{"id":8824,"date":"2016-09-16T18:42:38","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T18:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idsunmedia.com\/?p=8824"},"modified":"2016-09-16T18:42:38","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T18:42:38","slug":"get-down-and-dirty-at-film-noir-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/16\/get-down-and-dirty-at-film-noir-land\/","title":{"rendered":"GET DOWN AND DIRTY AT FILM NOIR LAND"},"content":{"rendered":"

Third annual film series will be killer<\/i><\/span><\/h2>\n

By Dana DuGan<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Greg
Greg Olson, film curator at Seattle Art Museum, picked three classic films for the festival
All my career I\u2019ve wanted to push those boundaries, so we\u2019ll do that in your valley as well.\u201d Greg Olson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Imagine, if you will, a film noir theme park. The men lurking in alleys and bars would be dark, chiseled and cagey. The stylish women would be long-legged, cunning and alluring. The snappy dialogue would force park visitors to sit still in awe of the interplay of words, and the lighting would be shadowy and spikey. Also, it\u2019d be dangerous in subtle ways. My kind of place.<\/p>\n

\u201cFilm noir is low-down, sexed-up, over the speed limit,\u201d Greg Olson, the curator of Seattle Art Museum films, wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s the juvenile-delinquent child of brooding German Expressionist cinema aesthetics, French poetic realism and American pulp fiction, godfathered by post-World-War-II malaise and timeless moral corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, more simply stated, a damn good, edge-of-your-seat flick.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the Seattle Arts Museum\u2019s long-running film noir series, Hailey resident Jeannine Gregoire introduced her passion to the area three years ago.<\/p>\n

Olson helps her choose the films for the Sun Valley Film Noir Series each year.<\/p>\n

This year, the series is entitled \u201cKiss Tomorrow Goodbye,\u201d taken from the title of a noir novel by Horace McCoy, and a classic film adaptation with James Cagney.<\/p>\n

The series will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15, at the Magic Lantern Cinemas in Ketchum, with a screening of \u00a0\u201cScarlet Street\u201d (1945), directed by Austrian-German filmmaker Fritz Lang and starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea. In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Gangster Films list.<\/p>\n

\u201cScarlet Street\u201d is considered one of Lang\u2019s best American films. Based on the French novel \u201cLa Chienne,\u201d the film tells the tale of an unhappily married bank cashier with little to show for his life, who becomes obsessed with the beautiful woman he rescues one night.<\/p>\n

An opening reception will take place at the Magic Lantern Cinemas at 6 p.m. before the film with opening remarks prior to the screening by Charles Brandt and Vernon Scott.<\/p>\n

\u201cFilm noir deals in some things that strike us deeply \u2013 greed and guilt \u2013 whether the ultimate price is paid or not,\u201d Olson said.<\/p>\n

Art is cathartic but does that explain why we love these dangerous, uncomfortable, conniving stories so much?<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are eternal questions,\u201d Olson said. \u201cWe all have light and dark within us. It\u2019s a way of delving into that dark side of our nature. In movies, we can see the humanness of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olson said that in curating the movies for the Sun Valley Film Noir Series, he has a sense of \u201ceducating the audience a little bit.\u201d He started with the archetypal choices, Germanic directors, who\u2019d fled the Nazis, like Lang, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Max Ophuls, and Robert Siodmak used what they knew of German expressionism in their work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were used to envisioning mental states around the characters, the shadows, and tipping camera angles,\u201d Olson said. \u201cIt was right out of lithographs and stage performances they might have seen. Then they came to Hollywood to direct domestic films. It makes sense they\u2019d use what they knew and had seen. It\u2019s very stylistic.<\/p>\n

These directors \u2013 boy oh boy \u2013 they controlled and cared about every inch of those films. Details are really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olson said the second movie in the series, \u201cThe Killers,\u201d has \u201cbig noir themes about how the past haunts us \u2013 it\u2019s the presence of the past. It\u2019s all convoluted time, with 11 flashbacks narrated by eight different people, but it flows on the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll my career I\u2019ve wanted to push those boundaries, so we\u2019ll do that in your valley as well,\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sun Valley Film Noir Series will continue on Thursday, Sept. 22, with \u201cThe Killers\u201d (1946) directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner and Edmond O\u2019Brien based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway (Idaho alert). On Thursday, Sept. 29, the screening will be \u201cIn a Lonely Place\u201d (1950) directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart, and the inimitable Gloria Grahame (who was married to Ray at the time).<\/p>\n

Tickets will be $10 at the Magic Lantern Cinemas box office the day of each film.<\/p>\n

\n

Serving as the public introduction to the Sun Valley Film Noir Series is the distinctive poster, using a photo of Gregoire herself, created by Boise-based artist Ward Hooper. Hooper\u2019s work can currently be seen in the 32 Cells Art Show inspired by an Old Idaho Penitentiary inmate\u2019s story and crime at the Swell Artist Collective Gallery, 404 South 8th Street, on the lower level of the Old Mercantile Building in the BoDo district, Boise.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Third annual film series will be killer By Dana DuGan Imagine, if you will, a film noir theme park. The men lurking in alleys and bars would be dark, chiseled and cagey. The stylish women would be long-legged, cunning and alluring. The snappy dialogue would force park visitors to sit still in awe of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,4,7,18,36,49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-entertainment","9":"category-event-preview","10":"category-news","11":"category-slider","12":"category-top-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}