Screen/Society--AMI Showcase--Film Noir Series--"Le dernier tournant" ("The Last Turning")

Monday, September 19, 2016 - 3:00pm to 4:45pm
Screen/Society--AMI Showcase--Film Noir Series--"Le dernier tournant" ("The Last Turning")

Film Screening:

 

Le dernier tournant (The Last Turning)
(Pierre Chenal, 1939, 90 min, France, in French w/ English subtitles, B&W, DVD)

-- Introduced by Prof. Michael Morton (AMI)!

Within five years of the first publication of James M. Cain's pulp fiction crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, film directors were lining up on both sides of the Atlantic to turn it into a film. French director Pierre Chenal was the first to make it to the starting block, although his adaptation, despite being the first, is not well-known and is massively overshadowed by the subsequent versions by Luchino Visconti and Tay Garnett, respectively titled Ossessione (1942) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

While it may lack the sordid earthiness of Visconti's film and the simmering sensuality of Garnett's, Chenal's, Le Dernier tournant (aka The Last Turning) powerfully evokes the grueling bleakness of James M. Cain's classic novel and the dark inner forces that propel the story to its shocking denouement. It achieves this primarily through its distinctly noir lighting and camerawork, which clearly show the influence of German expressionism (a feature also of Chenal's previous noir thriller L'Alibi and his superlative Crime et châtiment) but also through the intense performances from its lead actors Fernand Gravey and Corinne Luchaire.

"The trio of lead actors, a fine supporting cast (including Robert Le Vigan and Chenal’s wife Florence Marly), and the atmosphere of dust and fatalism that swirls through every scene, make this essential viewing for fans of film noir and great cinema." -- WorldsCinema.org

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Program in Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).

Bryan Center Griffith Film Theater