BFI: Twilight and Treachery: The Postwar European Film Noir
14 February 2008 16:07 Filed in: British Film
Institute | Screenings
Twilight and Treachery: The Postwar European Film
Noir
What exactly is film noir? To coincide with the BFI release of Bertolucci’s The Conformist, BFI Southbank presents a thought-provoking season to address this question throughout March.
What exactly is film noir? To coincide with the BFI release of Bertolucci’s The Conformist, BFI Southbank presents a thought-provoking season to address this question throughout March.
The term film noir was first coined in 1946 by French
critics familiar with the crime novels published
under the monicker Série Noire, but the words are
often used to evoke a certain kind of Hollywood crime
film, which probably began with The Maltese Falcon
and blossomed brilliantly between 1944 and 1950. It
may be said that this form of film-making was a
style, rather than a genre, as a style need not be
confined to any one country or culture. To support
this theory we will screen a selection of titles, old
and new, with early examples of European noir such as
Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950) and the
rarely seen The Lost One (Der Verleone, 1951),
starring Peter Lorre in the compelling tale of a
doctor manipulated by the Nazis.
The selection is restricted to postwar films, with the intention to provide some idea of historical development and national preoccupations, as well as celebrating the ways in which some very distinctive film-makers have responded to the dramatic potential film noir. Think of Louis Malle’s Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l’echafaud, 1957) with the smouldering Jeanne Moreau and the soaring Miles Davis soundtrack; or Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos (1963).
It also becomes obvious that you don’t have to bathe a film in black shadows, narrative flashbacks and femmes fatales for it to feel noir. Live Flesh (Carne Tremula, 1997), by Pedro Almodóvar, The Consequences of Love (Le conseguenze dell’amore 2004) and Hidden (Caché, 2005) make perfect examples of this point. So what does the term signify? A pessimistic mood of danger; a fatalistic foreboding that people and things aren’t what they seem; a sense that however much you may try to put past mistakes behind you the future is a dark and lonely place. Happily, such a schema leaves film-makers a surprising amount of leeway, as may be seen in this brief but illuminating survey of European films noirs.
Extended Run: The Conformist Il Conformista (1970)
Fri 29 Feb – Fri 21 Mar
A brilliant blend of thriller, psychological portrait and political parable, The Conformist found Bernardo Bertolucci on peak form, working with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti to create a stylistic tour de force. Adapting a novel by Alberto Moravia, Bertolucci centred his film on Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who to impress his Fascist friends embarks on a mission to assassinate his former professor, now considered a subversive threat.
It-Fr-W Ger 1970 Dir Bernardo Bertolucci With Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi 111min EST 15 A BFI release
EVENT: European Film Noir
To contextualise our Twilight and Treachery season, Andrew Spicer, editor of European Film Noir, challenges the preconception that film noir is an American phenomenon. He will be joined by fellow contributors in a round-table discussion to reveal the richness and disturbing force of films noirs produced in Europe, and the intriguing relationship between European and American noirs.
Tue 18 Mar 18:20 NFT2
www.bfi.org.uk/twilightandtreachery
The selection is restricted to postwar films, with the intention to provide some idea of historical development and national preoccupations, as well as celebrating the ways in which some very distinctive film-makers have responded to the dramatic potential film noir. Think of Louis Malle’s Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l’echafaud, 1957) with the smouldering Jeanne Moreau and the soaring Miles Davis soundtrack; or Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos (1963).
It also becomes obvious that you don’t have to bathe a film in black shadows, narrative flashbacks and femmes fatales for it to feel noir. Live Flesh (Carne Tremula, 1997), by Pedro Almodóvar, The Consequences of Love (Le conseguenze dell’amore 2004) and Hidden (Caché, 2005) make perfect examples of this point. So what does the term signify? A pessimistic mood of danger; a fatalistic foreboding that people and things aren’t what they seem; a sense that however much you may try to put past mistakes behind you the future is a dark and lonely place. Happily, such a schema leaves film-makers a surprising amount of leeway, as may be seen in this brief but illuminating survey of European films noirs.
Extended Run: The Conformist Il Conformista (1970)
Fri 29 Feb – Fri 21 Mar
A brilliant blend of thriller, psychological portrait and political parable, The Conformist found Bernardo Bertolucci on peak form, working with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti to create a stylistic tour de force. Adapting a novel by Alberto Moravia, Bertolucci centred his film on Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who to impress his Fascist friends embarks on a mission to assassinate his former professor, now considered a subversive threat.
It-Fr-W Ger 1970 Dir Bernardo Bertolucci With Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi 111min EST 15 A BFI release
EVENT: European Film Noir
To contextualise our Twilight and Treachery season, Andrew Spicer, editor of European Film Noir, challenges the preconception that film noir is an American phenomenon. He will be joined by fellow contributors in a round-table discussion to reveal the richness and disturbing force of films noirs produced in Europe, and the intriguing relationship between European and American noirs.
Tue 18 Mar 18:20 NFT2
www.bfi.org.uk/twilightandtreachery
|