”
All genuine film noir has that feel of being lost in an amoral wilderness that’s cut through with dark shadows and high contrast. Exactly because Detour is so small, so short, and was made without any aspirations for greatness whatsoever, it achieves a kind of film noir perfection.
If you like film noir, and want to get an idea just how bleak it was on the B-side of postwar America, this is one to check out.
Past screenings
Sunday, August 12th
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers'
Released July 24, 1946
Unrated, 1 hr. 57 min.
Directed By: Lewis Milestone
Barbara Stanwyck as Martha Ivers
Kirk Douglas as Walter O'Neil.
Van Heflin as Sam Masterson
Lizabeth Scott as Antonia "Toni" Marachek
In “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946). Van Heflin plays a man who ran away from Iverstown when he was a kid, the night of the big electrical storm. Little does he know that he just missed witnessing his childhood sweetheart murder her domineering, wealthy aunt in the heat of passion — so when he accidentally shows up in town again, the grown-up Barbara Stanwyck thinks he wants to blackmail her and her weak-willed husband, Kirk Douglas, who helped cover up the crime way back when (in his screen debut, Douglas shows that you could have parked a Buick on his magnificent chin, but he cowers before Stanwyck).
By this time she’s the town’s petty royalty: not only has she inherited every penny of her aunt’s estate, she’s increased the family factory to ten times its original size and ensured that Douglas will never face an opponent when he runs for re-election as D.A. When she sits at her desk in the factory, proudly showing Heflin the extent of her business savvy and success, we find ourselves cringing at her almost manly grit and determination, and we worry that he’s going to fall for her again. Is it really Heflin’s silence she wants? Or is he The Man Who Got Away?
Yet again, is she primarily interested in pushing the slightly dim-witted bombshell Toni (Lizabeth Scott, above and left) out of the picture?Her titular “strange love” is, I think, all three of those things — Stanwyck’s Martha Ivers is yet another example for viewers of what women aren’t supposed to be.
Yet look at what a bundle of contradictions her steeliness represented: on the one hand
Stanwyck (right) was the highest-paid woman in America after 1944, nominated four times for Best Actress, consistently earning top billing throughout her career in the 30s and 40s, and married to one of the screen’s most dreamily beautiful men, Robert Taylor; yet on the other, she played hard women who lose in the end, undone by their grasping attempts to be something more than they are.
The Film Noir series is Co-sponsored by the Orange County Cultural Center and the Hillsborough Arts Council.
For more information call Elizabeth at 919-913-5213
Past screenings
Sunday July 15
Scarlett Street
Released 1945
PG, 1 hr. 35 min.
Directed By: Fritz Lang
Our first showing is "Scarlet Street" on Sunday, July 15th, 5 - 7 PM at The Depot in Hillsborough. Admission is free.
Scarlet Street is a 1945 American film noir directed by Fritz Lang and based on the French novel La Chienne (The Bitch) by Georges de La Fouchardière, that previously had been dramatized cinematically as La Chienne (1931) by director Jean Renoir.
Actors Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea, had earlier appeared together in The Woman in the Window (1944) also directed by Fritz Lang. The three were re-teamed for Scarlet Street.
Masterfully directed by Fritz Lang, Scarlet Street is a bleak film in which an ordinary man succumbs first to vice and then to murder. Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) is a lonely man married to a nagging wife. Painting is the only thing that brings him joy. Cross meets Kitty (Joan Bennett) who, believing him to be a famous painter, begins an affair with him. Encouraged by her lover, con man Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea) Kitty persuades Cross to embezzle money from his employer in order to pay for her lavish apartment. In that apartment, happy for the first time in his life, Cross paints Kitty's picture. Johnny then pretends that Kitty painted to portrait, which has won great critical acclaim.
Finally realizing he has been manipulated, Cross kills Kitty, loses his job, and because his name has been stolen by Kitty, is unable to paint. He suffers a mental breakdown as the film ends, haunted by guilt. Kitty and Johnny are two of the most amoral and casual villains in the history of film noir, both like predatory animals completely without conscience. Milton Krasner's photography is excellent in its use of stark black-and-white to convey psychological states. Fritz Lang is unparalleled in his ability to convey the desperation of hapless, naïve victims in a cruelly realistic world. Linda Rasmussen, Rovi
Banned in New York!
"On January 4, 1946, the New York State Censor Board banned Scarlet Street entirely, relying on the statute that gave it power to censor films that were "obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious" or whose exhibition "would tend to corrupt morals or incite to crime."'
Banned in Atlanta!
"Because of "the sordid life it portrayed, the treatment of illicit love, the failure of the characters to receive orthodox punishment from the police, and because the picture would tend to weaken a respect for the law," Scarlet Street was "licentious, profane, obscure and contrary to the good order of the community."
"Fritz Lang's production and direction ably project the sordid tale of the romance between a milquetoast character and a gold-digging blonde.
Edward G. Robinson is the mild cashier and amateur painter whose love for Joan Bennett leads him to embezzlement, murder and disgrace.
Two stars turn in top work to keep the interest high, and Dan Duryea's portrayal of the crafty and crooked opportunist whom Bennett loves is a standout in furthering the melodrama."
Variety Magazine
The Film Noir series is Co-sponsored by the Orange County Cultural Center and the Hillsborough Arts Council.
For more information call Elizabeth at 919-913-5213