“The original noirs remain the most resonant school of movie to have ever emerged in America.”
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MICHAEL ATKINSON, TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES
The Big Sleep Touch of Evil USA 1958. Director: Orson Welles Cast: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia
A “Goya-like vision of an infected universe” (Peter Bogdanovich), Touch of Evil is often cited as the final film of the vintage noir period, and is generally regarded as one of Orson Welles’s five major masterpieces. The film is set in a seedy town on the American side of the California-Mexico border, and stars Charlton Heston as Vargas, a Mexican narcotics agent honeymooning with his American wife Susan (Janet Leigh). When the town boss is murdered in a spectacular explosion, Vargas is drawn into the investigation, and finds himself ferociously at odds with corner-cutting, corpulent Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), the local American lawman, who is unshakably convinced of the guilt of a young Mexican suspect. Employing his characteristic baroque compositions, director Welles weaves a tour-deforce tapestry of the grotesque out of flea-bag motels, pot-smoking delinquents, butch bikers, and sweaty backwater hoodlums. Marlene Dietrich makes a brief appearance as the cigar-smoking madam of a Mexican bordello. The film opens with a stunning, swooning, three-minute, single-take sequence that “may be the greatest single shot ever put on film” (James Monaco). “A marvellously garish thriller ... Terrific entertainment” (Pauline Kael). B&W, 35mm. 108 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 16 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 17 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 18 – 8:25 PM MONDAY, AUGUST 19 – 6:30 PM
USA 1946. Director: Howard Hawks Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, John Ridgely, Dorothy Malone
Force of Evil USA 1948. Director: Abraham Polonsky Cast: John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Howland Chamberlain, Roy Roberts
Writer-director Abraham Polonsky’s dark, disturbing drama deserves its reputation as a high point of Hollywood noir and one of the most important American movies of the 1940s. John Garfield (The Postman Always Rings Twice) impresses as Joe Morse, a corrupt, ambitious New York lawyer working for a big-time gambling syndicate. When his monopoly-minded mobster bosses plot to rig the numbers racket on July 4th, thereby bankrupting all small independent operators, Joe finds his loyalties dangerously divided: the scheme, he knows, will ruin his kindly older brother Leo (Thomas Gomez), a small-time bookie who blames himself for Joe’s big-time corruption. What follows is a remarkably complex tale of moral conflict, Cain-and-Abel rivalry, and guilt — and, not incidentally, an incisive, Godfather-like indictment of amoral American capitalism run amok. Polonsky, here making his directorial debut (he had earlier scripted Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul, also starring Garfield) was one of the great casualties of Hollywood’s anti-Communist witch-hunts. He wouldn’t direct another film until 1969. “Poetic, terse, beautifully exact, and highly personal ... This is film noir at its best” (Don Druker, Chicago Reader). “One of the great films of the modern American cinema” (Andrew Sarris). B&W, 35mm. 78 mins.
The noir universe of crime, corruption, cynicism, and existential chaos gets the big-budget A-list treatment. Classic Hollywood favourite The Big Sleep is glam noir with a big-time pedigree: a William Faulkner script, based on a Raymond Chandler novel, directed by Howard Hawks, with Bogart and Bacall in the leads — and, of course, the legendary convoluted plot that even director, novelist, and screenwriter professed themselves unable to follow. Bogart is tough-talking private eye Philip Marlowe; Bacall is seductive socialite Vivian Sternwood, older sister of a mixed-up young woman Marlowe is hired to protect. The sexual attraction between Marlowe and Vivian sizzles, while the cynical, slangy, hard-boiled dialogue truly amazes. And, if the storyline’s too-intricate web of murder and intrigue veers deliriously off into incomprehensibility, “who cares when the sultry mood, the incredibly witty and memorable script, and the performances are all so impeccable” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). “A witty, incredibly complicated thriller ... The film catches the lurid Chandler atmosphere. The characters are a collection of sophisticated monsters — blackmailers, pornographers, apathetic society girls, drug addicts, nymphomaniacs, murderers. All of them talk in innuendoes, as if that were a new stylization of the American language” (Pauline Kael). B&W, 35mm. 114 mins. FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – 8:05 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 – 6:30 PM TUESDAY, AUGUST 27 – 8:05 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 24 – 8:25 PM MONDAY, AUGUST 26 – 6:30 PM Preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by The Film Foundation and the Archive Council.
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