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This summer we revisit a style of filmmaking that emerged in Hollywood in the early 1940s, was later coined “film noir,” and was later still championed by the French New Wave critics. From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Killing (1956), BAMPFA’s series offers viewers a chance to see many archival 35mm prints and digital restorations of film noir masterpieces and revel in the plot twists of these vastly entertaining and suspenseful mysteries, melodramas, and crime thrillers.
With its distinctive play of shadows, lighting, camera angles, and compositional tension, film noir became an international phenomenon adopted by filmmakers around the world-an approach that has influenced generations of filmmakers through the neo-noir and Tech noir periods. Film noir was born out of a confluence of cinematic and literary sources. We see influences of German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism, Italian neorealism, and American pulp fiction in these films. A number of the directors represented in this series were émigrés to the United States (Michael Curtiz, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Jacques Tourneur, and Billy Wilder), who brought European influences to their Hollywood productions. Many celebrated writers (James M. Cain, Vera Caspary, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Cornell Woolrich) penned the original stories or screenplays. Archetypal elements and themes are found in these compelling narratives, such as an exploration of codes of loyalty, duplicity, and psychological concerns. In a sense, these noirs reflect America’s paranoia and cynicism during a time when disillusionment from the wars fought and the political oppression experienced in the first half of the twentieth century was a strong undercurrent in society.
The celebrated film historian David Thomson joins us on June 16 to give a fifty-minute lecture on the stylistics of film noir before The Lady from Shanghai. He will also introduce In a Lonely Place and Out of the Past. For all three appearances, Thomson will lead post-screening discussions with the audience.
-Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator
6 окт 2024
