Following previous summer-long series devoted to major studios and film movements in American cinema, Sag Harbor Cinema turns its focus this summer to film noir – one of Hollywood’s most seductive and ever-evolving languages. Spanning the shadow-soaked fatalism of the 1940s and ‘50s to its sharper, colder reinvention in the late 20th and 21st centuries, SHC’s Summer Noir series traces the genre’s evolution from its classic roots to modern incarnations.
The program kicks off on Saturday, May 23, at 6 PM, with a screening of one of François Truffaut’s favorite films, Robert Aldrich’s “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955), followed by a Q&A and the opening of an accompanying exhibit on the Cinema’s third floor, “Trapped in the Shadows: Film Noir Artifacts,” featuring a curated selection of film-related art, photographs, original scripts, vintage paperbacks, and objects representing noir in all its cinematic forms as well as its influence on other arts.
“The interplay between light and darkness is at the essence of noir. As such, its shades deepen or soften according to the historical moment, a filmmaker’s vision, the eye of a cinematographer, a star’s features, or the lamp of a projector. Its instability is part of the attraction, just like the sense of peril that infuses its stories. Too moody to be properly characterized as a film genre, noir has touched them all. As Walter Hill, a master of the form, aptly wrote in an essay: ‘We know it when we see it. At least we think so.’ This makes a series like this one almost impossible to program, but also very fun. Even more with the opportunity to further investigate noir’s own imagery with an art exhibit,” said SHC’s Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.
Through the summer, the series will continue to feature classics like “Out of the Past” (Jacques Tourneur, 1947), “They Live by Night” (Nicholas Ray, 1948) and “Touch of Evil” (Orson Welles, 1958), alongside lesser-known titles, like Anthony Mann’s prescient “Border Incident” (1949) and Steve McQueen’s “Widows” (2018) and defining neo-noirs such as “Chinatown” (Roman Polanski, 1974), “Play Misty for Me” (Clint Eastwood, 1971), and “L.A. Confidential” (Curtis Hanson, 1997).
On June 1, the Cinema will celebrate Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday with a screening of Henry Hathaway’s “Technicolor noir Niagara” (1953), with dark lady Monroe — just prior to her comedic glory in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “How to Marry a Millionaire” — as a honeymooner plotting to kill her husband.
Summer Noir at Sag Harbor Cinema invites audiences to revisit or discover these films on the big screen, where the shadowy atmosphere and dark corners of noir resonate most powerfully. Special guests and the full schedule will be updated throughout the summer at sagharborcinema.org.