12 Jul

Killers, thieves and gumshoes – Cinematheque’s Film Noir series is back!

The iconic image from the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple.

Each year, Vancouver’s premiere arthouse Cinematheque presents a festival of dark shadows, lonely streets, tough guys and tougher dames. This year’s Film Noir festival (Aug. 4-22) includes not only seminal works from the genre’s postwar heyday, but also “neo-noir” selections from the sixties and the eighties, too.

All told, Cinematheque (1131 Howe St) is screening 13 films, nine for the first time. Here are some highlights.

Blood Simple (1984) – Writing of a recent reissue of the 1984 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, AV Club’s Mike D’Angelo said, “any excuse to see the Coens’ magnificently moody neo-noir on the big screen is welcome” and that “It’s a trailblazing masterpiece in any form.” France McDormand, who would go on to become a key player in Coen bros. movies, stars, along with Dan Hedaya.

Point Blank (1967) – The Cinematheque guide calls John Boorman’s thriller “a key link between vintage noir and the great paranoid conspiracy films of the 1970s.” It stars Lee Marvin as a double-crossed hoodlum who seeks revenge on his betrayers. With Angie Dickinson.

Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson in Point Blank.

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) – Dana Andrews is a brutal New York cop and Gene Tierney is the daughter of the man he tries to frame for the murder of a gangster. Otto Preminger (Laura) directs from a Ben Hecht (HIs Girl Friday) screenplay.

Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney in Where the Sidewalk Ends.

The Big Sleep (1946) – A classic by just about any definition, as Howard Hawks directs Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a movie based on a Raymond Chandler novel with a script by William Faulkner. The Cinematheque guide quotes New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael: “The characters are a collection of sophisticated monsters… All of them talk in innuendos, as if that were a new stylization of the American language.”

Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep.

The Killers (1946) – A Hemingway short story is the source for this film about an ex-boxer (Burt Lancaster) ready for death, with Ava Gardner as the double-crossing dame who ruins his life. It’s “one of film noir’s defining works – a master class in the criminality, corruption and cynicism of the noir universe,” according to the Cinematheque guide.