Twelve More Restored Film Noir Classics Screen At Ojai Art Center
The Ojai Art Center Film Branch announces Shadows & Secrets: Season Two, a twelve-week series of restored American film noir classics screening Sunday evenings at 7 p.m. from August 2 through October 25.
When Shadows & Secrets concluded its first season, audience response made one thing clear: the appetite for classic noir still exists. Season Two answers that response with twelve more masterworks of the genre, each critically acclaimed, recently restored, and largely unknown to contemporary audiences.
The season opens August 2 with “D.O.A.” (1949), Rudolph Maté’s nerve-shredding thriller about a man who walks into a police station to report his own murder. The series closes October 25 with “The Sound of Fury” (1950), Cy Endfield’s devastating indictment of mob violence and media complicity, one of the most powerful American films ever made, still among the least seen.
Between those two bookends the series moves through the full range of noir’s moral universe: Fritz Lang’s “Woman in the Window,” Edgar Ulmer’s stripped-to-the-bone “Detour,” Nicholas Ray’s lyrical debut “They Live by Night,” Anthony Mann’s relentless procedural “T-Men,” and seven more films. Together these films make the case that postwar Hollywood, working in shadows and on shoestring budgets, produced some of the most psychologically honest cinema in American history.
All films are drawn from the public domain and have undergone recent restoration. Each screening is introduced and followed by open discussion.
The complete schedule:
• August 2 — “D.O.A.” (1949, dir. Rudolph Maté)
• August 9 — “Woman in the Window” (1944, dir. Fritz Lang)
• August 16 — “Detour” (1945, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer)
• August 23 — “Road House” (1948, dir. Jean Negulesco)
• August 30 — “They Live by Night” (1948, dir. Nicholas Ray)
• September 6 — “T-Men” (1947, dir. Anthony Mann)
• September 13 — “Pitfall” (1948, dir. André De Toth)
• No screening September 20
• September 27 — “Repeat Performance” (1947, dir. Alfred L. Werker)
• October 4 — “The Chase” (1946, dir. Arthur Ripley)
• October 11 — “The Man Who Cheated Himself” (1950, dir. Felix E. Feist)
• October 18 — “City That Never Sleeps” (1953, dir. John H. Auer)
• October 25 — “The Sound of Fury” (1950, dir. Cy Endfield)
Shadows & Secrets: Season Two is curated and presented by Steve Grumette, Film Branch Chairman, Ojai Art Center.
Single admission is $10 at the door. A series ticket covering all twelve films is $75, available at the door or online. The Ojai Art Center Theater is located at 113 S. Montgomery Street, Ojai.
For information visit ojaiartcenter.org/film or call (805) 649-4000.
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