ROADS TO PERDITION: THE DARK ALLURE OF FILM NOIR at the Revue. $12, five-lecture pass $40.
Ever find yourself wondering, after a screening of The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity, how bad women lure good men to do dangerous things? Wishing someone would shed a ray of light on the notoriously shadowy genre of film noir?
Well, you’re in luck. On Tuesday (January 18), broadcaster and author Kevin Courrier launches a monthly lecture series at the Revue Cinema designed to do exactly that.
Full disclosure: Kevin’s a good friend and a fine lecturer I’ve been a guest speaker in one of his Ryerson classes. (I also like his recent book about the Beatles, Artificial Paradise, and his monograph about Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica.)
In five instalments, Roads To Perdition will examine the genre from the inside out, concentrating on a different aspect each time. Tuesday’s talk, Detours In The Road, looks at the origins of noir as an outgrowth of nihilistic strains in American crime fiction and postwar culture it features clips from Detour, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.
Subsequent lectures will examine the tropes of the wrong man (February 15), the femme fatale (March 22) and the hidden monster (April 19). The series wraps up May 24 with a look at noir’s lasting influence on contemporary cinema in films like Chinatown, Mulholland Dr. and The Big Lebowski. I’m curious myself to see how that last one fits in.
