Film series: Saturday Night Noir
images of film posters for THE BIG SLEEP, THE THIRD MAN, THE BIG CLOCK, DETOUR, DOUBLE INDEMNITY & OUT OF THE PAST
Night and the city. Dark alleys, rain-drenched streets, silhouettes at windows, blinking neon. Welcome to Saturday Night Noir, a one-way trip into the doom-laden heart of a new kind of American cinema featuring life-beaten men and dangerously seductive women, born of the expressionistic camera-work of German and Austrian emigres, and the pulp imaginations of the great Hammett, Chandler, Cain and their siblings.
We offer five greats from the U.S., one per year from 1944–1948, four enrolled in the National Film Registry. And a bonus: two screenings of 1949’s great British noir, The Third Man (moved from its original Saturday night slot to accommodate our revised February 7 opening for in-person screenings!). Noir enthusiasts can finally see a restored print of Detour, in which “B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry.” (Janus Films)
The series wraps with Wilder’s classic Double Indemnity, introduced by local author David Lehman. Copies of his book The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir, published by Cornell University Press, will be available for sale at the screening.
