Word: noire
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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American films in the late 40s and early 50s were dominated by a style called film noir, as the optimistic excitement of wartime Hollywood gave way to a bleak mood of disillusionment and introspection. Directors turned away from the mythology of the American Dream to examine the darker sides of the American psyche: corruption, jealousy, greed, obsessive hate, and murder became crucial themes. Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, showing in the Orson Welles's film noir festival is in many ways a perfect example of the genre. Written by Raymond Chandler, it stars Barbara Stanwyck as the sexy but neglected...
...best film noir showing this weekend is not part of the festival: Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai. Rita Hayworth, whose performance in Gilda so defined the fascinatingly sensual but dangerous woman of the period that her picture was painted an atom bomb, lures Welles into a deadly and mysterious web of murder and corporate intrigue. The film's atmosphere, evoking a sinister world whose logic is not apparent at the surface, is exactly what Polanski was trying to achieve in Chinatown. Welles's eccentric camera angles are carried to new extremes which accentuate the uncertain character of reality...
Capra's State of the Union (1948) is in no sense part of the film noir style, thought it too deals with political corruption. The uneasy balance Capra strikes between his exposure of corruption and his reaffirmation is very much the same as that of his films of the 30s, like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Meet John Doe. While State of the Union is politically the least sophisticated of Capra's serious films, it is also emotionally the most exhilarating. Hepburn gives the best performance of her career as the wife of Spencer Tracy, presidential candidate, who wins...
...swiftly. They soon are dumped back into the realities of Detroit and New York. But the memories mingle and linger: supreme of pheasant smitane, Rockefeller, Harriman, Dillon, chestnut mousse, Bob Stack, Nanette Fabray, De La Renta, Alsop, filet of salmon in aspic, Cronkite, Swearingen, Humphrey, Schramsberg blanc de noir, Auchincloss. Watching from the dim corners of the old Decatur House on Lafayette Square, where the ladies went for tea, or inside the stately Anderson House, where Sadat the next day returned the White House favors with a dinner, one could see that a lot of the people had seen each...
Grape prices have dropped by 25% this year, and even more for finer-quality grapes. Vintners who paid the growers $862 per ton for high-quality Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and White Riesling grapes last year are now paying only about $500. Retail price reductions for wine will be less dramatic than that because of swelling production costs. But there should be modest price cuts in the best California wines by next summer, when 1974 whites will begin to hit those overcrowded retail shelves. The reds, aged longer, should drop somewhat by the 1975 holiday season. A 15% price...