Event
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British Film Noir Film Series
Saturday, October 17, 2009
7:30 pm - 11:00 pm, UCLA Hammer Museum - Billy Wilder Theater
"The Third Man" and "Night and the City"
Admission
Tickets: $10 in advance online. $9 general; $8 Cineclub members, students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Association members with ID.
Contact
UCLA Film & Television Archive
(310) 206-3456
Website
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/calendar/calendardetails.asp...
Additional Information
The Third Man and Night and the City screen as part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive film series Footsteps and Fog: British Film Noir.
The Third Man
(1949) Directed by Carol Reed
Graham Greene’s first screenplay unspools against the backdrop of a post WWII Vienna still under control of the Allied authorities. Joseph Cotten stars as a beleaguered pulp novelist unwittingly embroiled in a vast conspiracy. Orson Welles famously plays the amoral Harry Lime, a charismatic racketeer haunting the back alleys and underground sewers of the ruined city. Greene’s world-weary script is brilliantly enhanced by Carol Reed’s expressionistic visual style, not to mention Anton Karas’ indelible zither score. A commercial and critical success on its initial release, The Third Man is now widely recognized as a masterpiece of film noir and a high point in the history of British cinema.
Night and the City
(1950) Directed by Jules Dassin
Richard Widmark’s trademark combination of sleazy glibness and sweaty desperation finds its ideal expression in the role of London club tout and compulsive striver Harry Fabian. Described by a rival as “an artist without an art,” Fabian attempts to make his mark as a promoter in the Greco-Roman wrestling racket, a sport that takes brutality to the level of art both in and out of the ring. With its chiaroscuro cinematography and stylized portrayals of underworld characters—Francis L. Sullivan as a grotesque club owner, Googie Withers as his ambitious wife, Herbert Lom as a vicious racketeer, Polish champion wrestler Stanislaus Zbyszko as “Gregorius the Great”—the film sketches a place that is nominally London but really a realm of fevered urban imagination. The recurring image is of Fabian scrambling through dark alleys, trying and failing to get ahead of his fate—an appropriate motif for director Jules Dassin, who made the film while in exile from McCarthy-era Hollywood. —Juliet Clark, Pacific Film Archive.
About the Series:
French film scholars coined the term Film Noir to describe a particular cycle of American films dealing with dark themes (crime, betrayal, fatalism, and general post-war malaise) often imbued with a signature shadowy visual style. Though less well known, and with their own distinct sensibilities and variations, British filmmakers also made some fascinating contributions to this enigmatic genre. Our selection includes vaunted masterworks like Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), as well as rarities like the notorious No Orchids for Miss Blandish (St. John L. Clowes, 1948)—-what’s more, this program provides the opportunity to see many rare archival prints which are being shipped in from the UK. Shot in locales from London to the Lake District and beyond, this program aims to shine a light on the darkness from across the pond.
- October 17: The Third Man and Night and the City
- October 18: They Drive by Night and On the Night of the Fire
- October 23: The Long Haul and Hell Drivers
- October 24: The Clouded Yellow and The October Man
- October 26: No Orchids for Miss Blandish and Noose (a.k.a. The Silk Noose)
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