The Maltese Falcon at The Louisville Palace
The classic summer movie series is, once again, returning to the historic Louisville Palace. This year's collection of screenings are based in the classic genre, Film Noir.
Film Noir is one of Hollywood’s only organic artistic movements. Beginning in the early 1940s, numerous screenplays inspired by hardboiled American crime fiction were brought to the screen, primarily by European émigré directors who shared a certain storytelling sensibility: highly stylized, overtly theatrical, with imagery often drawn from an earlier era of German “expressionist” cinema. Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, and Otto Preminger, among others, were among this Hollywood vanguard. During and immediately following World War II, movie audiences responded to this fresh, vivid, adult-oriented type of film — as did many writers, directors, cameramen and actors eager to bring a more mature world-view to Hollywood product. Largely fueled by the financial and artistic success of Billy Wilder’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s novella Double Indemnity (1944), the studios began cranking out crime thrillers and murder dramas with a particularly dark and venomous view of existence.In 1946 a Paris retrospective of American films embargoed during the war clearly revealed this trend toward visibly darker, more cynical crime melodramas. It was noted by several Gallic critics who christened this new type of Hollywood product “film noir,” or black film, in literal translation.
Few, if any of the artists in Hollywood who made these films called them “noir” at the time. But the vivid co-mingling of lost innocence, doomed romanticism, hard-edged cynicism, desperate desire, and shadowy sexuality that was unleashed in those immediate post-war years proved hugely influential, both among industry peers in the original era, and to future generations of storytellers, both literary and cinematic.To this day the debate goes on as to whether “noir” is a film genre, circumscribed by its content, or a style of storytelling, identified by its visual attributes. The debate — in which there is no right answer — is only one of the things that keeps noir fresh for successive generations of movie lovers.
Tickets are $5 per screening and $42 for a season pass. Service charges not included on ticket prices. Tickets available only at The Louisville Palace Box Office (625 South Fourth Street).
Schedule
Friday, July 10 - 8:00pm - The Maltese Falcon
Saturday, July 11 - 8:00pm Laura
Friday, July 17 - 8:00pm Double Indemnity
Saturday, July 18 - 8:00pm Mildred Pierce
Friday, July 24 - 8:00pm Gilda
Saturday, July 25 - 8:00pm The Big Sleep
Friday, July 31 - 8:00pm The Killers
Saturday, August 1 - 8:00pm The Postman Always Rings Twice
Friday, August 7 - 8:00pm The Lady from Shanghai
Saturday, August 8 - 8:00pm Key Largo
Friday, August 14 - 8:00pm The Third Man
Saturday, August 15 - 8:00pm The Asphalt Jungle
Friday, August 21 - 8:00pm Sunset Blvd.
Saturday, August 22 - 8:00pmTouch of Evil
For more information call 800-745-3000 or visit LouisvillePalace.com
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