Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray from DOUBLE INDEMNITY |
Probably my favorite was the FILM NOIR series we did, because we'd open it up to discussion afterwards as to whether or not the film shown was actually film noir-- a very finite category of dark cinema that has to have certain ingredients to make it pure film noir;
1. A protagonist who gets in over his or her head, due to greed or lust or both.
2. A femme fatale (or the male version of such) who leads them to a path of destruction.
3. Dark shadowy cinematography.
4. A dark ending.
It was fun to show things like STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1941), long regarded as one of the first film noirs and then classify it as not (happy ending). The standard is DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) for those of you following along at home. It has all of it.
In the years since, we've discussed the idea of bringing the festival back and it looked like it might be on track--including having all new posters commissioned by local and national artists unique to the showings--
Who knows? If we can iron out some of the specifics you'll be the first to know. I