Jun 6 The Film Salon goes dark(er) this summer
For the next few months, we’ll survey some of the darker treats of the American cinema – what the French termed “film noirs”. Gangsters, double crossers, gunsels, flat foots, opportunists, loners and dames will be our bread and butter.
August will see not one, but four, great noir titles presented - all on 35mm and on the region’s largest screen. Join us as we temporarily move The Film Salon to the Plaza Theatre.
SAT June 6th at 7:30PM
Out of the Past, 1947
Dir. Jacques Tourneur
Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas
FILM SALON NEWS BLAST - JUNE 2009
The Film Salon at Trinity-First will begin a new series devoted to the darker side of the cinema – what the French termed “film noir” – with a screening of the 1947 film, Out of The Past on Saturday, June 6th at 7:30PM.
Robert Mitchum is a man with a past, hired to track down Kirk Douglas’ double-crossing girlfriend, played by Jane Greer. This could have been a standard take-the-money-and-run film, but director Jacques Tourneur scrambles the motivations, and time itself, producing a seminal work of film noir. Mitchum’s heavy-lidded eyes are a perfect match for the sometimes dreamlike qualities of this film. His projection of indifference slowly gives way to a hope that he might yet be able to escape his past and start anew with Greer. But this is a noir, and fate isn’t so easily cheated. The two aren’t just running from Douglas, but time itself.
This summer we’ll explore a number of noir titles and take advantage of a rare opportunity.
We’ll change our meeting time in July to the first Friday, July 3rd for a screening of Jules Dassin’s last American film before he was black-listed – his stunning Night and the City. Then In August, we’ll convene at the Plaza Classic Film Festival (August 6-16) which will offer not one, but four film noir essentials – Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and a new (re)discovery – Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence (fingered by Martin Scorsese as his favorite film shot in New York!). All four titles will be presented from 35mm archival prints in the historic Plaza Theatre. Look for August showtimes soon at www.plazaclassic.com
A Final Note:
The Film Salon celebrated its seventh anniversary last month by unveiling its new website – www.filmsalon.org. Over the coming months we hope the site will become an important resource for local cineastes. There’s a listing of all the films screened at The Film Salon, a place to continue our discussions, links to like-minded organizations and updated postings of articles and essays about our cinema heritage. Special thanks to Gilbert Chavarria and digitalstorm for all their continuing work to bring this site to life.
See you at The Movies.
