Force of Evil, a noir classic starring John Garfield looked like a Hopper painting and its cinematographer George Barnes was taken to an exhibition of Hopper paintings by the film’s director Abraham Polonsky who told him That’s what I want this picture to look like. “House by the Riverside” the painter’s first acclaimed work, influenced Hitchcock’s Psycho, Steven’s Giant and Malick’s Days of Heaven. Ace cinematographer James Wong Howe used the way Hopper contrasted light and dark in his pictures for the 1955 film Picnic, which starred William Holden and Kim Novak. The whole film looks like a Hopper painting, capturing the pathos of its small Kansas town inhabitants’ quietly desperate lives. Wim Wender’s Hammett is infused with Hopper’s work and his Californian evocation of “Nighthawks” in End of Violence is there for all to savour. The same painting was scrupulously reproduced by Ken Adam in Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven. A montage of Hopper’s houses and lighthouses on the New England coastline can be seen in Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance. The same paintings plus the dark interiors of America in the Depression are all there in Sam Mendes Road to Perdition. The aforementioned films, plus of course Shirley – Visions of Reality, are a cinematic tribute to a great artist. *The first film society was established in London in 1925 by a group of enthusiasts including Iris Barry, Sidney Bernstein, Adrian Brunel, Hugh Miller, Walter Mycroft and Ivor Montagu, to show films which had been rejected on commercial grounds, most of them European, and films which had been rejected by the censor, most of them from the Soviet Union. Among its sponsors were George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. It was often referred to as the London Film Society, as it was followed by others in the next fifteen years: Edinburgh Film Guild, Salford Workers Film Society (now the Manchester & Salford Film Society).In 1939 its activities ended, but after the war the New London Film Society emerged as its successor. The national body for film societies in the UK is the British Federation of Film Societies and its President is Derek Malcolm.
WIMBLEDON FILM CLUB Wimbledon Film Club is a registered charity run for the whole community by a committee of unpaid volunteers. They screen world cinema, best of British and Indie films on alternate Tuesdays at 8.30pm at HMV Curzon 23 The Broadway, Wimbledon SW19 1RE The object of the WFC is to advance the education of the public in the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the arts, particularly the art of film and allied visual techniques. Screening in the Autumn/Winter Season: Oct 6: Listen Up Philip Oct 20: The Good Lie Oct 27: What we do in the Shadows Nov 10: Slow West Nov 24: Salt of the Earth Dec 8: Nightcrawler Fees: AUTUMN/WINTER Season Adults: £36 Before 7/10/15 £40 After 7/10/15 Further details: membership@wimbledonfilmclub.com www.wimbledonfilmclub.com
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