FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
In Last Hurrah for Chivalry, a simple revenge plot is complicated by the two hired killers not being entirely sure about who to trust. Your choices, then, for what we’ll be screening on Tuesday 4 June are out of three films that are also linked by the theme of Deception! Up for the vote are…
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, USA, 1944)
"A powerful, ruthless and almost cruelly exciting picture in which Fred MacMurray and Bareara Stanwyck do the finest acting of their respective careers..." Marjory Adams, Boston Globe
Fred MacMurray stars as Walter Neff: an insurance agent who is hired and then seduced by the very married Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), who persuades him to help murder her husband for the insurance. What should be a simple case of insurance-agents-helps-murder-the-husband-of-the-wife-he-is-having-an-affair-with-for-the-insurance is complicated when Neff's friend and boss, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) begins to suspect foul play... Adapted from James M. Cain's novel by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity is a dark and tautly constructed film noir classic.
Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, USA, 1992)
"[A] riveting treatise on the theme of betrayal set in an urban wasteland that murders hope and makes redemption virtually impossible..." Derek Malcolm, Guardian
Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Eddie Bunker and Quentin Tarantino star as (respectively) Mr.s White, Orange, Pink, Blonde, Blue and Brown: six career criminals, brought together by Lawrence Tierney’s Mr Big, to carry out an audacious diamond heist. But what should be a simple case of six-ruthless-career-criminals-who-have-never-met-one-another-before-carry-out-an-audacious-diamond-heist is complicated when the heist is interrupted by the police, leading the survivors to suspect (as they lay low in an abandoned warehouse) that one of their number must be an undercover cop... Quentin Tarantino's debut feature (and arguably his best film) was an absolute sensation upon its release and (unarguably) one of the most thrilling and influential films of the 90s.
Seconds (John Frankenheimer, USA, 1966)
“Saul Bass’ unsettling title sequence sets the scene for the concise articulation of fifty-something bourgeois despair, as visualised by James Wong Howe’s distorting camerawork and the edgy discord of Jerry Goldsmith’s excoriating score... [and] one of the most chilling endings in all American cinema…” Time Out
Arthur Hamilton is a paunchy, middle-aged banker who, dissatisfied with his safe suburban existence, elects to undergo an elaborate medical procedure (courtesy of a shady organisation) that will grant him a whole new lease of life (and then some). But what should be a simple case of paunchy-middle-aged-banker-makes-deal-with-shady-organisation-in-order-to-look-like-Rock-Hudson-and-enjoy-an-entirely-new-lease-of-life, is complicated when settling into his new life proves a lot harder than Arthur had imagined - especially when he's not entirely sure who he can trust... Rock Hudson gives it his all in John Frankenheimer’s criminally underseen cult classic, a Kafkaesque horror story of ennui, paranoia and alienation - and one of the strangest and singular films of the 60s.
