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British Film Noir Film Series
Friday, October 23, 2009
7:30 pm - 11:00 pm, UCLA Hammer Museum - Billy Wilder Theater
"The Long Haul" and "Hell Drivers"
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 Long Haul and Hell Drivers screen as part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive film series Footsteps and Fog: British Film Noir.
The Long Haul (New Print)
(1957) Directed by Ken Hughes
Racketeering is the principal cargo in this well-tuned tale about a trucker in trouble. Victor Mature (in a role intended for Marlon Brando) plays Harry Miller, a deactivated G.I. stranded in England with his Liverpudlian wife. Harry signs on as a driver for a lorry combine only to find that mobsters rule the road. Joe Easy (Patrick Allen), the ruthless thug who runs Easy Hauling, plays it fast and loose with his freight, but not as loose as his curvaceous cohort Lynn (Diana Dors, the British Monroe). Once Harry catches sight of her, Dors becomes the soft shoulder on a road to nowhere. Though Hell Drivers emphasizes rivalry among the drivers themselves, both of these big wheelers saw the hauling biz as a shiftless world of lowballers and hijackers. Caught up in the momentum, Harry must choose between a pedestrian life with wife and child and the felonious fast lane. The Long Haul offers no rest stop for the wicked. —Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive.
Hell Drivers
(1957) Directed by Cy Endfield
Cy Endfield, another of this series’ refugees from the Hollywood blacklist, delivers a raw critique of capitalist exploitation in the form of a full-throttle thriller. Stanley Baker plays an ex-con who drifts into a job hauling gravel for Hawlett’s, a trucking company where only the desperate need apply. Spurred on by openly ruthless management, marginal men—including pious, naive “Italian” Herbert Lom and a young Sean Connery—vie to beat the pace set by the unhinged Irishman at the wheel of truck Number 1: Patrick McGoohan, before he was The Prisoner’s Number 6. There’s plenty of action in the rattle and roar of trucks careening along country roads, but the film’s suspense comes from social pressures rather than speed as the rivalry between Baker and McGoohan becomes increasingly explosive. The ultimate use of all those rocks is never mentioned; hauling endless tons of cargo in a race none of them can ever really win, the drivers are embodiments of labor as a road to nowhere. —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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