Événement

NOIR CITY 16: 1945: CONFLICT / JEALOUSY

Monday, January 29

The price of admission gets you into the double bill.

7:30
CONFLICT
(1945, Warner Bros. 86 min.)

Scr. Arthur T. Horman and Dwight Taylor; story by Alfred Neumann and Robert Siodmak. Dir. Curtis Bernhardt

One of Humphrey Bogart's rarest films has the legendary actor as a scheming wife killer (Rose Hobart stands in for Bogart's real-life ball and chain, Mayo Methot) playing cat-and-mouse with family friend Sidney Greenstreet, a psychiatrist with expertise in the criminal mind. It's fascinating to see, for the first and only time, Bogart and Greenstreet trade places as hero and villain. Robert Siodmak was originally intended to direct, but Curt Bernhardt ably orchestrates the evocative affair.

9:30
JEALOUSY
(1945, Republic. 71 min.)

Scr. Arnold Lipp (Phillips), story by Dalton Trumbo. Dir. Gustav Machaty

A perky female cabbie (Jane Randolph) gets embroiled in a dangerous triangle involving her suicidal Czech boyfriend (Nils Asther) and a rakish doctor (John Loder) who's taken a shine to her. Director Machaty, known for the infamous 1933 sex film Ecstasy, concocts a dreamy tale that touches all the tropes of "B" mysteries while depicting the displacement of European artists adrift in sunbaked Hollywood. As close to an art film as ever emerged from Poverty Row...and, not surprisingly, the last film the experimentally inclined Machaty made in America.
35mm print courtesy of the British Film Institute