| Femme fatale hall of fame / Saturdays in May & June at 1pm |
 The most seductive and sophisticated of cinematic figures, Femme Fatales hold audiences as spellbound as the suckers who fall for them. Spinning a web of deception we’d all love to be stuck in, they are anti-heroines, willing to do anything to achieve their aims, unwilling to be trapped in boring marriages and held down by “traditional” values. We may see their demise by the end, but what we remember is their fierce independence, their predatory powers, their insatiable appetites, and their smoldering sensuality. Come and be the next willing victims of Noir’s greatest vamps and vixens!
5/3 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity remains the apotheosis of film noir, and its unbeatable combination of intricate plotting, quick-witted verbal one-upmanship, downbeat L.A. locations, and crackly on-edge performances from Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson make the film endlessly entertaining. MacMurray plays the sleazy insurance agent Walter Neff, who is seduced by bombshell Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) into cooking up a murder plot to bump off her husband, so that they might share in the riches of the insurance policy Neff has just sold him. Of course, Neff is blissfully unaware that he too is aboard a murderous trolley ride to the end of the line. A brilliant script by Billy Wilder and tough-as-nails novelist Raymond Chandler, and Robinson’s shrewd performance as the insurance investigator boss hot on Neff’s trail, turn the heat up even further in James M. Cain’s classic story of love, betrayal and murder.
Dir. Billy Wilder, 1944, 35mm, 107 min.
Tickets - $10
5/10 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Yvonne de Carlo in Criss Cross
Originally intended by film producer Mark Hellinger to be a sharp, straight-up policier in the style of his The Naked City before his untimely passing in 1947, Criss Cross instead surfaced in 1949 as a heavily stylized affair helmed by film noir titan Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Phantom Lady, The File On Thelma Jordan). The film’s star, Burt Lancaster, was reportly unhappy with Siodmak’s grafting of a love triangle angle onto the original racetrack heist story, but Criss Cross’s head-spinning maze of triple and quadruple crosses benefits from the added unfolding consequences of fatalistic love akin to a slo-mo train wreck. The action centers around a robbery hatched by a heartbreaker (a drop-dead gorgeous Yvonne De Carlo), her ex-husband (Lancaster) and a vicious gangster played by the wonderful Dan Dureya. Criss Cross also features the movie debut of Tony Curtis, and was later remade by Steven Soderbergh as The Underneath (1995).
Dir. Robert Siodmak, 1949, 35mm, 88 min.
Tickets - $10
5/17 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Jane Greer in Out of the Past
For Out Of The Past, director Jacques Tourneur took some of the hazy, dreamlike stylistic touches of his previous Val Lewton-produced 1940s horror films (Cat People, The Leopard Man, I Walked With A Zombie, which were in turn noir-influenced in terms of atmosphere and cinematography), and elevated already-complex material into an intriguing and beautifully textured masterwork where nothing is as it seems. Jane Greer shines brightly as the dark-hearted dame who deals a dirty hand to both rich gangster Kirk Douglas and middle-of-nowhere gas station owner Robert Mitchum (in one of his finest performances). In a previous identity, Mitchum was a private dick who chased Greer, Douglas’ mistress on the lam, to Mexico, where they conspired against Douglas, but now in the present, Douglas seems all-forgiving — until it’s too late for Mitchum to get the gist of the set-up he’s waltzed into. Out Of The Past was later remade as Against All Odds (1984).
Dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1947, 35mm, 97 min.
Tickets - $10
5/24 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Claire Trevor in Born to Kill
Perhaps the most perverse film to come out of Hollywood in the 1940s, Born To Kill was the first film noir to be directed by Robert Wise, who later went on to shoot many noir greats like The Set-Up and The Captive City. Wise revels in the utter sleazy friction created by leads Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor, who play a emotionally unbalanced and jealous killer, and a recent divorcée hungry for danger who trails him out of instant attachment to his insane self-confidence. Tierney is a pure thrill to watch as Sam Wilde, the amoral dirtbag narcissist who treats friends and foes all with the same contempt, and the inimitable Elisha Cook, Jr. is equally fun as Sam’s jittery “friend”, who utters one of noir’s most memorable lines of callous-yet-sensible dialogue: “You can't just go around killing people when the notion strikes you. It's just not feasible.”
Dir. Robert Wise, 1947, 35mm, 92 min.
Tickets - $10
5/31 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Ida Lupino in They Drive by Night
Ida Lupino gives her all for this film in her must-see portrayal of the unhinged beauty Lana Carlsen. Based on the tensely wrought Depression-era novel “The Long Haul” penned by noir writer A.I. “Buzz” Bezzerides, Raoul Walsh’s rarely-screened They Drive By Night (not to be confused with the excellent 1949 noir They Live By Night) features George Raft and Humphrey Bogart as brothers who go into business together as rickety independent operators of a trucking company. Fate smacks both brothers in the gut when Bogart falls asleep at the wheel and loses an arm in a truck accident, and Raft gets seduced by Lupino’s loopy vixen, who bumps off her trucking magnate hubby in the hopes that Raft will join her both in business and in love. When Raft spurns her, she frames him for the murder, and the film climaxes in one of the most demented courtroom scenes ever.
Dir. Raoul Walsh, 1940, 35mm, 95 min.
Tickets - $10
6/7 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry
“The joy of any Crawford performance is her portrayal of women whose worlds crumble around them, which she takes in with a slight tilt of those bizarrely-drawn eyebrows and a trembling in her clenched fists.” —Donna Bowman, The Onion
No one dares weep once Joan Crawford gets it going in this one. An unusual hybrid of film noir and chick flick, The Damned Don’t Cry features one of Crawford’s most iconic performances, and a story arc that resembles both Joan’s real-life rags to riches rise to stardom and the life of gangster Bugsy Siegel’s girlfriend Virginia Hill. From an oilfield shack to the head of a national crime syndicate, Crawford plunges into the swamp of corruption, using her sexual moxie as a blunt instrument on David Brian, Steve Cochran and Kent Smith. Directed by Vincent Sherman (who also directed Joan in two other pictures within eighteen months of Damned), this tough-edged movie showcases an aging Crawford still at the heights of her cinematic power.
Dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950, 35mm, 103 min.
Tickets - $10
6/14 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven
Gene Tierney’s performance here as a mad, cold-blooded beauty who will stop at absolutely nothing to possess successful novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) earned her an Academy Award nomination and the enduring awe of movie fans. It is hard to believe that such radiant beauty cloaks such evil, but such is true as we watch Tierney dispatch with anybody and anything that she perceives is getting in the way of Wilde’s affection for her. Tierney’s reptilian turn is what makes this film truly memorable, but Leave Her To Heaven is also beautifully filmed in Technicolor (an unusual touch for an entry in a genre that prides itself on things lurking in the shadows), and springs forth from a script leaving precious little to convention, in a genre where convention was often crowned king.
Dir. John M. Stahl, 1945, 35mm, 110 min.
Tickets - $10
6/21 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Rita Hayworth in Gilda
Rita Hayworth unknowingly defined her career and the iconic image of the femme fatale itself with Gilda. The love triangle is a prevalent theme in film noir, but never has it been more painfully realized than in this film, for its triangle of love-hate is so devoid of warmth that it threatens to crumble at any moment, and we are kept eagerly waiting to see which way the structure topples. In a heartwrenching performance, Hayworth teeters back and forth with Glenn Ford’s small-time crook and George Macready’s wealthy fascist businessman until she’s out of juice; Allmovie.com reviewer Steve Press notes: “When…Gilda performs her signature number, ‘Put the Blame on Mame,’ she is not simply enraging both [Ford] and [Macready] with her open sexuality, she is also crying out in pain for the love she is being denied.” Gilda was produced by Virginia Van Upp, one of the few female producers working in the testosterone-charged studio system of 1940s Hollywood.
Dir. Charles Vidor, 1946, 35mm, 110 min.
Tickets - $10
6/28 @ 1:00pm / SERIES: femme fatale hall of fame
 Ann Savage in Detour
Coming in at a lean 67 minutes, underrated auteur Edgar Ulmer’s Detour may be one of the most inexpensive noirs ever filmed, but it’s nothing but one of the genre’s most “pure distillations – and most perversely entertaining triumphs.” (NoirOfTheWeek.com). Sultry siren Ann Savage plays one of the meanest femme fatales in the history of the genre, hurling acidic, barbed insults at Tom Neal, playing the motorist with a shady recent past who’s just picked her up from hitchhiking. Neal lets Savage’s berating, domineering behavior get the better of him as he drags her along for a grim ride through murder plots and seedy motel rooms; the two characters are glorious extremes of noir gender archetypes – the deadly female animal and the loser willing to let such a creature walk all over him in exchange for a glimpse at a more exciting life.
Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945, 35mm, 67 min.
Tickets - $10
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